Retro Porting Toolkit · The classics, rebuilt to run anywhere

Bring classic games forward.

Retro Porting Toolkit

Recompile and augment games from original consoles with modern rendering, controls, multiplayer, and modding, while preserving the games themselves.

Classic games were built around 240p displays, fixed frame rates, four controller ports, serial cables, and CPUs measured in megahertz. Those constraints do not need to follow the games forever.

The games you remember. Without the old limits.

  • Higher frame rates. Run games smoothly beyond their original frame-rate limits.
  • Modern displays. Widescreen, ultrawide, high-resolution output, and flexible viewports.
  • Modern multiplayer. Turn local multiplayer and console link modes into LAN and online play.
  • Modern controllers. Remapping, contemporary gamepads, keyboard and mouse, and new input devices.
  • Modding. Expose game data and behavior for characters, assets, rules, levels, and entirely new experiences.
  • Quality of life. Save states, rewind, faster loading, debugging, and accessibility improvements.

More than emulation.

Emulation asks: how do we reproduce this old machine? Retro Porting Toolkit asks a different question: what could its games do if they were not limited by that machine anymore?

Traditional emulators recreate the original hardware extremely well, and this project builds on decades of that accumulated knowledge. But by recompiling games back into real code and recovering how they actually work, the toolkit operates above the hardware abstraction. Changes become possible at the level of the game itself.

A remaster is a new commercial production. A source port needs source code or a heroic reverse-engineering effort for one title. An emulator reproduces the machine. Retro Porting Toolkit occupies another space entirely: preserve the game, replace the constraints. The goal is not to make old games unrecognizable. It is to make the boundaries around them programmable.

Preserve the game. Replace the constraints.

Recompile. Understand. Augment.

  • Recompile. Translate original game code into code that runs efficiently on modern hardware, without manually rewriting the game.
  • Understand. Recover higher-level knowledge about the game's code, data, assets, and systems, so the toolkit knows what the running game actually means.
  • Augment. Use that knowledge to replace or extend individual systems with modern implementations: rendering, input, networking, audio, storage, UI.

One improvement. Many games.

A traditional port improves one game. Retro Porting Toolkit is designed to improve the platform underneath many games.

Teach the toolkit how a PlayStation game establishes a display, and a whole class of games can inherit modern display modes. Implement modern handling for a common input path, and many games pick up modern controllers at once. Understand a console's link protocol, and games designed around two physical consoles can meet over a network instead.

Every game teaches the toolkit more about its platform. Every platform improvement makes the next game easier. The toolkit gets better; the library gets bigger.

From console feature to modern capability.

  • Split screen becomes multiple displays. A game already knows how to render two players. Give each player their own viewport, window, or monitor.
  • Link cable becomes network play. Some PlayStation games connected two consoles with a serial cable. Reimplement the transport, and the same game logic can travel over LAN or the internet while the game still believes it is talking to another PlayStation.
  • Memory card becomes modern storage. Keep the game's expectations intact while saves gain management, backups, and sync.
  • Controller port becomes modern input. Map the original input model onto contemporary controllers, keyboard and mouse, or accessibility hardware.
  • Fixed viewport becomes widescreen. Understand how the game builds its camera and projection instead of stretching the final image.

In the wild

  • Press: Time Extension on OpenPete + PSXRecomp, Notebookcheck on Pepsiman in the browser, retro-gamer.jp on Twisted Metal 4
  • Video: Video Game Esoterica, Save states & rewind showcase
  • Writing: 1379.tech, the team's technical blog

Videos

Hardware

  • PlayStation (2026): Seven playable first-party titles, the real PS1 BIOS recompiled and running as the kernel, and the decoder behind community ports of Spyro and Pepsiman.
  • NES (2026): Ten commercial titles rebuilt as native C from raw 6502 machine code, across four mappers, with no BIOS required at all.
  • Super Nintendo (2026): Three released games, true widescreen, and MSU-1 CD-quality audio, coaxed out of the 65816, a chip that fights static analysis.
  • Game Boy Advance (2026): The toolkit's first 32-bit target: ARM7TDMI to C++, about ten game repos, adaptive widescreen that genuinely widens, and an Android APK.
  • Sega Genesis (2026): The Sonic family running as native code, with netplay, 2-player split-screen, and an experimental recompiler for the Z80 sound chip riding along.
  • Nintendo DS (2026): Two CPUs, one recompiler: very early pre-alpha research that already has one public game consumer to its name.
  • Virtual Boy (2026): Mario's Tennis running as native code, a tech demo from a recompiler whose stated ambition is life beyond red-and-black.
  • GameCube (2026): The GameCube's own firmware menu, booting as recompiled native code: LLE-first research on the PowerPC Gekko, honestly labeled as such.
  • CD-i (2026): Very early research with a distinctive scope: the entire Philips CD-i system ROM, OS-9 and all, recompiled into native code.
  • Original Xbox (2026): The odd one out: the Xbox already speaks x86, so the work here is low-level emulation, validated against a real console and not yet public.

