What Is a Recomp? Recompilation Explained

The one-sentence answer

A recomp is a console game translated, ahead of time, into a native program for your PC or browser, so nothing emulates the console while you play. The word is community shorthand: Majora's Mask has a famous recomp, and lists of them are called recompiled games lists.

The technique behind it is static recompilation. A tool reads the game's executable, finds its functions, and emits one block of C or C++ per function. Each machine instruction becomes an equivalent line of code. Compile that output with an ordinary compiler, link it against a runtime that stands in for the console's services, and the game runs natively.

Why not just emulate

An emulator decodes the game's code while it runs. A recomp translated the code before it was ever launched, so the game's logic runs at native speed and can be patched like any other program. That is how recomps add true widescreen, unlocked frame rates and mouse aim reliably. The trade-off is coverage: code the recompiler cannot find, or code a game generates at runtime, needs special handling, which is why every recomp covers exactly one game.

The translation is also literal, which makes it fast to produce and hopeless to read. A MIPS add-immediate becomes one line adding a constant to a register field. Useful output, ugly source.

Recomp versus decomp

Decompilation aims at the opposite target: readable source, written by people and verified to rebuild the original executable byte for byte. It takes years; recompilation takes a toolchain. In practice they meet in the middle, because the best-known native ports, like Ship of Harkinian and Dusklight, are built on decompilations, while pure recomps like Zelda64Recompiled and Unleashed Recompiled skip that step entirely.

What you always need

Every recomp ships without the game. On first launch it reads a cartridge dump or disc image you made from a copy you own, and no project distributes ROMs, ISOs or BIOS files. The concept pages here go deeper on recompilation and decompilation, and the games list tracks every project's current status.