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A bit of trivia, since the start of the project I ordered the AI agents to produce a handoff for the next agent, so we have the whole timeline for the project as handoff docs: https://github.com/lfarroco/ogre-battle-64-recomp/tree/main/...

It's sad that we even have to think about this. Ogre Battle 64 is 27 years old now. Under the law that preceded the Copyright Act of 1976, it would be entering the public domain right about now.

It's absurd how long we've made copyright terms, and it's really endangering preservation.

More infringing than emulators. De/recompilation projects are pretty clearly 'derivative works' of the original copyrighted program code, even if they require the original ROM in order to extract other assets necessary to compile a fully playable artifact.

The closer analogy would be fan-translation patches, which are also pretty clearly copyright-infringing derivative works though generally tolerated by rights holders.

Companies often encourage (or at least turn a blind eye to) creative derivative works from fan communities, especially if they're non-commercial and aren't cutting into the market share of their own official products enough for them to take notice.

It's basically the same as emulation as long as the recompiled code doesn't get distributed (which this project doesn't do AFAIK). Functionally the only difference between a "recomp" and traditional console emulation is that the assembly code that the CPU runs is translated to C then compiled to native code, rather than being interpreted or JIT compiled at runtime. Traditionally recompilation was mainly used when porting games to platforms where the emulation overhead would have been too much, like if you were making a GBA port of a Sega Genesis game. With these enhanced ports, I guess the idea is that if you're making a game specific "emulator" anyway, you might as well recompile the code and get rid of the overhead of interpretation.

Note that this isn't the same as a "decomp" where the goal is to make readable source code that resembles something that the original developers would have worked with. A "recomp" simply translates the assembly instructions to C. You end up with "assembly code but in C" rather than idiomatic C code.

IIRC, EU have some laws protecting "interoperability", i.e. making a program work on other platforms. I suspect decompiling is considered as "interoperability".

I'm not aware of legal trouble involving the the Zelda 64 recomp project, which would have a much higher chance of attracting the attention of big N (especially now that a new version of OoT is coming out).

At least in the way that I see it, a recomp is like building your own turntable to play your vinyl records, after stydying their grooves and infering how they would sound (so I guess that it would be less gray than an emulator).

No one can say anything, no game rom is ever bundled in the official releases of these recomps. We always have to provide the roms. Where from, it's another story.

Next time, try a walkthrough from GameFAQs. Printed that bad boy out at school and played into the wee hours when I was a teen. Still my absolute favorite RPG, but I needed all to get all the secrets, all the birthday items, all the unique characters that only existed in so-and-so town after the campaign ended, etc. To this day, all I'd want in a modern RPG is something like Ogre Battle 64, and instead all I get is the SNES/PS1 version (my current copy is the latter, since the SNES yielded me a very nice aftermarket price about a decade ago), which is great, but definitely rougher in comparison.

Nothing since has come close.

It was an unusual game in many aspects. Few copies were created, as the publisher had some issues. Its prerendered graphics aged very well. It has a small fan base. I recall that its gamefaqs guide had something like 60+ pages, given the amount of content and secrets that it has. In a console with few RPGs as the 64, it was an oasis.

The game has big attention for detail in both sprites and text. For example, at some point it unlocks a screen that lists all characters in a graph chart, with colored edges as their relation type - and it updates multiple times as the game progresses.

The strategy part of the franchise is mostly forgotten nowadays, there was only a recent remake for "let us cling together"(which is awesome as well, but it's in the tactics genre).

> The game received "favorable" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic.[26] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 33 out of 40.[29] Nintendo Power gave it a favorable review while the game was still in development.[37] Vicious Sid of GamePro said, "Beneath Ogre Battle 64's intimidating interface and plodding pace lies a wealth of strategy: If you choose to enlist, be sure to pack plenty of patience."[40][d]

> The game won the award for "Best Strategy Game" at GameSpot's Best and Worst of 2000 Awards,[41] and was nominated for the "Best Game No One Played" award, which went to Samba de Amigo. The staff noted that the game's sales had "fallen prey to [its] console of origin, the N64."[42] The game was also nominated for the "Best Console Strategy Game" and "Gamers' Choice: N64" awards at The Electric Playground's Blister Awards 2000, both of which went to Front Mission 3 and Perfect Dark, respectively.[43][44]

> It was rated the 111th best game made on a Nintendo System in Nintendo Power's Top 200 Games list.[45] Reviewing the Virtual Console re-release, IGN said that it "was (and still is) lordly indeed".[34]

> In 2023, Time Extension included the game on their "Best Nintendo 64 Games of All Time" list.[46]

Sounds like it was received well even if it didn't sell well

>They likely contain stolen or copyrighted code.

How would that be possible when it's trying to byte-match the original binaries

What is a "true recomp"? If it works as the original did, then it's a recompilation no matter the author.

You may not like that the author is mostly an LLM, but the output clearly works.

"No true scotsman uses LLMs for a recompilation"