
Game Source Code Collection - tosh
https://archive.org/details/gamesourcecode
======
iforgotpassword
Nice, this also includes the infamous half-life 2 leak from 2007 as well as
some other ones that definitely weren't officially released. Or like re-volt,
which is now owned by a company still actively trying to take down mirrors of
the code that pop up, hence any unofficial port of it only releases in binary
form.

But then again a lot of the older leaked ones, nobody probably cares about too
much. There's definitely some old, sometimes less popular games where I'd like
to get hold of the code and take a stab at porting to something modern.

So if you were a game dev for some now defunct game studio in the 90s and
still have some games' source floating around it would be a great coincidence
if that would surface somewhere like archive.org... :-)

~~~
benologist
Game companies are learning old IP can be modernized for fresh new profits so
most likely a lot of old game copyrights will become retroactively enforced
and sources hunted down and expunged as they're remastered and made
exclusively available in whatever online shop or subscription service.

[https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-
law...](https://www.polygon.com/2018/7/22/17600008/nintendo-roms-lawsuit-
cease-desist)

[https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/best-video-games-
remaste...](https://www.maxim.com/entertainment/best-video-games-remasters-
and-remakes-of-the-year-2018-1)

~~~
pvg
People have been reworking old IP, neglecting or enforcing various rights, etc
for years. I don't think it's some new trend game companies recently learned
or that it affects how aggressive (or not) owners are that much. Old sources
in particular are not all that valuable in many cases, beside historically.

~~~
benologist
Right, but at the moment there are dozens of old movies being reworked and
dozens of old games being reworked and the volume feels like it's growing with
new announcements all the time. Over the last 20 years I have only seen a few
games remade to maintain compatibility, usually unofficially patched by fans
or as open source homages.

I think this is being fueled by movie and game outliers today being able to
achieve their first $billion in their first week. That outsized ROI on gaming,
like movies, completely changes the calculus on what old stuff is worth today.
FAANG will throw billions into making games as soon as their movie pipelines
are sorted.

------
efiecho
I love the Internet Archive, but I absolutely hate the website redesign they
made a few years back. Before navigation was so simple and sane, but
unfortunately they had to update because the site was "too old" and this was
during the "mobile trend" that was going on at the time, which resulted in
infinite scrolling and other mobile stuff that makes using the website a pain,
even after all these years.

~~~
0xdeadb00f
I agree. I also think they need to redo the tagging/category system they
currently have in place. It's super unintuitive and there are so many
duplicate or useless tags.

------
freshbagels
I've been looking a collection like this, but for startups/sites/internet
companies.

Something that would have Facebook's[0] and Snapchat's[1] source code.

Or even something that would have Staffjoy's[2](a startup that shut down then
open sourced their source code).

[0] ->
[https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406](https://gist.github.com/nikcub/3833406)

[1] -> [https://github.com/JonnyBanana/Snapchat-Source-Code-
Leak](https://github.com/JonnyBanana/Snapchat-Source-Code-Leak)

[2] -> [https://github.com/Staffjoy/v2](https://github.com/Staffjoy/v2)

------
guiambros
Gotta love Jason Scott and his work to preserve computer history. From the
list:

 _Leisure Suit Larry Source Code Reading Excerpt_

[https://archive.org/details/Leisure_Suit_Larry_Source_Code_R...](https://archive.org/details/Leisure_Suit_Larry_Source_Code_Reading_Excerpt)

~~~
splatzone
I'm not sure I understand what he's doing here. Is he reading out the whole
source code to the game as a performance art piece so he can share it without
infringing copyright laws?

~~~
textfiles
I am carefully enunciating the words that will undo the locks on the key to
the universe.

------
fit2rule
This is truly one of the treasures of archive.org, which has so much valuable
content on it I can't imagine what life would be like without it.

I'm going to present this amazing collection of games and their source code to
my local kids computer club and maybe spend a few hours de-tarball'ing and
building some of these wonderful games.

