F-15 Strike Eagle II reversing project calls for DOS test pilots

A long-running hobby project that is recreating the C source code of the 1989 flight simulator F-15 Strike Eagle II by reverse engineering the game’s original binaries has reached the point where it needs players rather than disassemblers. In a post published on June 20, 2026, the developer behind the project — who writes under the name neuviemeporte — issued an open call for “test pilots” to fly the reconstructed build and report what breaks.

Progress outran expectations

A little over a month before the post, it still looked as though several more years of labour lay ahead rewriting assembly into C for the game’s second executable, egame, with the third, end, still to come. Since then, the author reports, all C code has been reconstructed for all executables, all data has been moved out of assembly into C, most assembly-only code has functional replacements written in C, and most routines and data structures have been given meaningful names. The repository may soon be forked for a porting project.

That speed changes the nature of the work. The project’s tooling keeps the reconstructed opcodes faithful to the original as changes are made, but it cannot catch every bug — particularly those that involve data layout — so a running game has to be maintained and played from now on.

How to fly the reconstructed build

The current release is v0.9.1 and is meant to be used with version 451.03 of the original game together with the Desert Storm expansion pack. Players drop the executables into the game folder in place of the originals, keeping a backup first; the author also suggests removing the original f15.com so that the old build is not launched instead of the new f15.exe. The reconstruction does not reach the setup screen and instead assumes an MCGA/VGA display with no sound and no joystick. Everything else should work across the game’s three parts: mission briefing, flight and debriefing.

Bug-for-bug, on purpose

Reports are wanted for crashes, graphical glitches and keys that stop working, ideally with a screenshot (Ctrl+F5 in DOSBox) and a description of what was happening before the problem appeared. One caveat applies: this is a bug-for-bug reconstruction, so behaviour that also exists in the original has to stay as it is for now. The original game, the post notes, has known problems with 3D objects disappearing and with the aircraft falling towards the sky when inverted and out of fuel, so testers should check the original before filing a report — keeping a copy around for reference is a good idea.