The Simpsons Game Recompiled

A native PC port of The Simpsons Game (Xbox 360, 2007) for Linux, Steam Deck and Windows, made by statically recompiling the original game code.

The game's PowerPC executable is translated ahead of time into C++ and compiled for x86-64, so the game's own code runs directly on your CPU rather than inside an emulator. Underneath it, the ReXGlue runtime, which is derived from the Xenia project, provides the Xbox 360 kernel, audio, input and graphics layers, with a Vulkan renderer on Linux and Direct3D 12 or Vulkan on Windows.

This project does not include any game content. You need your own copy of the Xbox 360 game.

Download the latest release

Contents

• Status
• Features
• Requirements
• Installation
• Configuration
• Known issues
• Building from source
• Contributing
• Reporting bugs
• Project layout
• Roadmap
• Legal
• License
• Credits

Status

Platform	Status
Linux (x86-64)	Playable
Steam Deck	Playable, and the main test platform
Windows (x86-64)	Playable, less tested than Linux, mostly on Steam Deck hardware
Android	Planned

The game boots, plays its videos, saves and loads, and runs its levels. See Known issues for what still misbehaves.

Features

• Native x86-64 executable: the recompiled game code runs without CPU emulation.
• Vulkan renderer that draws with the GPU's own render targets, plus an accurate fallback path that emulates the Xbox 360's EDRAM in the pixel shader.
• 60 FPS gameplay, with menus, the title screen and loading screens kept at the original 30 FPS so they run at the speed they were made for.
• Render resolution scaling (supersampling), anisotropic filtering and FXAA.
• A launcher that installs the game from your ISO, manages settings, patches and save backups, adds the game to Steam, and updates itself.
• Controller support, and keyboard and mouse controls with rebindable keys and an in-game list of the controls.

Requirements

• Your own copy of The Simpsons Game for Xbox 360, as an ISO image. The USA release (title ID 45410809) is the main target. The European release also boots and plays but has seen less testing.
• About 5 GB of free disk space for the installed game data.
• A 64-bit x86 CPU. The standard download needs AVX2 (Intel Haswell, AMD Excavator or Zen, or newer, roughly 2013 onwards). For older CPUs with SSE4.2, download the package ending in -NoAVX2 instead; it runs the same game, somewhat slower.
• A GPU with a current Vulkan driver (Linux) or Direct3D 12 driver (Windows).
• A controller is recommended.

Installation

1. Download the archive for your platform from the Releases page. Use the -NoAVX2 package if your CPU predates AVX2 (the standard package then fails to start, on Windows with error 0xc0000142).
2. Extract it anywhere.
3. Start the launcher:
   • Linux and Steam Deck: run Play.sh.
   • Windows: run simpsons-launcher.exe. It is a standalone program and does not need Python.
4. In the Install tab, select your Xbox 360 ISO. The launcher extracts and installs the game data.
5. Press Play.

On Steam Deck, use Add to Steam in the launcher to play from Game Mode.

To start the game without the launcher window, for example from your own Steam shortcut, run Play.sh --play on Linux or simpsons-launcher.exe --play on Windows. It uses the same settings as the launcher's Play button.

The launcher can update itself from the About tab. Updates replace only the engine and launcher files. Your settings, saves and mods are kept. If the installed package does not match your CPU, the launcher offers the right one.

Antivirus warnings. The Windows programs in the release are not code-signed, so Microsoft Defender and browsers such as Edge sometimes flag or block the download, occasionally with a generic detection like Trojan:Win32/Suschil!rfn. These are false positives: every release is built from this repository's source by the public GitHub Actions workflow in .github/workflows/release.yml. If your download is blocked, you can build the game yourself (see Building from source) or restore the file from Defender's protection history.

Configuration

Most settings are in the launcher's Settings tab, saved as soon as you change them. They are written to simpsons.toml next to the game executable, inside a block the launcher manages. Settings outside that block can be edited by hand. The launcher has a light and a dark theme; the button at its top right switches between them.

Saves and the shader cache are stored in:

Linux	Windows
~/.local/share/simpsons	%LOCALAPPDATA%\simpsons

Frame rate. 60 is the default and the recommended setting. 30 matches the original console exactly. The game's frame scheduler cannot go above 60 FPS, so the 90 and 120 settings do not add frames; they make frame pacing less even. Menus and loading screens run at 30 FPS regardless, because the game runs their logic once per frame (menu_frame_rate in simpsons.toml, 0 turns this off).

