​

The amount of decompiled games has seen a considerable increase during the last 5 years.
A lot of N64 games have been the main focus of such decompilation projects, since the console's many games were originally coded in C/C++.

One of the many projects currently being decompiled from the N64 console is none other than one of Rare's top games for it, Perfect Dark.
The current status of the decompilation project is nearing its completion, with both the NTSC 1.0 and NTSC Final versions of the game currently sitting at 97% completion.

The other versions of the game are not far off, either.
The PAL and Japanese versions are sitting at 96% and 95%, respectively. Even the Beta versions of the game are getting a decompilation as well, with both the NTSC and PAL Betas sitting at 94% and 96%, respectively. With all the work being done, the completion and possibility of a PC port (and other devices) is coming closer and closer to being a near-future reality.

There's a lot more N64 games being decompiled at the moment, with the most recent one being Ocarina of Time, which has been seeing ports to many devices and consoles thanks to the combined effort of the community, with Majora's Mask being another one that's closing up above 70% completion. If you want to take a peek at other decompilation projects currently being worked on, you can visit the N64Decomp community at GitHub, while the Zelda titles decompilations are currently hosted at Zelda Reverse Engineering Team's page.

Source

 

[FAST6191]

how come those decomp projects started appearing when AI just hit the main stream? the last 25 years nothing emerged and now...
why is that?

I don't know if decompilers are trained on anything like similar setups to AI (I am sure someone did the equivalent of a unit test changing 1 variable or something to make several thousand subtly different test cases as either a test or training model) but I would not read too much into it -- static decompilation of C has been bubbling along behind the scenes in academic circles and forensic circles for many years now, dynamic bursting onto the scene with the first N64 emulators but precursors existing before then and while it was more of a party trick then just in time C compilers also existed and would be counted among precursor technologies.
Decompilations of C based things (scripted languages, C# and related things having it happen for years/by default) did happen before then as well, usually when some info was leaked alongside it, see Diablo for a later example but some of the sorts of things being done

 

[MikaDubbz]

how come those decomp projects started appearing when AI just hit the main stream? the last 25 years nothing emerged and now...
why is that?

AI has nothing to do with the decomps, any correlation between the 2 rising at around the same time is strictly coincidental. As to why they started to pop up only in the last 5 years in completed states? Can't say for sure, but probably because we only collectively figured out how to backwards engineer these games in full in recent years. And look at the timeline, about 5 years since decomps became a real thing and we only have a small handful of completed decomps in that time. Clearly this is a long tedious process that takes a lot of time and dedication.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Love seeing the fans working on source ports and the care and craft that goes into them.

Post automatically merged: Oct 10, 2022

how come those decomp projects started appearing when AI just hit the main stream? the last 25 years nothing emerged and now...
why is that?

I think the processing power required to brute force crunch was just too slow on older hardware? But with new tech you can get like 2% a month now?

Maybe that's completely off base but that's what I've assumed.

 

[Viri]

Oh shit, cool! I can't wait to play a native PC port, with the Xbox 360 textures, minus Elvis' new face. And Miyamoto being added back in! Also, neat Banjo is at 90% and Minish Cap is at 97%. lol

Spoiler

Dat Elvis face. lol

 

[wiiAdventurer]

Looks at N64 decompilation github projects, doesn't see Jet Force Gemini or Iggy's Wrecking Balls. Come on people!!

Seriously though, while I find a lot of FPS games kinda boring, PD has always been one of my favorites. It just has so much content, provides some ideas that are even unique today, and still maintains a very high degree of quality. I am excited to see where this goes.

 

[chrisrlink]

i alwaus kkeepp wondering why REing viideo games are legal and why game companies haven't
made exception bans on them,,on the flip side glad nothing's been sucessful at banning REing (so far)

 

[MikaDubbz]

i alwaus kkeepp wondering why REing viideo games are legal and why game companies haven't
made exception bans on them,,on the flip side glad nothing's been sucessful at banning REing (so far)

Well TakeTwo did go after the GTA decomps, and all development on those ceased, and I believe all githubs have been shutdown, including forks. Which is a shame, there was still 2 or so titles from that era to get the treatment, those being San Andreas and Vice City Stories of course. I believe Liberty City Stories was still a bit of a work in progress but you could still get it up and running. As a Wii U owner, I'm forever going to be annoyed that I have GTA 3 and Vice City on my device but San Andreas will never arrive to round out the trilogy.

