Retroarch is now on Retail Mode (Xbox Series S/X)

wiired24

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It's been a while since I've been involved with the Xbox Scene. I wanted to share something super cool with the community. You can now install Retroarch on your Xbox Series S/X or Xbox One on Retail Mode. You DO NOT need a whitelist. And no you will not get banned from Xbox Live. This is great because dev mode is no longer required. With retroarch on Retail Mode games have full access to the hardware and you have all of your games in one place. No longer do you have to switch back and forth when you want to play Xbox Games or Retro Games.



I've linked the video tutorial here so you can give it a watch if you prefer a more in depth guide. All credit goes to Gamr13. This guy is doing the lords work. Basically there are a few steps to getting Retroarch setup in Retail Mode on your Xbox.

1. Open Edge Browser
2. Navigate to https://gamr13.github.io/
3. Once there, click on Retroarch and select "Download App"
4. You will be taken to the Microsoft Store where you can download Retroarch.
5. After Retroarch is finished downloading just configure it, add your games and you're ready to go. Enjoy Retro Gaming on Retail.

That's it. If you have any questions drop them here.
 
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Waveracer

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It's really cool, indeed. I have tried different cores (consoles). Some N64 games play great, others don't. PS2 crashes a lot.

What are the best settings for N64 and PS2 emulation, everyone?
 
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wiired24

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It's really cool, indeed. I have tried different cores (consoles). Some N64 games play great, others don't. PS2 crashes a lot.

What are the best settings for N64 and PS2 emulation, everyone?

From my own experience PS2 is hit and miss since the PCSX2 Libretro core is still a work in progress. The games I have tested for PS2 that work fine or with very minimal issues are

God of War
Grand Theft Auto III
Persona 3 FES

N64 should emulate most games well enough. From my own testing Conker, Mario 64, Paper Mario, Smash Bros, all worked great.
 

wiired24

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I don't see why you couldn't it's just a retroarch config file. It's not specific to any mode that you're running it on. So as long as you copy it to the correct place where retroarch will search for it.
 

godreborn

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I can't access the d drive where all my content is. plus, how are you supposed to ftp to the correct location? almost everything is blocked off when in dev mode, so that probably wouldn't work.
 

Waveracer

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From my own experience PS2 is hit and miss since the PCSX2 Libretro core is still a work in progress. The games I have tested for PS2 that work fine or with very minimal issues are

God of War
Grand Theft Auto III
Persona 3 FES

N64 should emulate most games well enough. From my own testing Conker, Mario 64, Paper Mario, Smash Bros, all worked great.

My console is Series X (I forgot to mention that). Some N64 games run perfectly like Diddy Kong Racing. Others don't play great like Excitebike 64.

Fatal Frame III (PS2), when it doesn't crash the app or fails to load content, runs smoothly but the ghost list is not updated so you can't save the ghosts that you photograph. That means progress is not saved.

Is necessary to manually update Retroarch and the cores or what do you to have the latest version of the app and cores on Xbox?
 
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wiired24

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nm, figured it out. you only have 30GBs internally or so?
Yeah there is an FTP server you can get alonside retroarch on gamer13 github. Also yes, but with the latest version of Retroarch you can use USB Storage too in addition to the 30GB Internal.
 

godreborn

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Yeah there is an FTP server you can get alonside retroarch on gamer13 github. Also yes, but with the latest version of Retroarch you can use USB Storage too in addition to the 30GB Internal.
alright, I think I got everything figured out. I need to wait until I have some money for a hard drive before I actually try it out. I have the dev mode version configured just right, and I did make two backups of the content, so it will be as easy as transferring over the content. which drive is the external drive, and if you put some of your bc games on it, does the series x format the drive in some special way where the only way to access the content is ftp?
 
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wiired24

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This thread is ignoring the most important advice we all have given at some point: Never use a YT video as a guide.
I posted a written step by step guide and linked to a video that explains the process in depth very well. Not sure what you mean. It's not a difficult process
 

CMDreamer

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I posted a written step by step guide and linked to a video that explains the process in depth very well. Not sure what you mean. It's not a difficult process

Don't missunderstand me, I'm not trying to troll nor make your information look wrong. But we always encourage tempers not to follow instructions on YT videos as they get outdated very fast.
 
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wiired24

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Don't missunderstand me, I'm not trying to troll nor make your information look wrong. But we always encourage tempers not to follow instructions on YT videos as they get outdated very fast.

Fair point but that's why I also posted a write-up of the steps below and any changes in the future would be updated to the original post in this thread. So even if the video becomes outdated 6 months from now, there will still be up to date information reflected here.
 
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godreborn

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Fair point but that's why I also posted a write-up of the steps below and any changes in the future would be updated to the original post in this thread. So even if the video becomes outdated 6 months from now, there will still be up to date information reflected here.
How big a drive can Retroarch use? I'm going to buy a 5tb for bc Xbox games and Retroarch if possible. Also, does the Xbox format the drive to something unreadable in windows?
 

wiired24

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How big a drive can Retroarch use? I'm going to buy a 5tb for bc Xbox games and Retroarch if possible. Also, does the Xbox format the drive to something unreadable in windows?

5TB should be just fine. As for the Xbox yea when you format it for the Xbox from what I remember it does make it into a format that is specifically for Xbox if you're using the drive for Xbox. But you should have the option to "Use as extra storage" or something along those lines which would keep your files in tact. It's been a minute since I've done it myself. For Retroarch I'm just using the 30GB on Retail as I prefer the speed of the internal SSD Drive on the Xbox Series S and I was able to get quite a good amount of games despite the low storage space available on the drive.
 

godreborn

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5TB should be just fine. As for the Xbox yea when you format it for the Xbox from what I remember it does make it into a format that is specifically for Xbox. But you should have the option to "Use as extended storage" which would keep your files in tact.
So does that mean I'll have to ftp to the external drive? What drive letter is that?
 

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