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game emulation and recompilation

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PS2 games statically recompiled to WebAssembly

Shown by deadxwarrior on Oct 12, 2026. Click the card to turn it over.

316points

159comments

#135of 4,366 in 2026

Top 4%of 2026 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

8 positive, 26 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 20 critical, out of 54 comments about the project. Thread score -0.10.

Idea: 5 for, 8 againstDocs: 0 for, 5 againstPerformance: 3 for, 1 againstExecution: 0 for, 4 againstPrivacy: 0 for, 1 against

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

Called an emulator in disguise rather than true static recompilation
From 3 comments
- "PlayStation 2 games running in the browser without an emulator. The game's Emotion Engine machine code is translated ahead of time into C++, compiled to WebAssembly, and linked…
  vrighter on HN
- The exact same as before. Emulators existed. This is literally an emulator running in a browser. But one that doesn't have a file dialog. It walks like an emulator, quacks like…
  vrighter on HN
- ah yes, another recomp that still emulates a core system component.…
  krystalgamer on HN
Legal concerns about distributing games and hosting
From 2 comments
- I wonder how "legal" hosting this would be given that it would require the host to basically distribute the game for free for everyone else
  khalidkhair on HN
- i actually developed the project to play my own game dumps remotely via VPN from my home server; making it publicly available is not legal and will be consequences:)
  deadxwarrior on HN
Security concerns about hidden malware in native decomps
From 1 comment
- I don't know. There's suddenly so many decomps that run native (granted this post is about WebAssembly). Is there no concern about hidden malware? IMO it doesn't have the same…
  aceazzameen on HN

Make it work on Steam Deck
From 1 comment
- VERY cool. I wish you could make this work for steam deck (and friends) though.
  spwa4 on HN
Provide a playable GitHub Pages demo
From 1 comment
- No GitHub pages so I can play?
  simonmales on HN

Performance on heavier titles
From 2 comments
- This is good, I didn't know 3DS could handle PS2 emulation. What's the performance like on heavier titles?
  Benard-dev on HN
- Recompiling PS2 games to WebAssembly is insane. Have you noticed any major performance bottlenecks when running heavier titles in the browser?
  shan-pafin on HN
Timing accuracy of vector units
From 1 comment
- Impressive. How are you handling the PS2’s timing sensitive hardware, like the vector units, in a static recompilation? Curious how close you can get to correct behavior without…
  danxbuild on HN

Emulators with ROMs
From 2 comments
- I think it's less that recompilation is stealing the code, and more that it is a piece of the puzzle to 'stealing' the game experience (the thing that you would pay for).…
  fwip on HN
- The exact same as before. Emulators existed. This is literally an emulator running in a browser. But one that doesn't have a file dialog. It walks like an emulator, quacks like…
  vrighter on HN
psp-web-recomp
From 2 comments
- - related thread:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49991243 (God of War on PSP, recompiled to WebAssembly and running in the browser) - might interest you, if you like the…
  mamonoleechi on HN
- > This is the sibling of psp-web-recomp and follows the same method Fucking amazing that this person can prompt to embed an emulator into a binary and call it "no emulation…
  anonymous908213 on HN
vitaslop
From 1 comment
- I did similar for PS Vita over the past few months: https://github.com/cretz/vitaslop But instead of single games, I "built" an ARM-to-WASM transpiler in WASM. Also cool…
  kodablah on HN