Case study

som-decomp: reconstructing Secret of Mana from a cartridge ROM

som-decomp reconstructs the North American SNES release of Secret of Mana with matching 65816 and SPC700 assembly, readable C routines and documentation of combat, AI, maps, menus and audio. Its build extracts data from the user's ROM and the author reports a byte-exact rebuilt image; captured-state differential checks cover much of the recovered C.

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: 1
Last commit: 2026-10-25
Language: Assembly
License (GitHub): GPL-3.0

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

Copy as Markdown View JSON Cite

Evidence

Observed: Code and documentation observed; no download method or demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-08

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: A user-dumped North American Secret of Mana v1.0 ROM is required; other releases are unsupported.
Prerequisites: Python 3 and cc65 ca65/ld65 are required; emulator-based tools also need RetroArch with a snes9x or bsnes core.
Limits: The capture-based C verification harness is not published yet.
License: GPL-3.0.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{som-decomp-case,
  title = {{som-decomp: reconstructing Secret of Mana from a cartridge ROM}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/cidwel/som-decomp}},
  url = {https://github.com/cidwel/som-decomp},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/som-decomp-case/}}
}

Plain text

som-decomp: reconstructing Secret of Mana from a cartridge ROM. https://github.com/cidwel/som-decomp (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/som-decomp-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Report an outdated entry Suggest a translation fix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 · cidwel/som-decomp · Revision 7158855
Makefile GitHub · cidwel/som-decomp · Revision 7158855