Playing on the Original Xbox Live 22 Years Later Is Incredible.

it's been 12 years since the original Xbox Live shut down for good and yet 12 years later I just made a brand new Xbox Live account for my original childhood Xbox for free because Xbox Live is back and it's thanks to some Geniuses that managed to get the whole system up and running again for everyone to play and I want to show you how it all works how you can go make an Xbox Live account right now some of the best running games and even how I managed to get this running on an emulator so you can try this on your PC or even on a steam deck is a new player on the market though Microsoft's Xbox they can hear me and I can hear them online gaming is going to be the big Next Step you can play anybody anywhere anytime it's the hottest thing for the holidays Xbox Live if you ever used incognito mode before you surely must know it's not the most secure thing in the world it's like trying to take a shower with a window open yeah the door is still closed but like everyone can still see you on the street just like how when you're on the internet lots of people can see what you're doing on your devices people like your ISP advertisers and if you're on a public Wi-Fi at any hacker on the same network can just go in and rip all your sensitive information from your devices and that's where private internet access comes in they're a VPN that can hide your IP address and encrypt your online connection so that way no one can just spy in and see what you're doing online and it's super customizable too they've got over 80 countries to pick locations from and they even let you pick down to what city you want to make a live like you're in look these guys have been doing this for over 10 years and they have over 10 million customers around the world and with support for pretty much every device that you own yeah even your Roku TV if you want uh you'll never have to worry about your ISP praying at your information again okay go to Pia vpn.com damage you have to get started for as little as two dollars a month on a VPN plan plus four extra months for free when you use my link that's Pia vpn.com damagef and thank you to private internet access for supporting this Channel and helping me make videos like this okay so I could be that there's a lot of people watching this that grew up like me with the original Xbox but we're too young to ever get a chance to experience playing online on the original Xbox Live since it was sadly discontinued in 2010 and if you're like me you always wondered what would it be like to be able to play the games that you grew up with online uh but couldn't especially since it was like what 50 bucks a year and dude good luck getting your parents to agree to that well great news there's a new service that was made by the super talented team called Insignia which is just straight up a drop-in Xbox Live replacement for all Xboxes stock and modded it works exactly the same with the original Xbox Live did with most of the features already working out of the box so you can play all your favorite games online exactly like it's 2002 with just you know less jinko jeans and frosted tips I want this video to be the one guide for anyone that sees this and goes oh I want to try that but like hasn't touched their Xbox in over 10 years or something a lot of tech has changed since then so I want to run down all the little things that you might need so you can go play 20 Hawks underground or Star Wars Battlefront 2 online and hopefully get you up and running by tonight then I even want to show you how you can set this up on an emulator on your PC or even cooler on your steam deck so you can still play with your friends even if you're on original console so let me show you how this all works I think you'll be very impressed with all the work that has been done on insignia all right I'm going to show you a few things to make this process a little easier since it's been like a good 20 years since the Xbox came out and Tech has kind of changed a little bit since then okay first off if it's been a while since you use your Xbox you'll probably notice they still use these types of cables we don't really use these anymore and it's going to be even harder to find a monitor or a TV that even uses these cables nowadays now I've seen this upscale as being suggested a lot when it comes to plugging old consoles through Modern TVs and let me tell you these things suck they're not any more convenient and the picture quality is really really bad you'll see for yourself in a moment so what I would suggest instead is one of these this is an adapter from pound that just converts your port to HDMI that's all it is and it looks pretty good too there are other mods that people can make where you can completely solder in a native HDMI port to get the true resolution of the console and all that but most people won't care about that and just want an easy good looking way to get their Xbox hooked up and this is perfect for that I'll leave a link to this in the description next is the controller situation I still have my original controller that I used when I was a kid but it is really hard to find a decent condition original Xbox controller that still works nowadays plus there's some people that might not be used to playing with the original controller especially the giant OG Duke controller look at it it's like someone put joysticks on a boomerang but I find a solution for that too this is a wingman converter xb2 which lets you pair whatever control you want including the new Xbox series controllers and hook it up to your original Xbox wirelessly too you just plug it in pair your controller and off you go with full vibration support and everything the black and white buttons from the original Xbox controller are assigned to the bumpers on the new controller so you don't lose out on any functionality either Brook makes some really cool devices like this