Case study

Silent Hill: matching PlayStation decompilation of the executable and overlays

Reconstructs Silent Hill’s PlayStation code, the main executable plus its engine, screen and map overlays, as C that rebuilds byte-identical binaries from the user’s own NTSC-U 1.1 disc image. The project focuses on matching and naming. decomp.dev reports every function matched for the pinned commit, while data migration, shiftable builds and documentation remain open.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-10-18
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

Stars: 966
Last commit: 2026-11-10
Language: C

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

Target NTSC-U 1.1 (SLUS-00707); configurations also cover PAL 1.0 and three NTSC-J releases. The output is the PlayStation executable and overlays; the codebase is not port-ready.
Supply a personal NTSC-U 1.1 disc dump as one .BIN with the setup guide SHA-1 under rom/image. The repository includes some Sony PsyQ 4.3/4.4 library objects and prebuilt compiler and ISO tools.
The Make build uses Linux or WSL2, git, build-essential, MIPS binutils and cpp, Python 3, bchunk, 7z and recursive submodules. Native Windows Ninja builds are reported to mismatch.
The build compares SHA-256 hashes for the executable and overlays; the project reports 6,527 of 6,527 functions matched and 36.99% of data matched.
Project code is GPLv3; the game data and Sony SDK objects retain separate rights.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{silent-hill-decomp-case,
  title = {{Silent Hill: matching PlayStation decompilation of the executable and overlays}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp}},
  url = {https://github.com/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp},
  urldate = {2026-10-18},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/silent-hill-decomp-case/}}
}

Plain text

Silent Hill: matching PlayStation decompilation of the executable and overlays. https://github.com/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp (accessed 2026-10-18). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/silent-hill-decomp-case/

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About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
LICENSE GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
lib/versions.txt GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
configs/USA/checksum.sha GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
.github/workflows/check.yml GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
.gitmodules GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
Makefile GitHub · shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp · Revision 73a9f17
https://github.com/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp/actions/runs/39120072732
https://github.com/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp/wiki/Setup/8e17f29b6e88a5fc0dfaa5be427211fae2f76ddf
https://decomp.dev/shdecompilations/silent-hill-decomp