Nicheloom visits: 58,345 all-time · 7,637 in the last 7 days

The opportunity tracker for new startups.

Today: 1,008 launches · Niche of the day: specialized calculation tools · See what launched today →

Black Ops II statically recompiled to native ARM64 macOS

Get picks like this daily. Today's launch numbers, the top launches, AI and tech news, and a daily opportunity pick, straight to your inbox.

Want to reach these readers? Sponsor an issue.

I grew up with Black Ops 2 and wanted to see if I could make it work on my 2020 MacBook Pro. So I used Claude Opus 5.5 to create a tool that converts your copy of the game (from Steam) to a native ARM64 Mac app, with almost 60fps in all areas. The whole game is statically recompilated ahead-of-time (AOT) and does not use any emulator whatsoever, be it Wine, Crossover or Rosetta. The best thing is the performance, although some heat issues are still to fix. You get to play the whole Campaign, local Multiplayer (with bots) and local Zombies (all DLCs maps; you need to have them in your Steam library obviously) at about 60fps. Split-screen was not in the PC version, but I've been working on it lately; it's coming soon! LAN mode is on the roadmap for later too :)

HN · launched Nov 11, 2026 · 150 upvotes (top 8%) · 0 views

Niche: game decompilation and recompilation tools · 196 launches, 13 in the last 7 days ▼ -38% · Explore this niche →

Category and tags
  • Media & entertainment
  • Dev tools
  • Prosumer
  • Not AI
  • Hobby / open-source project

Visit website ↗ Source listing ↗

More like this: all 196 launches in game decompilation and recompilation tools →

Could you build this?

No Statically recompiling a shipped x86 game into a native ARM64 macOS app requires binary lifting, reverse engineering, graphics API translation, and reimplementing platform services. Those demand deep compiler and systems expertise, and the output depends on copyrighted game assets.

What it would actually take: A real build needs a binary lifting pipeline that translates x86-64 code to ARM64 with correct handling of calling conventions, SEH, and self-modifying or indirect code. It also needs shims for Windows APIs, Steam, and audio, and a D3D9 or D3D11 to Metal translation layer that performs well. The team needs reverse engineers and compiler engineers, plus extensive debugging, and it must address copyright and distribution.

Discussion

20 comments analyzed.

Competitors mentioned: Claude, Qwen, Kimi, DeepSeek

Concerns raised: Anthropic restricting reverse engineering of games, ToS and legality of reverse engineering with Claude, not really an emulator, naming is misleading, guardrails easily bypassed

Feature requests: recompile Modern Warfare (2007) and MW2 (2009), co-op mod for CoD4

Competitors

Other products that read as similar to this one : 596 launches clear the similarity bar, closest 8 shown.

Attention rank: #56 of 597 (itself plus its competitors, highest first, normalized so YC and Product Hunt are compared fairly).

Launched 305 days after the earliest competitor.

Related data

The niche, labels, vibe code rating and competitor comparison on this page are analysis by Nicheloom. If you use them, please credit nicheloom.com. How you may use our data.