Brawl Central (website)

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Not to be confused with Team:Brawl Central.

VGDistrict logo.

Brawl Central (later known as Nintendo Hub, VGDistrict, and then lastly as Smash Bros Central,) started off as an unofficial Super Smash Bros. Brawl fansite on November 16th, 2006 by Chris. TheBuzzSaw would join Chris shortly after to help with programming and backend assistance with the site. Brawl Central acted like the Smash Bros. DOJO!! by providing information related to Super Smash Bros. Brawl and translating sources from Japanese magazines and forums. Brawl Central would later broaden itself and include a forum for community discussion on January 15th, 2008.

History

Nintendo Hub in 2008.

Brawl Central was started and run by Smash Bros. players and SmashBoards members Chris and the Buzz Saw. At some point, 3 other admins (T3h Kaiser, Pumpkins, and NGW) were appointed, with Buzz retiring. The main website featured many different pieces of information and news of Nintendo and other video game related news, constantly being updated by news editors. News editors included NGW, Kagato, Ferret, Xiammes, Kirby173, and Rocky. The forum's section had members gather and discuss topics ranging from video games to questions and forum games. The administrators and moderators kept the site clean, although members sometimes got to "vote" in regards to whether or not something should be deleted. The forum would include many character-specific clans for Super Smash Brothers Brawl. Some of the clans included "The Aura Wielders" (Lucario), "K.I.N.G.S" (King Dedede), "Aethercide" (Ike), "The Galaxian Enforcers" (Metaknight), "FALCON PAWNCH!" (Cpt. Falcon), etc.

Brawl Central hosted many elaborate wifi tournaments during its tenure. The big tournaments were BCT1, BCT2, and BCT3. Some of the best fighters on the forum were RedHalberd, Yonex204, UltimateRazer, CO18, Fatal, FIERCE, Snap, Thulius, ridleynkrool, and boomshakalaka. A lot of the tournament matches can still be viewed on Brawl Central's old YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@BrawlCentralVideos/videos

In 2008, Brawl Central rebranded to Nintendo Hub. Many of the Brawl-related features were kept, such as character boards and competitive Brawl forums. However, the site had expanded to encompass many more series, with over 20 forums related to game series, mostly those from first-party Nintendo franchises. Examples of non-Nintendo brands include the Guitar Hero / Rock Band forum, and the Gears of War and Halo forums. It later rebranded to VGDistrict.

VGDistrict's appearance.

On November 2009, T3h Kaiser and other admins, moderators, and forum members were tired with the way that the admin Chris ran VGDistrict and thus left to make Xugo Gaming. VGD was set to close down later that month, but on November 24th, Chris decided to keep the site open and used cheaper hosting to help try to secure the site's financial stability. On Friday, December 11th, 2009 VGDistrict was revamped and all previous members and posts were deleted. One of the most notable changes from the switch to VGDistrict, besides veering away from the Nintendo-centric branding, was the revamped homepage. The homepage now featured dedicated sections for featured members, gaming news, sponsors, gaming tournaments, and a link to VGD's new podcast, the D-cast. The D-cast was a videogame podcast ran by forum members RnR and Adamated87.

VGDistrict ran until around June 2013, where it shut down, rebranded, and began redirecting to Smash Bros Central, which added features such as a wiki and tournaments. The pivot from VGDistrict to Smash Bros Central was an effort by Chris to capitalize on the hype of the upcoming Super Smash Brothers for Wii U and 3DS. One of SBC's new moderators, Proto Man, would post daily Miiverse updates from Masahiro Sakurai to Smash Bros Central's homepage. Smash Bros Central also started its own podcast, called "The Smash Bros Central Podcast." The SBC podcast would have standalone episodes with set Nintendo topics, and special episodes with Nintendo Direct/E3 Reactions. Podcast hosts/guests included: GSNinja, Lauren, Proto Man, SilverX, Ismar, PK_Awesome, Karazure, Liam, Scan, Rocky, Logshot, and Genow. Smashbros Central would continue being run until around January 2014, where the site would no longer run.

Domain History

The Smash Bros. Central website, dated May 29th 2020.

Smash Bros Central would live on until Early 2015 until the website presumably shut down. The domain would be taken up by a business company, containing dozens of articles relating to business studies. Tab names would simply be labelled "Business". This would continue being used until around March of 2018, where the website would be open for purchase again.

In June of 2018, Smash Bros Central's website returned with a black screen saying "Soon...". It once again sported the Smash Bros Central name on tabs, implying an intention to return. As of 15th April 2024, however, the same screen remains.

The domain for VGDistrict would not see after January 2014 until July 2017, where it became a redirect for SSBWorld. On April 22nd, 2020, the domain name for VGDistrict expired and was auctioned on GoDaddy's website. The domain name was valued at $1,305 USD based on domains of similar naming conventions, but ended with no sale. In September of 2020, it was sold by a Chinese vendor, though the resultant website was taken down.

Gallery

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  VGDistrict's abbreviated logo.

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  Nintendo Hub Banner - Ness.

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  Nintendo Hub Banner - Samus.

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  Nintendo Hub Halloween Theme.

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  Smash Bros Central's appearance.

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  VGDistrict pre-launch