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Reviving a 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI

Reviving a 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI

by stared·Mar 7, 2026·28 points·9 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidWizardryRabbit HoleDark Horse

AI-assisted decompilation of a 20-year-old binary is impressive, but the artifact is a single game.

Strengths
  • •Demonstrates novel workflow: Ghidra + Claude Code + m2c for iterative reverse engineering—pedagogically valuable case study.
  • •Actually delivers a playable artifact (WASM, Apple Silicon) with open-source repo—not just theory or screenshots.
  • •Honest about failure modes (Claude hallucinating fonts, inventing assets)—mirrors real AI-assisted dev friction.
Weaknesses
  • •Niche appeal: only relevant to retro game fans or binary archaeology researchers—no general-purpose tool emerges.
  • •Doesn't generalize; each old binary would require similar hand-holding and domain expertise to recover.
Category
Other
Target Audience

Reverse engineers, retro game enthusiasts, binary archaeology hobbyists

Similar To

Ghidra · m2c

Post Description

Play: https://p.migdal.pl/chromatron-oxide/ Repo: https://github.com/stared/chromatron-oxide/ (educational purpose only) The original: https://www.silverspaceship.com/chromatron/

Full story in the blog post.

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