Rabah Shihab has ported his 1993 Amiga game Babylonian Twins to the Godot engine by employing a large language model (LLM) to interpret the original 68000 assembly code. The game, originally built on an Amiga 500 with 512KB RAM and no hard drive, was developed under challenging conditions in Baghdad during the early 1990s. The porting effort was detailed in a blog post published on September 1, 2026, on babyloniantwins.com.
The original game was programmed entirely in 68000 assembly language, with every sprite and scanline manually coded. Shihab, then an engineering student, worked without internet access or game development resources, relying solely on the Amiga Hardware Reference Manual and limited electricity. The porting process involved using an LLM to read and translate the assembly instructions into a format compatible with Godot, a modern open-source game engine. This approach allowed Shihab to revive the game’s codebase decades later without rewriting it from scratch.
This project highlights how AI tools like LLMs can assist in understanding and modernizing legacy software, especially code written in low-level languages like assembly. It demonstrates a practical application of AI in software preservation and game development, bridging a gap between vintage computing and contemporary platforms. Such efforts are rare, particularly for games created under restrictive conditions, making this a notable example of AI-enabled code translation.
The blog post includes technical details and code snippets illustrating how the LLM was used to interpret hardware-specific assembly commands. Shihab’s work not only preserves a piece of gaming history but also showcases the potential of AI to unlock and repurpose decades-old software. The full port and related materials are available for download on babyloniantwins.com.