This is for another forum. I don't want to post it there until it is complete. Here it will remain a work in progress. You do not have to understand what it says or read it, but if you're bored enough, go ahead.

Brawl+ and Balanced Brawl are hacks of Regular Brawl (the original game you get when you boot the disk). The creators and players of both BBrawl and Brawl+ saw that Regular Brawl is not competitive enough. The Brawl+ side saw it as a competitive joke, as it removes pretty much everything that made previous versions of Smash fun, like combos, fast-paced gameplay, and move-cancelling. The BBrawl side saw that it was okay, but it had some major flaws that needed to be addressed if Regular Brawl was ever going to be taken seriously on a competitive level, such as tripping (fyi, for no logical reason, your character trips randomly as you run), chaingrabs (grabbing, throwing, and regrabbing your opponent with your opponent having no chance to escape), and unbalance (Meta-Knight is top tier, and well, is basically unbeatable in the right hands).

Brawl+ came first out of the two, and since it saw Regular Brawl babyish and too easy to play, the creators took the liberty of naming it vBrawl, or Vanilla Brawl, for being too sweet. Not too many people know this, so they too call it vBrawl. If the hardcore vBrawl and BBrawl fans ever found out the origins, they would probably be mad. I mean, yeah.

This was an intro for you guys if you do plan to read this. If you see some stuff repeated, oh well…

For it to make sense, think of Brawl+ as Linux and BBrawl as Mac.

Outline

I. Introduction

II. The Hack's Purpose

III. Which is More Competitive

IV. What to Expect

V. Disadvantages of Each

Comparation Between BBrawl and Brawl+

Note: This is a comparation, not an opinion, not a debate which is better, or not a place for elitism. Don't get this locked.

Introduction

Well, you could be reading this because of a lot of reasons. You're looking for an engine hack for Brawl because you want to try something different, or you're just bored of texture and music hacks with regular Brawl only. Well, look no further. This topic is intended to inform new people on what are the differences between these two projects, and which is the one they're looking for.

Well, this is as simple as a comparation is going to get. Even if you still don't even know what a .gtc file is, you'll probably understand. Take note that this topic is arranged in order from what is most likely to make you choose to the least likely. Keep reading until the end if you don't decide at first.

Purpose

Now, for some background on how each hack got started.

Brawl+ - Melee fans rejoiced, Nintendo announced Super Smash Bros. Brawl, technically, Melee with new characters and stages. Melee was already considered a gem in the competitive community, as professional matches were very amusing to watch, and actually playing it was so adrenaline pumping (it's apparently possible for a video game to do that). The few that payed attention though, noted one thing: Sakurai (The director of the Smash series, and as a little side information, also the Kirby series) stated that gameplay was going to be slowed down to make it easier for new people to pick up. Many rages ensued by Melee fans, as their "fun speed activate" gameplay was gone.

When Brawl was released, Melee fans raged so hard. The gameplay was a joke in a competitive sense. Combos were gone, a lot of inescapable chaingrabs were found, and the most ridiculous of all, the character, while moving on the ground, will randomly trip. Imagine being a race car driver, then suddenly buying a car whose maximum speed is 2MPH. That's just.. unreasonable, so much, that even people who would just drive to get around would say it's ridiculous. Yeah, this was basically it.

First, came the miracle, Wii homebrew. Then, a Action Replay/Gameshark like application came out, Gecko OS. At first, this was used for lulz and giggles, making giant characters, using superpowered characters, or swapping items, like Peach's Down-B giving Pokeballs. For months, it stayed like this.

Then came the expert hackers that well, made useful codes. Among them, a user named Phantom Wings, which made pretty much more than half of the codes used today. Melee fans wanted a Melee 2.0 (which never got done), so they asked the hackers to bring elements back from Melee to Brawl, such as hitstun (the amount of time you stay immobile after an attack, basically unexistant in vBrawl, hence no combos), L-canceling (later turned into Auto-L-canceling to remove techincal barriers) and wavedashing (unfortunately worked in a similar fashion as Luigi's wavedash in Melee, but for everybody).

Of course, Melee 2.0 failed. For some Sakurai reason, the developers of Brawl used an engine called Havok instead of Melee as a base, so everything is changed and having it work exactly like Melee again "would be a living hell and would probably take years, and still it probably won't play like Melee." Knowing this, the original group that wanted Melee 2.0, which wasn't a large group to begin with - redirected their goals. They now searched for a better Brawl, as they couldn't make another Melee.

The name Brawl+ was coined, and it aimed for character balance and a not-snailed-paced gameplay, while being as competitive as Melee. In general, Brawl+ is believed to be Melee 2.0 because:

- That's how it started out, but the idea was later dropped.

- A lot of Melee-specific techinques are added, though people who use this argument fail to see that Smash 64 had a lot of the stuff too.

- Old, Melee, high tiers like Marth, Falco, Fox, Jiggz, Captain Falcon, etc. play an aweful lot like their Melee counterparts without wavedashing.

- While it features fast gameplay, it isn't exactly like Melee's (Melee's is far more faster)

Brawl+ isn't Melee 2.0, and now you know why it will never be. Brawl+ is what previous fans of Smash Bros. would have thought Brawl+ would come out to be, but again, for some reason, didn't.

Balanced Brawl: In BBrawl fans' eyes, vBrawl is perfect, but has some flawed techiniques that need to be removed if the game is ever to be taken seriously. Also, they see Brawl+ as being flawed as making it into another game is not the solution to making it more competitive.

BBrawl first started out in the dark, very few people knew about it. It was made by very few people too. Two people, in fact. Thinkaman, who is a very respected vBrawl player, and Amazing Ampharos, who is also a very good vBrawl player, and a moderator in the smashboards forums. Their goal, was to keep vBrawl the way it is, with character balance, as the tier list for vBrawl is ridiculous. Meta-Knight, for example, has no weaknesses. At all.

Unfortunately, as already stated, BBrawl started in secret, so there is no more history available for them.