The Super Smash Brothers franchise is no stranger when it comes to mods. Until Nintendo shut it down, the Project M mod for Brawl was a standard for many in the Smash community who liked the overall design for Brawl but wanted the mechanics from Melee.
Now, thanks to modder Y.2.K, Super Smash Brothers for Wii U is getting a similar treatment with the introduction of Super Smash Brothers: Reloaded.
Very much like the Project M mod that came before it, the goal of Reloaded is to "make the game more competitively focused, adding stage changes, new costumes, and eventually, changing every single character in the game to make the game more fast paced and competitive."
Since Reloaded is still in its infancy, it doesn't offer too much that separates it from the vanilla game. For now, all it offers is:
- Custom Title Screen
- Space Battlefield Stage, i.e., a standard Battlefield Stage but in space
- Hazardless Midgar
- Hazardless Jungle Hijinks
- Hazardless DreamLand 64
- Hazardless Castle Siege
- Hazardless Norfair (Y.2.K warns that it's still buggy and some kinks need to be worked out)
- Hazardless Hyrule Castle 64
As you can see, for the time being, Reloaded's primary appeal is its attempt to remove all the hazards from various stages, making them tournament-viable. There are already some stages that have this quality, but they are few in number, and playing them repeatedly can quickly get monotonous. These new stages serve to spice things up and remove their earlier iterations off the ban list.
Y.2.K isn't stopping at merely a few hazardless stages, either; he already has a list of planned additions in the wings, which include:
- One Custom Costume For Each Character
- A Refined User Interface
- Change How the Menus Function
- Tournament Legal Big Battlefield
- More Hazardless Stages
- Custom Music and Sounds
- Custom Announcer ( Y.2.K isn't sure about this, but it's something he hopes to add later down the line)
In conclusion, Y.2.K warns that Reloaded is not meant to be a spiritual successor to Project M by any means. Rather, he asserts the mod is simply a means for him to express himself and show off what it can do for the community.
Hopefully, this means Reloaded won't go out of control like Project M did and ultimately get shut down by Nintendo. In the end, however, we'll just have to wait and see what happens.
A link to download the Super Smash Bros.: Reloaded mod is available here.
