If you have arrived at this page you may have a few questions such as why does RetroReversing.com even exist?
Well, let us try to answer this question, starting with the problem we are trying to solve.
Problem: The difficulty curve of going from a player of a game to being able to reverse engineer, modify or decompile it is too damn high.
This is especially true of console games, where without a knowledge of assembly and how the hardware actually works it can be very tricky to started without giving up in frustration.
But why learn how to reverse engineer an old game? Surely there are better uses of your time than that, right? right?!
There are multiple answer to this question but we feel the most important is simple: It is fun.
Other reasons include game preservation, knowledge and even just enjoying participating in a community of people with the same interests.
Play the game, multiple times, play all the DLC, enjoy it, have fun. Now what if that game could be improved, what feature would you add to it?
Whole new levels, characters, stories and game mechanics?! Cool! I bet there would be tons of people who would love to play your modified version of the game.
Ignore what you don’t know, these will come gradually in time, don’t worry about learning anything before hand.
Learn just what you need when you need it and apply it straight away. This way everything you learn will stick and you save yourself waiting time memorizing concepts you may never even need.
That really depends on what you want to accomplish, but start at smallest most basic step and make each subsequent step as small as possible.
Let’s say you want to modify the Nintendo 64 game “Mario Kart 64” to give it 8 player online play support.
Thats quite a goal but just take a few small steps and learn everything along the way, for example:
This is not the fastest way to learn everything about the low level N64 defaults but it is a fun way to learn about some low level N64 details that you never knew before.
Even if you give up after the first few steps you will have learned more than you knew before and your next project is sure to get further!
If that all still sounds out of reach then don’t worry the main aim of this site is to help everyone learn the basics so we can bring these possibilities within reach.
Reverse engineering has been an integral part of the game industry from the very start, whether it was game developers reverse engineering the console to rival companies reversing each other games, reversing was a vital skill.
Retrogame Archeology is a term coined by Associate Professor John Aycokc from the University of Calgary.
He highlights the benefits of looking under the hood of old games in this excellent video:
This section aims to answer questions as to why the site is setup the way it is, what content should be included in the site and what is out of scope or better covered on other websites.
This site has a much more technical focus, focusing on knowledge and tutorials for stuff like modding, hacking and reverse engineering. Example how a game works, how the code works, how to modify the graphics or sound or other assets.
How were the games made, what development kits, what 3D modelling tools, what 2D artist tools etc.
This is a site for:
This is not a site for:
We are taking advantage of a few of Github’s features such as being able to edit un a web browser without checking out the code and live preview before submitting.
The advantages are:
Do not post unused content, that is the domain of The Cutting Room Floor, a link should be made on each game page to Link to this, and any con tent found should be posted to TCRF page.
