Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
blog.chrislewis.au
Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
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Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#2It's pretty amazing what you can do when you embrace LLMs, figure out how to build one high-quality rigorous project with them, and then start working on more projects.
You become a machine with your workflow, once again limited only by your time/energy, tokens, and your discretion on how to spend it.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#3Awesome. Hopefully AI will allow more games to be decompiled in the future. Anyone working on a decomp of Perfect Dark?
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#4It's pretty amazing what you can do when you embrace LLMs, figure out how to build one high-quality rigorous project with them, and then start working on more projects. You become a machine with your workflow, once again limited only by your time/energy, tokens, and your discretion on how to spend it.
> It's pretty amazing what you can do when you embrace LLMs, figure out how to build one high-quality rigorous project with them, and then start working on more projects.
Indeed. But I think it's fair to say that just embracing LLMs is not enough.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#5Awesome. Hopefully AI will allow more games to be decompiled in the future. Anyone working on a decomp of Perfect Dark?
https://github.com/n64decomp/perfect_dark claims to be “a complete decompilation of Perfect Dark for the Nintendo 64”. And: “When a matching decompilation is compiled with the same compiler that the original developers used, the output will be exactly the same as the retail game, byte for byte.”
Relatedly, https://github.com/perfect-dark-pc-port/perfect_dark forked from the above describes itself as “a work-in-progress port of the Perfect Dark decompilation to modern platforms”. Further: “The game is in a mostly functional state, with both singleplayer and split-screen multiplayer modes fully working. There are minor graphics- and gameplay-related issues, and possibly occasional crashes.”
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#6I’m surprised the game companies themselves aren’t interested in these projects.
Seems like easy money to just decompile a retro game, add some quality of life improvements and stick it on steam.
Are their hands tied by legal or what other factors are preventing this?
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#7It's especially annoying that LLMs/agents are a logical starting point for decompiling old games but there is a significant backlash against it as the gaming community is very anti-AI and consumers of the benefits decompiling offers tend to be noncoders who don't believe that AI can do more than slop. I've seen takes such as "they're too lazy to learn C++" and accepting a PR from someone using Claude taints the project irrevocably.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#8I love the game Monster Hunter2 so much that I once practiced decompiling it. I worked on it for about two months and got maybe 5% done. Sometimes I really admire people who do this kind of decompilation work.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#9Its really great how we can breathe new life into older games like this. I'm currently working solo on a Tales of Symphonia gamecube decomp. My aim is to let AI do everything of substance. currently about 3400 functions are exact out of about 4800. So still a way to go. But I haven't written a single line yet.
Re: Decompiling a Nintendo 64 game in 84 days
#10I’m surprised the game companies themselves aren’t interested in these projects. Seems like easy money to just decompile a retro game, add some quality of life improvements and stick it on steam. Are their hands tied by legal or what other factors are preventing this?
> Are their hands tied by legal
Yes.
Even if you're the owner of the game, the contracts for the voice actors, motion capture, models, etc. frequently define very narrow terms of usage. Defining the exact release platforms is common. Not to mention profit sharing if the actors or studios you're hiring are popular.
It's even worse for retro games. Many times the original rights holder went out of business, sold their rights, died, or something else that muddies the ownership chain.