Xbox 360 (RGH) Port of IKEMEN GO – Is it technically possible?

[joystickuser294-hue]

Hello IKEMEN GO developers,

First of all, thank you for creating and maintaining IKEMEN GO.

I have spent several weeks researching whether MUGEN or IKEMEN GO could ever run on the Xbox 360 (RGH/JTAG). I searched GitHub, Reddit, Xbox-Scene archives, SourceForge, and even the old OpenMUGEN Xbox project.

Here is what I found:

• XMugen exists only for the original Xbox.
• OpenMUGEN source code is archived.
• I could not find any Xbox 360 port, prototype, or abandoned project.

Before giving up, I wanted to ask the people who know the engine best.

My questions are:

1. Is an Xbox 360 port of IKEMEN GO technically possible in theory?
2. What is the biggest obstacle?
   • Go compiler?
   • PowerPC CPU?
   • Graphics backend?
   • Memory limitations?
3. Would it be easier to port IKEMEN GO or revive the old OpenMUGEN Xbox source?
4. If someone seriously wanted to start this project, where should they begin?
5. Has anyone ever discussed or attempted an Xbox 360 port before?

I am not asking anyone to build it for me.

I only want to know whether this project is technically possible or completely impossible.

If there are old documents, branches, experimental code, or developers who worked on similar ideas, I would greatly appreciate any information. And If it is impossible, could you explain the exact technical reason?

Thank you very much.

[SuperFromND]

I don't believe anybody has attempted to compile Ikemen for the Xbox 360 before (or any homebrew port to a console for that matter). I wasn't able to find much information on how exactly people develop homebrew for it (and I don't own a 360 at the moment to explore further), so I can't help too much there unfortunately.

My guess is that simply getting Go to compile anything that the 360 could run would be the #1 problem. Compared to C++ or even C#, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of console homebrew ports written in Go to work off of, so getting the Xenon CPU to work as a build target would be tricky to say the least.

On top of that, a lot of Ikemen's libraries for things like graphics and audio assume they can use a relatively modern API like OpenGL 3 or Vulkan, which obviously isn't a thing on the 360 and would require a bit of finagling (if not custom libraries entirely, which is to be expected).

This would be followed shortly by memory limitations; a fresh copy of Ikemen's latest nightly already uses around 240ish MB on its own, which is roughly half of the 360's entire RAM space. Even just a few characters and stages would almost certainly fill the entire RAM of the 360 (and that's assuming the RAM isn't also being used for other things like the 360's hypervisor.)

All that said: I would love to see someone attempt a homebrew console port anyways! We won't merge it into the main branch of course, but I think it would be a really great use of Ikemen's open-source nature and would definitely get some experienced, "outsider" eyes on the project. It might be worth asking around on some of these homebrew forums about it, just in case it catches someone's attention who knows 360 homebrew development better than I do.