Update (7/27/2024): Xefu Spoofer V2 has been released to support the new xefu files.
Update (7/22/2024): Two new xefu files — dated 2019 and 2021 — have been found in Fusion Frenzy and Crimson Skies for Xbox One X which will run on a modified Xbox 360! It appears that this game emulates the Xbox 360 which in turns uses xefu files to emulate original Xbox. Any new found files will be documented on this wiki page.
Xbox Emulation on Xbox 360
As you may be aware, the Xbox 360 can play original Xbox games through the official Microsoft-developed backwards compatibility emulator called Xenon Fusion (XeFu). This allowed 460 whitelisted original Xbox titles to be played on Xbox 360 consoles. With the advent of being able to run homebrew on the Xbox 360, modders quickly figured out how to remove the whitelist to allow you to run any original Xbox game on the emulator — with results varying wildly from not booting at all, crashing mid-game, graphics or physics glitches, or working completely fine.
Various backwards compatibility lists were made over the years for modded Xbox 360 consoles, and around 6 years ago I combined all the lists that I could find into one Xbox 360 Backwards Compatibility list that eventually made its way onto the ConsoleMods wiki. Recently, this list was “completed”, as in every game was tested, by the collaborative efforts of many members of the /r/360hacks reddit, Xbox Homebrew discord, and the ConsoleMods community. While this is a major milestone, it’s not the end. The XeFu emulator received seven updates over the years, with the latest being from 2018 which fixed a single game’s crashing issue on PAL consoles (Panzer Dragoon Orta — as part of it becoming available on the Xbox One). Games on the official whitelist follow a list that tells the system which emulator version to use. If a specific version wasn’t specified for that game, it chooses the latest version available.
While the ConsoleMods list is a great reference for games that are perfectly playable, there are a few mentions of games that only work on specific versions. The non-working games always begged the question: What version of the emulator was this tested on? What if the person who checked the compatibility was using an old version and a later revision fixed the emulation issues for that game?
Xefu Spoofer
Over the weekend, I learned Lua and created a couple scripts for the homebrew Xbox 360 dashboard, Aurora. One of the scripts, Xefu Spoofer, is designed to answer these questions. It allows anyone with a modded Xbox 360 to simply choose which version of the emulator to use. It does this by backing up your set of xefu files from your Compatibility folder, then when you make a selection, it copies your selected xefu file to the Compatibility folder *eight times* and names them the same as the original xefu files. This guarantees that the xefu version you selected will always be used until you hit the “reset to default” button in the script, which puts everything back to where it was originally.
This gives the opportunity for anyone to test games against different emulator versions and hopefully find more compatible games in the sea of incompatible ones.
Downloading Xefu Spoofer
To download Xefu Spoofer, simply open the Aurora dashboard, press the Back button > Scripts > Aurora Repo Browser > Utility Scripts > Xefu Spoofer. It will automatically download the script and it will be available to run.
Alternatively, you can download the files from ConsoleMods, extract them, and put them in your scripts folder, located at: hdd1:\\Aurora\User\Scripts\Utility\
Conclusion
In short, if you have a modded Xbox 360 and your favorite game is marked as incompatible on the ConsoleMods list, try running the script and see if it works on another version of the emulator and update the list with the results. Or if you just want to help test random games for the thrill of the hunt, that works too 🙂