again the link is going to be in the description if you want to get one of these lastly let's talk about actually connecting to the internet so in case you forgot Xbox has no Wi-fi connectivity it's strictly only wired ethernet now Microsoft did release a Wi-Fi adapter a long time ago but it is horribly outdated don't expect the thing to work with any router from the last 10 years now if you're fortunate enough to have your router close enough to your Xbox it's pretty simple just hook up an extra ethernet cable from your Xbox to your router and you're done but if you have a room like downstairs or across your house or something what I would recommend is picking up a power line adapter these could be had for pretty cheap basically the way that it works is that it comes in a two pack you plug them into a wall outlet one goes to the router and one goes to the Xbox the power line adapters uses your House's electrical circuit to Route the internet connection from your room and Bam easy wired internet also you can use this to have a wired connection to your PC or your PS5 or something once you're done I'll leave the one that I use in the description all right you got your set of mostly modernized this is all completely optional by the way you don't need any of this but it sure makes using your Xbox way easier now let's get on to installing insignia okay first let's get a few things clear playing online can be done both with a completely stock and modded consoles so you can literally just boot up your 20 year old Xbox run a quick exploit and start playing online but like many other creators I would really recommend modding your Xbox if you have some extra time simply just because it's really easy to do so there's zero drawbacks and it gives you a bunch of features that you find useful including being able to just throw all your backed up games on your hard drive being able to FTP into your Xbox wirelessly using custom themes or if you want to go a more old school route and Modded Xbox will let you do that too most people don't remember the old school days of DVDs in a Sharpie but even if you don't care about any of those things I would still recommend you look into modding it simply because well these consoles are starting to get pretty old by now which means at this point your hard drive is probably gonna die any day now your disk reader is probably gonna die in a day now your clock capacitor is probably already leaky with a Modded Xbox at the very least you'll have the ability to easily swap out these parts before something happens so your Xbox doesn't just die a set brick there's lots of tutorials on YouTube but let me know in the comments if you'd want to see my personal take on a video about this in case you're wondering how this is going to work the simple explanation here is that there are a handful of Xbox games out there that have save game exploits that we can use to run any code that we want this is how the Insignia app works you only have to run it once and you're good to go so let me show you how this works okay first step you gotta register so go to the link in the description or just go to insignia.live type in your email and like in a few days or so you'll get your invite code in your email awesome let's set this aside for now all right so if your Xbox is stock we're gonna need a few things first thing is an exploitable game now there's a couple of these games that work the most common and popular ones are going to be Tom Clancy Splinter Cell Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4 007 agent Under Fire great game by the way and Mecha Soul these two are the most preferred because any version of these games will work the original black seal best of platinum hits any version will work while these games over here have to be the original Black Label version well some versions of 007 work it's complicated you got to check the numbers on the disk and make sure that they met you see what I mean just for simplicity's sake just stick to these two if you can you can find them for a very reasonable price on eBay don't buy them on Amazon for some reason they're incredibly expensive there I'll also have a link in the description to check and see if you have a copy that'll work so I'm going to use my personal copy of Splinter Cell in spite of everything I've actually taken really good care of this game next we're gonna need an Xbox to USB adapter this is so we can transfer over the modded save from a flash drive over to the Xbox these are really cheap you can get these for like eight bucks I'll link the one that I use in the description and lastly you're gonna need a flash drive unfortunately this one is going to be a little bit more tricky because you can't just use any flash drive lying around think about it in 2001 most flash drives are pretty small like a one gigabyte cost like 200 bucks so to an Xbox sitting at 32 or even 16 gigabyte flash drive is like black magic and won't recognize it so General consensus is to stick to a small flash drive as possible preferably under four gigs I'm using this very old two gigabyte flash drive that seems to work just fine I'll link some flash drive that should work in the description to test that it works just plug it into the Xbox with a USB adapter and if you see a message saying the flash drive has been erased you're good to go if you plug it in and nothing happens or you see an error you're gonna need to Def a flash drive and that should be all you need to get started other than the Windows machine so first things first let's grab the Insignia program link is going to be in the description click on releases then click on the corresponding game that you have there's double 07 there is mecha salt that's m a metal arms SC Splinter Cell and th4 is Tony Hawks I have SC and TSC so I'm going to download that all right cool let's go load this up on the flash drive we're going to use an app called Explorer 360 to do this the