About
Tomba!, known as Tombi! in Europe, is a 1997 platform-adventure game developed and published by Whoopee Camp for the PlayStation, following a feral child recovering his grandfather's bracelet from an evil race of anthropomorphic pigs. TombaRecomp statically recompiles the original PlayStation Tomba! (USA, SCUS-94236) into a native Windows/macOS/Linux executable using the PSXRecomp framework, translating the game's MIPS code ahead of time into native C and running it against a simulated PS1 (GPU, SPU, GTE, memory cards) with a real recompiled PS1 BIOS rather than high-level emulation. It's currently at v0.12.3-alpha, playable from BIOS boot through gameplay with known tracked crashes, offering both software and OpenGL renderers, supersampling/anti-aliasing, experimental 16:9 widescreen, and analog or D-pad controller modes.
How it differs from the original
Unlike playing on original hardware or through emulation, it runs the game's own code as a native recompiled program with an authentic recompiled BIOS rather than emulation shims, and adds features absent from the original release such as widescreen, supersampling, and a cache that converts and speeds up areas as players actually visit them. It requires the player's own legally obtained disc image; the repository itself contains no disc, retail BIOS, or game code.
Getting started
Download the Windows release archive and run the included launcher, which lets you pick your disc image (OpenBIOS is used automatically, with an optional real BIOS dump) and adjust renderer, widescreen, and controller settings before launching. An experimental Linux AppImage is also available, or the project can be built from source with CMake.
History
The recompilation grew out of developing the general-purpose PSXRecomp static-recompilation framework, with Tomba! serving as one of the framework's proving-ground games rather than being the project's primary goal.
Known limitations
- gameplay: Game is playable from BIOS boot through gameplay but has known crashes tracked in ISSUES.md.
- widescreen: Experimental widescreen 16:9 support is opt-in; some 2D HUD/menu/FMV elements and occasional background seams can look off.
- cache: Areas visited are converted to native code over time; areas not yet visited run in slower compatibility mode.
Additional notes
- License
- Released under the PolyForm Noncommercial license.
- Community
- Players are asked not to publicly share the file that records their session's cached game code, since it contains verbatim copyrighted material read from their own disc.