Getting a recomp to boot is the easy part, says RT64's developer
On 5 October, Darío, the developer of RT64, the renderer behind most N64 recompilations, posted a thread on Bluesky about the words decomp, recomp and port. It drew more than 700 likes in a scene that has spent weeks arguing about AI-written ports. Darío also worked on Unleashed Recompiled, so the view comes from someone who builds these tools and ships with them.
Three words, three kinds of work
The thread starts with definitions, because they keep getting mixed up. Every recompilation is a port, but not every port is a recompilation. A recompilation uses a tool that converts a game's code automatically into code that behaves the same on another platform, which skips the need for a complete decompilation. It can still use a decomp, even an unfinished one, as a source of information for the fixes a good port needs: high refresh rates, widescreen and quality-of-life changes. Our decomp vs recomp guide covers the same ground.
Booting was always quick
The central claim is about time. Two years ago, as soon as the recompilation tools came out, developers working by hand got games running in under a day. A bare recompilation was never the slow part, so in Darío's view AI hasn't sped up recomps at all. The months go into the polish that turns a booting game into something people choose over an emulator, and players have shown they aren't interested in a recomp that offers nothing more.
Darío describes a newer kind of project that stops at the first step: AI gets the game running and the author treats the job as done, when that's where the real work starts.
The Donkey Kong 64 race
The example is DK64: Rekongpiled. Its developers didn't use AI, and they were racing another Donkey Kong 64 recomp that did. The team knew the game inside out and had help from Darío on using the framework fully, and Rekongpiled reached a good state. The AI-driven effort stalled because it lacked that knowledge of the game. Darío adds that projects using AI have generally found the work takes as long as doing it by hand, or longer.
Where AI does help
The thread grants one area: decompilations, where AI can speed up producing C that compiles back into a matching game. The catch is that matching was never the point of a decomp. The point is documenting the code and understanding how it works. That's why decompilation and porting have usually been done by different people, one group explaining the code and another using that documented code to build ports.
What it means if you just want to play
Judge a recomp by its polish, not by the fact that it boots. Check whether it plays start to finish, whether it adds something over emulation such as widescreen, higher frame rates or fixes, and whether bugs get answered. Our piece on the backlash against vibe-coded recomps has more on how projects describe their own AI use, and the AI disclosure page lists what each one says.
Sources: Darío's thread on Bluesky, Unleashed Recompiled credits.