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In addition to cosmetic hacks such as file replacement, modifications to the gameplay of individual games, shorthanded to mods, have become a widespread phenomenon within the hacking community. The first attempts at modding involved Brawl, with such projects generally being viewed as novelties, not unlike the modification of palette swaps for characters; outside of this, forcing the Wii to load such mods was considered difficult, requiring use of the now-inoperable Twilight hack. The increasing complexity of game play mods and the discovery of the Smash Stack exploit, however, caused the mods to develop considerably more attention with observers.

Brawl remains the most commonly modded game in the series, though some mods also exist for Melee, Smash 64, and Smash 4. A majority of mods for Brawl can be loaded through the Smash Stack exploit, though alternate methods for loading them are available; mods for Melee often require the use of applications available for The Homebrew Channel. 19XXTE, a gameplay mod for Smash 64, requires patching a ROM image of the game, while a variety of experimental mods for Smash 4 on Wii U make use of a kernel exploit built into the console's internet browser.

Within the hacking community, the base game without any mods is often referred to as vBrawl or vMelee as a contraction for Vanilla Brawl or Vanilla Melee; the term "vanilla" comes from a common terminology featured in the computing world.

Overview

Specific changes to the game depend on the preferences of the developers, as well as their ultimate goal. There are a few different categories most mods fall into:

Balance mods don't change the core gameplay and apply buffs and nerf to characters to reduce competitive inequality between characters
Overpowered mods give every characters huge buffs so that everybody is equally overpowered.
Melee-inspired mods change the gameplay and movesets to be more fast-paced and technical like in Melee, sometimes adding mechanics such as wavedashing.
Competitive mods don't change anything gameplays-wise, but add features for players to practice their skill and/or improvements for tournament play, such as quality of life changes.
New character mods try to bring new characters into the game with new 3D models, animations and movesets, either replacing characters or being a new addition.
Skin Mods bring new Alternate Costumes to characters using File Replacment.

Due to the Smash Stack exploit and relative ease of hacking the Wii compared to other consoles, alongside the popularity of Project M, modifications for Brawl are considerably more widespread than for any other game in the series.

Stages

In addition to raw gameplay, other portions of the game may be overhauled by developers to further change gameplay. The changing of stages is among the more common ways to do this;

In Brawl

In Brawl-, the stage Temple has been significantly condensed compared to its vanilla counterpart.

In Project M, the same stage layout was used to make the Skyloft stage.

In Brawl mods, it has been possible for quite a long time to create new stages replacing others. It is also possible to use newly created slots on the stage selection screen or alternative stages that load when holding a specific button when selecting a stage.

Brawl- and Project M for instance, replace the ordinarily over-sized Temple with a smaller, more condensed version. Stages with transformations like Castle Siege or Pokemon Stadium are often changed to stay at the most competitive form of the stage. Outside of this, unpopular stages might be entirely replaced with others, such as how Project M replaces the highly non-standard Mario Bros. with a rendition of Fountain of Dreams from Melee.

Legacy TE added stages with the design of stages used for competitive play for each stage, using its theme in background models and textures and playing the same background music, that load when holding the Start, L, or Z button. Legacy XP added a lot of over 700 new stages into the game using new slots on the selection screen, as well as variants when holding down specific buttons. Button Shortcuts to quickly select popular Project M stages have also been added. Smash 2 added all stages that were in Melee back into the game. Outside of stage layout changes, some textures and tracks may be replaced, particularly in the case of original stages.

In Melee

SD Remix, released in 2015, features 3 pages of stages: One for the vanilla stages, one with 1 player mode only stages and one for newly created stages with some inspired from other games.

In 64

19XX modifies the stage selection screen to contain otherwise unplayable in versus mode stages Battlefield, Final Destination and Meta Crystal. 19XXTE 's selection screen contains 11 instead of the original 9 slots for stages, 19XXCE has 16 slots.

In 2018 modders found a way to change stages, first only replacing Hyrule Castle but later it became possible to replace all stages. The mod SSBMSE replaces most stages in the game with more competitive stages modeled after their appearance in other Smash games.

In version 0.8.2 of Smash Remix it became possible to include new stages that don't replace old stages. Its stage selection screen featured 3 pages each with 9 slots of stages (like in the original game), the first containing the original stages, the second mainly stages from SSBMSE and the last mainly 1 player mode stages.

In Smash 4

Creating new stages is possible in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.

In Ultimate

Creating new stages is possible in Ultimate, though stage collisions have new properties that cannot currently be edited by the Smash 4 stage collision editor.

Gameplay modifications

This article or section is incomplete. You can help SmashWiki by expanding or finishing it.
The editor who added this tag elaborates: much more to say about it, especially PM; split into games; split into core engine - small character move changes for balance or clone chracter creation

Gameplay modifications for the games are intended to, as their name implies, modify how the actual gameplay works. Character movesets or even the core engine might be changed, techniques might be removed, altered or newly added.