Case study

The Bard's Tale: byte-matching reconstruction of BARD.EXE

The Bard's Tale reconstructs the 1987 MS-DOS BARD.EXE as C and assembly modules built with Microsoft C 4.0 and LINK 3.51 /EXEPACK. Its scripts rebuild the root program and three overlays, then compare the result with a user-provided executable; the author reports a byte-identical full rebuild.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

Stars: 0
Last commit: 2026-10-16
Language: Assembly

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Observed: Code and documentation observed; no download method or demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Provide your own BARD.EXE and Microsoft C 4.0 with LINK 3.51.
Prerequisites: Building uses DOSBox-X, nasm and Python 3.
License: No licence file in the repository.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{bards-tale-msdos-decomp-case,
  title = {{The Bard's Tale: byte-matching reconstruction of BARD.EXE}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/retro-ware/bt1-re}},
  url = {https://github.com/retro-ware/bt1-re},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/bards-tale-msdos-decomp-case/}}
}

Plain text

The Bard's Tale: byte-matching reconstruction of BARD.EXE. https://github.com/retro-ware/bt1-re (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/bards-tale-msdos-decomp-case/

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · retro-ware/bt1-re · Revision e932e5d
CHECKLIST.md GitHub · retro-ware/bt1-re · Revision e932e5d