Futurama: The Game: The Recomp
Futurama: The Game: The Recomp is a native PC port of Futurama: The Game for Windows, aiming for 1:1 parity with the original Xbox release.
- Type: PC port
- Game: Futurama: The Game
- Runs on Windows
- By hiburn8
- Latest release v1.4.0, 2026-11-02
- Source: https://github.com/hiburn8/Futurama-The-Game-The-Recomp
README
Futurama: The Game: The Recomp
Good news, everyone! The 2003 Futurama game for the original Xbox now runs natively on Windows. No emulator, just a real Windows build.
I rebuilt the whole game in C++, one function at a time, straight from the original Xbox code (the // orig: comments point back to where each bit lives in the original).
Graphics go through Direct3D 11, sound through XAudio2, and you can play with an Xbox controller or the keyboard.
The aim was 1:1 with the original. Same levels, same physics, same scripts, same timing, even the same random numbers, frame for frame. It's not a remake or a remaster. It's the same game, it just runs on your PC now.
It's not an automatic translation of the disc either. All of the game's code is right here in this repo, written out
in C++, and it's what gets compiled into the exe. Nothing from the disc's executable gets translated or run as game
code. The disc is only read for the stuff that can't be shared: the models, textures, sounds, music, movies, level
scripts, text, and some data tables stored inside the original default.xbe. There's one exception: the Xbox's sound
chip has its own little DSP programs (the effects in dsstdfx.bin on the disc, plus a small startup program inside
default.xbe), and those run on a tiny built-in emulation of that audio DSP, just like they would on the console.
You'll need your own copy
There's no game data in here. You need your own NTSC-U Xbox copy of Futurama, either as a disc image (.iso) or the
extracted files. All the models, textures, sounds, movies and scripts get loaded from that when you play.
Playing
The easy way: grab the zip from the Releases page, unzip it anywhere and double-click
FuturamaRecomp.exe. The first time, it asks for your disc image (pick your .iso, or the default.xbe inside your
extracted folder) and remembers it from then on. Put the .iso (or a futurama folder with the extracted files)
right next to the exe and it finds it by itself. Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, nothing else to install.
Built it yourself? Double-click works the same, or point it straight at your disc:
build\Release\FuturamaRecomp.exe <your futurama.iso or extracted folder>
Add --size 1920x1080 to change the window size (the default is 1280x960). Saves go to
%APPDATA%\FuturamaRecomp\saves, or wherever you point --saves.
An Xbox controller just works. No controller? The keyboard does it too:
| Keys | Xbox pad |
|---|---|
| W A S D | left stick |
| I J K L | right stick |
| arrow keys | d-pad |
| Space / E / Left Ctrl / R | A / B / X / Y |
| Q / F | White / Black |
| Z / Shift | left / right trigger |
| Enter / Esc | Start / Back |
Building
You need Windows, Visual Studio 2022 with the "Desktop development with C++" workload, and CMake 3.25 or newer.
cmake -S . -B build -G "Visual Studio 17 2022" -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release
Have fun!
How I made it
This took about two weeks (12-25 October 2026), with Claude Opus 5.5 on high reasoning effort doing most of the heavy lifting. Every function was rewritten by reading and understanding the original machine code, then tested against the real thing.
A few things that made it work:
- I used both the Xbox and PS2 versions. The Xbox version is the one I ported and tested against. The PS2 version still had its class and function names left in, so it was basically a map of the code.
- The original game runs in an emulator I put together on top of Unicorn, and the port gets compared against it frame by frame: player and camera, enemies, every script call, the random numbers, physics, graphics calls, sound and movies. If a single bit is off, the test fails.
- Lots of playtesting. First a bot that finds its own way around each level. Then me playing, with my inputs recorded and replayed on the original. And finally a lockstep mode, where the original runs right alongside the port while I play and every frame gets checked live.
How close is it?
Really close. Every game function the tests reach (701 of them) matches the original. That's backed by almost 4,000 object tests, 60 level tests, 38 rendering tests, the menus, sound, movies and full playthroughs. One run goes from the start of level 1-1 to the end and on into level 1-2, and all 3.7 million things it compares match.
