this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2026
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Having the source code makes it trivial to do whatever you want with the code. Working through an emulator is not fun from a coding perspective.
Absolutely not true. I guarantee there is a lot of code, especially hacky code, written specifically for the N64's hardware. Even if you port it to a modern PC, you're still going to have to address a bunch of unexpected behavior that relied on the quirks of the hardware. Graphics effects in particular are known for this.
Source code means you can refactor it to preserve that graphics. But realistically that's unlikely if nobody wants to put the effort in
Why would you work through the emulator? You modify the source rom.
Rom hacks have existed since the GB era of games, that’s not even using an emulator, played straight on the GB with a hacked cart.
Very simply, the source ROM is code that isn’t readable in that way. The emulator interpolates the ROM binary. While ROM hacking is a thing, it’s done through hijacking the emulator’s/platform’s API calls.
Imagine having an audiobook as an MP3, but you want to rewrite chapter 8. You have all the words, you can hear them, but you don’t have the script. You have to transcribe everything first in order to have the book text. From there, you can edit what the book says, but it’d be easier if you just had the text in the first place.
Uhh, no, you literally modify the source rom, if you have the source code for the console it’s child’s play. Lots are made with dev kits, or their stolen code.
And you don’t use an emulator at all. What you’re suggesting means that game could only be played on a singular emulator with a particular bios setting. You could do that, but why?
I’m comparing ROM hacking to decompilation. Decomp completely renders the full source code as readable and compilable for new binaries. ROM hacking doesn’t go that far.
Decompile is even easier than rom hacking… since you have the rom source code now…. So you can insert files instead of just replacing or the slightly more work of modifying (which you claimed isn’t possible…?)
Why would you ever work through an emulator?
You’re using an audio book, but it’s actually more an album, you can change the tracks on the cd, but you can’t easily change the song in the middle, but just like an audiobook, you can mute or just delete the content, you’re saying you can’t do anything, this is just wrong on every level. Rom hacks ARE still able to do this though. Although most just replace files with others by changing the whole data.
A rom or iso is just a compilation of files that’s read and interpreted by the emulator or console. Why are you thinking it’s a singular file like an audio book? It’s more of a .zip file.