PixlBit

 

There's no denying the staying power of Competitive Smash. Even when it was kicked out of the spotlight in the years between Brawl and Smash 4, Competitive Smash was still kicking in more ways than one. That's why when late last year, when one Smash Bros most devise title made headlines when it was abruptly stopping development, everyone took pause to look at the wreckage: Project M. It was no surprise that the controversial mod to 2008's Super Smash Bros Brawl was a legal no-no but when everything suddenly stopped for the team largely seeing development of Project M and all download links for the mod disappeared from the main website,it had seem that Nintendo's fighting legal team had finished off the game for good.

 

Which makes this a perfectly awkward time for me to go out and play the mod for the first time to see what's the hubbub was about right?

 

Let's not even beat around the bush: Brawl was a flawed game. Not a terrible one but a flawed one. A feeling that was felt the hardest in competitive crowd. Dispite pleas from players to fix gameplay elements and broken characters, Nintendo largely left Brawl mostly un-patched. However, once modders broke through and started messing around with models and such, it didn't take long for people to start messing with the game play and balance. Thus, we started to see things Brawl hacks which were largely made to fix things and characters (cough Meta Knight cough). However when we start to get things like Project M, things get a little more deeper and complex. Project M, if the M didn't tip you off, was an attempt to give Brawl more “Melee” like game play aesthetics, movement (IE: wavedashing), re-balancing of stages to be more competitive friendly (God, the DK Jungle Beat stage is so much better in Project M) ,and even the characters that were missed in Brawl from Melee such as Roy and Mewtwo. In short, playing Project M almost feels playing a new game, one that you can easily customize to your like too. Want to play as Zero Suit Samus from Smash 4 fighting a terrible model of Dio from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure? Project M says you can and you can even swap out the intro of the game with the anime opening of Attack on Titan. I still can't believe the many weird and unique ways you can make the game yours with very little effort. The Project M team really did an amazing job with making the game accommodating for those who aren't tech savvy. Even including WiFi to play online.

 

If there is one thing I've been avoiding talking about in my experience with Project M is the game play. I mean other than modding the shit out of the game, its really the core experience of the game. And to me...its OK. The thing is about Project M is that its pretty good remix of Brawl's cast with some rad new moves. I really love ZSS' re-imagined down B, it makes much more sense than her flip kick. But overall, Project M doesn't really wow me. I'm sure that is also due to the fact that I don't have much of a Competitive streak for Smash nor one for Melee. Honestly if you do go out and get Project M, you'll have to keep that mind. The mod does offer some fun mode modes for casual players, but the reality is that this was a competitive mod built by competitive people.

 

When Project M stopped development in late last year, the world of Smash Bros was a very different place. Now, for the first time in the series history, their were multiple Smash Bros like alternatives, especially on the PC. From unique expressions of Smash Bros aesthetics like Lethal League or more direct takes like Rivals of Aether. However the one Smash Bros alternative that owes a lot from Project M happens to both be the most popular and comes from a surprising source: Smash 4. Its hard not to see the correlation, especially after playing Project M, that the newest Smash 4 takes from the mod. From aesthetics touches (alternate costumes), to custom moves, returning Melee character (albeit as DLC), even Omega stages which make the stages more competitive friendly. Smash 4 really extends its hand to competitive folks to be appealing as possible. It make sense that Nintendo would use ideas from something that is competitive friendly like Project M. It also would make sense that Nintendo would slowly start to clamp down harder on mod like Project beside of the legal nightmare it probably brought to them. Whatever the reason, the future of Project M is pretty much gone. However, much like the Smash community, life still moves on and people still regularity play, stream and mod the hell out of Brawl thanks in large part to Project M. With Smash 4's last DLC characters releasing today, its only a matter of time that it too becomes the next Smash game that gets a new (legally dubious) leash on life thanks to modding.

 

If you feel venturous, you can still install Project M. There's even a “hackless” version of the game that can be played on a Wii U too. To learn more, jump over to Reddit's Project M thread.