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Windows Central
Windows Central
Technology
Brendan Lowry

"We do a lil port'n, and a lil polish'n": This classic Fallout game is getting a fan-made Xbox port developed with a 20-year-old homebrew framework

Fallout 2.

While most of the big Fallout games — including Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, and Fallout 76 — are all playable on Xbox consoles thanks to official Xbox 360 releases and Xbox Backwards Compatibility, the same can't be said for the classic titles made by Interplay Entertainment. Indeed, Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout Tactics are all exclusive to PC, and haven't gotten console ports.

In the near future, however, it's entirely possible that you'll be able to play all of Fallout 2 on the original Xbox console — provided you have one and are willing to dive down the rabbit hole of modding it. That's thanks to Milenko (@dtoxmilenko on X), who's actively working on a fan-made port of the RPG to the system.

You may recognize them as a developer on the project to make a reverse-engineered version of the OG Xbox's dashboard a usable launcher for PC games; now they're also bringing Fallout 2 to the 2001 console, and is doing so with a 20-year-old emulator framework.

The framework was created by Xport, a prolific developer in the homebrew community that formed around the first Xbox in the years following its release. Xport released multiple emulators that helped make games from a wide variety of platforms playable on the console, complete with high levels of polish; now, two decades later, one of their releases is being used for Milenko's Fallout project.

"The cool thing about Xbox homebrew, is for 20+ years a lot of cool people made things and just tucked the source away. For example.. Xport. The scene was flooded with their emulators and ports, they had a framework that made these homebrew applications feel like legitimate Xbox titles," Milenko wrote in a post. "So like.. what if we borrowed that framework for the Fallout 2 port..?"

"We do a lil port'n, and a lil polish'n. Stupid easy with Xport's framework," they added.

The version of Fallout 2 that's being brought to Xbox is specifically the Community Edition, which sports engine fixes and quality-of-life improvements, but otherwise keeps the experience identical to the original. Notably, Milenko has actually released the current work-in-progress version of their port, though there's a lot that still needs to be done.

While the game's intro, main menu, scripting, rendering, and basic combat mechanics are all functional, audio, music, voice acting, and creating and loading saves are all either disabled or untested at the moment. Worldspaces outside of the temple you start in haven't been tested, either, and the rudimentary gamepad support the project has now feels "rough."

These things will all be worked out in time, hopefully, and ultimately, I think it's pretty awesome that someone is working on making Fallout 2 playable on the OG Xbox. With any luck, further development of the port will go smoothly, and work on similar projects for the very first Fallout game and Fallout Tactics will happen, too.

Would you mod an OG Xbox in order to play a homebrew port of classic Fallout games on it? I'm curious, so share your thoughts in the comments below and vote in our poll as well.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

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