Vault

L’Empereur (NES, 1991)

Game 8 in the KOEI NES decompiler family. Read as a transitional specimen — same family engine, but the country→province two-tier turn that the 16-bit titles keep.

Links: system → NES · toolchain → KOEI tools · thesis → L’Empereur — the two-tier turn (NES→SNES design hinge)

Identity

Field	Value
Logical name	LEmp-decompiler (public) · github.com/chrisaacson69/LEmp-decompiler
Sibling path	../LEmp-decompiler (resolved via .claude/local-paths.md)
Status	✅ all 18 code banks named, 0 errors; docs + symbol table, no ROM
Engine	NA2-era VM, GemFire-era syscalls
Depends on	koei-nes → nes-render

⚠️ Not cloned on this machine (2026-07-21).

What it contributed

• The $E2E3 native-call trampoline — a native ABI callable from bytecode. The headline engine finding, and the NES-side cousin of the per-routine trampolines later found on SNES.
• The two-tier turn. Bank 1 runs two loops: 15 countries via order-table $6FF2 → sub_8039, then 46 cities via $7002 → sub_80C0; the AI mirrors it in ai_run_country_turn. This is the structural shape the 16-bit titles inherit — hence “design hinge”.
• Tax simplified to a policy-flag command; officer-holds-army retained since ROTK1.
• 1790 base year — the revolutionary run-up, not just the famous wars.

Tags

nes · 6502 · reverse-engineering · games