Alter Echo for PC 1.2.0

Alter Echo (Xbox, 2003), statically recompiled to run natively on PC. The installer builds the game on your computer from your own copy of the North American (NTSC) Xbox release, either a disc image (.iso) or its extracted files. No game files are included.

What's new in 1.2.0

New Game+ (the first extra)

Extras add gameplay the original never had. Each starts from its own menu entry, so unless you pick it, the game plays exactly as on the Xbox.

New Game Plus appears in the main menu, under Load Game, once you have a save from the game's last area. There's nothing to turn on: if you've already finished the game, it's there when you update.

• It opens the Load Game screen: pick any save and a new campaign starts from it. It skips the tutorial and starts where Paavo strips Nevin of his forms.
• You keep what you paid for. Your money, sword, guns, and health and time dilation upgrades come with you from the start. The gun and stealth forms' upgrades come back when the story gives you each form again.
• The save you picked is left alone. You save as usual, into a slot you choose.
• Every hit on Nevin is harder, and more so each time round. Finish a New Game Plus campaign, then pick a save from the game's last area, and the next campaign is a tier higher, from New Game Plus 1 up to 9. "New Game Plus" and the tier show on screen as a campaign starts and each time you load one of its saves, so you can tell those saves from normal ones. Enemies keep their health; only the damage you take goes up, from 2x at tier 1 to 10x at tier 9. With your armour, tier 1 hits about as hard as a first playthrough. No single hit takes more than half your health unless it already did in the original game.

The README has the details.

Fixed

• Linux: overwriting a save kept the old one. The new save was written, but the one it replaced stayed on disk. The game lists only five saves, so once there were six, one of them was hidden. Saves overwritten before 1.2.0 are still on disk: each save is a folder in alter-echo-recomp/game/UDATA/, and the SaveMeta.xbx file inside each one shows its name. Moving an old one out of that folder brings the hidden save back to the list.

Updating: run the new installer and choose the same folder. Your saves and settings.ini stay. Updating from 1.1.2 takes about 11 minutes, not a full install: New Game+ hooks into the game's translated code, so the code is translated and compiled again.

Which file do I download?

Your system	Download	Then
Windows 10/11	AlterEchoInstaller.exe	Run it, choose an install folder and your disc image, and wait 15-30 minutes. Start Alter Echo from the Start Menu
Linux	AlterEchoInstaller.sh	In a terminal: bash AlterEchoInstaller.sh. Give it your disc image and a folder, and wait 10-20 minutes. Start Alter Echo from your applications menu

You don't need the "Source code" downloads below unless you're building it yourself; the README explains how.

Good to know

• Windows will warn you: "Windows protected your PC". The installer isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway. The installer downloads its build tools (GCC with CMake and Ninja, about 270 MB, and the capstone disassembler) and checks each against a pinned checksum.
• Linux: if build tools are missing, the installer lists them and asks before installing them with your package manager (pacman, apt, dnf or zypper). It builds the native Linux version. No Wine is needed.
• About 6 GB of free disk space is needed in the install folder. Your saves, settings and logs stay inside it.
• Controls: an Xbox 360-compatible controller, or keyboard and mouse. The README lists the keys, settings and troubleshooting.

How tested is it?

• Linux: played start to finish. New Game+ was played on Linux: a campaign started from a finished save, the first mission, a save and a reload, and the New Game Plus 1 banner. The higher tiers were checked by measuring hits, not by playing them through. For 1.2.0, the Linux installer updated a copy of a 1.1.2 install in 11 minutes (8 files at a time, CPU held at 3 GHz), and the updated game booted at 60 fps. On Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE the package names it installs are untested, so if it stops at that step, please report it.
• Windows: experimental. The installer and the game it builds have only been run under Wine, never on a real Windows PC. New Game+ was tested in the Windows build under Wine. If you try it, please open an issue with how it went, whether it worked or not, and attach install.log from the install folder if the installer stopped.
• Known issue: the wavy effect when you activate a sync node can look blocky instead of wavy. It isn't caused by 1.2.0 and will be looked at for a later release.

Checksums (SHA-256)

3f24cab21ea58cfb114336c49ccb491dff9018f41e2cf8a938344c2bd95c716c  AlterEchoInstaller.exe
5135e7da6cc2e634e7af670e315e7cb273b70dc942d3b7c059d3536414f38941  AlterEchoInstaller.sh

Built on the xboxrecomp toolkit by sp00nz and its contributors, via this fork. Alter Echo is a trademark of its owner. This project is not affiliated with the game's developer or publisher.