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Decompilation is definitely the path forward. Not only does it preserve games and allow you to play enhanced native versions, they’re totally legal and won’t get you into hot water. I played Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time at 60fps and it was glorious.
Wait, what? Distributing decompiled code from a proprietary source is completely legal? Is that actually correct?
I was under the impression that the source code is copyrighted, as is the compiled build of the game, and that decompiling the game is a violation of the Terms of Service, which would make distributing it still illegal. I’d love to be wrong about this though.
Yes, reverse engineering is totally legal. The big asterisk here is that you can’t distribute any assets the company owns, so you need the original game files regardless to play the decompiled version.
This cleared up my confusion, thanks!
I’m familiar with reveng from a malware and security testing point of view, using tools like IDA, Binja, Ghidra, etc., so I was aware that decompilers are taking the compiled assembly instructions, then recreating Intermediate Language and pseudo-C stuff without debugging info or original function names and stuff, but I was missing the key point of game assets not being distributable.
