3on3 Arcade Recomp

NHL 3 on 3 Arcade — PC port

A native Windows and Linux port of 3 on 3 NHL Arcade (Xbox Live Arcade, 2009), statically recompiled from the Xbox 360 executable with ReXGlue. It runs without an emulator, at higher resolutions and frame rates, with ultrawide (WIP) support and online play.

No game content is included. You need your own copy of the game: the release only contains the recompiled engine, and you add the game files to it.

Download

Get the latest build from the Releases page. Each release has one archive per platform:

File	For
NHL3on3-<version>-windows_64_portable.zip	64-bit Windows 10 / 11
NHL3on3-<version>-linux_64.tar.gz	64-bit (x86-64) Linux
NHL3on3-<version>-SHA256SUMS.txt	Checksums of the two archives

Both are portable: unpack anywhere, nothing gets installed, and settings stay in that folder. Each archive unpacks to a single folder:

NHL3on3-<version>-windows_64_portable/     NHL3on3-<version>-linux_64/
├── nhl3on3.exe                            ├── nhl3on3
├── NHL3on3 Launcher.bat                   ├── nhl3on3-launcher
├── nhl3on3_launcher.ps1                   ├── librexruntime.so
├── rexruntime.dll                         ├── librexgpu-xenos.so
├── rexgpu-xenos.dll                       ├── README.txt
├── msvcp140*.dll, vcruntime140*.dll       ├── LICENSE.txt
├── README.txt                             └── game/
├── LICENSE.txt                                └── PUT_GAME_FILES_HERE.txt
└── game/
    └── PUT_GAME_FILES_HERE.txt

nhl3on3.toml (your settings) and logs/ are created beside the game the first time you save settings or play.

Requirements

• A 64-bit CPU with AVX2: Intel Haswell (2013) / AMD Ryzen or newer.
• Windows: Windows 10 or 11 and a GPU with Direct3D 12 support. The Visual C++ runtime is included.
• Linux: a 2023-or-newer distribution (glibc 2.38 and libstdc++ from GCC 13: Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13, Fedora 39, Arch, or newer), a Vulkan driver (Mesa or the NVIDIA driver), and an X11 or Wayland desktop. Everything else is bundled.
• A controller is recommended (anything SDL supports: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro, and more).

Setup

1. Unpack the archive for your platform. On Linux, keep the file permissions: tar xzf NHL3on3-<version>-linux_64.tar.gz.
2. Copy your game package into the game folder; see Getting the game files. It's unpacked automatically the first time you play.
3. Start the launcher: NHL3on3 Launcher.bat on Windows, nhl3on3-launcher on Linux. Choose your settings and press Play.

After the first run you can also start nhl3on3.exe / nhl3on3 directly; it uses the saved settings.

On Windows, SmartScreen may warn about an unrecognized app the first time. Choose More info, then Run anyway. The game isn't code-signed, so Windows may also show an "Open File - Security Warning" when you start nhl3on3.exe directly; the launcher clears that for you, or right-click the exe, choose Properties, and tick Unblock.

Getting the game files

The game comes as an Xbox 360 STFS package: a file with a 40-character hexadecimal name, stored on the console's drive under Content/0000000000000000/58410975/000D0000/ (58410975 is the game's title ID). Copy that file as-is into the game folder.

The first time the game starts, it finds the package and unpacks it into game/ (a few seconds), then applies a small menu patch to data0.big and data0.bh. After that you can delete the package file. If you already have the extracted files instead, put them in game/ so that default.xex is directly inside it; that works too.

For extracting by hand, tools/extract_stfs.py in this repository does the same with Python 3: python3 tools/extract_stfs.py <package file> game.

Settings

The launcher writes nhl3on3.toml beside the game. It only writes settings that differ from the defaults and keeps any other lines you add by hand.

