Unofficial Sonic Unleashed Port

Just attempted to run the Windows version under Windows 11 on ARM, no dice (ends up not even showing anything, just shows the throbber icon and then doesn't do anything). Gonna install a quick Linux VM and see if that runs, but I have a feeling it won't. Us Mac users always get left out!

 

Watched a couple of videos of the port in action and... this is some absolutely groundbreaking work! The fact you can actually toggle the Werehog battle music? Ultrawide support?? 60 FPS??? I am BEWILDERED. This game's like, what, 17 years old already? Time flies, man. Unfortunately I can't play this due to me not having a PC, but I'll give the port a go when I get the chance! Kudos to everyone involved in this!

 

Just gave this a whirl this afternoon. Not really much I can I add that hasn't already been said. This is simply incredible work. Congratulations and thank you to everyone involved. My gaming laptop (hooked up to a gaming TV) was able to flawlessly run the game at 4k up to 120fps, only dipping as "low" as 60fps for some parts of Savannah Citadel Day Act 1 for no obvious reason. And one time I clipped through the floor at the end of Savannah Citadel Night Act 1, but that could well have been induced by the increased framerate. Unleashed has never looked or played better.

If SEGA are ever going to bother creating a port of their own, it won't hold a candle to this unless they go above and beyond to try and creative a definitive Unleashed experience that fixes all the problems that fans of game have with it. And given their extensive history of ports and so-called enhancements, that's a tall order that won't be met without an unprecedented paradigm shift.

I don't think I'm gonna be able to play much of this right now though. As impressive as this is, and as fantastic as Unleashed's production values are now that the game can finally be shown off at such high fidelity, it's still Unleashed. Playing it isn't really my idea of a great time. I hope everyone else has a wonderful time getting stuck in though.

 

From the git:
"XenonRecomp is a tool that converts Xbox 360 executables into C++ code, which can then be recompiled for any platform. Currently, it only supports x86 platforms due to the use of x86 intrinsics."

 

Sega hasn't really stamped out any of the other "ports" like this, have they? I doubt they care - the number of people who even know how to download/run is probably a tiny sliver of the overall Sonic fanbase, and let's be real, we're the diehards who would still buy an official Unleashed remaster anyway (especially if they did something similar to Generations by adding in a separate campaign or new levels).

Anyway this is neat, I own the digital Unleashed on Xbox Series S, so I'll need to see if there's some way I can use that for the recompilation. If not, happy for the people who can enjoy it!

 

Yes, let's be real. Having the technical expertise and equipment that's supposedly "required" to get this up and running isn't stopping anyone.

This port is all over social media and mainstream gaming news. You think all people in this very thread that have been playing the game have a working X360 HDD with a proprietary transfer cable from the 2000s, or the confidence to use non-proprietary alternative methods? Some people here specifically might fit that bill, but not everyone. And certainly not every nostalgic gamer. Nor every budding 12 year old Sonic fan sharing guides and sketchy links on YouTube, Reddit and Twitter. As with any recompilation that requires the original game, most people playing it aren't going to be going through all of the "required" steps.

Now as for whether or not SEGA care, historically they haven't and I don't see that changing with this release. Unleashed is close to 20 years old at this point, has never been re-released and its enhancements on the Xbox Series are little more than a footnote for the floundering console. It's not like anyone is taking money out of SEGA's pockets unless they were planning on an Unleashed port. And honestly that doesn't look likely. But I'd be surprised if it hasn't caught attention already.

 

In case people are still experiencing stutters even when turning settings to minimum, I had the same problem on my decently powerful PC and fixed it by switching the renderer from "auto" (which I assume means DX11) to "Vulkan" in the config.toml file. After that, everything ran smoothly, and I've been having an absolute blast with all the mods I used on Xenia. I'm honestly super thrilled and impressed by the port.

Unleashed is the game I have the strongest childhood memories of from announcement to release. I remember the teaser trailer and people suspecting the tune Sonic was humming as Angel Island Zone (for some reason), I remember the leaked trailers closely followed by the hastily released official trailers, I remember tuning in live to E3 on YouTube when it was such a novelty and watching all the live coverage of Unleashed and saying to my younger brother "Sonic's good again!". We bought the PS2 version, not realizing it was radically different from the HD release, since we didn't have a 360.

I think it was Christmas 2009 when our recently divorced Dad signed us up to some sort of program with the US Air Force to give gifts to kids, and they gifted us a 360 Arcade Edition with Unleashed, among other things. Since the console and the game technically belonged to us both, we made a deal where I would play all the Daytime stages, which were shorter but harder for him, and he would play the Nighttime stages, which were much longer but more difficult for me. Early on we both got massively stuck on Tornado Defense Act 1 for maybe a month or more during the Summer (probably because we were hopelessly unfamiliar with the controller). We went so far as to lug that poor 360 half a mile on foot to our friends' house to see if they could help, to no avail. We eventually got past it, but I think we stopped just before Eggmanland.

