When a game’s “code is lost” what stops a company from dumping/decompiling code from a disk or cartridge copy of the game for things like remakes and remasters?

Question

When a game’s “code is lost” what stops a company from dumping/decompiling code from a disk or cartridge copy of the game for things like remakes and remasters?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Decompiling is like figuring out a recipe from an already baked cake. Yes, it’s totally possible to produce a recipe that enables you to replicate the cake, but you lose all the supporting information like how long and hot to bake it, what alternatives there are, and other bits and pieces that make working with it just plain difficult.

It’s hard enough to keep source code of that size tidy and useable. It’s 1000x harder if it’s code from decompilation.