Forget the Xbox Ally X, here's a real Xbox handheld that spins discs

The ROG Xbox Ally and ROG Xbox Ally X are nearly here, and it's possible to get the full screen Xbox experience on a multitude of other PC gaming handhelds, too. But as great as these options are, they're far too sober-looking for some.

Wouldn't it be great if you could get an Xbox handheld that plays original Xbox discs and looks like something salvaged from one of the trash piles in Borderlands 4?

That's exactly what modder James has done for his YouTube channel. And to say his Xbox handheld is a bit different from the Xbox Ally would be a bit of an understatement. It also uses considerably more duct tape.

I Made an Original Xbox Portable - YouTube

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How to turn an OG Xbox into a very distinctive portable

His rather inspired project took the guts of an original Xbox – which, as he says, was famously the biggest, most power-hungry console of its time – and gave it "some love".

This was by cutting it apart to grab its hard drive and fix the broken DVD drive. Freed from its casing, the innards of the Xbox are sandwiched between two halves of an Xbox controller and given an old LCD display.

The resulting handheld – which involved tons of work to make work – is massive and hugely impressive.

While it looks like something you'd call the bomb squad in to defuse, it's a fully working, fully playable handheld Xbox that you can play Halo on, although not for very long if you're running it on battery.

I love this kind of thing – whether it's James' Xbox oddity or people getting Doom to run on fridges and vapes, I'm a big fan of people using their talents to do really weird but fun things.

And if you like what James has done to an old Xbox there's plenty more unusual items where that came from on his YouTube channel, including "the game console for murderers" – a handheld made specifically for incarcerated prisoners.

No, really.