It's just been a little less than a week since the hypervisor vulnerability was first reported. In the short time between that and today, we've already seen a "Hello World" Proof of Concept being released. And today, we have a few bits of info about the first emulator for the Xbox 360. This anonymous developer was kind enough to send a few screenshots and describe what he has been up to.

First, a few screenshots:

     

Here's what he said about his project:

In light of the recent 360 hack and possibility of widespread homebrew in the future, I wanted to share some news with you and X-S.

I've been working on a port of MAME to the 360. I call it 'MAME360'.

Now for a bit about the project:

• It's based on MAME 0.112 and is fairly easy to keep up-to-date (doesn't need any messing around with like Mameox on the xbox).
• Originally it was based on SDLMAME but I've since ported a 360 specific osd layer (so SDL for the 360 exists - as an aside I also have a port of ScummVM in the works too).
• Mame doesn't include any dynarec cpu emulation on anything other than an x86 platform. So any game that is PSX or N64 based for example doesn't run at all well.
• Most other stuff (that I've tried) runs pretty well.
• At the moment it will only run on 360 dev/debug/test kits. Whether it will ever run on a hacked retail box remains to be seen.

Since there isn't much of a difference when you run code on a debug kit and a hacked retail box, it is possible that if the hypervisor vulnerability is fully exploited, it will open up the Xbox360 to a lot of homebrew. Personally, I can't wait for this to show up and be possible to run it on retail boxes as homebrew.

When the home computer ZX Spectrum was released in the UK back in the early 80s, its significance was likened to that of the Commodore 64 in the USA. So it's good that Jan Jones (aka Jonesy) came up with an emulator for ZX Spectrum 48K using Xbox 360's XNA Studio Homebrew program.

Sound exciting? Jonesy mentioned that while the emulator is in its very early stages, it is already able to run most games at top speed. If you want to know, most tests were done on games Sabre Wulf and Alien8. However, there are still certain features that need to be polished such as sound support, better keyboard mapping, and better ROM selection.

Speaking of which, the Spectrum ROM is included but there are currently no game ROMS so you need to find some on your own. As Jonesy said, the emulator is still in its infant stages so the help of other.NET and XNA developers are highly appreciated. Anyway, feel free to try this one and if you are not convinced yet, just see this YouTube video clip below:

Download: [ZX360 Source Code]

 

 
For the guys with an inkling for something far more retro in their 360's lineup, you may want to see this. Up ahead is the aptly named DotRetro v0.3 app, which is an emulator that allows your Xbox 360 to play some of the old classics we all remember and love, like Space Invaders. The emulator sports NES emulation capability, though it's stated to be limited at the moment.

According to author kp73 , the emulator's based on the .NET/XNA Game Studio Express by Microsoft">XNA frameworks, which may remind some of the guys here of the other NES-based project in the works. We'll leave it up to you to see which you may prefer - with this brew being free. Enjoy the download, which should also work with All 32-bit MS Windows (95/98/NT/2000/XP). Make sure to read the GPL text included in the bundle before uploading the brew.

Download:[DotRetro v.03]

It's not perfect, but it's something at least. Someone sent us word of Bryan Livingston's (aka Lone Coder's) XNASharpNES, a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator for the Xbox 360.

Before you get your hopes up, we'll let you know some things that might temper your enthusiasm. First off, this isn't a hack. Rather, it's a conversion of Jonathan Turner's SharpNES program that runs using XNA. Second, it's still got a lot of kinks to work out, as XNASharpNES doesn't run at full speed and has no rom loading menu.

Lastly, and perhaps least exciting for everyone here to hear, is that you'll still have to pay to get it to work:

This requires a creators club account which runs $99 a year or $49 for four months. You'll also need Visual C# Studio Express which is free.

It's probably not something you guys would want to download just yet, so we'll just link to his site. Still, you have to admire the work it took to get this far, and someone's bound to find some use for this emulator conversion. For now at least, it's still another XNA app that's got a lot of future potential.

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Update:

Version 2's already out, fixing some issues with the previous version and giving it additional functions. The new version still lacks sound, but the new features listed in Lone Coder's changelog should make up for it:

• Second controller fixed (Yea for Luigi fans!).
  
• Made thumbstick work as an alternate control.
  
• Battery saves are stored to disk (Be sure to exit the emu or it won't save).
• Crude rom navigation.
  
• Emu remembers which rom was last loaded and will load it up.
  
• Emu runs at full speed when not being debugged
• Minor performance improvements