Having said that, I don't know if it really is illegal or not. I mean every decomp project is not a means on its own to pirate the game, you still need to provide your own copy of the game. Granted it can be pirated, but it can also be legit, whether it is or not has nothing to do with the decomp project files provided in these projects.

 

[Kioku]

Well TakeTwo did go after the GTA decomps, and all development on those ceased, and I believe all githubs have been shutdown, including forks. Which is a shame, there was still 2 or so titles from that era to get the treatment, those being San Andreas and Vice City Stories of course. I believe Liberty City Stories was still a bit of a work in progress but you could still get it up and running. As a Wii U owner, I'm forever going to be annoyed that I have GTA 3 and Vice City on my device but San Andreas will never arrive to round out the trilogy.

Having said that, I don't know if it really is illegal or not. I mean every decomp project is not a means on its own to pirate the game, you still need to provide your own copy of the game. Granted it can be pirated, but it can also be legit, whether it is or not has nothing to do with the decomp project files provided in these projects.

Realistically, all it would take is one of these devs to go to court to see where the law stands on it. Decomp projects, in theory, shouldn't be illegal. Unless there's copyrighted code being distributed or a means of piracy being available from these sources.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Realistically, all it would take is one of these devs to go to court to see where the law stands on it. Decomp projects, in theory, shouldn't be illegal. Unless there's copyrighted code being distributed or a means of piracy being available from these sources.

I believe the Take Two GTA decomps being taken down is going to court. But I could have that wrong.

 

[AxlSt00pid]

Wow, my favorite N64 shooter is almost fully decompiled? AND THE PAL VERSION TOO? NICE

 

[scoobydude51]

Well TakeTwo did go after the GTA decomps, and all development on those ceased, and I believe all githubs have been shutdown, including forks. Which is a shame, there was still 2 or so titles from that era to get the treatment, those being San Andreas and Vice City Stories of course. I believe Liberty City Stories was still a bit of a work in progress but you could still get it up and running. As a Wii U owner, I'm forever going to be annoyed that I have GTA 3 and Vice City on my device but San Andreas will never arrive to round out the trilogy.

Having said that, I don't know if it really is illegal or not. I mean every decomp project is not a means on its own to pirate the game, you still need to provide your own copy of the game. Granted it can be pirated, but it can also be legit, whether it is or not has nothing to do with the decomp project files provided in these projects.

IIRC, it wasn’t a clean decomp, they just used the PS2 copies that had the debug symbols and used a program (probably Ghidra) to turn it back into code. Since it included comments from the Rockstar developers (which decomp projects don’t have) and San Andreas wasn’t included since only GTA 3 and Vice City had the debug symbols included.

 

[godreborn]

This is very exciting because the ports to PS4/5 will be incredible for couch multiplayer.

@godreborn

I'll try to compile it for the ps4, but not the ps5. I'm quitting after the ps4 scene as I've mentioned before.

 

[stanleyopar2000]

Ocarina of time had one at 95% why can't we?

Because potential problems of having Microsoft stop it

 

[Avalyn]

I think this article could wait until it's 100

yeah it's like saying "I'm coming" just before you come. I mean, just do it and surprise your partner and then go to sleep, am I right?

 

[regnad]

Hope Banjo 1 and 2 get decompiled some day

 

[Vague Rant]

Hope Banjo 1 and 2 get decompiled some day

Banjo-Kazooie is already at 90%.

 

[Jayro]

Oh uh should have said "I'm looking forward in Goldeneye's decomp" lol
Sorry Getting my wires crossed up quite often today

I'm especially looking forward to that one getting released, but Perfect Dark is equally as exciting to me because of all the QoL improvements. Playing multiplayer with dual MagSec 4's set to 3-round burst mode makes you GOD-LIKE.

 

[regnad]

Banjo-Kazooie is already at 90%.

I saw! Yay! Tooie is not as beloved unfortunately, but it could certainly benefit from a decomp considering how hard it is to emulate.

 

[chrisrlink]

I'm especially looking forward to that one getting released, but Perfect Dark is equally as exciting to me because of all the QoL improvements. Playing multiplayer with dual MagSec 4's set to 3-round burst mode makes you GOD-LIKE.

yeah cause last time i checked Goldeneye (the rom) is still buggy on emulator unless RA fixed it (I was going by PJ64)

 

[Viri]

I saw! Yay! Tooie is not as beloved unfortunately, but it could certainly benefit from a decomp considering how hard it is to emulate.

That game desperately needed a pause map.