Dead Rising 2: Case Zero Xenon Recomp

Dead Rising 2: Case Zero — Native PC Port

To play with online feature download it from the XenonLive launcher

Play Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (Capcom / Blue Castle Games, 2010 — the Xbox 360 exclusive prologue to Dead Rising 2) natively on your Windows or Linux PC.

This is not an emulator: the game's Xbox 360 code was translated ahead of time into a native program (XenonRecomp / XenosRecomp), running on a purpose-built engine with a Vulkan renderer, real XMA audio, and native keyboard/mouse support.

Status: essentially complete. The game is 100% playable start to finish — it has been completed end to end on both Windows and Linux — and should look right in nearly all places. A few minor issues remain (listed below); none block progress.

No game data is included in this repository or the downloads. You must own Dead Rising 2: Case Zero and supply your own copy of the game package. This project is not affiliated with, or endorsed by, Capcom or Microsoft.

How to install

1. Download the release for your system from the Releases page:
   • Windows: CaseZeroRecomp-windows-x86_64.zip
   • Linux: CaseZeroRecomp-linux-x86_64.tar.zst
2. Unpack it anywhere (Windows: right-click → Extract All; Linux: tar --zstd -xf CaseZeroRecomp-linux-x86_64.tar.zst).
3. Add your copy of the game. You need the XBLA package file your Xbox 360 downloaded — about 825 MB, no file extension. On the console's storage it is at:

   Content/0000000000000000/58410A8D/000D0000/<a long string of letters and numbers>
   

   Copy that file into the assets/package/ folder inside the game folder you just unpacked (copying the whole 58410A8D folder in also works — or just drag the file onto the launcher window in step 4).
4. Run the game — cz_runtime.exe on Windows, ./cz_runtime on Linux. The first run sets everything up by itself under a progress bar: it unpacks your package, prepares the game's 1,367 shaders (~10 seconds), and generates the menu and prompt assets from your data. Later launches go straight into the game. The launcher's SUBTITLES row picks the game's language, and the launcher and the in-game PC settings panel follow it (English, French, Italian, Spanish; Japanese and Korean menus stay in English — the game's own text is localized either way).

If anything needed is missing, the game tells you exactly what and where — it never fails with a blank screen on purpose. A README.md inside the bundle has a troubleshooting section. Every run writes cz_runtime.log next to the game folder's assets/ (for the AppImage, next to the .AppImage), and cz_runtime --diag prints your OS, GPU, driver and display facts and exits — attach both to any bug report. Or press F9 in the game: it captures the frame, the last 60 s of log and your machine into a report the XenonLive launcher's Issues tab sends for you.

Your saves and settings live outside the game folder (Windows: Saved Games\Dead Rising 2 Case Zero\; Linux: ~/.local/share/Dead Rising 2 Case Zero/), so you can delete or replace the game folder at any time without losing progress.

Controls

• Keyboard/mouse works out of the box with the Dead Rising 2 PC control scheme: WASD to move, mouse to look, left-click attack, right-click aim, Space jump, E to use/pick up, Tab for the map, 1/3 to cycle items, arrow keys for the d-pad. Every on-screen prompt shows real key icons, and the exact map is printed in the terminal at startup. Rebindable via a kbmap.txt file next to the executable.
• Any controller SDL recognizes (Xbox layout) works, with vibration, and the prompts switch between keyboard and controller art automatically depending on which one you touched last.

Features

• The whole game: Still Creek, combo weapons, cinematics, save/load — completable start to finish.
• Two-player online co-op (v1.1.0), the mode the Xbox build carried in its code and never showed: JOIN CO-OP GAME on the main menu, a friends list to join from, and the host asked before anyone comes in — over XenonLive, through its launcher. The military arrival at the end of the game is single-player for now: the second player is dropped there rather than crash the host (a fix is in progress).
• Level cap raised to 50 (the original XBLA release stopped Chuck at level 5) with all fifteen skills unlockable — Case Zero as a full game, not a demo-sized one.
• 60 fps (the game's own hidden mode, surfaced) — the original 30 fps pacing remains available as a setting, along with higher caps.
• The restored PC options screen: the Xbox build ships a dormant PC graphics menu; this port revives it in-game — resolution (720p up to 5K, applies live without a restart), display mode, vsync, shadow quality.
• 21:9 ultrawide support — pick an ultrawide resolution (e.g. 3440×1440) and the game renders true widescreen. Tip: raise Field of View to at least +10 in the options when playing ultrawide — at the stock FOV the wider frame stretches Chuck; +10 or more makes it look great.
• MSAA 2x anti-aliasing by default, adjustable field of view, a settings launcher, and a pipeline pre-warm so even your first session plays smoothly.
• Real Xbox 360 audio (XMA) through ffmpeg — music, speech, effects, looping ambience.
• Built for long sessions: texture memory recycles over a full playthrough — no slow degradation on marathon runs.

