Open on XA free patch called Melee 3D turns Super Smash Bros. Melee into a 3D arena fighter where you can run in any direction. Its creator, walz, released v1.0 on GitHub on October 17. You apply it to your own copy of the 2001 game.
walz's X bio reads "working on indie games. previously @RivalsOfAether". sadkellz's 2023 camera mod CameraDX credits walz as "ASM helper". The announcement went up at 2:30 PM ET: "Fight it out on familiar stages reimagined for a 3D world." By October 20 it had passed 1.2 million views and 18,500 likes.
I haven't played it. This is based on the README, the release files and walz's own clips.
The Throttle: up and down on R
The README rewrites the controls. "Your character moves in the direction you point the control stick." All attacks are "'forward' inputs by default". A new button called the Throttle supplies the up and down inputs. It's bound to R by default (changeable to L or R on the character select screen).
Holding the Throttle while recovering "will automatically point your up special trajectory toward the ledge". Ness's grounded up special and neutral special "can be steered in 3D", with the control stick for horizontal and the C stick for vertical.
The trailer itself copies Melee's attract-mode How to Play video and rewrites its captions for 3D, a detail one reply singled out.
A month of teasers, then a bigger argument
walz had been posting clips since at least September 17. One showed Yoshi rolling around a 3D Fountain of Dreams and drew 444,000 views.
On the evening of October 17, Hungrybox, whose bio calls him a "3-Time #1 SSBM Player in the World", quoted the trailer to open a broader debate. He wrote that he feels "more confused than ever" about LLMs in gaming. In the past week, he said, he'd been sent "about a dozen different projects like this one that dissect and reintegrate Melee in multitudes of creative ways".
His post doesn't say how Melee 3D was made. At least two replies (one, another) asked walz if it was vibe coded. I found no public answer from walz on X. Before release, walz did answer an earlier question about whether a clip was AI. Asked on September 18, "Is this AI or is this a mod from the decomp?", walz replied: "this is a mod of the decomp". That says what it's built on, not how the code was written.
Where it runs
walz calls the download "Slippi Direct compatible". The README recommends only the default Slippi gecko codes, because others "may cause desyncs".
On October 19, Hero88go's Melee Unlocked 0.9.1, a native Windows build of Melee, added Melee 3D support on its "Static Recomp" engine. Its release notes describe Direct online "against the same disc", so plan on both players running the patched ISO. Original hardware is untested. walz wrote: "hasnt been tested on console yet but i hope to release a console build at some point".
