An unofficial native Windows port of Shadow of the Colossus (PS2, PAL, SCES-53326 v1.00), built by statically recompiling the game's PlayStation 2 code to C++ with PS2Recomp.

This project is fully vibe-coded. Every line of code, every tool and every document in this repository was written by AI coding agents (Anthropic's Claude through Claude Code, and OpenAI's ChatGPT/Codex). A human directed the work, played the builds and reported what was wrong, but did not write the code by hand. Treat it accordingly: it works surprisingly well, and some of it is strange.

No game data is included. This repository contains no disc image, no game files, no BIOS, no emulator and no code generated from the game. You need your own legally obtained copy of the game. The tools only accept the exact SCES-53326 v1.00 disc image and check its hashes before doing anything.

This is a fan project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Team Ico or Japan Studio. Shadow of the Colossus is a trademark of its respective owners.

• Boot, language/video selection, title screen, intro cutscene, gameplay, riding Agro, climbing and fighting.
• All 16 colossus fights pass the automated scenario harness (warp, fight, kill, death cutscene, save prompt), and the early colossi have been played through by hand.
• Memory card saves (stored as a PCSX2-compatible card image), plus instant save states on F5 / F9.
• 60 Hz (NTSC) mode, widescreen with proportional UI, maximized/fullscreen window (F11).
• Mouse camera, keyboard bindings and gamepad input.
• Sound and music through an emulated IOP and SPU2.
• Heavy scenes such as the lake, the canyon and the Gaius fight run at a steady 60 fps on a Ryzen 5 5500 with an RTX 3060. The original console often ran at 20–30 fps.

• Occasionally a single black frame flashes on screen.
• The first time a new kind of surface appears, a few frames can be slower while its GPU shader compiles in the background. Compiled shaders are cached on disk, so this happens once per PC.
• Audio is functional but not a perfect SPU2 reproduction.
• Only Windows and only the PAL v1.00 disc are supported.
• On GPUs without GL_ARB_fragment_shader_interlock (for example AMD on Windows OpenGL), the renderer falls back to the slower compute-shader path automatically.

• EE (main CPU): the game's MIPS R5900 code (boot ELF plus the KERNEL, MANAGER and GAMECORE XFF modules, relocated statically) is translated to C++ ahead of time and compiled with MSVC. A small runtime provides the PS2 kernel, threads, interrupts, timers and DMA.
• VU1 (vector unit): the game's VU1 microprograms are recompiled to C++ as well and run on their own thread, with an interpreter fallback.
• IOP (I/O processor): the game's IOP modules run in an emulated R3000 with high-level replacements where useful (CD/DVD, memory card, pad, sound).
• GS (graphics): an OpenGL 4.6 renderer. GS primitives are rasterized by the GPU, with the exact PS2 coverage rules, blending and depth tests in specialized fragment shaders ordered by fragment-shader interlock. A compute-shader rasterizer and a CPU reference renderer are kept for fallback and verification.
• PCSX2 was used during development as a reference ("oracle") to compare RAM, GS output and timing. It is not part of this repository or the build.

More detail: Docs/ARCHITECTURE.md, Docs/PROGRESS.md (the full development log), Docs/GAME_BUILD.md, Docs/CONFIGURATION.md, Docs/PERFORMANCE.md and Docs/TESTING.md.

Experimental prebuilt ZIPs can be distributed through GitHub Releases. When a ZIP is available, extract it, put your supported ISO in its Game folder, and run Play.bat. You can also drag the ISO onto Play.bat to keep it in another folder. Prebuilt packages include the C++ runtime DLLs and do not require Visual Studio, Python, CMake, Ninja, or local compilation.

Only the PAL SCES-53326 v1.00 disc is supported. Windows x64, an AVX2-capable CPU, and OpenGL 4.6 are required. To create a package from a finished build, see Docs/RELEASING.md.

• Windows 10 or 11, x64.
• MSVC x64 build tools from Visual Studio 2022 or newer (including Visual Studio 2026), or the standalone Build Tools. The full Visual Studio IDE is optional. In Visual Studio Installer, select Desktop development with C++, a Windows 10 or 11 SDK, and C++ CMake tools for Windows. CMake and Ninja can also be installed separately on PATH.
• Python 3.10 or newer.
• A GPU with OpenGL 4.6.
• Your own dump of Shadow of the Colossus (Europe, Australia), SCES-53326, version 1.00, as a 2048-byte-sector ISO (SHA-256 068925770645266189005f09c9a9a1fee25726bfc93c89b12f832f3673664ac4).
• Disk space and patience: the generated game code is about 9,000 C++ files and a full build takes around an hour.

git clone --recursive <this repository>
cd <repository>
setup.bat

setup.bat is the one-step path: it checks the Git submodules, Python and the C++ build tools, finds and SHA-256-verifies your disc image, tells you exactly what to fix if something is missing (and waits while you fix it), then configures, builds, generates the game code and offers to start the game. Running it again is safe — finished steps are skipped or re-checked in seconds.

Setup discovers Visual Studio and standalone Build Tools installations using Microsoft's vswhere, including custom install locations. Set VSROOT to an installation directory to select it explicitly.

If you prefer doing the same steps by hand:

1. Put your disc image in Game/ (the folder is part of the repository and contains a PLACE-YOUR-ISO-HERE.txt placeholder; any *.iso of the right size is found automatically, or set SOTC_ISO).

2. Configure and build the recompiler:

   configure.bat
   build.bat ps2_recomp

3. Generate the C++ game code from your disc. This verifies the image, relocates the modules and writes Port/generated/ (git-ignored, never commit it):

   Tools\generate.bat

4. Build the port:

   configure.bat
   build.bat

5. Run it:

   run.bat

The executable is build/port/bin/sotc.exe. On first launch it writes sotc.ini next to itself.

Recompiled VU1 programs are optional. Without them VU1 code runs in the interpreter, which is slower. Producing them means capturing the game's VU1 microcode at run time (PS2X_VU1_CAPTURE) and running the vu1_recomp tool; see the VU1 sections of Docs/PROGRESS.md.

A gamepad also works. Bindings, mouse sensitivity, stick inversion, widescreen, video mode and the renderer switches are all in sotc.ini; see Docs/CONFIGURATION.md.

Git-ignored and never committed: Game/*.iso (your disc image; the Game/ folder itself is committed with a placeholder telling you what to drop in), Emulator/, Tools/pcsx2-oracle/, Port/generated/, Analysis/extracted/, Analysis/oracle/ and build/.

GPL-3.0, the same as PS2Recomp, which this port builds on. See LICENSE. The license covers the code in this repository only. It grants nothing for the game itself.

• PS2Recomp by ran-j and contributors: the static recompiler and runtime this port started from.
• PCSX2, used as the reference emulator while developing.
• raylib, ELFIO, rabbitizer, fmt and toml11.
• Team Ico and Japan Studio, for the game.