Sonic Unleashed is one of the games featuring the Blue Blur from the Xbox 360/PS3 era that hasn’t been remastered for modern consoles. It sits in a strange nether zone where it wasn’t especially beloved by critics or fans (well, it’s no way near as bad as Sonic 06), meaning Sega doesn’t have much of an incentive when it comes to giving it the remaster treatment of Colors and Generations. So Sonic fans are taking things into their own hands and, from the looks of it, doing a pretty amazing job.
To recompile something is to essentially change its machine language from one to another, so in Unleashed Recompiled’s case, it is essentially altering the original Xbox 360 code to something that is able to work natively on PC.
Earlier this month saw the launch of Unleashed Recompiled, an unofficial port of the game to PC that doesn’t just jazz up the game in a traditional sense, but essentially remasters the game using a new technique that could change the ways in which we experience Xbox 360 and PS3 titles on PC. It uses a process known as Static Decompilation that decompiles the game, and then recompiles it onto the PC into what is essentially a native port. I’m far from an expert, and YouTubers like ModernVintageGamer have done a killer job breaking things down. But even without the appropriate knowledge, it’s hard to deny how impressive this is.
Sonic Unleashed Recompiled Could Change How We Play Old Games
On the surface, Sonic Unleashed Recompiled feels like little more than a jazzed-up remaster of an average Sonic title. But considering that it came from the original code, it’s extremely impressive to witness. You can increase the resolution to far beyond 4K and push the performance way higher than the developers ever intended. Be warned though, going beyond 60 frames could cause some issues, considering the game was never designed to accommodate it.
You can also adjust some settings, such as aspect ratio, to better emulate forgotten PS2 versions of the game. To our surprise, it still looks pretty good.
You will obviously need a copy of the original game to rip an ISO from the disc, which itself requires a modded Xbox 360 and the right amount of knowledge. As for Unleashed, ports like this were made possible by a custom program known as XenonRecomp which is built as a means to convert Xbox 360 executables into C++ code that presumably works with current-era PCs without the need to use an emulator, meaning native ports with the features people have come to expect can be implemented with relative ease.
And The Results Are Incredible
Sonic Unleashed has always been quite an attractive game considering its bright uses of colour and imaginative character models, but when the resolution is natively increased to 2160p and beyond, it’s a sight to behold. Environments are crisp and clear, characters pop more than they’ve ever done before, and it’s clear how much love and skill has gone into reverse-engineering its code to work so flawlessly on modern hardware. New touches like the DualSense lightbar reacting to Sonic’s transformations and the touchpad being used to navigate the world map have also been added. These extra, unnecessary touches serve to make an old game feel new again.
What makes me most excited about Unleashed Compiled is the possibilities it opens up for other Xbox 360 titles receiving a new lease on life on PC. There are so many games that have never seen native PC versions or were simply delisted from digital storefronts, so the only way to play them is on the console itself with a physical copy in hand. It’s not ideal for either playing these games or preserving them for future generations, so to know we’re well on our way to a more effective solution is hard not to get excited about.
Of course, I’m not naive either. This process isn’t a matter of dragging random Xbox 360 executables into the program, pressing a button, and spitting out a remaster. It might be one day, but right now you need immense technical expertise to make this possible, but projects like this being in the public eye where regular joes like myself can see them will work wonders to give them greater support. Unleashed Recompiled could be the start of something very special.
- Released
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November 18, 2008
- ESRB
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