Case study

Ignition: porting the 1997 racing game from executable analysis

Ignition ports the 1997 racing game by reading routines in its Windows executable with IDA and rewriting their behaviour in portable C99. The port loads data from the user's disc image and provides races, championships, audio and multiple platform hosts. Source files, executable-analysis notes and per-routine progress records document the reconstruction.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06
Evidence class: C1 partial scope or analysis entry

Stars: 11
Last commit: 2026-11-07
Language: C
License (GitHub): GPL-3.0

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: 2026-11-08

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Supply a .cue/.bin disc image from a copy of Ignition.
Prerequisites: Build tools depend on platform; the macOS build requires Xcode command line tools.
Limits: The author reports about 70% of the game's code ported; original joystick code remains unported.
License: GNU General Public License v3.0.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{ignition-port-case,
  title = {{Ignition: porting the 1997 racing game from executable analysis}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/xesf/ignition}},
  url = {https://github.com/xesf/ignition},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/ignition-port-case/}}
}

Plain text

Ignition: porting the 1997 racing game from executable analysis. https://github.com/xesf/ignition (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/ignition-port-case/

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About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · xesf/ignition · Revision a64eca5
NOTES.md GitHub · xesf/ignition · Revision a64eca5
docs/PROGRESS.md GitHub · xesf/ignition · Revision a64eca5