I've gone back to replay every now and then since, as I still have that battered 360 with the barely functioning disc drive (thank you, GameStop Power Rewards card). As soon as emulation was at an acceptable level I got it up and running with mods and I've never looked back. Right now, I'm using mods to turn buttons into Dreamcast buttons since I have a custom Xbox Controller with that colorscheme, Alt Voice Lines, HD cutscenes, Improved Progression (which has a dedicated PC mod now), Werehog's Fury, Vertical Drop Shadow for Werehog, Easier Dark Gaia QTE, and Moon in the World Map. I thought about using the Like a Werehog, but it looks far too involved for my tastes.

 

...okay? The fact that people will likelier pirate the game to make the recompilation work doesn't contradict my broader point, which is that the market for a fan-made recompilation would (probably - if someone wants to provide hard numbers proving otherwise, I'll leave that open) be a drop in the bucket compared to an official remaster from Sega that would be put out in stores and on the official storefronts and have an actual marketing campaign and etc.

Like, you're right, it wouldn't be that hard to download the game if you're fine going through illicit channels, I just don't get where the sass is coming from.

 

My understanding is that it should still work on WoA, as the Prism emulator it uses to run x86 code supports AVX/AVX2.

I'm assuming LucasMadword is using a snapdragon laptop, perhaps the GPU drivers don't play nice with Unleashed.

Edit:
Are you using Windows 11 24H2?

 

You're also right that this project is never going to dent sales of an official port. But you said its a tiny sliver that will have the know to go through with accessing this recompilation, and I think that's just patently false in this day and age. Short of an official port, it really couldn't be any easier. Anyone who wants to play Unleashed on PC and has somewhat capable gaming PC is gonna look into this. If you play mods, you've got all the expertise necessary to go through with this.

I don't think PC is the biggest platform for Sonic though. That's probably the bigger reason for SEGA to not care and why the audience is limited.

I wasn't meaning to be sassy, by the way. I'm just really amused by the amount of hubbub I'm seeing overplaying how you get this game running (intentional on the part of the team, of course). I've seen lots of people and articles say "You have to follow all of the steps because an iso will not work. Also here's the steps to make your own iso". Fair enough, don't promote piracy. But don't lie to people bloody hell lol.

 

On a Mac Mini M4. My exploration today is- doesn't work at all on Windows on ARM, doesn't work at all on Whisky (basically similar to Proton but for Mac), but *does* actually open fine on Fedora Silverblue ARM. That being said, it only seems to get to the menu screen at like 1fps, before it crashes (crashes? hangs?). I'm a bit exhausted from dealing with Linux today, so I gave up lol

 

Even the famously litigious Nintendo couldn't do anything about the Mario 64 decomp, so I'd be really surprised to see this one go differently.

Of course, I'm a good boy and would never do anything illegal so I donated my PS3 copy of Sonic Unleashed to the local orphanage and purchased an Xbox 360 through Microsoft directly with a brand new and legitimate copy of Sonic Unleashed(TM). I also left a tip to show my appreciation to Sega Sammy Holdings, Inc.'s shareholders for their hard work and dedication to the craft. Anyone who downloads the iso that's the first result you get on Google when you look it up - you know what you did. Shame on you.

 

(This isn't meant as a rebuttle or a refute btw just further musings)

I actually don't think adding more stages is the answer either, but it's more of a personal thing for me. These games were received far better than Unleashed ever was so your idea probably has a lot of merit but the number one thing stopping me from replaying most "Modern" Sonic games is the amount of junk platforming stages they put in to pad out the experience. To me, there's nothing wrong with two good, clean acts that milk all the ideas out of a given level before you move onto something else, like the old days. The gimmick acts in Colors, Generations, Frontiers and Shadow Generations always felt like they were stretching games that didn't have all that much going on to begin with thin. When i open one of those games up I'm far more likely to just fire through all the main acts instead which renders a lot of the padding moot.

You accuont for this in the post tbf, and I think a dream scenario where the DLC levels are stiched together into real acts might be ideal, but the Wii acts feel like too much work to be worth bothering with. You can fudge a lot of them together with the assets that already exist in the game but the quality of the level design is way lower than the base game. Once you get into the business of shoring that aspect up then you might as well just throw some new levels in with the amount of work that you're doing.

Another thing to consider with all this is the difficulty curve. For all the problems Unleashed has I think the way it ramps up the challenge is pretty stellar, and tossing out extra hard levels into the main campaign could screw that up.

Which is why I think slimming down the amount of continent hopping that needs to happen might be a better answer, but you're right in that I'm not sure how viable that is especially with some of the levels relying on level up items that lean on the game proceeding in a certain order.

