Invalid characterset or character set not supported Apex of the Smash Spirit: Project M and its Legacy (XP)





Apex of the Smash Spirit: Project M and its Legacy (XP)
October 29, 2018

IMPORTANT! Be sure to check out this review's Super Smash Bros. Brawl companion article, as well as the reviews for Smash 64 and Melee for context, if you wish.

Of all mediums of art, video games have some of the most apparent and flexible ways of being consumed, particularly in how consumption of video games can be modified. One can rewrite a book, re-edit a film, remix a song, re-paint a painting, and so on, yet video games are unique in how they can be re-coded to achieve any number of aims. We take that aspect of a video game for granted: it is code, and like all codes, it can be tinkered with by someone with the right tools. There are limits on how much one can adjust film or text or canvas while still being faithful to tone and aesthetics, much less the overall identity of that work as a whole, but game modification, while extremely difficult in its own right, allows for endless possibilities of changing and expanding the gameplay, setting, and other aspects of X game while still being fundamentally X game. While not everyone would word this in the jargon I provide, the true masters of modding have that intuition to expand a concept without breaching its identity, and among the most elite of these coding kings can be found in the modding community for Super Smash Bros. Brawl.



Birth.

On February 7, 2011, a miracle occurred; Project M came to the world. There had been traces of Super Smash Bros. Brawl modding before it, thanks to an easily exploitable glitch in the game's Stage Builder function, but PM, which had started out as just a modification of the Falco character, was something entirely new. Fans had decried Brawl's petulant backsteps in game design, but Project M fixed glitches, removed such awful design choices as random tripping and input delay, upped the gameplay speed, re-balanced the characters, and threw in a boatload of new characters and stages to boot. Adding new content to a game is nothing new to the modding scene, but Project M offered an astounding level of quality; their ports of the previously removed Mewtwo and Roy characters to Brawl feel as natural as they did in Melee, if not more so. That leads into what's so special about Project M: the feel.

Even after reading about the hundreds of hours of work put into crafting each character, I can't quite fathom the effort the Project M team took to get this mod to feel the way it does. The weight, the impact, the momentum, the speed of running -- it all just works. Everything is meticulously tinkered to perfection. This is a game in which simply moving about is satisfying, and it elevates the experience as a whole. Of course, for you MLG Pro Gamer types out there, wavedashing and other advanced techniques are back to elevate the heights your dedication can take you, and the little quirks introduced in Brawl, such as footstooling (jumping on an enemy's head to stun them) make the gameplay all the deeper. It's glorious.

Despite the skill ceiling being higher than ever, Project M is still quite approachable simple due to the fundamentals of the Smash Bros. series being intact; when your core gameplay is intuitive as it has been since Smash 64, you can afford to up the ante in terms of skill ceiling. And what player, casual or hardcore, isn't going to want to see the new content PM has to offer? New stages, new music, new costumes; even without all these new (and returning) goodies, the slightly adjusted character movesets are worth checking out, too. Balance is better than ever before, and everyone feels yet more intuitive to pick up, with no one vastly outmatching the other. Yes, you can beat a Fox or Meta Knight with an Olimar or a Mr. Game & Watch here. Isn't better balancing a superior method of accessibility than reducing how far skill can take you?

Thus the fans decided to do what Nintendon't, taking a game that was already fairly fun on its own merits and making it legendary. Hundreds of thousands of players of all kinds tried out the mod and were not disappointed, and the mod was downloaded over three million times across its various versions. Project M got so far into the mainstream that mainstream news outlets such as Kotaku, Wired, and GamesRadar poured out greatly deserved praises, some of them claiming the mod to be the apex of the series. Speaking of Apex, the massive competitive community -- from which was born the most well-known Smash personality on YouTube, Alpharad, -- helped Project M get a well-deserved spot at the international fighting game tournament expo, Apex. As the mod required the Super Smash Bros. Brawl game itself to run, Project M could hardly be considered illegal, Nintendo never took any action against Project M, and so the Smash Bros. community flourished in having found this new facet of itself. The magnificent mod's magnanimous massiveness was almost too good to be true, but for a moment, the party did indeed seem to be over.



Death.

On the bitter day of December 02, 2015, Project M ceased development and shuttled all content on its website, including downloads. In the place of the lovely web design and gateways to modding memories lie a forlorn farewell to its fantastic fanbase. According to the message, the "excruciating call" to end the growth of a project responsible for "unforgettable connections and friendships," this provider of "life-changing lessons in communication, team work, professionalism, work ethic, and more" was to simply end the seminal six-year sensation on a high note rather than see it decline in the competitive circles. There are also promises of some "entirely new venture" to look forward to upon the demise of Project M, but from what I gather, this promise has not yet been fulfilled since all those years ago.

Naturally, the ever-active Project M fanbase were shocked and saddened to see the sudden and confusing end to the development of a community treasure. It's uncertain as to what is to blame for this unfortunate undermining, but the immediate impulse implicates Nintendo. The mega-corporation had refrained from making any statement on the work, with the closest thing to a stance being the unreasonable banning of people discussing the mod on Nintendo's now-dead Miiverse platform. The bans were under the pretense of "criminal activity," despite legal precedent frowning upon this libelous accusation; as they do today with their egregious flouting of copyright law, Nintendo demonstrated back then their illiteracy in legal matters and consumer rights. Perhaps even worse was the possibility of their censoring people on Twitch. There is no legal case for Nintendo to take a stance against works Project M. It is simply the delusions of a company who, having perhaps more power in these regards than it should over in Japan, is so out of touch with U.S. law (to say nothing of ethics) that it tried to

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hastypixels hastypixels - November 10, 2018 (12:18 AM)
I have seen more than a few instances of fans taking better care of legacy IP than the studios that own and/or create them, and though that's because it was harder to make money on legacy IP than it is now, somewhere between the extra work, cost and market saturation, the point of doing it was lost.

Yet there's one darn good reason for supporting older games, especially within franchises, and that's brand awareness. Some development houses and publishers get it. Exposure counts, and we've had some real treats of games land in our laps as a result: Mighty Gunbolt Burst is one such example, one half a laughingstock-become-legitimate fun.

Project M was a breath of fresh air at just the right time, and I was amazed at how much was possible on a "locked down" platform. I'd modded my Wii, sure enough, but nothing the community presented had such polish! It was as if Nintendo had realized all of its mistakes and released a new patch, ala-PC style gaming. It's not unusual for a PC game to undergo at times strenuous overhauling, but certainly not Nintendo's titles.

Even now we get modest patches, which is a testament to their quality assurance process, more than anything else. Fans have done much more than ensure a game will run on an Operating System that post-dates it by a couple of decades, and that continues to be a fascinating aspect of gaming. Transformative but wholly faithful.

I agree. Try re-writing Shakespeare and having it reflect the work accurately. Yes, it's do-able, but that's because it's the endeavor of a fan!

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