this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2025
119 points (97.6% liked)

RetroGaming

23476 readers
49 users here now

Vintage gaming community.

Rules:

  1. Be kind.
  2. No spam or soliciting for money.
  3. No racism or other bigotry allowed.
  4. Obviously nothing illegal.

If you see these please report them.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 8 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Hazzard@lemm.ee 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Earnest question, how is this actually legally viable?

Obviously the decompilation is open source, but those are usually distributed without assets, in some kind of builder that requires a copy of the game. And clearly the original game isn't open source, or else this decompilation wouldn't need to exist.

So... has the game been released free to the public without the source code? Has Lego or the original developer blessed this project? Or is the game just... in legal limbo or something where they feel comfortable taking the risk?

[–] ch8zer@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 day ago

He addresses it in another video, but there isn’t a single rights holder. There are 3 that each own different parts of the game. He tried contacting them but none responded.

[–] octoblade@lemmynsfw.com 2 points 2 days ago

The original publisher probably just doesn't care. The game isn't currently available for sale. I do wonder if Lego would care, but most they would likely do is a cease and desist. It seems like a typical abandonware game situation.

[–] sheepishly@fedia.io 14 points 3 days ago

I've been watching MattKC's videos on decompiling this game... neat stuff!

[–] rudyharrelson@lemmy.radio 15 points 3 days ago

That's super neat. I still have my physical copy of this game from back in the day. I've booted it up in a Windows 98 VM before, but that's way more hassle than just opening it in Firefox.

[–] catra@piefed.blahaj.zone 9 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

My post of this got removed from !games@lemmy.world citing piracy and I thought I might post it here, but I guess I don't have to :3

Anyway, cool stuff!

[–] WaterWaiver@aussie.zone 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Absolutely amazing. Going to go for the offline port though, I don't trust my save data to my browser.

N.B. Only worked in Chromium (not Firefox) for me.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 7 points 3 days ago

Fuck yeah this is awesome. I played this so much as a kid.