> Were decomps/recomps a hobby because people wanted to make sure their old games could run on modern hardware and be extended with mods etc., or were they a hobby because people enjoyed the actual process of using Ghidra and reverse engineering by hand, and the decompiled game was just a side effect?
This is a very weird false dichotomy. It almost certainly was both of those for everyone who made any meaningful progress. You have to care about the end result to stick with a project to the end after you've finished the fun parts, and you have to enjoy most of the process of getting there for it to be a hobby. The journey and the destination matter, not one or the other.
This is a very weird false dichotomy. It almost certainly was both of those for everyone who made any meaningful progress. You have to care about the end result to stick with a project to the end after you've finished the fun parts, and you have to enjoy most of the process of getting there for it to be a hobby. The journey and the destination matter, not one or the other.