Case study
Crash Bandicoot 2 Recompiled: a PSXRecomp native build
A Windows launcher that uses the PSXRecomp recompiler and runtime to translate the user’s Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back disc to C and compile it locally, so the game runs as native code with an emulated PlayStation hardware layer. The repository holds the launcher, a patched vendored runtime and a long bring-up log; it distributes no game code or data.
- Targets
- Game
- Category
- Independent reconstruction cases
- Relationship
- Independent reconstruction project
- Sources reviewed
Requirements & limits
- Prerequisites: Needs a disc image the user owns of the North American release (serial SCUS-94154), as .cue/.bin or .chd; the launcher checks tracks, sectors and boot serial and hashes the image. No PlayStation BIOS is required because MIT-licensed OpenBIOS is included, and locally generated files derived from the disc must not be redistributed.
- Prerequisites: Release v0.9.6 (2026-10-08) is a 64-bit Windows 10+ bundle; a first build takes about 3 GB of disk space and five to twenty minutes. Source use needs Python 3.11+ with PySide6 and the PSXRecomp MinGW-w64 Clang toolchain; the notes say MSVC is unsupported, and 59 runtime patches are kept in tuning/patches.
- Limits: The README calls the game completable from start to finish but a work-in-progress preview with minor sound and graphical issues. Streamed level-code overlays are compiled natively when possible and otherwise fall back to a MIPS interpreter; the opt-in 60 FPS mode runs the emulated CPU at 200% and is not verified across the whole game.
- Testing evidence: Published checks are launcher settings and UI smoke tests, scenario scripts and a harness comparing its own Direct3D 12 and OpenGL renderers.
- License: There is no top-level license file. The README lists PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 for PSXRecomp, MIT for OpenBIOS, zlib for SDL3 and LGPLv3 for Qt/PySide6; the game and its trademarks belong to their owners.
About this entry
The description was reviewed against primary sources.
Primary sources
- README.md GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- tuning/NOTES.md GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- _build/Crash2Recomp/README.md GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- _build/Crash2Recomp/CMakeLists.txt GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- _build/build_recompiler.ps1 GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- tuning/patches GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- tuning/renderer_parity GitHub · Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp · Revision 48036cf
- https://github.com/Zumbo06/Crash2Recomp/releases/tag/v0.9.6
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