For Commander Keen 1-3 I would have picked https://pckf.com/viewtopic.php?t=18248

No Ultimas? VI+Worlds, VII and VIII's got some. nuvie, exult, pentagram... There's also many UO servers and clients.

There were also some Eye of the Beholders and Might & Magics, but I believe ScummVM's absorbed them of their independence by now.

Push-Over has Domino-Chain. Flashback had Reminiscence.

ReflectionHLE covers Wolf3D/SOD faithfully. I know Wolf has a bunch of ports but they've always had license, compatibility or accuracy issues and run head-first into cruft.

Bstone reimplements Aliens of Gold from the released Planet Strike! sources.

I don't like to look for more of these because this year, it's a low hanging fruit for vibecoders to get easy clout from by telling clod to make them The Game (though most of them are Nintendo console focused as that's where all the more marketed games are and I believe Nintendo sucks so). I personally prefer the human-made clean room non-decompiled reimplementation ports which are more legally clear, so i'd take Freeablo over Devilution, OpenRW over re3, etc... Short-term slopjobs are no ideal, and decompilations with license washing are on borrowed time (and distract the momentum from clean-room efforts as there's gratification, even after the repercussions of legal action).

great list! always interesting to see these reverse engineered efforts, as well as straight remakes

leileilol wrote on 2026-09-20, 15:50:

No Ultimas? VI+Worlds, VII and VIII's got some. nuvie, exult, pentagram... There's also many UO servers and clients.

I never really played an Ultima game, although I heard about these projects. Never knew if they use any reverse-engineering or not, but I'll check this out, thanks!

There was a recent release of an Ultima IV mod/fangame called Threat of the Trinity (IIRC), which is said to be based on a modified engine -- perhaps also using reverse-engineering?

leileilol wrote on 2026-09-20, 15:50:

There were also some Eye of the Beholders and Might & Magics, but I believe ScummVM's absorbed them of their independence by now.

I gotta look into those blobbers, I only know ScummVM (supposedly) incorporates reconstructed code from Lure of the Temptress, which Revolution lost, unlike the code of Beneath a Steel Sky.

leileilol wrote on 2026-09-20, 15:50:

I don't like to look for more of these because this year, it's a low hanging fruit for vibecoders to get easy clout from by telling clod to make them The Game (though most of them are Nintendo console focused as that's where all the more marketed games are and I believe Nintendo sucks so).

That is very sadly true, I've already seen a couple of those (not much interested in console stuff but there's some for DOS, etc.).

leileilol wrote on 2026-09-20, 15:50:

I personally prefer the human-made clean room non-decompiled reimplementation ports which are more legally clear, so i'd take Freeablo over Devilution, OpenRW over re3, etc...

I would generally agree, but from my experience, a lot of these are far from recreating game mechanics 1:1. Daggerfall Unity plays nothing like vanilla Daggerfall, even though extensive analysis of the DOS binary was used to learn how this or that mechanic works. Wargus isn't Warcraft II (although it's pretty close I guess), and OpenRA is not at all any of the C&C games (but the code for those is thankfully available).

And aside from any legal concerns, I personally find it pretty impressive on its own that the code can be reconstructed from binaries this way.

Calvero wrote on 2026-09-20, 14:28:

For Commander Keen 1-3 I would have picked https://pckf.com/viewtopic.php?t=18248

BTW, I think that Omnispeak might be based on reverse-engineering as well but I'm not sure.

MrFlibble wrote on 2026-09-20, 13:20:

In the absence of source code releases for many older games, reverse-engineering and source code reconstruction appear to have a […]
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In the absence of source code releases for many older games, reverse-engineering and source code reconstruction appear to have already proven themselves a viable method of achieving source-port accurate engine recreations for a good number of titles, increasing their chances for proper cross-platform functionality.

In the ideal case, the source code is a near-perfect recreation of the original, and a functional port based on it is available. But these are not as numerous as one would’ve wished I guess. There are also projects which are heavily based on reverse-engineering, but without an explicit goal to produce a reconstruction of the original code. And in some cases, the code is not available publicly at all for various reasons, only compiled binaries or a DLL.

I’ve been sort of keeping a list of such projects for a while, here’s what I’ve got so far (in alphabetical order) – this is likely pretty incomplete, so please don’t hesitate to fill in the gaps.

• Beyond Castle Wolfenstein
• Blood
• Bio Menace
• Chocolate Keen (Commander Keen 1-3)
• Commander Keen 4-6
• Cosmore (Cosmo’s Cosmic Adventure)
• CSBWin (Dungeon Master & Chaos Straikes Back)
• Dethrace (Carmageddon)
• Devilution (Diablo)
• Digger Remastered (Digger – original source code also available)
• dRally (Death Rally)
• Duke Nukem II
• Fallout 2
• Elite: The New Kind (Elite, BBC Micro version)
• Force Engine, The
• Jill of the Jungle
• Jumpman
• Lords of Midnight
• Magic Carpet
• Magic Carpet II
• REternal Daughter (Eternal Daughter)
• NEO-RAW (Another World)
• OpenDUNE (Dune II: The Building of A Dynasty)
• OpenFodder (Cannon Fodder)
• OpenJKDF2 (Star Wars: Dark Forces 2 – Jedi Knight)
• OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon Deluxe)
• Pango
• Raptor: Call of the Shadows (original source code also available)
• SDLPoP (Prince of Persia for DOS – original Apple II code also available)
• SkiFree
• Strife
• SuperZZT
• TRX (Tomb Raider 1-3)
• Wacky Wheels
• Ambermoon.net (based on reverse-engineering, but not a full reconstruction?)

Oh man!!! I did not know about Cosmo Cosmic Adventure cosmore!!! It will be amazing to build a new EXE with 60fps smooth scrolling

I love this game, I played it a lot as a kid, but the motherfucker is jerky as hell!

I think you can add OpenTS for Tiberian Sun.

https://github.com/OpenTS-Developers/OpenTS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_en … ine_recreations

Open Jazz : https://github.com/AlisterT/openjazz/releases/tag/20260301

https://www.alister.eu/jazz/oj/

OpenJazz2 : https://github.com/faha223/OpenJazz2

https://www.jazz2online.com/

ReDuke, (as in the original Duke Nukum/em platform games) https://k1n9duk3.shikadi.net/reduke.html

Commander Genius (as in Commander Keen) https://clonekeenplus.sourceforge.io/index.php