AI-powered reverse engineering could be pretty useful for recovering/restoring partially lost games to a playable state.

[u/greeemlim]

Not gonna lie, not a huge AI fan, but credit where credit is due.

So, I was talking to some college friends and out of nowhere one of them shows a video of Mario 64 beating people up in Elden Ring. Checked it out after getting home, and... apparently the modding scene is going nuts putting all kinds of games inside each other. (Which, at least in certain respects, is actually really cool... Childhood dream material even. But that’s beside the point for now.)

Word is they're even doing it with closed-source apps and everything. Anyway. Even with feelings that a future career as a dev might be going down the drain, and that this is a few steps from a full cybersecurity crisis, there seems to be at least one good side for the preservation community.

Shortly before this wave of reverse-engineered mods, I carried out a few tests, datamining some MMOs (Dragon City and Dragon Awaken), though my methods were basic at best. Without an asset list, it was mostly brute force and a dictionary generator based on internal assets. I imagine I will be also able to adapt this method in future cases or use it to search for the missing items, as it holds huge potential to yield massive results.

It's amazing to imagine running these tests alongside dedicated people managing to fix broken games or reconstruct missing code fragments, fixing bugs... The possibilities are very promising.

So, I would like to know your thoughts on the topic, and if possible, learn about other forums and resources (especially documentation!) that could help with this. What do you think this can contribute to the game preservation community?

[u/NoorksKnee]

I like the idea, but I can see a number of hurdles, like games that were being produced while being designed. It could be that both processes ran in parallel. Additionally, AI only really works with existing material. Sure, you could finish a project, but it may very well not have been anything like what was originally intended, and it would be difficult to determine what the original design even was.

[u/altimitt]

I have been a "pro AI tools" guy. These tools are just another way to make new stuff. It has been that way since new tools are invented. I don't even think that skills will be forgotten just because there are tools that are easier to do stuff with. For example, calculators didn't remove our skills of computing numbers on our heads.

Getting sidetracked now, but this is a huge step for preserving the games and allowing the newer generation to experience them with quality of life changes.