King Kong PC Port

Peter Jackson's King Kong on PC, running natively, with the launcher and options of a modern PC release.

_{The original Xbox 360 game code, translated to native PC code with the ReXGlue SDK. No game files included: bring your own copy of the King Kong Xbox 360 disc.}

[!NOTE] First release. Tested from the start of the game, through the opening on the ship, into Skull Island. A full play-through has not been tested yet. Please report anything that goes wrong.

Highlights

Why this port?

Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie came out in 2005 on PC and on every console of the time. The Xbox 360 version was a launch title for the console, with upgraded graphics and its own achievements.

Until now the only way to play it was on an Xbox 360. On the Xenia emulator it boots, but it gets stuck right at the start of the first level and can't be played. This port runs it natively on Windows, fixes that freeze, and adds the options you would expect from a PC release.

The launcher

Everything is set up before the game starts. The launcher uses art from your own copy of the game: Kong's face, the achievement pictures and the stormy sky from the game's menu. Settings are saved to a plain text file, king_kong.toml, next to the game.

	Play Install the game straight from your disc image, with a progress bar Checks the disc really is King Kong Shader pack download: every effect already prepared, so the game never pauses for a new one Share my shaders: help the next players by sharing the effects your play-through prepared Updates: the launcher tells you when a new version is out and installs it with one click Turn the launcher off and hold Shift at start to bring it back
Display Windowed or fullscreen Window size that fits your screen Choose the monitor VSync on or off (off works great with G-Sync and FreeSync) Keep 16:9 with borders, or stretch to fill
	Graphics Render quality presets: Supersample, Native, Quality, Balanced, Performance and Ultra Performance, each showing the real resolution Custom resolution from 1x (720p) to 6x (8K) FXAA and FXAA Extreme Texture filtering up to 16x Shader preparing: wait for new effects (default, always drawn right) or prepare them in the background
Gameplay Frame rate: 30 (default, like the console), 60, 120, 144, 165, 240 or unlimited Frame counter in the corner, toggled with F2 Language
	Controls Invert the camera left/right and up/down, separately Camera speed from 25% to 300% Toggle aim: press the left trigger once to raise the gun and again to lower it, instead of holding it Stick deadzone to stop drift Vibration on or off, with a strength slider Remap any button on your controller Keyboard and mouse play: click a control, press a key Button prompts for Xbox 360, Xbox Series, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 2 or your keyboard keys
Achievements All 9 achievements with their pictures, descriptions and gamerscore See which ones you have unlocked Turn pop-ups and their sound on or off, set the volume Pick the sound: the built-in chime or any .wav you put in the sounds folder A test button to see and hear it A bonus Welcome to Skull Island achievement the first time you play
	About Open your save folder, game folder or settings file in one click Reset every setting Refresh the launcher's art from the game's menu

Cheats

The game's own cheats, as switches on the launcher's Cheats page instead of codes to type each time you play: all chapters, all bonus content, fast healing, one-hit kills, 999 bullets, unlimited spears, and the revolver, machine gun, shotgun and sniper rifle. They switch on as soon as the game reaches its main menu, exactly as if you had typed their codes.

In game

_{The main menu.}

Xbox 360 vs PC port

Hotkeys

Known issues

• Above 30 fps some character animations are not right yet. For example, the crew rowing at the start skip part of their animation. 30 fps, the default, plays them correctly.
• There can be a short pause when the game loads the next area. The game does the same on the Xbox 360.
• The pre-rendered videos pause for a moment every couple of seconds while the video player keeps to the video's timing. This is being looked into.
• The first time you see a new effect there is a short pause while it is prepared. It is saved, so this only happens once. Download the shader pack on the launcher's Play page and almost every effect is prepared before you play. If you prefer no pause at all, set Graphics > Shader preparing to Background, but then objects can briefly vanish or flash bright the first time.