I think it'd be at least worth trying though. For all of SA1's flaws I think the Adventure game elements of that game added a decent layer of immersion. In Unleashed it feels like the opposite is the case. Hub worlds, Adventure fields, day stages and night stages are all so cleanly separated to the point where Sonic has to go through teleporters to get to levels like 06, the "road trip" vibes are ruined by you not staying in any given location for long enough to build up a real relationship to it, and while an attempt was made I think the current level playlist is engineered to suck the energy dry out of the player even without the hub worlds or the medals as progress gates. I just don't think the game does anything that wouldn't be enhanced by a more standard structure.

 

Does it work on windows 11 on an AMD Ryzen?

 

I'm playing on an AMD Ryzen 5 3600 with Windows 11 installed.

 

hope they add multiple save slots in a future update

 

Beat the recomp. Yup, still my favorite sonic game. I think this made me appreciate it even more, honestly.

 

I'm not all that bothered by the more throwaway-feeling stages in the other boost games because on a moment-to-moment design level I don't feel that they're much weaker than the main stages, at least not necessarily (some of them do suck). It feels like a nice "alright in case the spectacle wasn't enough, here's more pure platforming for you" concession. But I also admit when I'm saying all this that I have Sonic Team's "the game is too short without it" justification for the werehog both existing and being a slow bore locking you in rooms to fight enemies over and over lingering in the back of my head, and I'm more thinking about the idea of rescuing the game from that than I am every stage being a 100% perfect knockout. Even still, I wasn't necessarily thinking of having them be main campaign stages in the first place. If someone ignores all the optional content and then says the game is too short, that's really their problem. Only in an extreme case like Forces have I ever thought it would be worth it to mix the extra acts into the main story as a mandatory way of expanding things (also because more dialogue between them might make the story feel less dogshit? I dunno).

On an aesthetic level I think even with some of the HD visual upgrades you'd probably still be able to tell the Wii assets aren't on the same level, but honestly I've never seen the complaints that the SD version's level design is significantly worse. Overly broad and flat, yes, but on a micro scale I can't say any individual level or piece of a level feels like it's way too frustrating or boring compared to HD. Maybe it's my broken brain that simultaneously believes "all of the boost games are way more similar to each other than people act like they are" and also "Unleashed is the worst boost game" talking, but I think they'd fit in perfectly well if they were remastered to the standard of HD's scaling and fidelity. Actually, I straight up think Wii Cool Edge is a better stage than HD cool edge, both in design and art direction (glowy ice caves are rad). I don't mind Daytime-only Eggmanland either.

Well as stated I'm not necessarily considering these as being mandatory, so it's not really any different than how it is right now, selecting a hard DLC level from the menu as soon as the levels from that continent are available to you. But I also think the issue with the DLCs is that they don't feel organically hard the way Jungle Joyride does, they're very twitch-reaction based, almost like an invisible QTE all their own. If we're busy stitching levels together and Final Horizon cardboard box-redesigning them, may as well take that opportunity to suck out some of the bullshit.

That, or we keep the difficulty the same, and I'm also thinking about how Mario Wonder added difficulty ratings to stages, and you can reach some 4-star level challenges as early as, like, world 2 I think? So something trafficking between the ideas of completion, performance and exploration feels like it could be interesting. Like, if we had to gate progress, giving the player the option of either improving at a stage to get a better rank, completing other harder stages with their own ranks, or hunting around the stages and hubs to find medals (adding them to whatever stages don't already have could be the most balanced mode of change for this. I could even see Sonic Team themselves doing something like adding a Knuckles NPC for a radar to help search for them. So you have to do something, but what you can do is relatively up to you.

Well that one's easy, just give the player all the upgrades from the start. I always thought it felt pointless in SA1 and 2, and I think it feels pointless in this game too. Ditto for the stat level-ups in both Unleashed and Frontiers.

Y'know that's a good point, I never thought of that. Connecting the towns, Gaia Gates and I guess custom diegetic stage entrances (which would still be the transporters, just invisible and triggered a little differently) would be a really neat challenge to see. I already use a mod to give Sonic his normal speed in the hubs, but straight-up welding them to the gates so there's no need for level transitions is interesting. I'm still thinking about the Wii Gaia Temple hubs, too, since there's nothing like them in the HD version and anything you didn't have a place for could get put inside them or made to work with their little puzzle areas or something.

 

Would anyone know how to update the game on Steam Deck? I downloaded the flatpack for 1.0.1, but I'm only seeing an option to run the program like normal after clicking it (and the version number in-game within the Options menu still says 1.0.0).

 

Weird that it doesn't give you the option to install the new version. I'd just uninstall 1.0.0 and install the new one after. Seems like it shouldn't be necessary, but it is what it is. The package manager should leave your save data alone.

Anyway, I've been having a bit of fun with this. It's a nice followup to my run through Jak and Daxter's unofficial PC port. Man, it is surreal to see Sonic Unleashed running at 144 fps. It's downright the smoothest I've ever seen a Sonic game run, nothing else comes close. Night stages are still as dull as ever, maybe more so because I can see more frames of them now, but that's my problem. If you liked them before, you're probably gonna love them on PC with all the settings cranked up.