Years ago, after Xbox Live for the original Xbox shut down, there was a program you could run on your PC that would connect over the internet to others running that software.
It would emulate an Xbox and do matchmaking and your local/physical Xbox would see the others through the program as “local” using the system link option for multiplayer games (Halo, etc)
For the life of me I cannot remember what that was called, and my Google-fu is failing and only returning results for console emulators.
Some friends from college and I dug out our old Xboxes, and we want to setup remote play for Halo 2 and have a nostalgic “Shotguns on Midship” night.
Update: Solved. Thanks, mouse@midwest.social. XLink Kai was the software I was thinking of.
XLink Kai? I remember it from late 2000s, I don’t know much about it now.
I do believe that’s it! Thanks!
Now to see if it’s still active or even works.
Edit: Looks like XLink Kai is still active, and they even have non-Windows versions now – even works on a Raspberry Pi. I was afraid I’d have to try to get an ancient, archived copy to work.
This just went from “let’s try to make it happen” to “probably can happen”. Assuming their consoles still work.
XBConnect
May want to look into insignia too, its a xbox live replacement, its still a WIP and doesn’t support some games, including halo 2 unfortunately, but the games it does support work very well
I used warpipe for GameCube and I think it also worked for Xbox
