Snowboard Kids 2 is 100% Decompiled

Always nice to see another game decompiled like this. It's a big deal as far as laying the groundwork for possible ports to PC and other consoles is concerned, and will probably aid modders quite a bit.

If anyone needs a full list of these projects (which includes this one), there's a pretty good selection here:

https://decomp.dev/projects

Though these may have a few they missed:

https://readonlymemo.com/decompilation-projects-and-n64-reco...

https://github.com/CharlotteCross1998/awesome-game-decompila...

I've been working on porting Rock Band 3 and Dance Central 3 to PC via AI assisted decompilation. The repos are on my GitHub (https://github.com/freeqaz/rb3 and https://github.com/freeqaz/dc3-decomp)

Like OP, I've learned at lot in this process. I have versions running in the browser now with a custom WebGPU rendering engine. Still lots of jank and vibes, but it's wild to see what models are capable of with the right tooling. (I've had Claude add extensions into Ghidra for Xbox/Wii specific instruction support)

Wild times we're living in. It's great for software preservation though!

As someone who has done RE for decades, I feel like I've been seeing a lot of new decompilation projects recently, but even before the rise of AI. Possibly correlated with the release of Ghidra? Either way, it's great to see and perhaps a sign of a greater trend.

Controversial opinion: I think the FOSS movement was a setback and distraction from attaining software freedom as well as giving an undeserved negative reputation to "reverse-engineering" in some areas. RMS had the right idea, but missed the mark when it came to practical application by focusing far too much on "source code". Other industries have long been making third-party parts by merely inspecting existing ones with measuring tools, and let's not forget the whole discipline of scientific research is largely what amounts to "reverse-engineering" the natural world. You don't need the original source code if you have good decompilers, and now LLMs to assist.

Decompiling a binary, finding what you need to change, and then patching precisely that piece, seems like a far more liberating process than getting the source code, figuring out how to build it in its entirety, and possibly changing more than only the piece you wanted to. Many years ago, I remember coming across a few Java utilities that were public-domain but not open-source, and the author explicitly told users that they were to use a Java decompiler to decompile, edit, and recompile if they wanted to make any changes.

I'm still so sad about the re3/reVC guys getting DMCA'd and then sued by Take2/Rockstar Games. It is the most impressive project I've seen so far.

This is what the internet is for. I only remember playing this game once or twice on a friend's N64, so I don't have any nostalgia for it, but the idea that someone chose this as their strange, impractical personal project is really satisfying.

These decomp projects are amazing. Comparing playing Twilight Princess in Dolphin (which is already an impressive feat of engineering) versus the Dusklight decompilation, it's like night and day.

I'm also really looking forward to trying the Dinosaur Planet decomp, because the prototype ROM from which it was derived has a tendency to crash the various libretro cores/N64 emulators I've tried.

I'm currently working in a cool hardware project (an "audiogame console" in a stealthy form factor), and I when I read this I had to go through the rabbit hole of comparing the hardware of the N64 with what I'm planning to use, an inexpensive ESP32-P4. It was nice to learn that the RSP in the N64 is similar to the RISCVs in the present-day MCU, with 128-bits wide SIMD. Most of my experience with numeric computing has been using at least 64 bits floating point; can't wait to shoot my foot many times with int16.

Awesome, but I always wondered why so much effort was put into decompiling this? Seems like a meme for meme's sake.

The decomp dev guys are doing amazing work. It's also super educational too, if you're someone like me who's in just doing relatively simple AI / python / typescript work and rarely has to think about memory, hardware constraints, all that, it's a completely different world. Also, AI is finally getting to the point where it can do very difficult decompilation work, which is super exciting to me.

I'm not that interested in the game much, but I really like how the repo with the Claude things is set up and the wording. I’ll use some of it in my projects. It’s well balanced IMO, includes all the important details, tools, and scripts, but not excessively wordy.

[1] https://github.com/cdlewis/snowboardkids2-decomp/tree/main

Awe, why I love hacker news. This game was my childhood! I played it again recently on an emulator and was astounded how much easier it was. Made it to Damian without losing a single race. That seemed impossible at age 10.

Love to see the enthousiasm for Snowboard Kids. I thought it was more of a hidden gem that not many people know about. I played that game with friends so much when I was young. Never was able to get my hands on Snowboard Kids 2 as it was never in stores.

How much have LLMs sped up these decompilations?

I understand the technical appeal of this effort, but wouldn't it be easier to try to obtain the original source code? Or has that been lost and all that's left is a blob?

Fundamentally, decompilation is not solving a technical problem most of the time (because the source already exists somewhere) but a social one (that the owner doesn't want to release it).

This is the game to be decompiling in 2026. Many good memories.

I'd love to do this for Mario Golf 64 but would run out of steam in like a week T_T

Great and all, but what about the legality of it all? It wouldn't be the first time that a decompilation project gets shut down.

Reverse engineering is (luckily) OK, but reproducing (or, well, releasing) the actual original code with the help of decompilation isn't really allowed, is it?

>n64s greatest game.

HEY, it was a GREAT game, but GREATEST? COME ON, this ain't no goldeneye