this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2026
40 points (97.6% liked)
RetroGaming
30367 readers
664 users here now
Vintage gaming community.
Rules:
- Be kind.
- No spam, AI slop, or soliciting for money.
- No racism or other bigotry allowed.
- Obviously nothing illegal.
If you see these please report them.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I used to think the decomp projects were really cool, even tho I didn't really play them. But lately, the influx of AI-driven decomp projects, the whole concept has lost its luster to me.
On the flip side, there are still projects out there that don't (or at least claim not to) use AI approaches. Here's a list I saw the other day: https://backloggd.com/u/WumpaGem/list/game-decompsrecomps-that-arent-vibe-coded/
They are still cool. Even with AI help the good decomps will rise to the top but it will take time to filter them out from the slop.
Yeah, it definitely leaves some sour in the mouth feeling with Ai involved. Especially if its vibe coded without the code fully documented and understood by humans. Those efforts aren't going away and people still do the time consuming and well thought out decompilation projects. I see the new flux of Ai driven recompilation as a bonus. At least it works, I mean i was waiting decades to play Wave Race 64 with 120 fps. Without these Ai tools, it could probably take another decade if anyone else than me was interested into it at all.
So I understand your point and I'm not the biggest fan of Ai too (but I'm not the biggest hater as well). But at least this is used to give it to us for free, its not a commercial project we pay for (the ports).
For sure, I get that. I started off very much in the "it's just a tool" and "AI as normal technology" camps, and over time I've become more and more jaded.
Ultimately what I appreciated about decomps was moreso the effort that went into it, rather than the result. But it totally makes sense if sometimes people care more about the result.
Those efforts aren't going anywhere. It's only a problem if everything is replaced. What I mean is, figuratively speaking: In the past we had 5 decomps done by human hand. Now with Ai we have 5 decomps done by humans, plus 25 done by Ai agents (with human oversight). So we do not lose much actually. This is my thinking.
On the other hand, I can see a lot of people no longer finding the decomp projects enticing when most of what they see are vibecoded projects. The people that may have been interested in those projects in the future could be totally put off by it now.
I agree with you here. In fact I wanted to express this issue first. But it made my previous reply complicated to understand, so I left it out. So yes, that's one of the issues. Also if a game is already vibe coded into a recomp, then someone else might find it less interesting to tackle that project, because most people probably wouldn't find it interesting anymore (as there is already a port). Which would be a shame to be honest. So yeah it's not all good only.