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Show HN: I spent 3 years reverse-engineering a 40 yo stock market sim from 1986 (wallstreetraider.com)

721 points by benstopics ↗ HN
Hello my name is Ben Ward for the past 3 years I have been remastering the financial game Wall Street Raider created by Michael Jenkins originally on DOS in 1986.

It has been a rough journey but I finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. I just recently redid the website and thought maybe the full story of how this project came to be would interest you all. Thank you for reading.

76 comments

[ 1.6 ms ] story [ 134 ms ] thread
cameron_b
Cheers for this!

Thank you for sharing your story.

replwoacause
I enjoyed the read. How did you tap into the legacy Power Basic engine? Was there a FFI or some kind of bridge you could hook into? And what languages were you using?
jjmarr
Good job! When can I buy it?

I am sold on the game and wishlisted it but lack of release date saddens me.

I love spreadsheet games like Terra Invicta/Paradox/Simutrans and this seems like a terrific example of one.

JohnHammersley
This is such a well written story, and congratulations Ben, it sounds like it's been a lot of hard but ultimately successful work!

I know you'll deservedly get a lot of credit for all your work in remastering the game, but you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read. Thank you for taking the time to write it up, and good luck with the Steam release, and whatever project you take on next! :)

benstopics
Thank you sir and I'm glad you enjoyed the story! I hope it's successful but we will see.
sho_hn
I really enjoyed this article as well!

I'm still curious, however:

> That's not a marketing angle—it's a headline that writes itself.

Any ChatGPT assistance there?

Aloha
I'm only annoyed that I cant buy it right now!
teiferer
> This is such a well written story, [...] you should also get credit for how you've woven this narrative together, it's a lovely read.

Don't forget to give credit to the LLM too which wrote the story for him.

saaaaaam
This is very well written. I have fairly low interest in video games and rarely read gaming content, but read this all the way through. That’s an achievement in itself!
benstopics
I figured the engineering crowd here would enjoy the technical journey and I am so grateful it got to front page so that I may talk about the technical side which I enjoy doing. I am not a hermit by nature and posting on HN really was a cry for someone to ask me a question about the backend. So I really appreciate all the technical questions gives me an opportunity to get into the weeds a bit.
nacozarina
AI can’t do impossible things yet, but we still can.
zahlman
... You got the source code, and it was 115 kloc of BASIC, but several other individuals and organizations failed to "reverse-engineer" it?
benstopics
Others attempted to build from scratch or port it without the original developer's involvement. I worked directly with Michael and built a bridge layer into his existing codebase rather than rewriting it.
sevenseacat
oh this is an absolutely fascinating story!
sevenseacat
I forgot to ask, do you have links to any of the Reddit threads? They’d be a fun read!
ozozozd
Awesome story! Well-written also.

You are the engineer we all aspired to be. Though, you really are the chosen one.

Wish you the best!

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pillefitz
This is amazing! Having no knowledge of Basic, a.) what makes the rewrite "impossible"? b.) how do coding agents perform on the codebase? It might make for a neat benchmark similar to ARC
msephton
Fantastic. Well done! For both the new game and the website article.
wewewedxfgdf
If you dropped the source code here you'd probably get a versiojn in each of the 5 major languages quick smart.
thomassmith65
This is a wonderful project, and the post is a wonderful read!

Are there any plans to break out portions of the Basic engine to a modern language? It's frustrating that the heart of the game remains inscrutable. Surely Ward is tempted?

doctoboggan
Really interesting, thanks for sharing!

I know it almost sounds crass, but you should consider letting an LLM take a crack at transpiling the code. Source to source translations are one of the most widely agreed upon strengths of LLMs.

DigiEggz
Congrats on such an achievement. The remake looks great, but those DOS screenshots have an undeniable charm. With such a large scale game, something I always find interesting is uncovering what types of quirks and bugs bubble underneath the surface in the original version. Did you come across anything obvious in your testing?
dionian
Love it and fascinated to play the game.
masswerk
Regarding "The Second Oldest Game Developer", there are also the authors of "Spacewar!": Steve Russell was born in 1937, meaning, he's either 89 or will be 89 this year. Dan Edwards must be around that age, as well.
bhy
The game itself could be a good benchmark for AI agents.
blobbers
I feel like this is the sort of thing AI could do in 10 minutes. Did you try?
tedheath123
I loved this game. As soon as I saw the title I knew it would be Wall Street Raider. I play it via dosbox and for me the UI is part of the charm. I’d be interested in tinkering with the pricing simulation but from the article it seems like that’s almost impossible.
Aditya_Garg
Amazing read! Is it possible to do something like this but for wall street raider?

https://labs.ramp.com/rct

"claude code plays wall street raider" would be very very cool.

ErneX
This was a great thing to read this morning, kudos to both!