Case study

Black: an Xbox static recompilation for Apple Silicon macOS

black-recomp ports the Xbox game Black to Apple Silicon macOS by statically lifting its x86 functions to C and compiling them for arm64. It supplies game-specific host code, handwritten guest functions, analysis seeds and reproduction scripts, while a sibling xboxrecomp runtime provides Xbox kernel, graphics and audio services. The author reports first-mission interaction with unresolved boot instability, camera drift and silent game audio.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

Stars: 9
Last commit: 2026-10-01
Language: C

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Observed: Code and documentation observed; no download method or demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Apple Silicon macOS, the user's own Black disc image, and a sibling xboxrecomp checkout are required.
Prerequisites: The documented build uses CMake, Xcode command-line tools, Python, Capstone, Unicorn, SDL3, glib, epoxy and xxhash.
Limits: Boot during video playback is unstable; camera drift and silent game audio remain unresolved.
License: MIT License.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{black-macos-recomp-case,
  title = {{Black: an Xbox static recompilation for Apple Silicon macOS}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/elpetese/black-macos-recomp}},
  url = {https://github.com/elpetese/black-macos-recomp},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/black-macos-recomp-case/}}
}

Plain text

Black: an Xbox static recompilation for Apple Silicon macOS. https://github.com/elpetese/black-macos-recomp (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/black-macos-recomp-case/

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About this entry

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · elpetese/black-macos-recomp · Revision 84ea2c7
METHODOLOGY.md GitHub · elpetese/black-macos-recomp · Revision 84ea2c7
LICENSE GitHub · elpetese/black-macos-recomp · Revision 84ea2c7