Peter Jackson's King Kong on PC, running natively, with the launcher and options of a modern PC release.

 

_{The original Xbox 360 game code, translated to native PC code with the ReXGlue SDK. No game files included: bring your own copy of the King Kong Xbox 360 disc.}

Modern graphics

_{Ambient occlusion: soft shading in corners, creases and under rocks, grass and people}

_{Up close, at full size}

_{Distance fog, on or off}

_{AMD FSR 1 and NVIDIA NIS keep a lower resolution sharp (zoomed 2x)}

A launcher made for the couch

_{Set up from your own disc  ·  Graphics: presets, upscalers, resolution and effects}

_{Gameplay: frame rate, field of view, camera shake  ·  Controls: remapping, mouse look, button prompts}

_{Cheats as switches  ·  Achievements with pop-ups and your choice of sound}

_{Add to Steam with its artwork  ·  Display: windowed, fullscreen, any monitor}

_{About: updates, stable or beta, Discord  ·  What's new after every update}

You need: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), a graphics card with DirectX 12, about 7 GB of free space, and a disc image you made from your own Peter Jackson's King Kong Xbox 360 disc (see Which version you need).

1. Download the KingKong-...-windows-x64.zip file from the latest release and unzip it anywhere.
2. Run king_kong.exe. The launcher opens, and the shader pack downloads by itself.
3. Choose Select disc image and pick your King Kong disc image. The launcher checks it, copies the game files (about 6.3 GB) into a game folder next to the exe and takes its artwork from them.
4. Press PLAY.

The download contains only this port. No game files are included: they come from your own disc. Your saves and settings are kept in Documents\king_kong. The port is also listed on Quiver Launcher, where you can see how it runs for other players.

The port is made for this disc only. Other versions will not work.

The launcher checks the title ID before it installs. To check your disc image yourself, run this in PowerShell and compare the result with the SHA-1 above:

Get-FileHash "C:\Games\King Kong.iso" -Algorithm SHA1

This is an experimental Proton build, not native Linux support. It's the Windows download running through Steam's Proton, so Linux and Steam Deck players can play now. A native Linux version is in development and will come in a future update. The Proton build was tested on a ROG Ally (Z1 Extreme) with Bazzite, where it held 120 FPS on the 10 W power profile.

1. Unzip KingKong-...-windows-x64.zip anywhere, for example in your home folder.
2. In Steam (in desktop mode on a Steam Deck), choose Games > Add a Non-Steam Game to My Library, browse to king_kong.exe and add it.
3. Right-click it in your library, choose Properties > Compatibility, tick Force the use of a specific Steam Play compatibility tool and pick Proton Experimental.
4. Start it from Steam (Game Mode works too). The first start takes about half a minute while Steam sets Proton up for it. Pick your disc image as on Windows: your Linux home folder is on the Z: drive.

Your saves and settings are kept in Steam's Proton folder for the game, under steamapps/compatdata.

Everything is set up before the game starts, with a controller, the keyboard or the mouse. The launcher looks and sounds like the game, using your own copy of it: the King Kong logo, stills from the movie trailer, the main menu music and the game's own menu sounds. Nothing from the game comes in the download. It follows the game's Language setting (English, French, German, Spanish or Italian). Settings are saved to a plain text file, king_kong.toml, next to the game, and every settings page has Reset page to put just that page back to its defaults.

