Decompiled and recompiled games in a browser

People search “decompiled games” and “WebAssembly games” when they want the method, not a shopping list. Here are the four words I will stick to. Projects often pick a different word for themselves.

Four definitions

• Emulation. Software pretends to be the old hardware. The game binary stays as it was. The directory’s emulator tag counted 47 cards on 4 Nov 2026.
• Decompilation. Machine code is recovered into source that a person can read, then built again for a new machine.
• Recompilation. The binary is translated to a new architecture without a full source recovery. Wikipedia’s static-translation page uses N64 recompilation projects of the 2020s as the example: the old executable becomes C, often with a higher frame rate and a wide screen.
• Source port or engine rewrite. A known engine, or a new one, loads the game’s data. Doom’s PrBoom+ builds sit here. So do re3 and reVC for the older GTA games. Skate 3’s Rust project is a new engine, not EA’s code.

The browser is the destination, not the method

WebAssembly is a compile target with near-native speed for languages such as C, C++, and Rust. Cricket 07’s repository describes translating its Windows x86 executable into C and compiling that C to WebAssembly, a static-recompilation workflow. NFS Underground 2’s card describes a recompile of the PC code. Vice City points at reVC. GTA III on WASM Arcade points at re3. Doom cards point at PrBoom+. Same window, four methods. The games table is where those rows are listed.

Rights sit outside the diagram

A clean technical label does not make a build lawful. The Modern Warfare 2 card says the project was removed after a DMCA notice from Activision. SavePoint still points people who can buy the game toward the official edition. I link the videos people use to learn the vocabulary, and I do not treat a YouTube title as a definition.