The source code for a bunch of retro games ranging from the NES, Genesis and Sega CD is currently available at GitHub.
The source comes from programming veteran, Chris Shrighley, who has more than 30 years in the industry, having worked with companies like Eurocom developing games for the NES, and more popular ones like Disney Interactive, working on games for the Genesis. He also worked on the Sega CD version of Batman Returns.

The list of games that had source code released by him:

• Magician (NES)
• John Smith Special Agent (aka James Bond Jr.) (NES)
  
• Hero Quest (previously unreleased NES game)
• Ex-Mutants (Genesis)
• Cliff Hanger (Genesis)
• Batman Returns (Sega CD)
• Gargoyles (Genesis)
• Gargoyles Protype/Test (SNES)

I’ve been a games programmer for a very long time now, and over the years I’ve collected quite a lot of source code from the games I’ve worked on. Unfortunately, a lot of the code is still owned by other people, and cannot be shared. I have older archives though, on the NES, and Sega Genesis, that I can share, and they are linked below.

Feel free to download and play with the code as you will. One important thing to note, this code is made available for educational purposes only! You are NOT allowed to make money from this source code, in any way, shape or form.

Cheers!

While the release is nowhere recent, it's always nice to see more and more developers that consider releasing the source code as open source and available to the public for others to delve into.

Source

 

[ShadowOne333]

Someone should reverse engineer Sonic CD.

Thats already done.
Check Soni CD decompilation, that one was done alongside Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 based on the RSDK (Retro Engine) releases.

 

[Vague Rant]

Sorry to be a bummer, but it's worth tempering your excitement here. Games of this vintage (SNES and older) were mostly written in processor-specific assembly code, meaning they can only be compiled into code that runs on the specific CPU they were developed for.

In the PlayStation era and beyond, development largely moved to portable, high-level languages like C, so having the source code to those games (either by direct release or reverse engineering ala Mario 64 and Ocarina of Time) makes porting them to other platforms very achievable. But that's not the case for these older games.

Spoiler: Slightly more technical explanation

As one example, Gargoyles from this set is written in Motorola 68000 assembly, to target the CPU used in the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. Now, if you wanted to use that code, you could replace everything that's Mega Drive-specific and port it to other 68k-based platforms like the Atari Jaguar or Amiga. But you can't use any of that code on an ARM-based Switch, a PPC-based Wii or an x86(_64)-based computer because they each use their own, unrelated assembly languages.

If you were especially dedicated and had a good understanding of the assembly language used, it would be possible to painstakingly hand-convert this code into something more portable by following what the original code is doing and writing something equivalent in your preferred language, but ultimately it's far more complicated than taking some existing C code and getting it running on PC or other platforms.

 

[HarveyHouston]

I don't know if any of these were really super popular during these consoles' heyday. Maybe Gargoyles, but that series wasn't even super popular, IIRC.

 

[ciaomao]

The Milton Bradley board game "Hero Quest" this NES game is based on, is what forced Sierra to change to Quest for Glory.

Spoiler

I played that table top game a lot with my friends back in the old days, but sold it just a few years ago. even if I painted all figurines, it was a nice deal.

 

[lordelan]

My understanding is it was never finished but that a rom has been available for some tim

There is a finished msdos version

Thx. So it's a vintage dungeon crawler rpg sort of thing. Nice.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Man, the racing part on Batman Returns is freaking awesome. I'd love a HD Remaster.

 

[InsaneNutter]

I remember Cliffhanger. Not sure if it was ever that popular, however I enjoyed playing that on the Amiga.

 

[phil3254]

The Milton Bradley board game "Hero Quest" this NES game is based on, is what forced Sierra to change to Quest for Glory.

Spoiler

How very "Gauntlet" like in imagery as well!

 

[x65943]

How very "Gauntlet" like in imagery as well!
View attachment 337871

this may be the one example of video game art where the man is actually more exposed and wearing less useful armor than his female counterpart

 

[sombrerosonic]

No huge note-worthy games, but still cool for preservation.

Yea but have you heard of the jimmyleak? they leaked all of the models from the OG movie as well as code from the GBA game. AKA what was used in the show and movie as well as the gba game was leaked to the public

 

[phil3254]

information wants to be free anon <3

 

[chrisrlink]

The Milton Bradley board game "Hero Quest" this NES game is based on, is what forced Sierra to change to Quest for Glory.

Spoiler

thank's for clarifying

Post automatically merged: Nov 16, 2022

since this is source code how is it compiled any legal compilers for NES/SNES source code or no

 

[duwen]

Though the batman that has a source code I'm sure people would want to see is batman forever. Instead of trying to turn mortal kombat gameplay into a 2D platform beat 'em up... like mortal kombat mythologies sub-zero... Maybe with source code, can turn it into a actual fighting game like... proper mortal kombat.

That wouldn't require the source code, just the sprites... so it's probably already been done. Look up the crazy world of MUGEN

 

[phil3254]

That wouldn't require the source code, just the sprites... so it's probably already been done. Look up the crazy world of MUGEN

Mugen truly is a collectors dream i collected 3000 some mugen characters pokemon eat your heart out! lol

 

[SylverReZ]

Mugen truly is a collectors dream i collected 3000 some mugen characters pokemon eat your heart out! lol

MUGEN was truely a work of art. So much infact that there is an entire fanbase dedicated to creating tons of mods for it. Fun fact: It started out as an MS-DOS game before being ported to Windows.

 

[Henx]

Worth linking the Github repo collection with all the sources (not leaked):
https://github.com/RetailGameSourceCode/

 

[sombrerosonic]

That wouldn't require the source code, just the sprites... so it's probably already been done. Look up the crazy world of MUGEN

Great game, i watched peter griffin beat the living shit out of aigis on there

 

[Hat-Man]

LET's gEt these badboys onto the 3DS!

 

[phil3254]

i helped sophia try and port infinite cat mugen to the psp and even when we had the ability to overclock it from 222 mhz to 333 thanks to cfw it just couldnt handle it. Mugen is harder to port to a handheld console than ya know lol! TOO MANY VARIABLES when it comes to hundreds of thousands of "add my favorite hd stages and characters" but try not and let all the subjectives that result from that crash my psp. I also tried to port quake 3 arena to the psp but again even over clocked it was abysmal. I love mugen to the moon but its not a port friendly title for limited hardwares.

 

[SylverReZ]

Porting takes quite a lot of work. Good luck to anyone who's up to the challenge.