Case study

strkexeu: Desert Strike and Jungle Strike DOS loader disassembly and unpacker

strkexeu documents how the DOS releases of Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf and Jungle Strike keep their game executables packed inside DAT files behind a small loader EXE. It contains a Turbo Assembler disassembly of the original DESERT.EXE/JUNGLE.EXE loader, with macros for each game and an optional CD check, and a single-file C unpacker that extracts the game EXEs. A technical note specifies the RLE and Huffman-forest compression.

Targets: Binary · Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-09
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

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Evidence

Observed: Code and documentation observed; no download method or demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-10

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Unpacking needs the DAT files from the DOS releases of Desert Strike or Jungle Strike.
Prerequisites: strikeld.asm assembles with Turbo Assembler 3.0 and links with Turbo Linker 3.01, with exactly one of the DESERT and JUNGLE macros defined; strkexeu.c needs only a C compiler and the C standard library.
Limits: The README expects rebuilt loader EXEs to be virtually identical to the originals, the main difference being the minimum allocation field at offset 0Ah of the DOS EXE header, which is 500h paragraphs smaller.
License: strkexeu: 3-clause BSD licence.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{strkexeu-case,
  title = {{strkexeu: Desert Strike and Jungle Strike DOS loader disassembly and unpacker}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://gitlab.com/NY00123/strkexeu}},
  url = {https://gitlab.com/NY00123/strkexeu},
  urldate = {2026-11-09},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/strkexeu-case/}}
}

Plain text

strkexeu: Desert Strike and Jungle Strike DOS loader disassembly and unpacker. https://gitlab.com/NY00123/strkexeu (accessed 2026-11-09). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/strkexeu-case/

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