explainer

Minecraft inside Skyrim. Doom on a working virtual PC inside Minecraft. Morrowind inside Elden Ring. These clips all look like the same trick and they are not. There are four completely different ways to do it, and knowing which one you are looking at tells you whether it can possibly be real.

Minecraft in Elden Ring. Skate in Modern Warfare 2. Minecraft in Cyberpunk, Skyrim and GTA 5. Two of those you can download today, one has no download, and two have no source at all. Here is the checklist we use, including the row it got wrong.

Six games were reported fully decompiled in one stretch of 2026. Five are finished or within a rounding error of it, none gives you a download today, and the difference between those two facts is the whole story.

Minecraft inside Skyrim. Morrowind inside Elden Ring. Doom inside Minecraft on a working virtual PC. A running list of games rebuilt inside other games, which ones you can download, and the one that runs on a $50 handheld.

Spider-Man: Edge of Time now has a finished 1.0 PC port with Windows, Linux and macOS builds, which changes the answer we gave two weeks ago. Here is what shipped, how it compares to the other Edge of Time project, and what it means for a Steam Deck.

Most recomp coverage assumes you own a gaming PC. But ten console decompilation ports are sitting in PortMaster right now, and they are listed for handhelds as cheap as the RG28XX. Here is the real list, pulled from PortMaster's own data.

One DK64 port advertises zero AI code. The first Wii recomp discloses that it used AI. A third group is getting quietly delisted from community trackers. The split is now the most useful quality signal you have.

FEX, Box64, Proton, DXVK, DXMT, Rosetta, MoltenVK. Every guide to running PC games on ARM throws these names at you at once. Here is what each one does, why they stack, and why every extra layer costs you frames.

Static recompilation reached the PlayStation 1. PSXRecomp turns a PS1 game into a native binary or a WebAssembly build, and Pepsiman Recompiled is the proof. Here is how it works and why it matters for handhelds.

The Snapdragon 865 is a 2020 flagship that keeps showing up in 2026 handhelds. Here is why its driver support matters, what it can emulate, and where it sits against newer chips.

Xbox 360 and PS3 emulation are the two hardest mainstream targets on a handheld. Here is which one is actually harder, why, and what hardware you need for each.

Evercade sells legal cartridges with zero setup. Firmware handhelds play your own files. Here is how they compare on legality, library, and value.

Evercade is a modern retro console built around real cartridges of licensed classics. Here is how it works, what makes it different, and who it is for.