We Pointed an AI at Raw Binary Files From 1986.

What This Means for Software

We were staring at a folder containing 24 files. They had names like a78-09.12, a78-05-1.52, and 68705.bin. The largest was 64 kilobytes. The smallest, 115 bytes. No headers, no metadata, no README. Just raw binary, dumped from the circuit board of a 1986 Taito arcade cabinet.

These were the ROM files for Bubble Bobble, one of the most beloved arcade games ever made. Specifically, this was the bub68705 variant, a set with its own fascinating history. And we asked Claude, Anthropic's AI, to tell us everything these bytes contained.

What came back was not a summary. It was a complete reverse-engineering of every system, every sprite, every level, every secret hidden in the game. The kind of analysis that once required specialized tools, deep expertise, and months of painstaking work.

It took an afternoon.

The ROM Set

Bubble Bobble’s hardware is surprisingly complex for an 80s arcade game. The bub68705 ROM set reveals a multi-processor architecture: four Z80 CPUs handling game logic, slave processing, sound control…