	Home Play, with the game's logo over a slow slideshow of stills from the movie Reinstall the game from your disc image, with a progress bar Check for updates: a new version downloads on its own screen with a progress bar, then the launcher restarts Add to Steam and Discord panels along the bottom, each with its own button (X and Y) Players online at the top right How the game, the shader pack and the port's version stand, at a glance Turn the launcher off and hold Shift at start to bring it back
First start The launcher asks for your copy of the game first, with a card showing exactly which disc works: pick your disc image and it checks it really is King Kong, then installs it It takes its artwork from your copy, then opens on Home Choose your language, and whether to show online players, before you start
	Add to Steam Adds the port to your Steam library as a non-Steam game, so you can start it from Steam, Big Picture or a Steam Deck With its artwork from SteamGridDB: cover, banner, header, logo and icon Steam Input is switched off for it, so your controller keeps working Steam closes for a moment while it's added and opens again afterwards Once it's in your library, the panel opens Steam instead
Display Windowed or fullscreen Window size that fits your screen Choose the monitor VSync on or off (off by default, and great with G-Sync and FreeSync) Keep 16:9 with borders, or stretch to fill
	Graphics Look: Original Xbox 360 (720p at 30 FPS, the console's anti-aliasing, texture filtering and field of view, motion blur and fog, no ambient occlusion) or Modern. Switching back to Modern puts your own settings back Graphics presets: Low, Medium, High, Ultra and Steam Deck, or Custom when you set things yourself Upscaler: AMD FSR 1 or NVIDIA Image Scaling (NIS), both for any graphics card, or Off. At Quality by default, with NIS on an NVIDIA card and FSR 1 on any other. Native, Quality, Balanced and Performance modes, each showing the resolution the game draws at Render quality (with the upscaler off): Native, Quality, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance Supersampling on or off: draws more pixels than your screen has, for the cleanest edges Custom resolution from 1x (720p) to 6x (8K) FXAA and texture filtering up to 16x Motion blur, screen blur and distance fog, each on or off Ambient occlusion at strength 1, 2 or 3
Gameplay Frame rate: 30 (default, like the console), 60, 90, 120, 144, 165, 240 or unlimited Camera shake on or off, with a strength from 10% to 200% Field of view from 69° (the original) to 110°. The game draws the wider area too, Jack's gun keeps its usual size, and the menus keep their original look Language of the game and the launcher Frame counter in the corner, toggled with F2 Startup logos: skip the Ubisoft, Universal and WingNut movies (the default) or play them
	Controls Invert the camera left/right and up/down, separately Controller sensitivity from 25% to 300% (150% by default) Camera response: Modern (the default) turns the camera the same way in every direction; Original is the Xbox 360's own feel Real mouse look for keyboard and mouse, with Mouse sensitivity and Mouse vertical (invert) Toggle aim: press the left trigger once to raise the gun and again to lower it Stick deadzone to stop drift (5% by default) Vibration on or off, with a strength from 10% to 200% Remap any button on your controller Keyboard and mouse with a modern layout (left mouse button shoots, right mouse button aims, R reloads, WASD moves); rebind any control to a key or mouse button, and each one says what it does in the game Button prompts that match your controller automatically, or pick Xbox 360, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 2, Steam Deck or your keyboard keys, in the game and in the launcher
Cheats The game's own cheats, as switches instead of codes to type each time you play: All chapters and all bonus content Fast healing, one-hit kills, 999 bullets and unlimited spears The revolver, machine gun, shotgun and sniper rifle They switch on as soon as the game reaches its main menu, exactly as if you had typed their codes.
	Achievements All 9 achievements with their pictures, descriptions and gamerscore See which ones you have unlocked Pop-ups in the Xbox 360's style or Steam's, with their sound on or off and its volume Pick the sound: the built-in chime or any .wav you put in the sounds folder. Name the Xbox 360 sound Xbox_360.wav and it plays by default A test button to see and hear it A bonus Welcome to Skull Island achievement the first time you play
About The version history: the notes for every version Discord: join the official server The launcher's music and menu sounds, each with a volume slider Check for updates now, or turn the check at start off Change version between stable and beta (early test builds; your saves and settings are kept) Online player count on or off How the shader pack stands Open your save folder, game folder or settings file in one click Take the launcher's artwork from your copy again, or reset every setting
	What's new After an update, the launcher shows what changed the first time it opens Every version takes you to the full version history

The game shots below are from the V-Rex chapter; in each pair only the setting being compared changes.

Soft shading where surfaces meet: in corners and creases, and on the ground under rocks, grass and people, so they sit in the scene instead of floating on it. It stays under the game's own distance fog, so far-off walls don't show through the haze. It's off by default: turn it on with Ambient occlusion, at strength 1 (recommended), 2 or 3. It costs about 1 ms a frame at 4K, and works with NVIDIA and AMD graphics for now.

_{2560 x 1440 at strength 1, taken half a second apart (the rain and the firelight move in between). The close-up is at full size.}

Distance fog is on by default. Off clears the haze over far scenery, though the fog is part of Skull Island's look and also hides the edges of each area, so some empty backdrops can show.

Pick AMD FSR 1 or NVIDIA NIS under Upscaler. Both work on any graphics card, and the launcher picks NIS on an NVIDIA card and FSR 1 on any other to begin with. They scale the game's picture up to your screen and sharpen it, so drawing fewer pixels for a higher frame rate still looks crisp. Upscaler mode picks how many pixels the game draws: Native, Quality, Balanced or Performance, with the resolution shown for your screen.

