At its core, the Xbox Series X is a powerful computer packed into a console body. Mouse and keyboard support and the possibility to enjoy a browser like Microsoft Edge have made it more likely to be used as a potential desktop computer for a long time, but the experience is not entirely satisfactory.

That doesn’t mean that this console can do great things in this space, and indeed it has now been shown that Is it possible to install Windows 98 via an emulator?. Not only that: it’s even possible to run the classic games of that operating system as if you were in front of one of those old computers.

Quake and Half-Life on Xbox

That’s exactly what they did at Digital Foundry after subscribing to the Microsoft Partner Program. Enable “Developer Mode” on the console.

From then on, they were able to install the DOSBox Pure emulator, a fork of DOSBox aimed at RetroArch and allowing full permission among its innovations. Install older versions of Windows.

Mouse didn’t work due to emulator limitations, but it was possible to make the Xbox controller it will act like that then to combine with a traditional keyboard.

The installation of the operating system was relatively simple and from there it was possible. Install classic video games like ‘Turok’, ‘Command & Conquer’, ‘Quake 2’ or ‘Half-Life’ran more satisfactorily.

Installing them is a bit of a hassle. Compulsory create an ISO image Some of the games to be streamed to Xbox and the console’s Blu-ray drive don’t help here because it can’t read those discs. The idea, of course, is to create them from another computer.

Once this hurdle is overcome, the reality is that the performance of classic games—as seen in the video— better, especially given that they run on an operating system that is being fully emulated on a console. Not bad, right?