Case study
Snowboard Kids 2: an LLM-assisted N64 matching decompilation
A public matching decompilation of the N64 game Snowboard Kids 2, begun in 2024 with community decompilation tools. The author’s dated posts document Claude, Codex and GLM workflows, including headless one-shot loops, similarity-based function scheduling and hook-guarded, hash-checked builds, through a reported complete function match.
Requirements and limitations
- Building needs the user’s own big-endian Snowboard Kids 2 ROM, make, Python 3, MIPS binutils and the toolchain installed by make setup; the README reports testing only on x86 Debian/Ubuntu and macOS. It states the repository has no game assets or assembly, although the reviewed tree tracks menu-sprite PNG and palette files under assets/.
- Progress figures are author-reported. The 2026-02-16 post describes matched code rising from about 25% to 58% with one-shot loops, then to about 75%, with 124 functions left; the 2026-05-17 post reports every function matched. The 2025-11-27 post’s 79% figure was a projection. This catalog did not build the ROM or check any figure.
- Byte-matching C is not documented or idiomatic source. The 2026-05-17 post notes remaining __asm__ coercions, many generated names and structures still needing cleanup, and graphics/audio assets mostly handled as binary blobs; the 2026-02-16 post describes brittle agent matches.
- Agent assistance is not quantified beyond the posts. The 2026-05-17 post dates the first commit to September 2024 and credits four named N64 decomp community members with significant contributions, especially across the final ten functions; the 2025-11-04 post describes a human-led loop. The work relies on community tools such as splat, m2c, decomp.me, asm-differ and decomp-permuter.
- No license file is present at the reviewed commit. The June 2026 Snowboard Kids 2: Recompiled release and the August 2026 decompilation of the original Snowboard Kids are separate projects outside this record; no REA integration is established.
About this entry
- Type
- Case study
- Category
- Independent reconstruction cases
- Relationship
- Independent reconstruction project
- Targets
- Game
Sources reviewed
The description was reviewed against primary sources. This does not establish runtime testing, security auditing or verified compatibility.
Primary sources
- https://github.com/cdlewis/snowboardkids2-decomp/blob/352a26fae08b3394e11f5e2b589e41a572d53288/README.md
- https://blog.chrislewis.au/using-coding-agents-to-decompile-nintendo-64-games/
- https://blog.chrislewis.au/the-unexpected-effectiveness-of-one-shot-decompilation-with-claude/
- https://blog.chrislewis.au/the-long-tail-of-llm-assisted-decompilation/
- https://blog.chrislewis.au/snowboard-kids-2-is-100-decompiled/
- https://github.com/cdlewis/snowboardkids2-decomp/tree/352a26fae08b3394e11f5e2b589e41a572d53288/assets/sprite_sheets/menuUiSprites