Games

  • Tomba! (2026): This is where PSXRecomp began, and it shows: reasonably playable, with a warp debug menu, FMV skipping, and experimental widescreen.
  • Tomba! 2 (2026): Tomba! goes fully 3D, and the recomp goes wide: adaptive widescreen up to 21:9, FMV skip, and an experimental debug menu.
  • Ape Escape (2026): A crowd favorite, caught early: Ape Escape runs with opt-in widescreen and an experimental Linux AppImage.
  • Mega Man X4 (2026): X4 on PC, the recomp way: true 16:9 widescreen, fast loading, and a damage multiplier you tune yourself.
  • Mega Man X5 (2026): X5, early and honest about it: widescreen and frame interpolation ship as mods, and FMVs decode with an auto-skip.
  • Mega Man X6 (2026): Released, not alpha, and carrying 203 configurable mod items from an authorized adaptation of the Mega Man X6 Tweaks mod.
  • Tsumu Light (2026): A puzzle game that never left Japan, now speaking English: an original fan translation applied at runtime, no ROM patching.
  • Super Mario World (2026): The flagship of SNESRecomp, believed playable end to end, with adaptive widescreen, MSU-1 audio, and a growing mod catalog.
  • Mega Man X (2026): Play it start to finish today: fully released, and the first SNES game recompiled without an explicit disassembly as reference.
  • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (2026): Hyrule, playable through the early dungeon, with adaptive widescreen, MSU-1 audio, and a first Linux build.
  • Donkey Kong Country 2 (2026): Community-led, core-hosted, and barely out of the gate: DKC2 brings experimental widescreen and an automated route auditor.
  • The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap (2026): Hyrule, wider: one of the first GBARecomp titles, with adaptive widescreen demonstrated up to 21:9.
  • Mega Man Zero (2026): The GBA screen always felt too small for Zero. Opt-in fixed-width or adaptive widescreen finally gives the series room to move.
  • WarioWare: Twisted! (2026): The cartridge had a tilt sensor. Now your phone does the tilting: gyro play on Android, controller motion on PC.
  • Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2026): Super Circuit, smoothed out: a 60 FPS track rendering mod and adaptive widescreen for the GBA racer.
  • Dragon Ball Z: Buu's Fury (2026): Buu's Fury goes wide: an optional adaptive widescreen mod with an edge-anchored HUD, in an early GBA recomp.
  • Pokemon Ruby & Sapphire (2026): Gen 3 arrives with its clock still ticking: the cartridge real-time clock is modeled right in the GBARecomp runtime.
  • Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen (2026): One repository, two games: FireRed and LeafGreen each build as their own native target.
  • Pokemon Emerald (2026): The missing piece: Emerald completes Gen 3 coverage in the GBARecomp lineup.
  • Super Mario Advance 2 (2026): Super Mario World again, this time from a GBA cartridge, recompiled in the GBARecomp lineup.
  • Super Mario Advance 4 (2026): Super Mario Bros. 3 in its GBA form, recompiled as part of the GBARecomp lineup.
  • Super Mario Bros. (2026): A released NES recomp where Mario is optional: experimental character mods, a widescreen mod, and a first-person Voxel 3D mode.
  • The Legend of Zelda (2026): Hyrule in voxels: a released NES recomp with a 3D overworld renderer, a first-person mode, and an experimental HD build.
  • Metroid (2026): Metroid earned its spot in NESRecomp's ten supported titles partly on the strength of its public disassembly.
  • Mega Man 3 (2026): Mega Man 3 brings MMC3 to NESRecomp's ten supported commercial games.
  • Dr. Mario (2026): Among the first four games NESRecomp ever brought up, on an MMC1 cartridge that exercises CHR bank switching.
  • Faxanadu (2026): Where NESRecomp's commercial support began, and the showcase for its JSON-driven Text Override System.
  • Duck Hunt (2026): The Zapper is gone; your mouse fills in. Duck Hunt, playable on PC through NESRecomp's mouse-as-Zapper substitution.
  • Yoshi (2026): Yoshi's NES puzzler, holding its spot among NESRecomp's ten supported commercial games.
  • Yoshi's Cookie (2026): Cookie matching on native code: one of NESRecomp's ten supported commercial games.
  • Gumshoe (2026): GxROM meets mouse-as-Zapper: Gumshoe rounds out NESRecomp's four supported mapper families.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog (2026): Green Hill Zone was the proving ground: Sonic was SegaGenesisRecomp's first title, now with a widescreen setting and intro skip.
  • Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2026): Sonic 2 joins the Genesis recomp lineup as SegaGenesisRecomp's second title, widescreen setting included.
  • Sonic 3 & Knuckles (2026): Sonic 3 & Knuckles on SegaGenesisRecomp, with a widescreen setting and a pre-boot launcher to greet you.
  • Mario's Tennis (2026): The Virtual Boy lives: its framework's first and only title, running at correct play speed as a tech demo.
  • Metroid Prime Hunters (2026): The DS goes native: campaign entry, adaptive 21:9 widescreen, Prime-style mouse controls, and experimental Wiimmfi online, all in public alpha.
  • recomp-net (2026): The ecosystem's netcode layer: portable delay-sync multiplayer for recompilation hosts, already powering psxrecomp's opt-in netplay build.
  • retcomm-rbengine (2026): The snapshot ring behind save states and rewind: a platform-agnostic rollback engine shared across the recomp ecosystems.
  • OpenPete (Spyro the Dragon) (2026): Spyro glides onto PC: a native port built from a fan decompilation, with PSXRecomp covering the functions the decomp has not reached.
  • Xenogears (2026): Xenogears, statically recompiled for PC by an independent community developer, with PSXRecomp as the decoder.
  • Boktai: The Sun Is in Your Hand (2026): The cartridge had a solar sensor. This community GBA recomp feeds it real local weather instead: sun outside, sun in the game.
  • Pepsiman (2026): A PS1 cult classic that never came West, now running natively in a browser tab as WebAssembly at 60 FPS.
  • Twisted Metal 4 (2026): Four players, one screen, three platforms: an independent PSXRecomp project keeping multitap multiplayer alive on PC, Mac, and Linux.
  • Mega Man X for Original Xbox (2026): Recompiled code travels: a community port taking the Mega Man X SNES recomp to original Xbox hardware via RXDK / XDK.

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