Zelda and Banjo Recompiled Developers Fight Back Against AI Vibe Coded Ports

Fan developers who spent years reverse engineering Nintendo 64 classics for PC are pushing back against a new wave of AI generated decompilations they say undermine their work and produce buggy, hard to maintain ports.

AI Code Enters the Recompilation Scene

A project called Banjo-Tooie Recompiled was shared online last week through the YouTube channel Video Game Esoterica. The channel did not initially disclose that the port was produced with AI assistance, a practice often called vibe coding. The project quickly drew criticism from members of the established recompilation community, who argued that AI generated code corrupts ongoing human-led porting efforts.

Human Developers Draw a Line

Argentinian software developer DarioSamo, who worked on the earlier human-led unofficial port of the first Banjo game, was among the most vocal critics. On October 1 he stated that the Banjo-Tooie Recompilation is not associated with his group and is entirely AI generated. He emphasized that both Zelda: Recompiled and Banjo: Recompiled maintain clear no AI policies and that the teams have never used and will never use AI to work on these projects.

DarioSamo said the teams are not interested in engaging a race to the bottom and will take the time necessary to deliver a polished version of the game. He described throwing AI at the extensive human research behind the framework, renderer, and the games themselves as disrespectful. He also noted that his group had already announced plans to produce a port of Banjo-Tooie at some point without using AI.

Modding and Maintenance Concerns

Criticism extended beyond ethics. FunkyLion, another member of the decompilation community, called on the Banjo-Tooie Recompiled project to be renamed and described it as one of the slopcomps that ignores the existing patching system. According to this critique, the project patches all of the recompiled code and memory from the wrong side, making modding as people usually expect it completely unmaintainable in the long run and contributing nothing to the decompilation efforts.

Responding to the influx of untested vibe coded ports that are buggy and cannot be fixed without experienced coders, FunkyLion created a list of decomps and recomps done by actual people, which will continue expanding. Jay Gunn, who is working on a new MediEvil recomp project, also supported the backlash, arguing that the charm of those earlier development days was that everything was hand made with barely any premade tools or shortcuts.

Sources: Kotaku · Techmeme