Over on TheGamingEmporium.com they have put together an extensive list of decompilation/recompilation projects available on the wonderful world wide web. If you want to find out which classic games are getting this special treatment, head on over to the list here.
What is decompilation? When programmers write computer code, they don’t typically write it in machine language, which is simply a list of numbers which the computer reads and interprets as instructions, such as fetch memory, add two numbers, etc. Remembering which number executes which command was tedious even in the early days of computing, and would be close to impossible now, given that modern instruction sets are much larger and computers execute millions of instructions in a single second.
To get around this problem, programmers use a high level programming language such as C++ or Rust, which allows them to write computer instructions in a more human readable format. The language still has strict rules to allow it to be translated into machine code when the program is complete, this is called “compiling” the code.
Decompilation is the process of going back from machine code into the human readable programming language. This is not trivial however, since any comments or notes the programmer added to their code is lost upon compiling it and cannot be recovered with decompilation. Other quality of life features, such as the names of individual blocks of programming code, may also be lost or altered during the decompilation process.
Why bother with decompiling in the first place? Because once you have the decompiled code, it can be edited, improved and recompiled. Some recompilation projects even take code decompiled from other systems (e.g Nintendo 64) and compile them into a native computer program for Windows or Linux. This allows for further customisations, optimisations and even completely new features that are not possible when running an emulator.
While the Retro Gaming Emporium list doesn’t claim to be exhaustive and contains some spurious entries (AssaultCube, for instance, seems to be an original game, while Simpsons Hit and Run is not a recompilation at all but a set of fan made patches) it’s still a great resource if you’re interested in these recompilation efforts. Like us, you will almost certainly discover some interesting projects you had not heard about before. Keep in mind that not every project will be complete and many will still be heavily work in progress.
Our friends over at VideoGameEsoterica took a look over the list and picked out some of their recommendations in the video below.