Image quality. FXAA anti-aliasing is on by default for new installs and smooths the cel-shading outlines at little cost. A render scale of 2x or 3x supersamples the whole image, which gives the outlines their cleanest look. On a Steam Deck, 1x holds 60 FPS; 2x looks much sharper and runs at about 59 FPS in Springfield, the busiest area, with occasional drops.

Keyboard and mouse. Turn on Play with keyboard & mouse in the launcher's Settings tab. The game then takes the mouse whenever its window is active, and lets go of it when you switch to another window. The game's own prompts show controller buttons; press F1 in the game to see which key each button is on. The default layout:

Action	Keys
Move	W A S D
Look around	Mouse
Jump, confirm	Space, Enter
Attack	Left click
Special attack (hold), back	Right click, Backspace
Action: talk, use, pick up	E
Target (hold)	Shift
Walk (hold)	Ctrl
Switch character	1 to 4, arrow keys
To-do list	Tab
Pause	Esc

Every control can be changed in the launcher's Keyboard & mouse section, where an action can have several keys, mouse buttons included, and the wheel and side buttons can be bound. The camera can also be put on keys (Look up, down, left and right), on top of the mouse. The keys that open the in-game overlays (F1 controls, F4 settings, F3 FPS overlay, ` console) can be changed there too. In the game, F4 opens the settings, with the controls under Input > Keybinds (press Save to config to keep changes made there).

Known issues

• At 60 FPS some scripted sequences can misbehave, because the game was built for 30 FPS. A known case is the dam in "Lisa the Tree Hugger", where random deaths can happen at 60; switch to 30 for that section if it happens.
• If videos show a black screen on Windows, switch the graphics backend to Vulkan in the launcher's settings.

Building from source

The game and the ReXGlue SDK are built together in one CMake project. Continuous integration uses exactly these steps; see .github/workflows/build.yml for the full list of Linux packages.

Linux

Requirements: Clang 20, CMake 3.25 or newer, Ninja, pkg-config, and the development packages for GTK 3, Vulkan, X11 and XCB, Wayland, xkbcommon, udev, ALSA, PulseAudio and PipeWire.

git clone https://github.com/YesterMester/TheSimpsonsGameRecomp.git
cd TheSimpsonsGameRecomp/simpsons
cmake --preset linux-amd64-relwithdebinfo \
      -DREXSDK_DIR="$PWD/../tools/rexglue-sdk" \
      "-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS=-march=x86-64-v3" "-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-march=x86-64-v3"
cmake --build --preset linux-amd64-relwithdebinfo --target simpsons
cd ..

# ISO extraction tool used by the launcher's installer
cmake -S tools/extract-xiso -B tools/extract-xiso/build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang
cmake --build tools/extract-xiso/build

# Install your game and play
launcher/simpsons-launcher.sh

The Linux preset calls the compiler clang-20. If your distribution names it clang, add -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ to the first cmake command.

Windows

Requirements: LLVM/Clang 20, Visual Studio Build Tools with the "Desktop development with C++" workload (for the Windows SDK and linker), CMake 3.25 or newer, Ninja and Python 3.

git clone https://github.com/YesterMester/TheSimpsonsGameRecomp.git
cd TheSimpsonsGameRecomp\simpsons
cmake --preset win-amd64-relwithdebinfo `
      -DREXSDK_DIR="$PWD/../tools/rexglue-sdk" `
      "-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS=-march=x86-64-v3" "-DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS=-march=x86-64-v3"
cmake --build --preset win-amd64-relwithdebinfo --target simpsons
cd ..

# ISO extraction tool (WIN32 must be defined for the bundled getopt)
cmake -S tools/extract-xiso -B tools/extract-xiso/build -G Ninja `
      -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang "-DCMAKE_C_FLAGS=-DWIN32"
cmake --build tools/extract-xiso/build

# Install your game and play
pip install PySide6
python launcher\launcher.py

Windows builds include both the Direct3D 12 and Vulkan renderers; the launcher's settings choose between them. Without PySide6 the launcher opens in your web browser instead of its own window.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome, from bug reports to fixes and new features.

Before you start

• For anything larger than a small fix, open an issue first to discuss the approach.
• Check the open issues and pull requests so work is not duplicated.

