Case study

Golden Balloon: native and browser port of Diddy Kong Racing

Golden Balloon is a native and browser port of the 1997 Nintendo 64 kart racer, built on the Diddy Kong Racing decompilation. The README says the game is compiled for the machine and runs from a ROM you already own.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-07
Evidence class: C1 partial scope or analysis entry

Stars: 195
Last commit: 2026-10-13
Language: C

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Demo screenshot from the project's public documentation

Observed: Download and demo observed; the case covers part of the target software.
Scope: Partial
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Provide a US 1.1 or European 1.1 ROM as .z64, .v64, or .n64. The browser build needs a WebGPU browser such as current Chrome or Edge, and reads the ROM locally.
The README identifies the first-party license as MIT and points to NOTICE.md for other components.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{goldenballoon-case,
  title = {{Golden Balloon: native and browser port of Diddy Kong Racing}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/akratch/goldenballoon}},
  url = {https://github.com/akratch/goldenballoon},
  urldate = {2026-11-07},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/goldenballoon-case/}}
}

Plain text

Golden Balloon: native and browser port of Diddy Kong Racing. https://github.com/akratch/goldenballoon (accessed 2026-11-07). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/goldenballoon-case/

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About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · akratch/goldenballoon · Revision 2b69e74