Decompilation projects have been going wild as of late, with more and more games being finished up after years of hard work.
The latest in the long line of Nintendo titles that has gotten over the line is the incredible Super Smash Bros. Melee, which might be music to your ears.
Super Smash Bros. Melee decompilation opens up endless possibilities
The Super Smash Bros. Melee decompilation project has now officially hit 100%, marking the end of a seriously lengthy process that began all the way back in July 2020.
Thatโs more than six years of picking apart one of my favorite GameCube titles, recreating its compiled code in C so that it matches what was originally spat out by the compiler.
And with Melee containing around 3.88MB of compiled code, as previously alluded to, this was not a simple project.
What is particularly interesting though is just how quickly things accelerated towards the end.
Large language models have played a pretty substantial role in getting those final pieces of the puzzle into place, with contributors using AI-powered tools to work through functions that would otherwise require a significant amount of trial and error.
The project had only reached around 50% completion in January 2026, before flying through the remaining half over the following months, eventually knocking out those final stubborn functions in September.
Obviously, there are rightly placed pushbacks on AI, but with use cases like this, you can see why it is helpful. However, does that mean youโll be firing up a native Melee PC port tomorrow? Sadly not.
The team behind the project has already tempered expectations, noting that plenty of the current code needs cleaning up before it becomes particularly useful outside of matching the original game.
Once that work is done, though, things start to get pretty exciting.
Having Melee available in readable C code should make deeper mods far easier to create, while also opening the door for future projects such as native ports and other improvements that are much more difficult when working directly with assembly.
Considering just how dedicated the Melee community has been for more than two decades, I can only imagine what people are going to cook up once the code is properly ready to be tinkered with.
