Recovering Lost Data from Aladdin's Source Code (Patreon)

Hi everyone! I'm really proud to publish the first result from our Writing Fund today - a totally comprehensive deep dive into the source code for Disney's Aladdin on the Sega Genesis, including an attempt to restore cut content (like the prisoner enemy in the video above)! The article is live on our website here:

https://gamehistory.org/aladdin-source-code/ 

Source code like this can tell us more about the making of a game than just about any other artifact. Examining it can tell us not only how the game as-is works on a programmatic level, but how it was intended to work. A well-trained archaeologist (like this piece's author, Rich Whitehouse) can reverse-engineer parts of the code that were commented out and get them functioning again. In one case, he even restored a piece of content by finding its art files in a hidden "Trash" folder - he literally dug in the trash to find it.

Unfortunately, source code like this is rarely documented and saved. I hope this is merely the beginning of our foray into archiving source code.

Anyway, let me know what you think! Is this the kind of thing you'd like to see more of?