If you happened to be a member of the Pure Xbox community all the way back in May last year, you might remember a story about a project called 'Insignia'. Still in private development as of 2021, the aim of this project is to allow original Xbox owners to play games online without any modifications or patches to software.

We haven't heard too much about Insignia publicly over the past 12 months, but development has been continuing on the project, with a whole range of videos having been uploaded to YouTube showcasing everything from multiplayer sessions in the likes of Unreal Championship and Midtown Madness, to online leaderboard tests.

Obviously, this free service won't be officially supported by Microsoft, and is a fan-driven project to allow gamers to enjoy their favourite original Xbox titles online again. There's no ETA on a release date right now (but the team "hopefully" wants to launch in 2021), and the idea is to focus on support for games "everyone wants to play" at launch.

"This service will not require any modifications or patches to software and will work with both stock and modded consoles as long as you have a way to dump keys (a one-time game exploit could be used for this).

The implementation is completely clean room..."

Here are a couple of sample videos showing Insignia in action from last year:

Interested in Insignia? Will you be trying it when it comes out? Let us know in the comments below.