The shader pack

The game prepares each new effect (a shader) the first time it appears, which can cause a short pause. The shader pack is the list of effects collected by a test build that plays every chapter on its own, published on the shader-packs release. Click Download shader pack on the launcher's Play page and it is added to your shader cache (Documents\king_kong\cache), keeping anything your game has already prepared. Each time the game starts it prepares everything in the cache, so you get no pauses even on a first play-through. New packs come out as more of the game is covered: when one does, the launcher offers it when it opens (see Updates).

Share my shaders

The shader pack only covers what has been played so far, and that is where you can help. Once you have played a good part of the game, open the launcher's Play page and click Share my shaders. It packs your shaders into one small shader-share-....zip file in Documents\king_kong, shows it to you, and opens a Share shaders form on GitHub to drop it into (you need a free GitHub account). The file holds only shader data: nothing personal, no saves or settings. Shaders that at least two players have sent go into the next shader pack.

Updates

When the launcher opens it asks GitHub whether a newer version of the port, or a newer shader pack, is out. They come out separately and each one is offered on its own. For the port, Update now downloads it, replaces the port's own files and restarts the launcher; your installed game, saves and settings stay as they are. For the shader pack, Download now adds it to the shaders your game has already prepared. Turn the checks off on the About page.

Reporting a problem

Everything useful is in the logs folder next to king_kong.exe:

• king_kong.log describes your settings, and every 10 seconds it notes the frame rate, the 1% low and any frames that took over 50 or 100 ms. That shows exactly where stutter happens.
• If the game crashes, crash-<date>.txt and crash-<date>.dmp appear next to it.

Please attach them to an issue together with your CPU, graphics card and the resolution you play at.

Which version you need

The port is made for this disc only. Other versions will not work.

The launcher checks the title ID before it installs. To check your disc image yourself, run this in PowerShell and compare the result with the SHA-1 above:

Get-FileHash "C:\Games\King Kong.iso" -Algorithm SHA1

Getting started

You need: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), a graphics card with DirectX 12, about 7 GB of free space, and your own Peter Jackson's King Kong Xbox 360 disc as a disc image (see Which version you need).

1. Download the KingKong-...-windows-x64.zip file from the latest release and unzip it anywhere.
2. Run king_kong.exe. The launcher opens.
3. Click Install from disc image... and pick your King Kong disc image. The launcher checks it and copies the game files (about 6.3 GB) into a game folder next to the exe.
4. Press PLAY.

The download contains only this port. No game files are included: they come from your own disc. Your saves and settings are kept in Documents\king_kong.

Linux: in development. A Linux version is being worked on but is not ready yet, so there is no Linux download for now.

.\setup.ps1 -Iso "C:\Games\King Kong.iso"   # downloads the SDK, unpacks your disc, translates the code
kk\build.bat kk-release                      # compiles

The "VENTURE" freeze

On Xenia this game gets stuck at the start, looking at the ship's name "VENTURE" (xenia-project/game-compatibility#1302). The cause is how disc reads finish. The game streams music and voice lines with reads it expects to finish right away. The emulator finishes them but reports them as still in progress, so the game thinks it got no data. No voice line ever plays, and the opening waits forever for one to end.

This port finishes those reads the way the console does (kk/src/io_fix.cpp), so music, voice lines and the opening all work.

Credits

• Peter Jackson's King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie by Ubisoft Montpellier, published by Ubisoft in 2005.
• Button prompt pictures from Xelu's Free Controllers & Keyboard Prompts (CC0).
• ReXGlue SDK, which does the code translation and runs the game, built on the work of Xenia and XenonRecomp.

[!NOTE] AI disclosure: this port was made almost entirely with Claude Code (Anthropic). The repository owner directed and tested the work; the AI did the analysis, code, tools and documentation.

[!IMPORTANT] This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Ubisoft, Universal Studios, WingNut Films, Microsoft or Xbox. It contains no game code or assets (the button prompt pictures are free CC0 art, not taken from the game). Do not open issues asking for game files.