Requirements

• A GPU and driver with Vulkan 1.3 support.
• Windows: Windows 10 or later, x86-64.
• Linux: x86-64 with glibc 2.35 or newer from v1.0.2 (v1.0.1 needed 2.43 — see known issues). An AppImage is provided from v1.0.2.
• Steam Deck: not yet verified. v1.0.1 cannot start there (glibc); v1.0.2's Linux build removes that cause but has not been run on a Deck by anyone on the project. If you try it, use the .tar.zst rather than the AppImage — you have to keep an 825 MB package and ~2 GB of unpacked data in the folder either way, so the single file buys nothing and the AppImage adds a FUSE dependency. Do the first run in Desktop Mode: it takes about a minute and Game Mode shows no progress console. docs/steam-deck-testing.md says exactly what to try and what to send back.
• ~2 GB free disk space after first-run unpacking.
• Your own copy of the game (see above).

Known issues (minor — none affect playability)

• A subtle shading flicker on Chuck's hair in motion (docs/hair-flicker-part92.md tracks it).
• The occasional spot may shade slightly differently than original hardware; everything is being tracked and refined.
• Linux glibc floor: v1.0.1 refuses to start on distributions below glibc 2.43 with a GLIBC_x.yz not found message (that includes every SteamOS). v1.0.2 is built on an older base (floor 2.35) and also ships as an AppImage.
• Steam Deck: untested by the project — see Requirements for which download to use. The Windows build under Proton is likewise untested and is the fallback, not the path to try first; on the dev box the same zip runs end to end under Wine 11, so a Deck failure there would be new information — please report it with PROTON_LOG=1.
• No macOS build yet — nothing blocks it in principle; it awaits test hardware.

Building from source

The repository contains no game data, so a build needs your own package plus sibling checkouts of the (patched) recompilers — see docs/xenonrecomp-upstream-bugs.md for the local patches and docs/windows-build-setup.md for the Windows toolchain. The short form (Linux, after unpacking the game and regenerating ppc/ per CLAUDE.md):

python3 tools/gen_import_stubs.py
cmake -S runtime -B runtime/build -G Ninja
cmake --build runtime/build -j$(nproc)
./runtime/build/cz_runtime --smoke

CI (.github/workflows/build.yml) builds the host runtime on both platforms on every push — it proves the host code compiles; it cannot run the game.

For developers and other porters

docs/ is this project's full working memory, written for an outside reader porting a different Xbox 360 title with the same pipeline: the findings ledger, the 500-entry gotcha list, the .big/STFS/XEX format notes, the renderer and audio build-out records, and the measurement discipline that kept it honest. Start with docs/xenia-capture-analysis.md and docs/gotchas.md. The original day-1 dev README is preserved at docs/dev-readme-day1.md.

For speedrunners

The game publishes its loading and cutscene state at a fixed address so a load remover or autosplitter does not have to chase pointers through a binary that gets rebuilt constantly. docs/speedrunning.md is the complete interface: the field layout, the cutscene names, example readers, and what is verified versus what is not.

Requests for extra fields are welcome — there is room reserved for them, and adding one breaks nobody.

Support the project

If this port made your day and you'd like to support the work, sponsor me on GitHub — it helps keep improvements coming (and future ports: Dead Rising 2: Case West is next). Bug reports and issues are just as valuable.

Credits and licensing

• hedge-dev — XenonRecomp and XenosRecomp, the recompiler pair this port is built on, and UnleashedRecomp for proving the shape (used as a structural reference only; no GPL code is copied).
• Third-party components and their licences are enumerated in THIRD_PARTY.md, generated into every release bundle.
• This repository's own code is licensed under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 (see LICENSE).
• Dead Rising 2: Case Zero is © Capcom Co., Ltd. This project ships none of its content; everything the game needs is read from, or generated at first run from, the player's own copy.