Case study

The Hobbit, native: a routine-by-routine C port of the ZX Spectrum game

The Hobbit, native ports the 1982 ZX Spectrum game to C one Z80 routine at a time, guided by an annotated SkoolKit disassembly. It provides a faithful version preserving register and memory behavior plus a separate edition that fixes identified bugs, with a reference runner that compares routine effects and transcripts against the original.

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: 8
Last commit: 2026-10-06
Language: C
License (GitHub): MIT

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

Copy as Markdown View JSON Cite

Evidence

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

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Supply your own version 1.2 The Hobbit tape image; a Spectrum 48K ROM improves hardware-matching results.
Prerequisites: Requires a C compiler and SDL2.
Limits: The faithful native port differs when the original overwrites its own code and in some restart-seed behavior.
License: MIT License.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{hobbit-1982-native-case,
  title = {{The Hobbit, native: a routine-by-routine C port of the ZX Spectrum game}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/7ucina/hobbit-1982-native}},
  url = {https://github.com/7ucina/hobbit-1982-native},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/hobbit-1982-native-case/}}
}

Plain text

The Hobbit, native: a routine-by-routine C port of the ZX Spectrum game. https://github.com/7ucina/hobbit-1982-native (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/hobbit-1982-native-case/

Useful? Star Awesome REA on GitHub2.4k

About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

Report an outdated entry Suggest a translation fix

Primary sources

README.md GitHub · 7ucina/hobbit-1982-native · Revision 5be9cac
docs/PORTING.md GitHub · 7ucina/hobbit-1982-native · Revision 5be9cac
LICENSE GitHub · 7ucina/hobbit-1982-native · Revision 5be9cac