Case study

Elite: Harmless — a Commodore 64 Elite disassembly

Elite: Harmless is a full ca65 disassembly of the Commodore 64 release of Elite, taken from the 1986 GMA86 disk, with the code split into flight, docked, text, ship-hull, math, sound and graphics modules. Its build script reassembles the original loader stages and game files, checks them against MD5 sums, and writes a disk image. The same source builds an enhanced variant with a faster multiplication routine and faster line drawing, and a loader document explains the choice of the GMA86 disk and describes the first stage of its copy-protected loader.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-09

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Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Building uses the cc65 toolchain and the repository setup script under Linux, Mac or Windows with WSL; the game runs in a Commodore 64 emulator such as VICE.
Scope: Disk images are produced only by building the source.
Limits: Documentation of the disassembly is ongoing.
License: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{elite-harmless-case,
  title = {{Elite: Harmless — a Commodore 64 Elite disassembly}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://codeberg.org/Kroc/elite-harmless}},
  url = {https://codeberg.org/Kroc/elite-harmless},
  urldate = {2026-11-09},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/elite-harmless-case/}}
}

Plain text

Elite: Harmless — a Commodore 64 Elite disassembly. https://codeberg.org/Kroc/elite-harmless (accessed 2026-11-09). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/elite-harmless-case/

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