About
Star Dust is a 1987 vertically scrolling shooter developed by Spanish studio Topo Soft for the ZX Spectrum, released in the UK by Kixx and later ported to Amstrad CPC, MS-DOS, and MSX. stardust-rebuilt is a reverse-engineering project that reconstructs a working ZX Spectrum assembly source for the original 1987 Stardust, made by members of the original development team to mark the game's 30th anniversary. The work is incomplete -- many addresses remain hardcoded without proper labels -- but the authors felt it worth releasing regardless.
How it differs from the original
The reverse-engineered source only covers the ZX Spectrum version's main gameplay: the game's intro and its entire on-foot second stage fall outside the project's scope and are not reconstructed.
History
The project was made by members of Stardust's original development team to mark 30 years since the 1987 release, and is dedicated to the memory of producer Javier Cano and cover artist Alfonso Azpiri; the original authors gave permission for the project to be made public.
Known limitations
- scope: The intro and the entire on-foot second stage of the game fell outside the scope of the reverse engineering effort.
Additional notes
- Methodology
- The source was reconstructed using the Fuse ZX Spectrum emulator and SkoolKit toolset, iteratively refining a disassembly control file generated from an in-game memory snapshot.