Burnout CRASH! — PC recompilation

An unofficial native Windows port of the Xbox 360 (XBLA) game Burnout CRASH! (2011), built by statically recompiling the original PowerPC executables to C++ with the ReXGlue SDK. No emulator runs at play time: the game's own code is compiled to x86-64 and runs on ReXGlue's Xbox 360 runtime (Direct3D 12 graphics, audio, input).

[!IMPORTANT] This project is vibe-coded. Everything in it (the reverse engineering, codegen configs, native hooks, build scripts, tools and this README) was written by Claude (Anthropic's AI, model Claude Opus 5.5, working through Claude Code) in conversation with the repository owner, who set the goals, supplied the game dump and tested the results. It has been played on exactly one PC. Expect rough edges.

This repository contains no game content. There are no game files, no executables and no recompiled code here. You need your own copy of Burnout CRASH!, dumped from your own Xbox 360, and the code is generated on your machine.

Quick start

You need Windows 10/11 x64, a Direct3D 12 GPU, and your Burnout CRASH! package file. That's the file (with a long hexadecimal name) in Content\0000000000000000\58410B5D\000D0000\ on your console's drive. Tools such as Horizon or Velocity can export it from a USB drive the console used.

1. Download this repository (Code → Download ZIP, then extract it, or git clone), and open PowerShell in its folder.

2. Run the setup script with the path to your package file:

   powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\setup.ps1 -Package "D:\path\to\your\package"
   

3. Play: out\build\win-amd64-relwithdebinfo\burnoutcrash.exe. Adding -Run to step 2 starts the game when the build finishes.

setup.ps1 does everything else, one step at a time:

• It installs the missing build tools with winget after asking you first: Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with C++ (about 3–4 GB), LLVM/Clang, CMake and Ninja. Windows may ask for admin rights.
• It downloads the ReXGlue SDK and verifies its checksum.
• It verifies your package, extracts it to game\, and checks that it's the supported version.
• It builds the game. The first build takes several minutes and several GB of RAM.

Plan for about 10 GB of free disk space if the build tools still need installing, or 3 GB otherwise. Re-running the script skips the steps that are already done, so after updating the repository just run .\setup.ps1 again (without -Package).

Status

• Boots through the intro to the title screen and main menu, with the full game unlocked (no trial).
• PLAY and saving have worked in limited testing.
• Not much else has been tested yet. Bug reports with a crash_trace.txt are welcome (see Troubleshooting).

Supported version

Only this exact build works. The configs refer to fixed addresses in it, and the build checks the hashes:

Game	Burnout CRASH!, Xbox Live Arcade
Title ID / media ID	58410B5D / 734ABC74, title update 3
DEFAULT.XEX SHA-256	f2389f9b8655e6432a78db8a4adc4cf524e5c56a6a92d013b6f0fb0452d4b425
DLL\CRASH.DLL.XEX SHA-256	bf66a2d38cf9a79dfe20558d289edb96b9f2346bf344613946a4ada897298338

Manual setup

Use this instead of setup.ps1 if you'd rather install and run each step yourself.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11 x64, a Direct3D 12 GPU, about 3 GB of free disk space (game files, generated code and build output)
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the C++ workload (for the Windows SDK and C++ libraries)
• LLVM/Clang 20 or newer, CMake 3.25+, Ninja
• ReXGlue SDK nightly 0.10.0.24-dev.gbd833a2: rexglue-sdk-0.10.0.24-dev.gbd833a2-win-amd64.zip

The tools can be installed with winget (setup.ps1 runs the same commands):

winget install -e --id LLVM.LLVM
winget install -e --id Kitware.CMake
winget install -e --id Ninja-build.Ninja
winget install -e --id Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools --override "--quiet --wait --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --includeRecommended"

Steps

1. Get the SDK. Extract the ReXGlue zip into third_party\rexglue-sdk\, so that third_party\rexglue-sdk\win-amd64\bin\rexglue.exe exists. Alternatively, set REXGLUE_SDK or pass -SdkDir to the build script.

2. Get the game files. Copy your Burnout CRASH! package off your console. It's the file in Content\0000000000000000\58410B5D\000D0000\ on the console's drive. Then extract it into game\:

   .\tools\extract-package.ps1 -Package <path to the package file>
   

   The script checks every block of the package against its hash tree first, so a damaged copy is reported instead of silently producing broken files. Any other STFS extractor works too, as long as game\DEFAULT.XEX and game\DLL\CRASH.DLL.XEX end up in place.

3. Build.

   .\build.ps1
   

   The first build generates about 375 MB of C++ from the game and compiles it. That takes a few minutes and several GB of RAM; -Jobs limits parallel compiles if memory is tight.

Running

out\build\win-amd64-relwithdebinfo\burnoutcrash.exe

The game files are found automatically (a game folder next to the exe, otherwise this project's game\). Useful options:

Option	Effect
--fullscreen	Start in fullscreen
--resolution=1080p	Render resolution and window size (720p, 1440p, 4k, WxH)
--mnk_mode	Keyboard as controller
--license_mask=0	Run as the trial version (the full game is the default)
--game_data_root=<dir>	Use game files from another folder
--log_file=<path> --log_level=debug	Detailed log

In-game, F3 shows the debug overlay, F4 the settings and ` (backtick) the console.

Saves go to Documents\burnoutcrash\.

The game's online features (EA account, Autolog, leaderboards) don't work, since the services shut down years ago. Decline the sign-in prompts.

Troubleshooting

• If the game crashes, it writes crash_trace.txt next to the exe, listing the recompiled functions on the stack (sub_XXXXXXXX is the original Xbox 360 address). Include it, and the newest file in the logs\ folder next to the exe, when reporting a bug.
• "…is a different build than this project supports" means your dump isn't the version in Supported version.

How it works

NOTES.md has the technical details: the project layout, and every fix applied on top of plain ReXGlue codegen. Some highlights:

• The game is two executables. DEFAULT.XEX is the native engine, and CRASH.DLL.XEX is the game logic, written in C# and compiled ahead of time with EA's EASharp.
• 140 switch statements in the C# code use a jump-table pattern ReXGlue doesn't detect. They're declared in config/crash_dll.toml, with a small hook for the cases where the index register is overwritten.
• About 375 functions in DEFAULT.XEX are only reachable through data or tail calls, and are declared in config/default.toml.
• A few guest functions are replaced with native versions in src/guest_overrides.cpp: a stack walker and an Xbox Live lookup that crashed the game when PLAY was selected.

Legal

This is a fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts, Criterion Games or Microsoft. Burnout and Burnout CRASH! are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. The repository contains only original code and configuration under the MIT license. You must own the game and dump it yourself. Don't share game files, generated code or builds made from them.

The ReXGlue SDK is a separate project under its own BSD 3-Clause license and isn't included here.