GoldenEye 007 N64 Decompilation Reaches 100%

One of the Nintendo 64’s most important games has just reached a major preservation milestone. The long-running GoldenEye 007 decompilation project has reached 100%, completing the effort to reconstruct Rare’s 1997 classic into readable C source code.

The project makes it possible for developers to understand and modify the game at a much deeper level than traditional ROM hacking allows, opening the door to extensive mods, bug fixes, improvements and, potentially, native ports to modern platforms. The repository supports the original NTSC-US, Japanese and PAL versions of GoldenEye 007.

This does not mean GoldenEye itself has suddenly become a freely downloadable open-source game. Copyrighted game assets are not included in the repository, and anyone building it must provide an appropriate original copy of the game from which the required assets can be extracted.

For GoldenEye fans, however, reaching 100% is a significant moment. After years of reverse-engineering work, developers now have a complete foundation upon which much more ambitious GoldenEye projects can be built — and native ports are likely to be where things get particularly interesting.