Case study
Conker's Bad Fur Day: Recompiled — an N64Recomp native port
Statically recompiles the US Nintendo 64 release of Conker’s Bad Fur Day with N64Recomp into a native Windows, Linux and macOS port on N64ModernRuntime and RT64. Function names and boundaries come from a vendored, still mostly assembly decompilation, while the recompiled code is taken from the user’s ROM so unmatched decompiled C cannot change behavior. The author reports heavy use of Claude Code across the project.
- Targets
- Game
- Category
- Independent reconstruction cases
- Relationship
- Independent reconstruction project
- Sources reviewed
Requirements & limits
- Prerequisites: Requires the user’s US ROM in big-endian .z64 form with the SHA-1 listed in the README; the repository and release packages contain no game data. ROM hacks that change only assets are accepted, while hacks that change code and other regions’ ROMs are refused.
- Prerequisites: Release V0.1.6 (2026-10-13) packages Windows, Linux and macOS builds plus a mods archive. Rendering uses Direct3D 12 or Vulkan on Windows, Vulkan on Linux and Metal on macOS; Linux builds are tested on Ubuntu 24.04, and the unsigned macOS release targets Apple Silicon with macOS 15 or later.
- Prerequisites: Source builds need a recursive clone, Git and Python 3 plus Visual Studio 2022+ on Windows, CMake, Ninja, Clang and SDL2 on Linux, or full Xcode and Homebrew on macOS, in a path without an apostrophe. N64Recomp and RSPRecomp run from a committed symbol file; regenerating it with the optional decompilation build also needs IDO and MIPS binutils.
- Testing evidence: The README reports the game played through to the end, with a widescreen pause-background issue; a macOS play-through is not yet confirmed and Intel Macs are untried. Decompiled C must rebuild the ROM’s code byte for byte, and the port is checked by play and by comparison with the original in an emulator; names are marked as guesses.
- Attribution: The author reports heavy Claude Code use for the recompilation setup, tool patches, host application, mods and decompiled functions. Own code is MIT, but builds including GPLv3 N64ModernRuntime are distributed under GPLv3, an RT64 patch is GPL-2.0-or-later, and the game is not covered.
About this entry
The description was reviewed against primary sources.
Primary sources
- README.md GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- recomp/README.md GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- .gitmodules GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- conker/README.md GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- CONTRIBUTING.md GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- LICENSE GitHub · sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled · Revision ed1b8bb
- https://github.com/sciaschi/CBFD-Recompiled/releases/tag/V0.1.6
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