A Big List of Decomp/Recomp Projects Happening for Retro Games
When official support falls off, community support always picks up!
Leave it to the PCGamingWiki community to "compile" a definitive directory of restoration projects for classic games. Many of these feature unofficial PC ports - just look for Playable or Complete written in the status column.
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_unofficial_ports
A few that leap out at me:
Silent Hill: The Arcade - Believe it or not, this light-gun arcade game actually has a real story! A group of kids traveling to Silent Hill to investigate occult claims gets mixed up in the town’s supernatural happenings. It looks like it takes about an hour to finish and supports co-op play as well.
Half-Life: Decay - This was the "secret" third expansion originally exclusive to the PS2 version of the game. It’s another co-op title, and while there are several ways to run it on modern hardware, the mod by user $am_I_Am seems to be the community favorite.
Lego Island - Oh, how I miss this one! I ran into a bug as a kid that blocked my progress, and since it’s a PC title from 1997, getting original copies to run on modern systems isn’t something I’ve thought too hard about. It’s rad to see that those accessibility hurdles may have finally been cleared.
Skate 2 - This is the wildcard pick I didn’t know I needed until now. With the Xenia emulator gaining traction, a project emerged using recompilation tools inspired by the N64 recompilation scene. The team forked those tools, and while their GitHub hasn't seen public movement in about a year, I’m hoping that just means they’re heads-down in private development. I’d love to see the original Skate games playable on PC without an emulation layer—also, is anyone still playing Skate 4?
Mega Man 64 - This was what actually prompted me to write this article! Being a port of Mega Man Legends, a beloved PS1 title - the 64 version arguably ran smoother but had more rougher edges thanks to limited cartridge space. The PC port fixes all that by keeping all the improvements like better render distance and native analog support while allowing for mods to re-implement the PS1 pixel art textures and audio!