Shrek Movie · GBA Video Recomp

<p align="center"> <img src="docs/screenshots/shrek-title.png" alt="Shrek Movie GBA Video title menu running in ShrekGBAVideoRecomp" width="720"> </p> <h1 align="center">ShrekGBAVideoRecomp — Shrek, Recompiled</h1>

This recompilation is a byproduct of developing gbarecomp — the games (and, apparently, movies) are the proving ground; the framework is the goal.

Static recompilation of Shrek Movie (Game Boy Advance Video, USA) to native PC, built on gbarecomp with the shared recomp-ui launcher.

Status — playable

Shrek boots, reaches the menu, and plays the movie in a responsive native PC window.

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Shreknicalities

This is a 64 MiB GBA Video Movie Pak, twice the normal GBA ROM address window. Its Matrix Memory cartridge controller pages compressed video data through a small aperture. gbarecomp models that mapper natively, allowing the player to reach the cartridge's second 32 MiB half.

The Movie Pak also copies and updates parts of its player while the film runs. gbarecomp recompiles the stable BIOS and cartridge code ahead of time, then safely follows the changing player code from live memory during playback. The result preserves the original Movie Pak's behavior without freezing the host window.

Generated translation is intentionally omitted from Git because it derives from the copyrighted ROM; the build tools regenerate it from your own dump.

Required inputs

Input	Local path	SHA-1
Shrek Movie (USA, MSKE, revision 5)	roms/shrek_movie_usa.gba	2dedea86ec289a0e31089299613d9f74cca03609
Game Boy Advance BIOS	gbarecomp/bios/gba_bios.bin	300c20df6731a33952ded8c436f7f186d25d3492

The runtime refuses unrecognized inputs. This repository contains neither file; you must supply your own legally dumped cartridge image and BIOS.

Quick start

1. Clone this repository with its submodules.
2. Place the verified ROM and BIOS at the paths above.
3. Build using the instructions below.
4. Run build/ShrekMovieRecomp.exe.
5. Press A on Play, because we have somehow recompiled a movie.

recomp-ui provides the pre-boot launcher and in-game settings. It remembers your local ROM and BIOS selections after the first launch.

Controls

GBA button	Keyboard
D-Pad	Arrow keys
A / B	Z / X
L / R	A / S
Start	Enter
Select	Backspace

Save states use Shift+F1–F9 to save and F1–F9 to load.

Building from source

Windows prerequisites: CMake 3.20+, Ninja, an MSYS2 MinGW64 compiler, and SDL2.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/mstan/ShrekGBAVideoRecomp.git
cd ShrekGBAVideoRecomp

cmake -S gbarecomp -B gbarecomp/build -G Ninja
cmake --build gbarecomp/build --target gba_recompile

# Generate the ignored ROM translation and recompiled BIOS output.
pwsh tools/regen.ps1

cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build --target ShrekMovieRecomp

The generated translation unit is large; expect the first build to take a while.

Playback validation

The headless smoke route runs 600 frames, validates static coverage and Matrix mapping, and captures a screenshot:

pwsh tools/test-playback.ps1

The opt-in complete-film route is:

pwsh tools/test-full-movie.ps1

The long route represents roughly the duration of the film at 60 GBA frames per second and is intentionally excluded from routine regression runs.

License

PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 — see LICENSE. Third-party components retain their own licenses.

Legal

This project contains no ROM, Nintendo BIOS, decoded movie frames, audio, or other cartridge content. You must supply your own legally dumped inputs.

Shrek and related names and artwork are trademarks or copyrights of their respective owners. Nintendo and Game Boy Advance are trademarks of Nintendo. This project is an unaffiliated, non-commercial preservation and research effort.

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Built with gbarecomp, because the Game Boy Advance was the best platform Shrek was released on.