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Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

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Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#21

Post by reactordev »

jimkleiber wrote: post #6

I'm not sure where to find the APKs/IPAs, but once you do, I wonder if using Claude Code or some other LLM tools could help you update the app (or reverse engineer) for modern OS versions. It's something that I've been thinking to do for my 2012 obsoleted microjournaling app.

They could, but then so can a lot of tools. At least with Android, it’s still Java so you can just emulate the runtime and run the app. To upgrade, just decompile the Java bytecode back into something editable.

I had this same issue with one of my “long lost” games only, it wasn’t a mobile game but a console game, so Ghidra was my only hope.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#22

Post by antonyh »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
fastball wrote: post #5

Where did the source code go? I have all the code from dumb little games I made (and never released) from almost 20 years ago.

I've lost so much code, photos and other digital assets over the years. I regret losing most of it, yet I can seem to get started on archiving the things I care about. So many funny little project, so much code I'd like to revisit, so many photos lot. Any recommendations on how to start a life as a digital hoarder?

Three things that have bitten me recently:

1. beware of encryption, especially Microsoft and Apple. I've encrypted Apple disk images with lost passwords, and USB drives that I'm not sure I'll ever decrypt now that I've mostly moved to Linux

2. USB drives rot. I have at least one sitting on my desk that doesn't work, or doesn't work with Linux, or is encrypted, I can't tell but I think it's dead and I've no idea what's on it

3. assume anything other than text or open formats will be useless later. I've a ton of info archived in closed proprietary formats that I might never be able to access.

Duplication is inevitable. I've a box of CD/DVD archives, a dozen large USB drives, two NAS, and half a dozen computers, and with all that storage and space I can't even have a definitive music collection. It's on both NAS, multiple computers, an MP3 player, my phone, and all the copies are different. We've 14 terabytes of photos, and so I now need to buy another NAS to replace the two I have and keep the old ones as a backup. It's endless curation, both for hardware and data.

And yet, the code I've lost. The photos that didn't make it to backup. I have those regrets too, like they were truly valuable.

Final thoughts: cloud storage isn't storage, it's short term for shuffling data between devices. Even email isn't secure - Yahoo deleted all my messages without warning because I didn't log in for a year.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#23

Post by pikuseru »

How about making a new game with help from your son (even if it’s ideas) and making some new memories? ;-)

The problem I found is that a lot of the stuff I made is tied to the hardware, OS and SDKs I used to make and run it (especially PalmOS and J2ME stuff - although Apple is just as bad.)

Luckily I’ve been able to find an emulator called Cloudpilot Emu to run some of my old PalmOS games in the browser.

I think if I was doing a game now and wanted to be able to look back on it in 10 to 20 years time I’d be doing it in C with SDL or JavaScript - although you’re betting on those being around. Or at least some virtual machine / runtime that could be ported to some new OS / platform.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#24

Post by antonyh »

cmrx64 wrote: post #19
redundantly wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you have a NAS you can run Gogs as a container for a git repo.

if you have a NAS you can just use a bare git directory as a remote

I do this, works exceptionally well. It also works via a USB key.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#25

Post by toomuchtodo »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
fastball wrote: post #5

Where did the source code go? I have all the code from dumb little games I made (and never released) from almost 20 years ago.

I've lost so much code, photos and other digital assets over the years. I regret losing most of it, yet I can seem to get started on archiving the things I care about. So many funny little project, so much code I'd like to revisit, so many photos lot. Any recommendations on how to start a life as a digital hoarder?

https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep and a Backblaze bucket (or other S3 compatible target). Can always search, organize, retrieve in the future as sibling comments have mentioned. https://rclone.org/ for when you need to forklift data around.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#27

Post by nemothekid »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
fastball wrote: post #5

Where did the source code go? I have all the code from dumb little games I made (and never released) from almost 20 years ago.

I've lost so much code, photos and other digital assets over the years. I regret losing most of it, yet I can seem to get started on archiving the things I care about. So many funny little project, so much code I'd like to revisit, so many photos lot. Any recommendations on how to start a life as a digital hoarder?

I’ve always found that the default hacker advice is was a bit too complex for my taste. If I’m someone who hardly cares about archiving things - I’m not suddenly going to care about setting up a NAS/Ceph/Backblaze/S3.

The lowest friction tool for me for nearly a decade now has just been iCloud. It helps that I use Apple products everywhere (and I even have iCloud installed on my windows machine), but I just default to storing things in iCloud.

Searching is not the best but I’m confident the files are there

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#28

Post by Podrod »

r0ckarong wrote: post #14

You can use Android Studio (or other virtualization / emulation) to set up an older version of Android and then you use one of the various sites that "archive" games: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/past-releases/... https://www.mobygames.com/game/54420/putter-king-adventure-g... I've used Bluestacks to play the entire somewhat recent Monkey Island game on PC because I could not be bothered to play it o…

Why didn't you just play the PC version of Return to Monkey Island?

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#29

Post by mixmastamyk »

mrweasel wrote: post #10
fastball wrote: post #5

Where did the source code go? I have all the code from dumb little games I made (and never released) from almost 20 years ago.

I've lost so much code, photos and other digital assets over the years. I regret losing most of it, yet I can seem to get started on archiving the things I care about. So many funny little project, so much code I'd like to revisit, so many photos lot. Any recommendations on how to start a life as a digital hoarder?

Make a data partition or folder, put all your files there. Do some basic organization. Then back it up regularly, using a tool you find easy enough to use. It’s not hard once you get the hang of it.

Re: Ask HN: How can I recover and run my old mobile game from the 2010s?

#30

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

nemothekid wrote: post #27
mrweasel wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've lost so much code, photos and other digital assets over the years. I regret losing most of it, yet I can seem to get started on archiving the things I care about. So many funny little project, so much code I'd like to revisit, so many photos lot. Any recommendations on how to start a life as a digital hoarder?

I’ve always found that the default hacker advice is was a bit too complex for my taste. If I’m someone who hardly cares about archiving things - I’m not suddenly going to care about setting up a NAS/Ceph/Backblaze/S3. The lowest friction tool for me for nearly a decade now has just been iCloud. It helps that I use Apple products everywhere (and I even have iCloud installed on my windows machine), but I just default t…

You can just plug in a USB3 SSD. The key is to have something easily transferred between machines as they are replaced. Then you just need discipline to keep everything important on that storage.
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