How we got here
50 sourced milestones, from the first disassemblies to matching decomps, static recompilers and the arguments of today. Every event links to where it is documented.
Roots: disassemblers, source drops and the law (1990-1999)
Commercial disassemblers appear, courts and lawmakers carve out room for reverse engineering, and id Software starts the habit of opening old engines.
IDA, the Interactive Disassembler, is released
Ilfak Guilfanov's interactive disassembler ships after a year of work. It becomes the standard commercial tool for reading machine code for the next three decades.
EU Software Directive allows decompilation for interoperability
The European Union's 1991 software directive explicitly permits decompiling a program when it is needed to make independent software work with it, giving European reverse engineers a statutory footing.
Sega v. Accolade: disassembly can be fair use
The US Ninth Circuit rules that disassembling a program to understand its functional interfaces can be fair use when there is no other way to get at those ideas. The decision underpins much later US reverse engineering.
The Wine project starts
Bob Amstadt and Eric Youngdale begin Wine, a clean reimplementation of the Windows API so Windows programs can run on Unix-like systems.
Cristina Cifuentes' thesis on reverse compilation
Cifuentes' PhD thesis "Reverse Compilation Techniques" lays out the structure of a general-purpose decompiler, an academic reference point for later decompilers.
"Abandonware" gets its name
Peter Ringering coins the term for software no longer sold or supported; an Abandonware Ring of sites forms in early 1997 to share such games, drawing industry cease-and-desist letters later that year.
MAME 0.1 is released
The Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator project publishes its first version, starting a long effort to document and preserve arcade hardware in code. MAME later became free software in 2016.
id Software releases the Doom source code
John Carmack publishes the Doom source code (the copy id later put on GitHub is GPL 2.0), which spawns decades of source ports and shows a game can outlive its platform through its code.
ReactOS development begins
After the stalled FreeWin95 effort, developers restart as ReactOS: an open-source operating system aiming for binary compatibility with Windows NT, written without Microsoft code.
DMCA signed into US law
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act adds anti-circumvention rules that shape how preservationists and reverse engineers can handle protected software, and later becomes the usual tool for takedowns of fan ports.
Home of the Underdogs opens
Sarinee Achavanuntakul launches an abandonware archive with reviews and downloads for thousands of out-of-print PC games, an early model for community game preservation.
Quake engine source released under the GPL
id Software opens the Quake engine, continuing the practice of releasing engine code once a game's commercial life winds down.
Reimplementations and real decompilers (2000-2012)
Emulation gets legal cover, fans rebuild whole games from scratch, and decompilation becomes a commercial product.
Sony v. Connectix upholds reverse engineering for emulation
The Ninth Circuit finds that copying Sony's BIOS while reverse engineering it to build the Virtual Game Station emulator was fair use, building on Sega v. Accolade.
ScummVM begins
Ludvig Strigeus starts a reimplementation of LucasArts' SCUMM adventure engine, later joined by Vincent Hamm; it grows into a host for many classic adventure engines.
OpenTTD 0.1
Ludvig Strigeus releases a re-engineered Transport Tycoon Deluxe, converted from the 1994 assembly original to C, which becomes a long-lived open-source game.
Quake III Arena source released
Following a QuakeCon 2005 announcement, id Tech 3 is released under the GPL.
Hex-Rays Decompiler launches
Hex-Rays introduces a commercial decompiler plugin for IDA that turns machine code into C-like pseudocode, making decompilation an everyday reverse engineering tool.
Wine 1.0
Fifteen years after it started, Wine reaches version 1.0.
pret's Pokémon disassemblies on GitHub
The pokecrystal disassembly repository goes up on GitHub, part of the pret group's work to rebuild Game Boy Pokémon games as assembly that reassembles into the original ROMs.
Archives in the browser (2013-2018)
Preservation moves online and fans start rebuilding classic PC games from their binaries.
Internet Archive opens the Console Living Room
The Internet Archive adds hundreds of early console games playable in the browser through the JSMESS emulator, as part of its historical software collection.
OpenRCT2 development starts
Ted "IntelOrca" John begins an open-source recreation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 in C++, which still needs the original game's data to run.
Ghidra's existence revealed
The WikiLeaks Vault 7 documents first reveal that the NSA has an internal reverse engineering framework called Ghidra.
Devilution reconstructs Diablo's source
Using symbol information left on the Japanese PlayStation release and a hidden debug build, contributors rebuild Diablo's source code; DevilutionX later carries it to modern systems.
The matching-decomp boom (2019-2023)
Free professional tooling arrives and N64 decompilations that rebuild byte-identical ROMs turn into native PC ports.
