Xemu Lightgun Edition

XEMU LightGun Edition — By Code Flow

A modified build of xemu (Original Xbox emulator) with native lightgun support: Sinden Lightgun and any HID mouse gun.
Born to make Silent Scope Complete playable — SS1, SS2 and SS3 all working, now at full speed even on low-end PCs.
Available for Windows and — new in v3.1 — for Batocera Linux (arcade cabinets!).

⬇ DOWNLOAD (Releases)  ·  💻 GitHub profile  ·  📋 Full changelog

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🆕 What's new in v4.0

• The startup splash has a "Don't show this again" checkbox (as in v2): ticking it writes an EULA.txt marker next to xemu.exe, and while that file exists the splash is skipped. Delete the file to bring it back.
• All project links now point to GitHub.

🕹️ What's new in v3.1 — Batocera Edition

The LightGun Edition now runs natively on Batocera Linux (43+): turn a mini PC into an Xbox lightgun arcade machine.

• Plug-and-play guns — Batocera detects your lightguns (Sinden, Gun4IR, OpenFIRE, AimTrak, ...) and assigns them to player ports automatically at every game launch. No manual binding, no stale device ids, ever. Player order simply follows the USB ports.
• New Linux input backend (evdev) — per-device gun input read straight from the kernel, including gun extra buttons that the window system never delivers (the Sinden D-pad navigates game menus out of the box)
• White Sinden borders, audio and 16:9 handled natively by Batocera — games launch from EmulationStation like any other system
• LIGHTGUN options inside the Batocera menus: number of guns (1 by default — most Xbox gun games refuse two), aim smoothing, aim sensitivity
• Flowa GunSetup for Batocera — a native configurator in the Ports menu with live button capture: press a gun button, a keyboard key or even an arcade coin button and it's mapped
• 3-step install with zero terminal: copy the package into the Batocera network share, add your BIOS, reboot. A boot-time auto-installer does the rest, keeps itself installed across reboots and re-applies after Batocera updates.

The Windows package is unchanged — see the Windows guide below.

🚀 What's new in v3.0

• Massive performance overhaul — a deep profiling campaign inside the NV2A GPU core found and fixed a chain of per-draw CPU bottlenecks (texture state tracking, descriptor pools, bulk vertex processing and more). Per-frame CPU cost roughly cut in half: Silent Scope Complete went from a slideshow to its full frame rate cap on an Intel iGPU laptop. Every game benefits.
• Fixed the long-standing random freeze when starting a game — an ABBA deadlock between the disc DMA and the GPU thread, found with a debugger and fixed for good. Affected all games since forever.
• Full button mapping — new Mapping tab in the configurator: Trigger, B, X, Start, Back, D-Pad, plus the Additional pad inputs (Y, White, Black, stick clicks, analog triggers, Guide — for service/extra modes in games like Virtua Cop). Bind them to any button of any detected mouse or any keyboard key: click a slot, press the input within 10 seconds, done. The aim is deliberately not mappable — it always follows the raw input device selected in Players.
• 100% portable — xemu.toml now lives next to the exe (native xemu portable mode) and game ISOs inside the folder are saved with relative paths. Copy the folder to a USB stick or another PC and it just works. Zero traces in AppData.
• New startup splash with auto-close, and the configurator rebranded to Code Flow GunSetup v3.0.

See CHANGELOG.md for the complete list.

Features

• Emulated EMS TopGun II lightgun as a true low-level USB device (VID 0x0b9a / PID 0x016b, XID subtype 0x50) — games genuinely detect a lightgun on the port, including in-game calibration (XInputSetLightgunCalibration reaches the emulated gun, like real hardware)
• Per-device gun input, DemulShooter-style: every HID pointer device is listed individually by name (Windows Raw Input API). Assign a specific gun to a specific player port — two guns for 2-player games work out of the box
• Native absolute-coordinate aiming (Sinden mouse mode), mapped to the actual game render area with correct offscreen (reload) reporting
• Full button mapping to any mouse or keyboard key (v3.0) — aim stays locked to the selected gun
• Adaptive aim smoothing (1-euro filter: steady crosshair when still, zero added latency on fast moves) + aim sensitivity setting
• Code Flow GunSetup — zero-install configurator: game ISO, gun-to-player assignment, button mapping, graphics settings, machine files status. One place for everything
• 100% portable package: settings, BIOS, MCPX boot ROM, HDD image, EEPROM and game ISO all live inside the app folder
• Lightgun-friendly UX: always-hidden cursor, hideable menu bar, and guards so the trigger can't toggle fullscreen or open menus
• Major NV2A performance fixes (v3.0) and the Silent Scope 2 Vulkan crash fix (submitted upstream to the xemu project)
• Batocera Linux support (v3.1): native evdev per-device input backend, automatic gun-to-player assignment via Batocera, options in the EmulationStation menus and a native GTK configurator in the Ports menu

