Someone reverse-engineered Black Ops II to run native Apple Silicon Macs

A developer has created a tool that statically recompiles Call of Duty: Black Ops II from 32-bit x86 Windows executables to run natively on ARM64 macOS systems like Apple Silicon Macs. The project, called bo2-mac, processes the game's three executables—campaign, zombies, and multiplayer—converting roughly 150,000 functions from x86 machine code to ARM64 machine code ahead of time using the Remill lifter to generate LLVM IR, which then passes through custom optimization passes before being linked with a hand-written Win32 runtime that uses Metal for Direct3D 11 rendering. This approach eliminates the need for Wine emulation or just-in-time compilation, allowing the game to run as native code in a single process while maintaining compatibility through a small x86 interpreter for copy-protected or untranslated code sequences.

For gamers and developers, this represents a significant technical achievement in binary translation and game preservation, enabling a 2012-era Windows title to run smoothly at 51-60 FPS on Apple M1 hardware without official publisher support. The project operates entirely offline—users must provide their own legitimate Steam copy, and the tool builds a personalized app on their machine without distributing any copyrighted game code. The takeaway is that dedicated reverse engineering can breathe new life into legacy software on modern architectures, showcasing what's possible when community passion meets deep technical expertise.