Evidence at a glance #
source evidence…
What was done #
Egg of Time is a native PC port of the Nintendo DS version of Chrono Trigger, achieved through static recompilation of the game's ARM9 code into C11. It provides widescreen support, high framerates, and modding capabilities while requiring a user-provided ROM dump.
Egg of Time is a project that enables a native PC experience for the Nintendo DS version of Chrono Trigger by performing static recompilation. Rather than emulation, the project translates the game's ARM and Thumb functions into C code, which is then compiled into a native library. A custom runtime, built with C11 and SDL3, handles hardware-specific tasks such as 2D graphics, sound, and input. The project features widescreen support, variable framerates (30 to 144 fps), and modding support for music and cutscenes. Development was assisted by Claude (Anthropic) via Claude Code, which performed reverse-engineering analysis and authored the recompiler, runtime, and documentation. The project is currently tested on Windows (using clang) and Linux (using gcc), while macOS builds are currently untested. The software does not distribute copyrighted game data; users must provide their own USA ROM dump to build the game locally. Limitations include the lack of implementation for Wi-Fi, microphone support, and the DS 3D engine. Further details on the architecture are available in the project repository.
Reproduce it #
Download the latest Windows release zip, extract to a writable directory, and run the executable. Provide a valid USA ROM of Chrono Trigger (SHA-1: 11f9e8204e484eab42181b210c9f214584be75bf) when prompted to initiate the build process.