NSA releases Ghidra
Ghidra is released for free at the RSA Conference, with source on GitHub about a month later, giving everyone a capable decompiler without an IDA licence.
Super Mario 64 decompilation goes public
The n64decomp group publishes a C decompilation of Super Mario 64 that rebuilds matching ROMs, an early large N64 matching decomp and a template for many that follow.
Ars Technica explains the N64 decomp scene
A widely read feature describes how hobbyists turn N64 binaries back into compilable C, prompted by a playable PC port of Super Mario 64 built on the decomp.
Nintendo targets the Super Mario 64 PC port
Takedown notices go after sites hosting compiled builds of the fan PC port and videos of it; the source-only decomp itself stays up.
Internet Archive preserves Flash with Ruffle
Ahead of Flash Player's end of life at the close of 2020, the Internet Archive starts playing Flash animations and games in the browser through the Rust-based Ruffle emulator.
Take-Two DMCA takes down re3
Take-Two files a DMCA notice against re3, the reverse-engineered GTA III code, and GitHub disables the whole fork network; Take-Two follows with legal action in September 2021.
decomp.me appears
A collaborative website for matching decompilation goes up, letting people share single-function "scratches" and work on them together in the browser.
Ocarina of Time code fully decompiled
The Zelda Reverse Engineering Team reports that all of Ocarina of Time's game code has been turned into C, opening the way to ports and mods.
Asahi Linux alpha
The first public Asahi Linux alpha installs on M1-series Macs, aimed at developers and power users.
Ship of Harkinian released
Harbour Masters release an unofficial native PC port of Ocarina of Time built on the OoT decompilation; players supply their own ROM for the assets.
OpenGOAL's first release
The OpenGOAL project, which decompiles Jak and Daxter's GOAL code and rebuilds the game natively for PC, publishes its first tagged release.
Perfect Dark decompilation reported complete
Ryan Dwyer's Perfect Dark decompilation covers the NTSC versions of the game, a prerequisite for the later native port.
Study: 87% of classic games are out of print
A Video Game History Foundation and Software Preservation Network survey finds that 87% of classic US-released games are not commercially available.
Recompilation goes mainstream (2024-2025)
Static recompilers make native ports possible without a finished decomp, and LLMs enter decompilation research.
LLM4Decompile paper
Researchers publish open language models trained to decompile binaries to C, one of the first widely cited LLM decompilers.
N64: Recompiled and Zelda 64: Recompiled
Mr-Wiseguy releases a static recompiler for N64 code together with a native PC port of Majora's Mask built with it; the player supplies the ROM.
2 Ship 2 Harkinian 1.0
Harbour Masters' decomp-based Majora's Mask PC port ships its first release, weeks after the recompiled version.
decomp.dev progress site
A shared progress site and GitHub bot starts tracking how far participating decomp projects have matched.
Starship, a Star Fox 64 PC port
Harbour Masters release Starship, a native Star Fox 64 port built on the SF64 decompilation and libultraship.
EA releases classic Command & Conquer source
Electronic Arts publishes GPL source for Tiberian Dawn, Red Alert, Renegade and Generals/Zero Hour for preservation, without game assets.
Unleashed Recompiled and XenonRecomp
A static recompilation of the Xbox 360 Sonic Unleashed ships as a native PC port, using the XenonRecomp and XenosRecomp tools and inspired by N64: Recompiled.
Completion and the AI debate (2026)
Long-running decomps finish while AI-generated "recomps" flood in and the community starts labelling human-made work.
Banjo: Recompiled 1.0
A native PC port of Banjo-Kazooie built with N64: Recompiled on top of the Banjo-Kazooie decompilation reaches 1.0.
AI-assisted Mario Kart Wii recomp stirs debate
The announcement of a statically recompiled Mario Kart Wii port that openly uses AI coding agents splits the community over code quality and maintainability.
GoldenEye 007 reaches 100% decompiled
The GoldenEye decompilation reports 100% for the US, Japanese and PAL versions after years of work; builds still need a user-supplied ROM.
A list of human-made decomps and recomps
X user Funky90sLion starts a public document cataloguing decomp and recomp projects made without generative AI, covered by Retro Dodo the next day.
Banjo: Recompiled lead calls AI ports "a race to the bottom"
DarioSamo distances his team from an AI-generated Banjo-Tooie recomp and criticises reuse of his team's work in that way.
Recomp developers push back on "slopcomps"
Kotaku reports on the backlash against vibe-coded N64 ports, with the Zelda and Banjo recomp teams restating their no-AI policies.
Beetle Adventure Racing decomp team objects to AI recomp
Synamax says his volunteer team's in-progress Beetle Adventure Racing decomp was taken and "finished" with an LLM without consent, and commits to finishing a human-made version.