Has there ever been a documented reverse engineering of an arcade game?

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newmanfamilyvlogs:
http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html

This is the only one I know of off the top of my head, it's probably pretty close to what you're thinking of.

DaveMMR:

--- Quote from: cotmm68030 on February 27, 2012, 09:24:00 am ---http://home.comcast.net/~jpittman2/pacman/pacmandossier.html

This is the only one I know of off the top of my head, it's probably pretty close to what you're thinking of.

--- End quote ---

I clicked on this link to check it out - still reading it an hour later. Interesting stuff.

jimmy2x2x:
Same here!

Nicely written and researched article, about as close as I am going to get I reckon

Gray_Area:
That's not really what you're looking for. This question would, I'm betting, be more likely answered at MAMEWorld.

Howard_Casto:
I'm no expert on the history of arcade games or anything, but I can give you the short answer.... no.

When source is compiled, especially on arcade machines, it gets compiled to some form of assembly. All comments are removed. Heck, even the names of the variables are removed! It saves space that way. Once you de-compile, you can reverse engineer and make some new comments based on how you think things are working (see mame) but once it's gone, it's gone. Mame rarely does that much actually. Think of the game's program chips as the harddrive of a computer. Mame doesn't emulate the harddrive... it emulates the entire pc, which can play the contents of the harddrive. So it isn't necessary to understand completely what is going on in the program roms, so long as the emulated hardware is setup correctly.

If any source code still exists to some arcade games, it would be rare if the public ever gets to see it. The games are still copyrighted afterall.

That isn't to say that there might be a few cases out there, but in general no.... you aren't going to find any source code.

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