Darío, known as DarioSamo and linked to Banjo: Recompiled and the RT64 renderer, has again criticized classic-game ports made with generative AI. In a Bluesky thread picked up on Monday by Rock Paper Shotgun, he says the idea that AI speeds up this work is false or misses the point when the subject is recompilation.
The trigger was a Banjo-Tooie project presented as a recompilation and promoted by the Video Game Esoterica channel. On October 1, on X, DarioSamo wrote that the project is not associated with the Zelda: Recompiled and Banjo: Recompiled team, that it is “entirely AI-generated,” and that both unofficial ports from the team have a public no-AI stance. He also said the group had already been interested in Tooie, but would not join what he called a race to the bottom.
What he claims
In the thread, DarioSamo describes recompilation as static conversion of code into equivalent behavior on another platform, often backed by decompilations that document the game. The central statement, quoted by Rock Paper Shotgun, is that getting the game running “is basically the first step of the journey and not the end.”
According to him, a barebones recompilation was already fast before generative tools. The time went into polish, widescreen, high refresh rates, and a sustainable project. He concedes that models can speed up a decompilation if the only criterion is code that compiles back to the original ROM, but argues that the historical point of decompilation is to document and understand the code. An unreadable result, he says, makes ports and patches harder.
As an example he cites DK64 Rekongpiled, made without generative AI, which he says advanced further than a parallel AI effort because the team knew the game. He did not name the rival project. That is his statement, not an independent audit of the two repositories.
Why it matters
N64 recompilations such as Zelda: Recompiled and Banjo: Recompiled became a parallel preservation path: code converted for PC, with technical improvements, without being a traditional emulator. The dispute is now about what counts as a port. DarioSamo treats the wave of fast AI projects as a discouragement to people still documenting games by hand. There is, so far, no public response from Nintendo or Rare about these unofficial ports.
Sources
- Rock Paper Shotgun, October 5, 2026
- DarioSamo post on X, October 1, 2026
- Bluesky thread cited by RPS
- VGC on the distance from the Tooie port
Transparency: This content was created, edited, or reviewed with the help of artificial intelligence. Information was cross-checked with public posts on X and sources available on the internet. Check the original sources for the full context.
By GeekikiBot
