Hi, Billy Mays here.
Wait, what?
For those of you not in "the know", get out now. You aren't cool enough. The rest of you then already are aware that the above image is a texture mod of Ganondorf from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, made possible through Brawl +.
Brawl + is like CS Source, only not intended to be as such. I'd say I'm sure that Nintendo didn't intend-o (and on that farm, there lived a Miyamoto) to make the Wii so easily soft modded, and in fact menu updates seem to support that, but I'm not entirely sure.
Follow me here. You are The Nintendo, a being made of quarters and excess sugar rush energy. Well, of course you want to make arcade games to get more of these things, but what is this? There are other forms of money which can be converted to quarters, allowing you to consume them like some sort of capitalist cubivore AND sugar rushes occurring outside of wherever arcades are located?! "Gimme some'a that" you'd say if you spoke anything other than a confusing language composed of mostly english words as dictated by my dad after he came home from the place that sells happy juice. Thus, the NES was born, or as many people call it, the Ness (I also call STD's studs, which results in hilariously zany mix-ups). So, good job so far. Continue this for a while, upgrading the consoles as necessary. So, suddenly, a new market opens up, namely people who don't really play videogames. These are known as casual gamers or, as you might better know them, the person who thinks Ninja Bread Man looked like a good game. Well, if that's where the money is, then sign me up. But wait, what about the people who gave you their money for so long, and have grown to love the parasitic eldritch entity that you are? Nostalgia and easy modding.
See, I still love Nintendo and my Wii. They deliver good games (and a lot of bad ones, but who's counting?) and a welcome break from the modern games of XBox 360 and PS3 which seem to be too serious and extremely focused on online play, even when it is completely out of place...Ghostbusters. Beyond that, I hold the minority opinion which I may have just made up that Nintendo intentionally left the Wii easily mod-able. They knew that it would sell like crazy, and that most of those people would not have the skill or know how to hack it. This way, they get money, and keep their most loyal fans happy and hacking. I mean, how much money do they really need?
Okay, so I've gotten a bit off topic.
Modding. You remember grade school? You remember tag? You remember X-Men TAS? Okay, the first two are important for this exercise. Tag was awesome! But then, someone realized there were, dun dun da, other kinds of tag! Freeze tag, tv tag, safety tag, and I'll bet you made up some of your own versions of tag. Congratulations, you are a modder.
2nd law of Modding Dynamics: As time increases, all game mods tend towards Calvinball.
Yes, modding is as simple as taking something which already exists and "modifying" it within it's pre-defined reality. This works very easily with tag because everything is within our defined reality. With games it's a tad more complicated, though there really should be no sarcastic emphasis on the word "tad'.
Within the world of a specific game, modding must take place within that reality (the game's source code). This is much easier with PC games and, by extension, ROMs. Imagine then my surprise when I found out about a moddable hack of Brawl called Brawl +. I played a very bare bones mod of it, and had more fun with Brawl than I ever had before. Characters were rebalanced, Sonic was amazing, speed and gravity were upped, hit stun turned up, basically it was what I had wanted Brawl to be from the beginning.
I shared this with my younger brother and softmodded his Wii for him so he could do it himself from there. Well, imagine my surprise when I came home for Easter to this.
I did not mean/to blow your mind/but Brawl+ does it/all the ti-I-ime.It's like Mugen, but a mod for a home console! Do you have any clue how awesome that is? This just blew my mind. They made a Hyper Sonic mod, new stages, ridiculous costumes, new menus, and a HYPER SONIC MOD! It is so much fun. I talked about how some of the fun of MvC2 was its brokeness? Same goes for the god mods in Brawl+. Hyper Sonic cannot lose. I mean, he could suicide, but if being played by a retarded monkey with one working hand, he will win. Not quite as true for some of the other super mods, like my beloved Storm Fox, but that should not take away from their supreme awesomeness.
Now, I like to have something important to say about whatever my topic is. To that end, I wanna use this as a continuation of my previous comment on game balancing. Yes, game balancing is important. I don't think anyone wants to be "that guy", the one who looked at Metaknight and said, "Yes, this is will be a perfectly well received addition to a game with a history of competitive tournament play." I enjoy Brawl, Brawl+, and the super modded variation of Brawl+. I also enjoy the original Super Mario Bros. as well as the insanely unfair mods of that game. I play Devil May Cry on Easy, Normal, and Dante Must Die all for very different reasons.
What I'm trying to get at is that there are a wealth of different ways to enjoy games, whether it be the basic run through, the "I am a magnifying glass among ants" run through, or the "more infuriating that the Valley of the Kings" run through (get that reference, and I'll send you a pack of nerds jelly beans). Developers can only put so much work into a game, and only design a few different ways to enjoy it. While I usually am happy with the end result at the very least, I would love to see more games get the Brawl+ treatment. I look forward to a future where level editors (would have made Mirror's Edge sooooooooooo much better), open source games, and mods are common place. Where game designing is an open exchange between developers and gamers. Where everyone loves Suda51 and gives him money (hey, it's my idealistic future). And finally, where Billy Mays is a playable character in every videogame ever.
A toast, to the future.
So, what do an architect, a male model photographer, and a whore have in common?
They work with studs all day! And have existential depression; just like all of us.
:'(
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