website is going to make you click on two links before you can download it just a heads up okay let's plug on our flash drive now once you got the Explorer 360 app Open click up here to load up your flash drive and you should see it there now for your modded save make sure you've extracted it then click on it go to data and you should see a bunch of numbers drag and drop that bunch of numbers folder into your flash drive all right you're done now let's boot up our Xbox and start loading up the mod save plug back into flash drive and on your Xbox go to storage and click on your flash drive you should see the modest save here then hit copy and transfer it over to your Xbox alright cool that was the hardest part so now let's go load up our game now each game is going to have a different way of loading up the exploit but basically it's pretty much just loading a save file a certain way if you want to see how to load it up for your game pause right here and check since we're doing Splinter Cell though it's super easy we'll just hit start game click on Linux and hit checkpoints your Xbox should go black and in a few seconds the Insignia tool should pop up awesome now just hit register Xbox and you're done your Xbox is registered and you can go play online let's put this away from now oh by the way if you have a modded system you can skip pretty much all of this uh just download the default.xbe file from insignia FTP and overtree applications folder and launch the app on your Xbox it's super easy also make sure you have the Xbox Dash installed so you can actually make an Xbox Live account you should be able to get it from Rocky 5's extra disk now let's test to see if this works by going into your settings Network and Landing a check if you see this congrats your Xbox is back online at a minimum your Xbox hasn't seen the screen in at least 12 years isn't that crazy now it's just a matter of making an account for the most part it's exactly the same as making an account 20 years ago you got to be the terms pick out your gamertags stuff like that and yeah I checked and unfortunately dark master has already been taken there's gonna be like three people who get that joke dark master now when you get to this part where it says subscription code go back to the email that you got from Insignia and type that in here don't share this with anyone because these codes can only be used once it's very important no one sees this code there's your zero dollar subscription now when you get to payment information literally all of this can just be made up stuff don't enter any actual info in here the only thing you gotta change is the credit card number which is four and then until it won't let you do it anymore billing email address has to be the same when you got your Insignia code sent to otherwise you won't be able to log in once you're done with that you have a few more screens and you've officially signed up for Xbox Live I'm telling you seeing the screen made me so happy especially considering up until now not many people will be able to see this and that's it that's all the setup you need now your Xbox should be functioning exactly as it would have 20 years ago now let's go play some games I want to make it clear that the Insignia team makes compatibility for Xbox games on a game by game basis each title has a different system for matchmaking and online plays so they need to make sure that each game doesn't have any issues before declaring it playable so that means sadly the Heavy Hitters like Halo 2 are still being worked on but they are constantly rolling out support for new games all the time after this video they have a total of 60 games that are supported for online play so that should hold you off until then and their eventual goal is to get every original Xbox game back online I'm going to show you just a few that I managed to try over the last few days okay I wanted to try some of the older Call of Duties and while this was really fun especially with a full Lobby it kind of hit me how much different Cod was 20 years ago like I was trying to figure out how to sprint in the games it felt a little slow only to find out yeah sprinting wasn't in this game yet foreign and if you've been playing Cod for years now your skills will transfer over which is crazy there's a bunch of different racing games already supported on Insignia but the one I kept seeing consistently pop up with players was Toca race driver 2. the community tells me they really like this one because it's the racing Sim that they grew up with a lot of people like this one I mean look at this Lobby some guy in my Lobby was even telling me they had an entire racing wheel setup hooked up to the game now that's dedication the cars felt a little slippery in my opinion but it doesn't matter because this was super fun to play online regardless here's me running Counter-Strike since there's not a lot of people that have this one what the community decides to do is just run player versus bot matches for now but talking to the community they would really love to have Knights of actual full TV Screw matches Battlefront 2 was so good on multiplayer dude this one I distinctly remember playing as a kid but offline and I'm like devastated I never got to experience this on Xbox Live it's so good especially with a decent Lobby this one is decently populated on a good night definitely give it a try unreal Championship was the console port for unreal tournament and was designed specifically for the Xbox it was developed by epic games which you've probably heard of for making really popular games such as that's right Gears of War 2 and literally nothing else and this felt really really good even for a 20 year old game it felt responsive the movement was great and it was always easy to find a game definitely recommend this one okay you get the idea how to overwhelm it with all the games that I played uh but needless to say there is a lot here