To the people who maintain archive.org, I salute you!

~~~
Spixel
You can donate here:
[https://archive.org/donate/](https://archive.org/donate/)

~~~
org3432
I can’t get past the DRM they allow, if they stopped doing that and raised the
bar I’d likely support them.

~~~
derefr
I believe their stance on DRM is something like:

• We (archive.org) can choose to either take in these DRMed works, archive
them, and publish them online for public consumption (with their DRM intact);
or we can _refuse_ the DRMed works at the door, and thus have them
_unavailable_ for public consumption, also leaving them unpreserved; or we can
_archive_ the DRMed works, but just not publish them (again leaving them
unavailable to the public.) The one thing we _can 't_ do, legally, is to just
ignore the wishes of the rightsholders and put up a _DRM-less_ version of the
content for public consumption. The rights-holders are still out there to sue
us. So we have to pick one of the other three options.

• One day, the rights will expire or the rights holder will disappear, and the
work will enter the public domain.

• If we had earlier rejected even archiving the work because of its DRM (from
some principled moral stance, as you seem to be suggesting), then at the time
the work enters the public domain, we won't have a copy, and would have to
then acquire one. It might be impossible to acquire a copy to preserve at that
point.

• So, it’s better to acquire a copy now, under license; and then just crack
the work out of its DRM later once the work becomes abandonware. (As the
Archive.org staff have proven happy to do and/or support, with e.g. 4am’s work
on the Apple II software archive.)

• Plus, even if we _did_ wait to acquire the work after its rights lapsed, we
would likely have to crack it anyway. Rightsholders that go to the trouble to
re-release their own works without DRM are pretty rare. Some rightsholders are
so lazy that, in “anniversary” re-releases of their products, they use the
community’s cracked copy! So it’s not like we’re making more work for
ourselves by choosing to take in DRMed works and then crack them eventually.
It’s just how it has to go, to ever archive these works at all. The likelihood
of ever just "coming across" a non-DRMed version of the work at some point in
the future is practically nil. (It would be like hoping that if you left an
aged painting on the market long enough, it would just de-varnish and repair
itself.)

• And, of course, we can start on the DRM-cracking process as soon as we get
the work, and keep the de-DRMed version as the canonical version to do
preservation work against, as long as that’s not the version we make visible
to the public (until the work becomes abandonware.) Museums and libraries have
many works in “private archives”, and those archives still hold value to the
public: academics can usually access them for studies, for example, as this
explicitly falls under Fair Use. But more importantly, the private
preservation of works that can't be preserved in public, ensures that they're
preserved at all.

I hope that makes it clear why either the first or the third options (give the
public the DRMed version; or preserve the DRMed version but don't publish it)
are better than the "refuse DRMed content at the door" approach. Which of
those other two options you favor is up to you. Personally I'd rather the
public have _some_ access to this rights-bound content rather than none.

~~~
org3432
The problem is these work owners are using archive.org to play both sides of
the argument, even worse consider the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Centern they
digitized works they didn’t author, don’t own any rights to for the works that
are 100s of years old, and then put them up on Archive.org under DRM. How is
that in any way ethical to take someone’s work and do that?

