by 
We have some good news for MediEvil fans! The recompilation of the original PS1 title has officially hit 1.0, bringing a ton of fixes and improvements based on feedback from last month's beta.
This includes improved stability, fixes for analogue handling, audio playback and the FMVs, as well as "support for slang/libretro shader presets through ShaderMod," a Mod Hub "to browse and install mods, asset packs, and shaders," and "an in-game Asset Pack Editor to create and edit packs" (the full list is available here under changes).
Just in case you've been living under a rock, static recompilation is a process that has become particularly popular in recent years for assisting in the creation of unofficial PC ports of classic games with added features (widescreen, increased frame rates, and greater draw distances, etc.).
According to derpPrincess, one of the brains behind the MediEvil Recomp, it basically involves "producing native equivalent code that can then be compiled again for your target system" (in this case macOS, Windows, and Linux), and ultimately requires players to supply their own existing copy of the game to extract the copyrighted files and assets. For derpPrincess, there were a few reasons why they wanted to create a MediEvil, with the most important being their love and appreciation for the original game.
While flaffymg, their partner on the project, had never heard of the game prior to working on the recomp, derpPrincess's history with the series goes way back, with the developer telling Time Extension:
"Me and my dad played MediEvil together, he'd sit and watch me play for hours and eventually got me MediEvil 2 because he saw how much I liked it. It's funny, I play RuneScape too (Oldschool RuneScape more specifically) so I guess I got a thing for cheeky British humor, despite being an American. Flaffy had never played MediEvil until recently, that was my thing.
"I've been involved off and on with the speedrunning and glitch hunting scene for MediEvil (and well various other games) for years. You'll see my name on Speedrun.com as a Super Moderator for the series. I don't do tons of speedrunning myself, but many people like to jokingly call me a "MediEvil Scientist" because of the things I do for the communiy, the glitches I try to find, and of course the moderation, so that we can have nice things for our small, but charming community."
Beyond that, derpPrincess also said that they hope this new release (alongside their other MediEvil shenanigans) will continue to bring more eyeballs to the series, potentially leading to more people becoming invested in the series and pushing Sony for a third official entry to close out the trilogy:
"We do this out of passion, to make people happy - to bring new eyes to retro gaming because someone has to do it if corporations won't. Though I wish they would reach out to us. We have the skills to bring love to these old games for modern devices and I feel it's an untapped market for them. People would definitely pay to have games like Castlevania: Symphony of the Night or MediEvil or Jersey Devil, etc on Steam and Modern Gen consoles, especially if you can easily mod them!
"One of the things I hope is that some of my actions allow for more love to the MediEvil franchise. We could really use a MediEvil 3, even if it's only on the PS5, it's be great. The ending of the story for MediEvil 2 was set up so that a third could happen so..."
It's important to note, flaffymg and derpPrincess are no strangers to recompilation, prior to setting out to recompile MediEvil. Both developers, for instance, were part of the team responsible for creating RecompOne, a PlayStation 1 Recompilation tool that acts "as both a static recompilation tool and a runtime to play PSX games natively on Windows / Mac/ Linux / Steam Deck / Alternative devices."
What's more, the pair are doing all this without the use of any generative AI tools, with derpPrincess voicing their opposition to the controversial tech and the advantages of human-made recomps with the following message shared with Time Extension:
"The advantage of creating a recomp without GenAI, or truthfully any project - is that the programmers working on it actually know what they're doing and how the code works. But also you get so good at programming that you're "better" than the AI tools (I use tools in quotes as I see it as plagiarism truthfully, and acknowledge we're in a bubble). That clearly doesn't mean faster, but the things people make with GenAI are terrible quality. And half baked.
"I strongly feel a lot of people get excited they have a shiny new toy that can fill in the gaps to their knowledge, and I get it, programming isn't the most exciting thing in the world to a lot of people. But I feel it's also made many people really lazy. They want the "fame" without doing any of the work, or very little. So many people using these tools will throw together 50 things in a day and move on to the next thing. That doesn't sound very fun to me."
flaffymg and derpPrincess aren't the only ones with a desire to keep MediEvil away from the recent surge of AI slop impacting the retro community, with the MediEvil co-creator Jay Gunn writing on BlueSky, "Keep GenAI the fuck away from MediEvil… now and in the future!"
Referring to this skeet, derpPrincess told Time Extension, "Who am I to disrespect the GOAT?"
You can grab the latest version of the recomp here.