🪟 Windows — Quick start

1. Download the Windows zip from Releases and extract it anywhere
2. Drop your files into the folders (each one contains a readme):
   • bios\ — Xbox flash BIOS image
   • mcpxbootrom\ — MCPX boot ROM
   • harddisk\ — Xbox HDD image
   • eeprom\ — optional (created automatically on first start)
3. Run FlowaGunSetup.exe: select your game ISO, assign your gun to Player 1 (already set to Lightgun (EMS TopGun II)), then Save & Launch
4. In game: left click = trigger, right click = B, middle click = Start — or remap everything in the Mapping tab

⚠️ BIOS, boot ROM, HDD image and games are not included — dump them from your own console and discs. The game region must match your BIOS/EEPROM region (EU ↔ EU, US ↔ US).

🕹️ Batocera (Linux) — Installation & guide

This is a separate package from the Windows one: download xemu-lightgun-batocera-edition-*.zip from Releases. Requires Batocera 43 or newer (x86_64). Your lightguns must be supported by Batocera itself (Sinden, Gun4IR, OpenFIRE, AimTrak, ...).

Install (3 steps, no terminal needed)

1. From your PC, open the Batocera network share in the file explorer: \\BATOCERA\share (or use a USB stick / SFTP to reach /userdata)
2. Extract the zip and copy the content of its share folder into the Batocera share, merging with the existing system/ and roms/ folders. Then add your own files, exactly like stock xemu on Batocera:
   • share\bios\Complex_4627.bin and share\bios\mcpx_1.0.bin (exact names)
   • your game ISOs in share\roms\xbox\
3. Fully reboot Batocera: MENU → QUIT → RESTART SYSTEM (restarting EmulationStation alone is not enough!). On boot the package installs itself in a few seconds — you will see EmulationStation restart once automatically: that's the installer finishing. Done.

If you already have a system/custom.sh on your Batocera, merge the two files manually instead of overwriting.

How it works on Batocera

• Guns are assigned automatically: at every game launch Batocera detects the connected guns and plugs them into the virtual Xbox ports (gun 1 → player 1, ...). To swap who is player 1, swap the USB ports. Nothing to configure.
• Options live in the Batocera menus: highlight an Xbox game → SELECT → advanced options (or MENU → GAMES SETTINGS → PER SYSTEM ADVANCED CONFIGURATION → XBOX) → LIGHTGUN submenu: number of guns, aim smoothing, aim sensitivity. Set USE GUNS = ON to get the white Sinden borders (drawn natively by Batocera).
• Number of guns is 1 by default on purpose: most Xbox gun games (e.g. Silent Scope Complete) refuse to start with two lightguns plugged into the console. Raise it to 2 for 2-player games (House of the Dead 3, Virtua Cop 3, ...).
• Flowa GunSetup (Ports menu): native configurator for everything else — full button mapping with live capture (17 slots: trigger, A/B/X/Y, Start, D-Pad, White/Black, triggers, Guide...). Click Capture, press any gun button, keyboard key or even an arcade coin button, done. The gun D-pad already works without any mapping. The aim is deliberately not mappable — it always follows the gun.
• In-game you can still open the xemu menu (with its aim sliders) using the gun/pad hotkeys that Batocera sets up automatically.

Batocera troubleshooting

• Game says "Only one lightgun controller can be used" → that game wants a single gun: set LIGHTGUNS = 1 gun in the game options (the default)
• A game closes by itself a few seconds after launch → a wireless pad left in a stale state after an EmulationStation restart: unplug/replug the pad dongle
• Installer log: share\system\xemu-flowa\install.log
• Uninstall: delete system/custom.sh, system/xemu-flowa/, system/flowa-gunsetup/ and roms/ports/FlowaGunSetup.sh, then remove the overlay (batocera-overlay-clear or delete /boot/boot/overlay) and reboot — everything returns to stock.

Known limitations

• Windows: gun-to-port bindings are tied to the physical USB port (like DemulShooter). Batocera: assignment is automatic, order follows USB ports.
• ReShade users (Windows): hook xemu as OpenGL (the presentation layer is OpenGL even when the internal renderer is Vulkan)

Source code

All modifications live in the flowa-lightgun branch (full diff vs upstream), including the Linux/evdev backend used by the Batocera Edition. Build like regular xemu (MSYS2 UCRT64 on Windows: ./build.sh; the Linux AppImage is built by the repository CI). The Windows configurator compiles with the C# compiler bundled with Windows; the Batocera configurator is Python/GTK, no build needed.

Credits

• Made by Code Flow (flowa) — github.com/flowa1911you. Watch the repository so you don't miss future releases and updates!
• Based on xemu by Matt Borgerson and contributors — see also the upstream site for general documentation

License

Same as upstream xemu (GPLv2). See LICENSE.