[https://archive.org/details/buddhist-digital-resource-
center...](https://archive.org/details/buddhist-digital-resource-center-
restricted)

~~~
derefr
Are you sure they don't own the rights?

When you create a "derivative work" of a work under copyright, you're creating
a new work that "samples" the original, and then asserting _your own_
copyright to it—that's why you need a license from the rightsholder in the
first place, to allow you to claim those IP rights on the derivative work.

In the case of a public-domain work, if you create a "derivative work" from
it, you own the IP of that derivative work, 100%. The public-domain parts that
you sampled aren't still public domain just because they're copied word-for-
word into your work. (I mean, the original work itself is still PD, but the
sample of it in your derivative work isn't. It's a "color of your bits"
thing[1].) "Public Domain" isn't an infectious copyleft license. You can
"fork" and "make proprietary" a PD work, and that's 100% allowed.

Now, I don't know enough about the Buddhist texts in question to say whether
their presentation of them here qualifies as a "derivative work"—but usually
even just translating a work makes it a derivative, so, if the TBRC were the
ones that translated these texts to English? They own 'em.

(If you want a public version, do the same thing FOSS communities do when a
FOSS project is forked into a proprietary product: walk back to the last open
branch-point of the source, and make your own open fork. In this case:
translate the texts yourself!)

[1] [https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23](https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23)

\---

Also, there might be a more interesting consideration at play in this
particular case: if a work is never _published_ , then AFAIK, it never
_enters_ copyright; its copyright "clock" only begins when someone publishes
it. So e.g. the diary of Anne Frank doesn't have a copyright year of 1945, but
rather 1947—the year it was found and published. Until then, the work is a
"manuscript", equivalent in IP rights status to a draft laying on a writer's
desk destined for a publisher.

You can think of such a manuscript as a secret root node in a "derivative
work" tree: the author creates work A [the manuscript], the publisher derives
work B [the published book], the author assigns work-A derivative-work rights
to the publisher, and then _also_ [usually] relinquishes all rights to work A.
Because of this, the copyright clock is relative to work B, not work A. If
copyright stayed attached to manuscripts, you could run out the copyright [in
a pre-Disney copyright regime] by just spending 30 years writing a book!

~~~
org3432
For the Buddhist texts, how could they own the rights to works written
hundreds of years ago? They're simply digitizing the work, no translation.
Here's an example:
[https://archive.org/details/bdrc-W1FPL194/page/n7](https://archive.org/details/bdrc-W1FPL194/page/n7)

~~~
derefr
If the works, before their digitization, only existed in a private collection
at a particular Buddhist temple, then their copyright clock wouldn't have
kicked off. It would start the moment that the works entered the public sphere
in some way. If that happened because of the digitization, then the
digitization is under copyright. In this case, the original work is the
"manuscript", and they're the "publisher."

~~~
org3432
Obviously at the time the texts were written, they were in circulation, but it
predates modern copyright law. So maybe there's a loophole in the law they're
exploiting, but regardless it's unethical, and Archive.org has the power to
not accept works under those circumstances.

------
gatherhunterer
Some of my favorites are not listed. Notably, Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy had
some of the best gameplay of all time. I played through a couple of months ago
and the lightsaber combat is still amazing by modern standards.

[https://github.com/grayj/Jedi-Academy](https://github.com/grayj/Jedi-Academy)

~~~
ThePadawan
A fun entrypoint to discovery into that repository is
[https://github.com/grayj/Jedi-
Academy/search?q=FIXME&unscope...](https://github.com/grayj/Jedi-
Academy/search?q=FIXME&unscoped_q=FIXME) .

------
fireattack
Something I want to ask for quite a while: what is the copyright status of
Archive.org? Is it legal?

I'm asking not just for this source code collection: they host lots of DOS and
console games on their website, which I highly doubt are in public domain or
under a free license. They also have lots of scans of some recent publishings
(particularly in my mind, I knew they have plenty of Japanese manga magazines
from this decade that are definitely not copyright-free.)

~~~
monocasa
They're officially a library in California which gives them a ton of carte
blanche wrt to copyright. As for the status of their particular actions, I
think it's a lot of grey area.

~~~
userbinator
I believe they also have a team of lawyers, which helps greatly too.

------
Flavorfish
I find the views in the about section to be interesting. Seems this collection
has gotten a massive spike of views in the last month of ~9,000 people, which
is ~30x that of the last few months. I wonder if this comes down to hacker
news, because at ~70 votes this post would have a view / vote ratio of about
125x, which seems in the ballpark but maybe a little high?

As you would guess California is the most common origin for views but
surprisingly Alberta comes in second with 1/2 the views of California! Are
there lots of fellow Albertan devs here?

~~~
jplayer01
[https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/cdih04/game_source...](https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/cdih04/game_source_code_collection/)

[https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/caphdj/game_so...](https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/caphdj/game_source_code_collection_internet_archive/)

It was also reposted on Reddit several times this month, and on Hacker News
(before this) as well. Seems to be making the rounds.

