To give you another example: Transport Tycoon was also written in assembly.

octotoad · on April 18, 2012

Almost all of Rollercoaster Tycoon as well. Blew my mind when I found out.

_pferreir_ · on April 18, 2012

Can't they publish the source code for those as well? I'm sure many of the original developers of early games that are now abandonware still have a backup of the source code lying around.

cdmoyer · on April 18, 2012

I think this part of the README is relevant:

  Thanks to Jason Scott and Tony Diaz for successfully   
  extracting the source code from a 22-year-old 3.5" floppy 
  disk archive, a task that took most of a long day and 
  night, and would have taken much longer if not for Tony's 
  incredible expertise, perseverence, and well-maintained 
  collection of vintage Apple hardware.

From this we learn that the code, today, only existed in an out-dated medium, readable on vintage hardware, and even meeting those prerequisites, still involved a fair amount of human expertise and time to extract.

I'm sure they could, but unless they also have a book to promote, it's probably not worth their time. Well, I think it would be, simply as a contribution to the history/record of the era... but they likely aren't going to recoup the time or effort other than in goodwill. (I also suspect there's probably legal, copyright, and ownership issues involved as well.)