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I Put Smash Bros Melee in My Living Room
Kevin Tang built a mixed-reality viewer for Super Smash Bros. Melee replays using the game's newly completed decompilation.
What: Using the 100% decompilation of the GameCube title, Tang used Unity and Meta Quest to project 3D matches onto physical surfaces, controlled by AI agents for development and external frame data from Slippi.
Why it matters: This demonstrates how full-source reconstruction turns legacy software into a modular data source, enabling modern XR interfaces for decades-old game logic.
Deep dive
- The project uses a 100% decompiled version of Super Smash Bros. Melee (US v1.02) to access internal animation and physics states.
- Data from Slippi tournament replays drives the movement of models extracted from the original game disk.
- Integration with Meta's Mixed Reality Utility Kit allows the game world to scale and snap to physical furniture.
- AI agents (Claude and Codex/Astra) handled the bulk of implementation, while Tang focused on physical UX verification.
- The app includes a 'Furniture Battle' mode using AI bots and a 'Master Hand' interaction mode for physical manipulation of fighters.
- Neural-network-based control is simulated using male fruit-fly connectome data, mapped to game inputs for experimental AI behavior.
Decoder
- Decompilation: The process of reverse-engineering a compiled binary back into high-level source code.
- Slippi: A popular modding and replay ecosystem for Super Smash Bros. Melee that captures input data to allow frame-perfect match reconstruction.
- HSDLib: A library used for parsing and extracting data from the HSD (Hitbox System Data) format used by GameCube-era Nintendo games.
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