Interesting! Trying to find that particular code in the decompiled code is proving challenging. I wonder if they haven't yet discovered and documented that yet!
I'm not aware of any cool homebrew, but there is a certain level of cool being able to compile the code for some N64 games using the original IDO compiler on original hardware. You can even compile one of the many decompiled games like Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie and more that all will produce the exact binary shipped on the cartridge byte for byte, all from reverse engineered work to create byte matching equivalent C code.
In Canada there's been a big problem with stolen cars lately. Mostly trucks, and other high value vehicles though. Selling them locally isn't feasible, but there's a criminal organization that's gotten very good at getting them on container ships and out to countries that don't care if the vehicles are stolen. So even with tracking, there's nothing people can do. Stopping it at the port is the obvious fix, but somehow that's not what is being done. Probably bribery to look the other way.
There isn't enough detail for me to know how serious is was in regards to stores not being able to accept payments, but a date of this blog being 2010, and it being written about a time when every megabyte of filesize matters makes me think it was possibly much earlier, like maybe 2001-2005. If that's the case, maybe not being able to process cards wasn't as big of a deal as it would be today because you could likely assume most if not all customers could pay with cash if card payments were down.
This is very wrong. Ghidra might decompile to some C code, but this is a completely different, and very high bar. This is 100% matching C code that compiles to the exact binary the game shipped with. This means it's able to be modified, tweaked and upgraded. Ghidra is helpful to do some research, but it won't compile.
I might be misremembering, but I seem to remember most games of that era were 540p scaled to 1080p. 720p would have been an upgrade. But your point still stands.
https://github.com/FoxdieTeam/mgs_reversing/blob/master/sour...