that will keep you busy now on to the things that currently work matchmaking leaderboards voice chat memory yeah even the old school wonky Xbox live voice chat works if you have online I mean it sounds like McDonald's drive-through but it's still somehow better than Nintendo system well that was a [ __ ] up sand trap what the hell was that about putter now on to the things that don't work friends list uh this whole screen is kind of just decoration right now but they assured me that they're working on it and this isn't really insignia's fault but some games like Battlefront 2 for example uh they need like a game update to properly connect online and since Xbox Live has been gone for like a while now uh the only way to install these updates is if you have a Modded Xbox so add that to the reasons why you should probably mod your Xbox but other than that this whole system works wonderful and it's showing incredible potential as it is this generation definitely still holds up all right lastly I want to go into how to get to set up if you want to play online with an emulator on your PC or a steam deck or something because listen as much as I love my original Xbox it's going to be hard to justify keeping this seven pound Chunk from my desk forever so you're going to want to set up the zemu emulator it's one of the more popular Xbox emulators as of when I'm writing this video and it should work on Windows for regular PCS and Linux for steam decks a quick disclaimer while the online functionalities of Insignia will work pretty much exactly the same as a real Xbox keep in mind that because this is emulation there will be some games that just straight up won't work because Xbox emulation is still a work in progress so you'll find that some games either won't boot or they might run weird with no sound but I've had pretty good luck with most games so far Zemo has a compatibility list so you can search up and see if the game that you want to play is playable or not I'm gonna assume your emulator is already set up properly uh if it's not and this is the first time you're hearing those emu I'll link a tutorial in the description for Windows people it takes like five minutes to get set up for steam deck people just install mu deck it'll set up everything for you in like 30 seconds and you can move on with the rest of the steps all right so we're going to try and replicate the same steps as a normal Xbox zema by default doesn't have an Xbox dashboard and we kind of need that to be able to actually make an account so we got to install the Xbox dashboard in the virtual hard drive of the emulator all right first we got to set up the virtual network adapter so go to machine then Network and then copy these settings all right cool our fake Xbox is connected to the internet now now we can access the Xbox hard drive through FTP Rocky 5's extras disk should allow us to do that no problem unfortunately there's an ISO that we can load up into the emulator so we can do that again link is going to be in the description you download the iso you put the iso into the disk slot reset the machine and it should boot you to the screen cool all right just keep this open in the background for now now we can use an app like filezilla to connect into the hard drive it's free don't worry first let's change a quick setting okay now copy these settings yes these settings will be the same for everyone so copy them exactly let's go top left site manager and let's make a new site so we can connect to the Xbox the username and password is Xbox all lowercase then hit connect and congrats you're connected to your hard drive you should be able to access your C drive from here all right now let's go grab our Xbox dashboard you can also grab this from the same place as Rocky 5's ISO I'll just link it down in the description so you don't have to look for it you can unzip the folder and just drag and drop all the files into the root C drive of the Xbox once that's done go back to the emulator reset your Xbox and you should have your Xbox dashboard all set up awesome at this point you can follow the exact same steps as everyone else so you load up the Insignia ISO you register your Xbox make an Xbox Live account on your dashboard Etc and now you're ready to play just like everyone else how cool is that all right so you're all set up you got online access now where do you go well if you go to their main website they always have a live counter what games people are currently playing and how many people are playing that game it's really helpful so you don't have to boot up your Xbox and check every time you want to play on top of that I would really really suggest joining the official Insignia Discord their Community is super kind and are always willing to help if you have any questions the developers are always hanging out in there in the chat and there's groups for all types of games that you want so you can go find people to play with as well plus you might run into me there so feel free to say hi if you do they just started doing group night events where they choose a specific game for everyone to play on the same time so that way you have like 40 50 people on the same game at once it's really really cool again highly suggest you check out the group to get the most out of your experience and be sure to let them know that Jeff sent you if you do go have fun reliving your childhood I hope to see you in game and let me know what games you'd love to replay again me personally I ran to go try Battlefront 2 as soon as I got the chance it was my favorite game as a kid I plan on making another Xbox related video soon since their Hardware is always so fascinating to work with so click over here to check that out and thank you for watching

Channel: Dammit Jeff

Views: 649,903

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Id: NxTuAbpF6Ns

Length: 20min 45sec (1245 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 17 2023