A developer who taught themselves to reverse-engineer GameCube games has launched Decomp Academy, an interactive learning platform that teaches PowerPC assembly decompilation through hands-on coding exercises. The site challenges users to write C code that compiles to byte-for-byte matching assembly using the original Metrowerks CodeWarrior GC/2.0 compiler.

The creator built the platform after struggling to find quality resources for learning decompilation while working on reconstructing Star Fox Adventures. Unlike typical reverse-engineering tutorials, Decomp Academy enforces strict accuracy—any single instruction mismatch results in failure, reflecting the precision required for legitimate game preservation projects.

With 250+ lessons spanning from basic assembly reading to advanced ABI concepts, the curriculum pulls actual functions from open-source decompilation efforts including Mario Party 4 and Pikmin. Each exercise requires students to match real retail compiler output exactly, preparing them to contribute to ongoing preservation work.

The platform is completely free and open source, hosted on GitHub with all lessons stored in markdown for easy contribution. Early feedback from the decompilation community has been positive. The project aims to become the definitive resource for teaching game decompilation techniques.

While still early-stage with rapidly evolving content, Decomp Academy already provides a structured path from beginner to contributor-ready skills in a niche but technically demanding field.