Pull requests

• Branch from main and open the pull request against main.
• Keep each pull request to one change. Describe what it fixes or adds and how you tested it: platform, GPU, and what you played.
• The Build check workflow must pass. It builds the game on Linux and Windows for every pull request.
• Follow the style of the code around your change. The SDK includes a .clang-format.
• To change how the game behaves, prefer overriding a recompiled function from simpsons/src over editing files in simpsons/generated, which the recompiler produces. simpsons/src/frame_pacing.cpp and simpsons/src/subtitles.cpp show how.
• Launcher settings are stored in simpsons.toml. If you change a default, add an entry to SETTINGS_DEFAULT_MIGRATIONS in launcher/launcher.py so existing configurations pick it up.
• Never include game files, ISOs, extracted assets, or anything else derived from the game's data.

By submitting a pull request, you agree that your contribution is licensed under the license of the part of the project it changes (see License).

Reporting bugs

Before opening an issue, check the known issues and the existing issues. When you open one, include:

• Your platform, operating system, CPU, GPU and graphics driver version.
• The release version, shown in the launcher's About tab.
• What you were doing and what happened. For graphical problems, add a screenshot.
• The log. The launcher's Play tab shows the game's console output, and its diagnostics section can create a support bundle with the logs and settings.

Project layout

launcher/            Launcher and installer (Python, with a Qt WebEngine interface)
simpsons/            The game project: recompiled code (generated/), hand-written hooks (src/)
simpsons/re/         Notes on the game's internals
tools/rexglue-sdk/   ReXGlue runtime: kernel, audio, input and graphics layers
tools/XenonRecomp/   PowerPC to C++ static recompiler
tools/extract-xiso/  Xbox ISO extraction, used by the launcher's installer
tools/bench/         Unattended test and benchmark tooling
.github/workflows/   Build check on every push and pull request; manual release packaging

Not in the repository: game data, prebuilt toolchains (tools/clang20, tools/rexglue-bin) and build output.

Roadmap

The goal is for this to be the best way to play the game. In rough order:

• Fully native renderer. The Xbox 360 GPU emulation is being replaced piece by piece with native rendering, each step checked to give exactly the same image. Done: every shader compiled ahead of time, native replacements for the most expensive shaders, render-to-texture and copies done natively instead of through the emulated EDRAM, and render targets sized like native ones. Next: real vertex and index buffers, and textures and buffers uploaded when the game loads them instead of watching its memory. A native renderer is also what the features below build on.
• No slowdowns or stutters. A steady 60 FPS everywhere, including at 2x internal resolution on the Steam Deck, with no shader compilation hitches.
• Widescreen. Wider aspect ratios such as 21:9 without stretching.
• Controller prompts. Button icons that match the controller you have connected (Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Steam Deck), or your keyboard keys, in every in-game prompt, menu and tutorial.
• Game fixes. Fixes for bugs in the original game.
• Restored content. Unused content from the original game, brought back where it works.
• Mod support. A mod loader and tools for replacing and adding scripts, models, objects and levels.
• Android port.

Legal

The Simpsons Game is © 2007 Electronic Arts Inc. The Simpsons and all related characters and trademarks belong to their respective owners. Xbox and Xbox 360 are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Electronic Arts, Fox, Microsoft or any other rights holder.

This repository and its releases contain no game assets: no textures, models, audio, video, scripts or level data. The code in simpsons/generated is produced by recompiling the game's executable code and does not contain the game's data. The game runs only with data installed from an ISO of your own copy, and nothing from your installation is uploaded anywhere.

Please support the original release. Do not use this project with copies of the game you do not own, and do not ask for or share game files in this repository's issues or discussions. You are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to you regarding backups of media you own.

This software is provided as is, without warranty of any kind.

A note on AI assistance: parts of this project, including research into the game's internals, build tooling and bug fixes, have been developed with the assistance of Claude AI, in the interest of getting a working release out and turning around fixes as quickly as possible for a solo, fan-made effort. Treat it as a fast-moving hobby project rather than a polished commercial release.

License

The project's own code (the launcher, the hand-written game code and the tooling) is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. The ReXGlue SDK in tools/rexglue-sdk is under the BSD 3-Clause License, as is the Xenia code it derives from. XenonRecomp in tools/XenonRecomp is under the MIT License. Third-party libraries keep their own licenses; see tools/rexglue-sdk/thirdparty.

Credits

• Xenia, the Xbox 360 emulator research project whose code the runtime is built on.
• The ReXGlue SDK by Tom Clay, the recompilation runtime this port uses.
• XenonRecomp by hedge-dev and contributors.
• tronuo, for the 60 FPS patch and the Havok physics fix.
• Everyone who has contributed code: Gabry179, awemancba, tronuo0 and anasalialamgir.
• The libraries the runtime is built with: SDL3, Dear ImGui, glslang, SPIRV-Tools, FFmpeg, spdlog, fmt and Tracy.