Chromatron Recompiled
Sean Barrett's roughly 20-year-old laser-and-mirror puzzle game Chromatron, recompiled from its original binaries with AI and Ghidra into a near pixel-identical Rust version.
Official site p.migdal.pl, verified Nov 3, 2026. Linked as “Play” from the developer's Show HN post and the blog post; hosted on the developer's own domain.
Rights holder / original work: Chromatron (Sean Barrett / Silver Spaceship Software)
A recompilation of Sean Barrett's Chromatron, rebuilt from the original Windows and Mac binaries with its levels, graphics and font. The original is distributed free by Silver Spaceship Software. The repository includes the original binaries, has no licence file and says it is shared for educational purposes with no copyright claimed over the original game logic or assets; no source shows permission from the original author. (GitHub (stared))
VibeGameDB lists this game only to document that it was made with AI coding tools. We do not host it, we do not represent the rights holder, and listing it does not mean it is licensed.
Where to play
Every platform this game is on. Links are checked against official sources; we never host or mirror games.
- Play free — official siteBrowserReleased · Recompilation of an existing game; native downloads for macOS, Windows and Linux, plus an experimental browser build (desktop only)Free
Runs in a desktop browser. No download.
Browser (no download) · Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
- View on GitHubGitHubReleased · Source code and release builds; no licence file (shared for educational purposes)Free
Download from the GitHub releases page.
Desktop · Official link verified Nov 3, 2026.
About Chromatron Recompiled
A recompilation of Chromatron, the free laser puzzle game by Sean Barrett (Silver Spaceship Software): you drag mirrors, prisms and other pieces from a toolbox onto a grid, rotate them, and steer coloured laser beams into matching targets until every one is lit. This is not a new game but a rebuild of the original from its Windows XP and Mac PowerPC binaries. The developer, Piotr Migdał, decompiled them with the NSA's Ghidra decompiler and had AI models rewrite the game; the blog post describes four attempts, starting with Claude Code and Opus 4.5 and then Cursor with GPT-5.2-Codex, before a fresh start in Rust with Opus 4.6 that the developer calls a pixel-perfect clone, with 307,199 of 307,200 pixels identical to the original. It runs natively on macOS, Windows and Linux, and there is an experimental browser (WebAssembly) build for desktop; controls need a mouse and keyboard. Free, with the source on GitHub.
How it was built
Partially verifiedThe blog post says the first attempt used Claude Code with Opus 4.5, connected to Ghidra through GhidrAssistMCP, and needed a lot of hand-holding; a second Claude Code attempt used the m2c decompiler and was abandoned. The published Rust version came from a fresh start “with Opus 4.6”, which worked mainly from the Win32 binary using PyGhidra. The post does not name the tool for that last attempt; the repository has a CLAUDE.md instruction file, the file Claude Code reads, which sets Rust as the target and requires every function to cite the decompiled code it came from. The developer built a separate font-comparison tool and a pixel-by-pixel screenshot comparison to check the results. How much code was written by hand is not stated.
- ObservedCLAUDE.md in the repository: project rules for the recompilation (Rust target, every function must reference its decompiled origin, nothing invented or assumed). — GitHub (stared)
The third attempt used Cursor with GPT-5.2-Codex and Ghidra's headless mode; the post says it became fully playable after one- or two-hour sessions with little feedback, with some visual differences left. The developer later used GPT-5.3-Codex to polish that C++ version (the post does not say in which tool) before starting over in Rust. The C++ version is not the one published for download.
The original Win32 and Mac PowerPC binaries were decompiled with Ghidra and the game rebuilt by AI models in four attempts: C with Raylib (Claude Code, Opus 4.5, GhidrAssistMCP), C with SDL2 (Claude Code, Opus 4.5, m2c), C++ with SDL2 (Cursor, GPT-5.2-Codex, Ghidra headless) and finally Rust with winit and softbuffer (Opus 4.6, PyGhidra). The repository keeps the decompiled C, function maps, string tables and the original binaries alongside the Rust source, and each Rust function cites the decompiled code it came from. Most of the effort, the developer says, went into matching the font, which turned out to be the Windows VGASYS system font.
- Engine / framework
- No engine (Rust with winit and softbuffer; WebAssembly build via Trunk)
- Languages
- Rust
- Team size
- Not disclosed
- Development time
- Not disclosed
- Development cost
- Not disclosed
- AI-written code
- Not disclosed
“307,199 out of 307,200 pixels identical to the original. Not bad!”- Reviving the 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI (Quesma blog)
- stared/chromatron-oxide on GitHub
- Show HN: Reviving a 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI
Verification notes: The four attempts, tools and models come from the developer's blog post on the Quesma blog, dated 4 Mar 2026; the Show HN post followed on 7 Mar 2026 (12:56 UTC). The tool for the final Rust attempt is not named in the post, only the model (Opus 4.6); Claude Code is recorded because the earlier attempts used it and the repository carries a CLAUDE.md file, so this is partly our inference. The download page credits the original to Sean Barrett (Silver Spaceship Software) and says the recompilation is by Piotr Migdał; its last WebAssembly build is stamped 27 Aug 2026 13:36 UTC. Original game: Silver Spaceship Software's page offers Chromatron and its three sequels free (“No cost, no ads, no popups”) for Windows and Mac OS X. The repository README says the recompilation is shared for educational purposes and claims no copyright over the original game logic or assets; the repository stores the original binaries and has no licence file. A Hacker News commenter posted a copy of the original source that had once been shared on the game's forum; the developer had not used it. GitHub statistics could not be read from the research environment, so none are recorded. The game was not played through.
Development history
The developer publishes the write-up of the recompilation on the Quesma blog, with download and play links.
DeveloperQuesma blog (Piotr Migdał)Posted on Hacker News as a Show HN.
OfficialHacker News (stared)Latest browser build, per the stamp on the download page.
ObservedPiotr Migdał
Game performance
Each figure measures something different — concurrent players, owners, downloads and sales are never interchangeable and are never added together. Labels show where each number comes from.
Browser (official site)
Free. The page links unsigned macOS builds (Apple Silicon and Intel), a Windows build, a Linux build and a WebAssembly version that needs a mouse and keyboard.
No public metrics recorded for this listing.
Not publicly available: Concurrent players (site), Monthly revenue, Gross revenue.
GitHub
Not publicly available: GitHub stars.
Reviews & rankings
Not yet reviewed by our editors.
Not currently ranked.
Sources
| Source | Type | Published | Accessed |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reviving the 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI Quesma blog (Piotr Migdał) | Devlog | Mar 4, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Show HN: Reviving a 20-year-old puzzle game Chromatron with Ghidra and AI Hacker News (stared) | Social post | Mar 7, 2026 | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Chromatron Recompiled (downloads and browser build) Piotr Migdał | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| stared/chromatron-oxide — README, CLAUDE.md and Cargo.toml GitHub (stared) | Repository | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Chromatron, by Silver Spaceship Software Silver Spaceship Software | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
| Official game page (language check) Piotr Migdał | Official site | Not confirmed | Nov 3, 2026 |
