THE CRUNCH
DarioSamo, who led the fan-made Banjo: Recompiled PC port of Banjo-Kazooie, has publicly disowned a new Banjo-Tooie port that appeared without his team's involvement. In a statement on X, reported by Video Games Chronicle, he said the Banjo-Tooie Recomp is entirely AI-generated and warned that using AI on the framework, renderer and research his team built is "very disrespectful". He called AI-generated ports "a race to the bottom" and said he would take the time necessary to deliver a polished version instead.
Banjo: Recompiled, released earlier this year, is an unofficial PC port built on a decompilation, meaning fan developers reverse-engineered the original N64 game into readable code in 2024. Such projects are described as technically legal because they use no leaked content or copyrighted assets, and players must supply their own legally sourced ROMs. As a native port, it supports framerates above 120 fps, ultrawide and widescreen modes, a dual-analog camera, instant load times and user-created mods.
A faster alternative exists: recompilation, which uses AI tools to quickly translate machine code into functional native code. Critics say these quick ports suffer numerous issues and are much harder to mod. DarioSamo claims the new Banjo-Tooie recomp was made by applying AI to tools and frameworks his team created, and that both Zelda: Recompiled and Banjo: Recompiled have clear no-AI stances. He also criticised the YouTube channel Video Game Esoterica for reporting on the port without making clear his team was not involved, and said he is still interested in doing Tooie properly at some point.