These are the levels I've played through myself with every frame compared against the original code in a CPU emulator. In several places the original reads memory it never set up, which leads to undefined behaviour. I don't emulate the memory layout, so it's not possible to replicate the exact undefined-ness here. Instead I either fix the bugs or hard-code reasonable start values (see Original bug fixes). During the frame-matched comparisons, I take the memory values from the emulated CPU and hand them to a dev version of the port, so they can stay in perfect step. Some frames only differed in the internal ID numbers the level scripts give objects. Those don't change anything you see or play, so I count them as matching.
| Level | Name | Frames | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1-1 | Planet Express | 9,369 (~2.5 min) | Matches |
| 1-2 | Sewers | 75,143 (~21 min) | Matches |
| 1-3 | Subway | 27,999 (~8 min) | Matches |
| 1-4 | Old New York | 82,111 (~23 min) | Matches |
| 1-5 | Red Light District | 25,691 (~7 min) | Matches |
| 1-7 | Uptown | 25,539 (~7 min) | Matches |
| 1-6 | New New York | 45,736 (~13 min) | Matches |
| 2-1 | Weasel Canyon | 43,898 (~12 min) | Matches |
| 2-6 | Run, Bender, Run | 7,117 (~2 min) | Matches |
| 2-2 | The Mine Facility | 20,686 (~6 min) | Matches |
| 2-3 | Red Rock Creek | 19,462 (~5.5 min) | Matches |
| 2-4 | The Junkyard | 27,562 (~7.5 min) | Matches |
| 2-5 | Rumble in the Junkyard | 14,752 (~4 min) | Matches |
| 3-1 | Market Square | 20,383 (~5.5 min) | Matches |
| 3-2 | Left Wing | 38,276 (~10.5 min) | Matches |
| 3-3 | Right Wing | 53,185 (~15 min) | Matches |
| 3-6 | Temple Courtyard | 28,896 (~8 min) | Matches |
| 3-4 | Inner Temple | 53,104 (~15 min) | Matches |
| 4-1 | Bogad Swamp Trail | 15,855 (~4.5 min) | Matches |
| 5-1 | Bender's Breakout | 33,217 (~9 min) | Matches |
| 5-2 | Leela's Last Laugh | 46,522 (~13 min) | Matches |
| 5-3 | Fry Fights Back | 37,798 (~10.5 min) | Matches |
| 3-5 | Courtyard II (removed) | Untested |
What I can't fully promise yet:
- I haven't compared the final picture and sound with a real Xbox. The port sends exactly the same graphics and sound commands, but how they come out on actual hardware hasn't been checked.
- The emulator I tested against does a few maths instructions (sine, cosine and a couple of others) slightly differently from a real Xbox, so those could be off in the very last bit.
- Code that nothing ever reaches, like old debug features, is ported but untested.
Original bug fixes
The aim is 1:1, so any bug that changes what you see or how the game plays stays in. The only ones I fixed are where the original's result comes down to luck (memory it never sets up) or would crash the Xbox.
| Bug | Status |
|---|---|
| Dead enemies always fade away one second after dying, so longer death animations get cut off (most weasels) | Left original |
| Spawning one kind of toxic warrior can hand the other kinds its shotgun | Left original |
| Shots at some breakable objects ignore the object's rotation and can't hit one of its six sides | Left original |
| The rat ride's steering is never reset, so riding it a second time starts with the old steering | Left original |
| A script that turns a path point saves the wrong number as its angle | Left original |
| A respawned enemy can skip planning its path and walk straight at you for a moment | Fixed |
| A grenade trooper killed before it ever attacks throws its dying grenade in an unpredictable direction | Fixed |
| A respawned weasel can copy the death animation of the weasel it replaced | Fixed |
| A few enemies (the 2-5 tank, a 3-5 shooter, the 5-1 Destructor) start falling one frame late | Fixed |
| Resetting the player can shift the player's model out of place | Fixed |
| The lock-on marker's see-through level is random instead of half | Fixed |
| The high priest (3-6) starts with a random summon timer and warp spot | Fixed |
| A few enemies and the 4-1 rat ride can act on a sound that was never started | Fixed |
| Settings missing from a config file get random values (the game's own files never miss any) | Fixed |
| Objects start with a random count of how many frames since they were last drawn | Fixed |
| Crashes only bad data could cause (missing objects, dividing by zero, broken files, running out of memory) | Fixed |