Show HN: Decomp Academy – Learn to decompile GameCube games into matching C

A new Show HN project called Decomp Academy is turning one of the nerdiest hobbies on earth into a surprisingly juicy spectator sport: taking old GameCube game code and teaching regular humans how to rebuild it in plain C code until it matches the original exactly. The big flex here is that learners can go from "what even is this wall of symbols?" to recreating real Star Fox Adventures game functions, with the site grading their work live. And yes, the community reaction was basically: this is cool as hell.

But the comments are where the real show starts. One reader immediately begged for the next step: not just lessons, but a slick web tool that lets people casually help real fan projects without spending a weekend wrestling setup instructions. That sparked the biggest undercurrent in the thread: people love the idea, but they want the painful parts hidden. Another user proudly admitted they already found a way to "cheat" one of the early lessons, which is exactly the kind of chaotic student energy the internet brings to every educational tool.

Then came the lovable confusion. One commenter said the first lesson told them to look to "the right" and there was... nothing there, turning a retro reverse-engineering classroom into a tiny customer-support drama. Meanwhile, the creator dropped a behind-the-scenes nugget that the whole thing runs on Amazon cloud tools and that getting the old compiler working there was "an adventure," which only made the project feel even more like a scrappy labor of love. The mood overall? Equal parts admiration, curiosity, and gremlin-level determination to break the homework before finishing it.