Serving tech enthusiasts for over 25 years.
TechSpot means tech analysis and advice you can trust.
A hot potato: Over the past few months, it seems as if fan-made PC ports of console-exclusive retro games have been emerging almost daily. This is because most of them are built either partially or entirely with AI coding tools such as Claude. Amid the wave, the debate over vibe coding has divided retro gaming enthusiasts.
Developer Dario, a major figure in the emerging PC fan port community, recently published a lengthy, harsh critique of the emerging practice of using LLMs to decompile, recompile, and create new ports for retro video games. His thread on Bluesky provides a detailed explanation of the practice and its pitfalls.
Growing numbers of retro enthusiasts have decompiled the their inner workings and reverse-engineer them. Using this knowledge, other developers have ported the games to modern platforms, often by recompiling the reverse-engineered code
I still see a lot of confusion about what decompilation, recompilation and ports are and what level of effort is involved in each type of project. It’s important that people understand the difference, as recompilation took a drastically different meaning that when it was originally introduced.
The resulting ports can support higher resolutions, higher frame rates, mods, and many other features not possible with emulation. Ports of games such as Star Fox 64 and Mario Kart 64 have inspired an explosion of attempts to revive and convert beloved titles like Daytona USA, GoldenEye 007, and Bloodborne.
However, many of these projects use AI tools. HarbourMasters, the team behind famous ports of Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, Star Fox 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask, was revealed to have been using LLMs for years. Besides the usual controversies around LLM use, including its environmental impact and the ethics of training AI on human work without permission, many developers also claim LLM-based coding produces verbose code that is indecipherable to humans.
Dario, a lead contributor to a Banjo-Kazooie port released earlier this year, also explains that many vibe-coded projects come from amateur developers with little to no knowledge of the games they are porting. He also disputes the claim that using AI saves time.
Appreciate the gesture, but for what it’s worth, the damage done by AI in this port is far bigger than I could ever imagine. Its entire organization and development is an unsalvageable train wreck. You may not have issues with its usage, but I have major gripes with it for technical reasons too.
According to Dario, LLMs might let inexperienced coders get a game up and running, but that was already the easy part before tools like Claude emerged. Some of these developers have faced criticism for seemingly abandoning bug-ridden projects that offer no advantages over emulation, and it remains to be seen how many AI coders will remain dedicated to fixing and optimizing their work.
For example, Dario compares two identically named Donkey Kong 64 ports, one of which used AI. The developer claims the non-AI recompilation progressed quickly, while the other stalled because of a gap in knowledge about the original game and N64 recompilation tools.
In response to the controversy, some projects have varying policies and disclaimers regarding LLMs. Some teams, for example, require developers to explain what their code does, while others only allow AI for non-coding tasks.
See more TechSpot in GoogleAdd us as a preferredot