------
borge
Unrelated; but I always find myself drawn to game development, yet I have no
desire to work in the industry. Does any other programmer feel the same, and
do you know why?

~~~
knodi123
> Does any other programmer feel the same

Of course.

> and do you know why?

Because games are fun, and programming is fun, and programming something that
will be fun for other people is fun.

But the games industry is crowded, and highly profit-optimized, and you just
instinctively know that getting a tour of the budget sausage factory wouldn't
bring a true sausage lover any significant pleasure.

~~~
Bekwnn
The games industry being crowded is a bit of a myth, though initially breaking
into it does present a barrier. Lots of studios seem hungry for anyone with
experience. Though, a lot of the actually interesting projects are crowded.
Which is a real concern if that's the only type you want to work on (I'm in
that camp...)

Like programming, once you have a few years under your belt, things really
open up.

~~~
soup10
Really depends, if your a solid game dev and willing to work on the latest
Barbie licensed mobile title its not so cutthroat. Profitable indie studio
though? Good luck with that

------
superfamicom
I bought and shared the "Space Funky B.O.B." source code (included in that
collection) and the "Super Noah's Ark 3D" source code (not in that
collection). Both came from 3.5" diskettes on eBay. Both are for the Super
Nintendo / Super Famicom system.

Space Funky B.O.B. is interesting due to the amount of swearing in the
comments of the source code.

Super Noah's Ark 3D is notable for many reasons. It is an unlicensed Christian
game that used a pass through style cartridge. It is based on the Wolfenstein
3D engine, and actually included some emails from John Carmack and Rebecca
Heineman from back in the day. A delightful insight into software development
decades ago.

[https://eludevisibility.org/2018/super-noahs-
ark-3d-source-c...](https://eludevisibility.org/2018/super-noahs-
ark-3d-source-code)

------
vkaku
Good Stuff!

We should augment this page with
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_video_games_with_available_source_code)

and [https://gamehistory.org/](https://gamehistory.org/)

and [https://www.computerhistory.org/](https://www.computerhistory.org/)

------
_Nat_
Perhaps a silly question, but is this entirely legal in the US?

This is, can I just download the source code and look through it without any
major caveats like already owning the corresponding game or having permission
from the publisher?

I see that some of the source code has a license associated with it, e.g.
licenses claiming that the content's in the public domain, but I'm unsure if
such licenses are necessarily legitimate.

------
IloveHN84
We need also game binary code preservation and how to compile the
sources..just the source code without build instructions is also pretty
useless for the preservation

------
tamalerhino
Heck Yea! I didn't know this was a thing?!

~~~
lofikrom
Right? Lots of classics.. Half Life, Sim City and Beyond Castle to name a few.

If you like spongebob you're in luck too. Probably gonna spend the next few
weekends building these.

~~~
djmips
Good luck building. It's probably going to be a bit more than a few
weekends... ;-) if you do get something built, maybe blog it / share it
somewhere.

------
ArtWomb
Thank you. Terrific list. Bill Gate's Donkey BASIC should be on here too.
Actually learned a lot from old BASIC games

------
adam0c
do you have the source code to FF8 because apparently that went missing

~~~
jimminy
It didn't go missing. Square had an institutional policy that had them
deleting source once projects were mastered and shipped, through to the early
2000's. FFVII-FFIX, Parasite Eve and numerous other games lost their source.

What's been recovered has been occasionally the code from contracted PC ports.

~~~
xingped
Why did they have such a policy? That seems crazy!

~~~
dleslie
That was also their golden era for quality products.

I cannot claim to know why they did this, but my educated/experienced guess as
a long-time game developer is that _someone_ thought it would be best for the
teams not to rely upon existing projects when creating new ones.

Imagine if painters always started from their previous painting rather than a
blank canvas; or if a home developer always started with prefabs of their
previous home. You'd get American suburbs and Ikea prints.

~~~
abecedarius
Imagine if we did this for operating systems. I want to believe.

------
doggydogs94
If you slave away at a game (or some other piece of code), over time the
fruits of your labor will become worthless.

~~~
0_gravitas
It's not worthless if it gets you paid

~~~
kevingadd
Not to mention that in game development, the experience from your first
shipped title is massively valuable when developing the second