_{The title screen at 1920 x 1080 in Performance mode (drawn at 1280 x 720), zoomed 2x: plain scaling, AMD FSR 1 and NVIDIA NIS.}

Look at the top of the Graphics page switches between Original Xbox 360, the game as it was on the console (720p at 30 FPS, its own anti-aliasing and texture filtering, the 69° field of view, motion blur and fog, no ambient occlusion and no upscaler), and Modern, with every setting. In Modern, a Preset sets several things at once:

The presets use NVIDIA NIS on an NVIDIA graphics card and AMD FSR 1 on any other; at Native it only sharpens. Change any of them yourself and the preset shows Custom.

• Above 30 fps some character animations are not right yet. For example, the crew rowing at the start skip part of their animation. 30 fps, the default, plays them correctly.
• There can be a short pause when the game loads the next area. The game does the same on the Xbox 360.
• The pre-rendered videos pause for a moment every couple of seconds while the video player keeps to the video's timing. This is being looked into.
• Under Proton the launcher has no stills from the movie trailer (Proton can't play the trailer to it). It shows the title screen from your first play instead.
• The first time you see a new effect it has to be prepared. Many are prepared at once in the background and the game waits only a moment for them, so there are no long pauses, but an object can occasionally appear a moment late the first time. Effects are saved, so this only happens once, and the shader pack prepares the effects other play-throughs have already seen before you play.

The game prepares each new effect (a shader) the first time it appears, which can cause a short pause. The shader pack is the list of effects collected by playing through the game, published on the shader-packs release. You don't need to do anything to get it: each time the launcher opens, it downloads the newest pack if you don't have it yet and adds it to your shader cache (Documents\king_kong\cache), keeping anything your game has already prepared. If you press PLAY while a download is still going, the game starts as soon as it finishes. New packs come out as more of the game is covered.

When the launcher opens it asks GitHub whether a newer version of the port is out. Update now downloads it, replaces the port's own files and restarts the launcher; your installed game, saves and settings stay as they are. Turn the check off on the About page. Change version on the About page switches between the stable version and the beta. The shader pack updates itself on its own.

On by default: the setup screen explains it, players who already have the game are told once, and you can switch it off at any time on the About page. While it's on, the top right of the launcher shows how many players are online, and the launcher checks in with the port's server every 5 minutes, also while you play. A check-in holds:

• a random number that isn't linked to you, deleted when you switch it off
• the port's version (and the newest one it was offered), and whether it's stable or beta
• Windows or Linux (Linux and Steam Deck players count as Linux, Proton included)
• whether you're in the game

That's all. No name, account, IP address or anything from your PC is kept, and installs that haven't checked in for 90 days are deleted. Nothing is sent while it's off. The server is the port's own, on Cloudflare.

Everything useful is in the logs folder next to king_kong.exe:

• king_kong.log describes your settings, and every 10 seconds it notes the frame rate, the 1% low and any frames that took over 50 or 100 ms. That shows exactly where stutter happens.
• If the game crashes, crash-<date>.txt and crash-<date>.dmp appear next to it.

Please attach them to an issue together with your CPU, graphics card and the resolution you play at, or ask on the Discord.

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie came out in 2005 on PC and on every console of the time. The Xbox 360 version was a launch title for the console, with upgraded graphics and its own achievements.

Until now the only way to play it was on an Xbox 360. On the Xenia emulator it boots, but it gets stuck right at the start of the first level and can't be played. This port runs it natively on Windows, fixes that freeze, and adds the options you would expect from a PC release.

On Xenia this game gets stuck at the start, looking at the ship's name "VENTURE" (xenia-project/game-compatibility#1302). The cause is how disc reads finish. The game streams music and voice lines with reads it expects to finish right away. The emulator finishes them but reports them as still in progress, so the game thinks it got no data. No voice line ever plays, and the opening waits forever for one to end.

This port finishes those reads the way the console does (kk/src/io_fix.cpp), so music, voice lines and the opening all work.

.\setup.ps1 -Iso "C:\Games\King Kong.iso"   # downloads the SDK, unpacks your disc, translates the code
kk\build.bat kk-release                      # compiles

• Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie by Ubisoft Montpellier, published by Ubisoft in 2005.
• Button prompt pictures from Xelu's Free Controllers & Keyboard Prompts (CC0).
• Steam Deck button prompt pictures from Kenney's Input Prompts (CC0).
• The Discord and Steam marks in the launcher from Simple Icons (CC0). Discord and Steam are trademarks of their owners.
• ReXGlue SDK, which does the code translation and runs the game, built on the work of Xenia and XenonRecomp.
• Upscaling: AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1 (in the ReXGlue SDK) and the NVIDIA Image Scaling SDK, both MIT licensed.