Guitar Hero II
2 recomps
Guitar Hero II (YoshiCrystal9)
YoshiCrystal9/re-gh2
re-gh2: a static recompilation of the Xbox 360 version, built with the ReXGlue SDK, for Windows and Linux. Its author presents it as a proof of concept: it depends on a still-in-development ReXGlue version that may break it in the future, performance isn’t great, and it’s prone to crashes. It reaches gameplay, as a test video shows, and a patch by ihatecompvir lets it load loose files from the game folder instead of the ones in the ARK archive. There are no releases: you have to build it. re-wor, the Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock recomp, is based on it. The latest commit is from February 22.
You needYour own copy of Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360, with the ISO extracted into the assets folder. To build it, Windows or Linux with the ReXGlue SDK, CMake, and Ninja.
Guitar Hero II (jillsandwich1998)
jillsandwich1998/reGH2
Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 on PC, rebuilt on your machine from your own copy; for now Linux only, with Vulkan. The game’s PowerPC code in default.xex is translated to C++ once, on your machine, with the ReXGlue SDK’s code generator, and compiled with a compiler that ships inside the AppImage; no game file and no code generated from it is distributed. Since 0.2.0 the game no longer runs on the SDK’s runtime (derived from Xenia): it uses its own code for the system core and a native Vulkan renderer at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, with SDL3 for audio and controllers, and it stays at 60 fps because the logic is tied to 60 Hz. The README warns that this is a pre-release: it has been played in Quick Play and in Career mode up to the fourth venue, with an X-plorer guitar and on a single machine (AMD, Mesa RADV), but not from start to finish, and how it behaves on NVIDIA, Intel, or SteamOS is unknown. The latest version is 0.2.0 (October 27). 21 of its 22 commits list Claude as a co-author.
You needYour own copy of Guitar Hero II for Xbox 360 (USA): the disc image, the extracted game, or the folder with default.xex. Plus 64-bit Linux with a Vulkan driver for your graphics card (the AppImage doesn’t include it).
Questions
Can you play Guitar Hero II natively on PC?
Not yet. The catalog has 2 recomps in progress, and none is playable yet.
What do I need to play it?
Your own copy of Guitar Hero II (Xbox 360). Recompendium only links projects that don’t distribute the game, and each entry says which version or region you need.
Which one is the most popular?
Guitar Hero II (YoshiCrystal9), with 38 stars on GitHub.