Silent Hill 1 could be getting a PC port in the next year thanks to fans, though there’s still a lot of work to be done.
The original Silent Hill remains a true classic in terms of early survival horror gaming, with many still calling it one of the greatest of all time.
It was one of the earliest horror games to use 3D environments in real-time, and is a great example of how the original PlayStation’s limitations actually ended up being beneficial through the addition of foggy environments to hide the low draw distance.
As the game was never released on platforms outside of the Sony PlayStation, it’s a pretty difficult game to play nowadays if you don’t want to resort to emulation. It’s not even available via PlayStation Plus Premium’s classics catalogue.
However, there is some hope for a native PC port thanks to the effort of fans, as the Silent Hill 1 Decompilation Project has just hit a new milestone.
The Silent Hill 1 Decompilation Project has now hit 50% decompiled, so the project is essentially halfway done.
Five months ago, the game had hit 10% decompiled. So, unless there are any major setbacks, it’s possible that a full decompilation could be achieved sometime in 2026.
What is decompilation and why is it important?
Decompilation is essentially a way to extract code from an executable so that it’s readable to humans, allowing you to modify it in additional ways that you can’t do via emulation.
Once this has been achieved, it can be recompiled as a native PC port. Recent examples of this include The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’s open-source port, titled Ship of Harkinian, or Sonic Unleashed Re-Compiled.
This often means custom levels, additional options, cheat menus, accessibility features, enhanced controller support, and much more can be added to the games once they’ve been re-compiled.
There are still limitations, but the potential is much greater than compared to simply emulating the game.
It’s also incredibly important for games preservation. Emulation is a decent option for many, but it can sometimes be a bit of a faff to setup and also doesn’t necessarily replicate the experience of playing the original game, whereas playing a decompiled game might.
Alongside the Silent Hill 1 Decompilation Project, Bloober Team is also working on a full remake of the original game in the same vein as last year’s Silent Hill 2. However, that game is still likely to be a couple of years away.
Either way, it’s cool to see that the original Silent Hill is getting a lot of love lately. No doubt that the recent warm reception to Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill f has renewed interest in the series. We’ll see where this project goes.