Tab	Settings
Display	Fullscreen, window size, monitor, aspect ratio (16:9, 21:9, 32:9, auto or custom), frame rate cap (60 to 240 or unlocked), VSync
Graphics	Internal resolution (720p, 1440p, 2160p), anisotropic filtering, native 2x MSAA
Game	Skip intro movie, mute audio, controller backend (Windows), keyboard as controller
Online	Online play, gamertag, server, connect through server, advertised IP

Anything else can go in Extra arguments (for example --log_fps=true), which is passed to the game as-is.

In game, F11 or Alt+Enter toggles fullscreen. Quit Game on the title menu exits.

Online play

Turn on Online play on the launcher's Online tab and set a gamertag (up to 15 characters). The community server (nhl3on3-turtle.fly.dev) is the default, and Connect through server relays game traffic through it, so no port forwarding is needed. If a gamertag is already in use, the server adds a number to the second one (turtle becomes turtle2).

Up to three skaters and a goalie per team; every player needs the same release version. A team's fourth player plays goalie, or set --play_goalie=true (Extra arguments) to ask for it. To run your own server, see server/README.md.

Troubleshooting

• The game closes right away or can't find its files: check that the package file, or default.xex if you extracted it yourself, is directly inside game/ and not in a subfolder. The log (see below) shows whether the package was found and unpacked.
• Crash at startup on an older CPU: the build needs AVX2 (see Requirements).
• The Linux launcher shows a Vulkan error: install your GPU's Vulkan driver (for example mesa-vulkan-drivers on Debian/Ubuntu). You can still edit nhl3on3.toml by hand and run ./nhl3on3.
• Anything else: the game writes logs to logs/ beside the executable; please attach the newest one to a bug report.

Building from source

You need the game's default.xex (the code is recompiled from it), the ReXGlue SDK 0.10.0, CMake 3.25+, Ninja and Clang 20. Windows builds also need Visual Studio 2022 (for the MSVC libraries and the Windows SDK).

1. Extract the game into game/extracted/ (so that game/extracted/default.xex exists).
2. Unpack the ReXGlue SDK into sdk/win-amd64/win-amd64/ and/or sdk/linux-amd64/linux-amd64/.
3. Generate the recompiled code: sdk/<platform>/<platform>/bin/rexglue codegen nhl3on3_manifest.toml
4. Build:
   • Windows: scripts\build_win_release.bat (or scripts\build_win.bat for RelWithDebInfo).
   • Linux: scripts/build_linux_release.sh (set LLVM_DIR and NINJA if Clang 20, ld.lld and Ninja aren't on PATH).

Output goes to out/build/<preset>/. When run from there, the game finds game/extracted/ by searching the parent folders, so no copying is needed.

Making a release

1. Build both Release configurations (above).

2. Run scripts/package_release.sh <version> (from Linux or WSL). It writes the two archives and the checksum file to out/release/. It bundles the Visual C++ runtime from the local Visual Studio install.

3. Tag the commit and attach the files:

   git tag -a v0.1.0 -m "v0.1.0" && git push origin v0.1.0
   gh release create v0.1.0 out/release/NHL3on3-v0.1.0-* --title "v0.1.0" --generate-notes
   

Repository layout

Path	Contents
src/	Game-specific code: display, UI patches, online play, team lobby
generated/	ReXGlue build glue (generated/default/ is produced by codegen and not committed)
launcher/	Settings launchers: PowerShell (Windows), SDL3 + Dear ImGui (Linux)
server/	Matchmaking and relay server (Python), deployable to Fly.io
tools/	Reverse engineering and packaging helpers (STFS extraction, UI archive tools)
release/	Readmes and placeholders copied into the release archives
scripts/	Build and packaging scripts

Credits and legal

The code in this repository is released under the MIT License. That covers this project's own code only, not the game it runs or the third-party components below, which keep their own licenses.

• Recompiled with ReXGlue.
• The Linux launcher uses Dear ImGui (MIT, launcher/thirdparty/imgui/LICENSE.txt) and SDL3 (zlib).

This is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts, the NHL, the NHLPA or Microsoft. 3 on 3 NHL Arcade and all related names, logos and content belong to their respective owners. This repository and its releases contain no game assets; you must own the game to play.