A GameCube fighting game from 2001 just landed on PC, and the modders who put it there spent six years getting to the finish line.
Super Smash Bros. Melee has been 100% decompiled. The files are on GitHub. Instructions come with it, so you don’t need to already know what you’re doing.
What a decompilation actually is
Decompilation means taking a finished game and turning it back into its original source code so it can run on a console or PC. In Melee’s case, that’s the difference between a disc that needs a GameCube and a download that doesn’t.
So for the first time in almost 30 years, the Nintendo fighter runs on a machine Nintendo never built it for.
The announcement, and the argument that followed
Twitter/X user Reticent posted the news along with the download link, writing, ” Super Smash Bros. Melee is now 100% decompiled! *Used with AI (Claude).”
That asterisk did a lot of work. Fans piled into the comments, and plenty of them weren’t happy about the AI credit.
Defenders showed up fast. “Works on a decomp for six grueling years straight, used AI to cross the finish line and all it did was generate one-to-one versions of the original game code,” one user shared. “Everyone calls it slop, not understanding the difference between AI recomps and AI decomps.”
Another agreed, adding, “For people saying “slop”: this has been in the works since 2020, if you still think its slop, it’s been in the works before AI was good enough to do full decompilations (they still can’t, they still need to be watched by humans).”
Why anyone still cares about a 2001 fighting game
Melee arrived in 2001, a crossover fighter from HAL Laboratory and Nintendo, published for the GameCube. It pulled characters out of Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Star Fox, Pokémon and Donkey Kong and dropped them into one roster, across multiple game modes and stages.
It became the best-selling title on the GameCube. Critics praised the visuals, the characters, the soundtrack and the controls. It’s still regarded as one of the most influential video games ever made.
Super Smash Bros. Brawl followed on the Nintendo Wii in 2008. Melee never went anywhere.
Six years of work, a fight in the replies over who deserves the credit, and a 24-year-old GameCube game sitting on GitHub waiting to be downloaded. That’s the state of Melee in 2026.
