If everyone is overpowered, then no one is overpowered!
Brawl-, or Brawl Minus, is a Game Mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl in protest of many other mods for the game that try to balance it out, more specifically to Brawl+, which went on to become Project M. While other mods try to balance the game within reason, Brawl- throws reason out the window and decides to give every single character in the game absolutely incredible buffs to the point where every character is so overpowered that the game is balanced. The game gained a lot of notoriety for its absolutely insane decisions in making the game balanced, such as giving every character a wall jump, making Ganondorf faster and giving him a projectile and a One-Hit Kill move, giving Captain Falcon electrical properties on any attack involving his knee, and even allowing Peach to pull turnips out of the air!
Due to the crazy decisions the team decided to make, it became one of the most popular mods for Brawl in a while. Even up to the point where it had a slight fandom rivalry with Project M!
As of version 4.0BC, Waluigi has been added as the first newcomer to Brawl-.
This game has examples of:
- Adaptational Early Appearance: The addition of Ridley was announced in December 2019, though his moveset may greatly differ from the one he has in Ultimate.
- Ascended Extra: As of 4.0BC, the Golden Sun universe now has a stage in addition to its Music and Assist Trophy.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Lucario can do a special taunt to instantly put itself at 999% damage, which makes it unbelievably powerful. However, the taunt can be stopped, or even if it is successful, it can be killed with anything in one hit.
- The Bus Came Back: Pichu, Mewtwo, Roy and Dr. Mario return from Melee.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: Waluigi. He uses dance moves, can swim in midair, can serve people like tennis balls, and one of his strongest moves is screaming "WAA".
- Competitive Balance: Granted, in a psychotic way, but most characters have reliable zero to death combos that it kinda works.
- Crazy Enough to Work: While the decision to make everyone way too powerful is questionable, it does do a pretty good job of balancing. Every character has fast moves, good hitboxes, reliable combos, and effective killing strategies.
- Defiant to the End: If you Star KO Falco, he will trash-talk you as he's sailing off into the background.
- Denser and Wackier: In edition to being generally overpowered, characters are sometimes modified to be just outright weird, such as Fox's Landmaster being replaced by Master Hand.
- Divergent Character Evolution:
- Pichu and Roy have noticeable differences in their movesets to make them stand out compared to Pikachu and Marth. Roy gains a mid-air boost and a new Final Smash while Pichu's general moves are overhauled or modified to make use of the Supercharge mechanic.
- As of 4.0BC, Pokemon Trainer has been dropped entirely and thus Charizard, Ivysaur, and Squirtle now have unique Down-B moves and Final Smashes.
- Fartillery: Unlike in Smash proper, where it's mostly a quick joke, Wario's Gasshole status is utilized far more heavily here, whether it be hitting opponents multiple times or increasing his momentum.
- Funny Background Event: The "Final Frustration" stage occasionally has Master Hand and Crazy Hand playing rock-paper-scissors in the background.
- Game-Breaker: The idea is for everyone to reach this status.
- Game Mod:
- It is a mod of Super Smash Bros. Brawl in the same vein as Project M.
- Minus itself has an offshoot in the form of Brawl Minus Zeus
, essentially the Japanese equivalent, which differs in various ways including new characters.
- Glass Cannon: Exaggerated with Lucario, who can put itself at 999% damage with a special taunt. At this point, its Aura is so high that it will either kill you in one hit or you will kill it in one hit.
- The Grappler: Bowser is retooled into one of these in this mod: In addition to retaining his Flying Slam and normal throws, Bowser's Royal Rampage gives him access to a variety of moves on the ground and Galactic Crusher, a spinning twirl that turns into a piledriver if it connects, in the air. These moves replace Bowser's fire breath, further cementing him as a grapple-based character.
- Guest Fighter: More like "Guest Stage", but a stage based on Golden Sun appears in 4.0BC.
- Hitbox Dissonance: Invoked, many characters have modified hitboxes that allow them to hit further. For example, King Dedede's forward smash already had good range, but now it has earthquake hitboxes.
- Large Ham: Captain Falcon, an already very large ham in the original Smash series, is made even hammier here. He will loudly proclaim "YES!" any time he hits someone with his knee, will yell "COME ON!" when he grabs you, and tell you "Show me your moves!" when he grabs you with his Falcon Dive.
- Lethal Joke Character: An exaggerated case of this where every single character is one of these.
- Lightning Bruiser: Everyone, to some extent.
- Mythology Gag: Plenty of references are abound. For example:
- Mario's dash attack comes from Super Mario 64.
- Mario and Luigi have the Firebrand and Thunderhand.
- Donkey Kong can pick up and throw barrels at will.
- The Pokémon Trainer Trio and Lucario have color palettes based on other Pokémon.
- Sonic's color palettes are based on Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, and "Glitch Sonic" character Ashura.
- Meta Knight and Snake get outfits based on their classic appearances in 4.0.BC. Additionally, Sonic gets his track suit from Sonic Adventure 2, Roy and Marth get their classic and Awakening outfits respectively, and much more.
- In 4.1, Falcon now has Boost Power.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Version 4.0BC includes costumes such as Ness' Pajamas and Mewtwo's armor that were previously seen in Project M.
- Not Quite Flight: Ivysaur can actually hover in midair if it uses Bullet Seed above ground.
- Number of the Beast: Ganondorf's Warlock Punch does 666% damage.
- One-Hit Kill:
- While Ganondorf's 666% punch became a staple of the mod, Marth's new critical hit is even worse! It does more damage than his original critical hit and ignores sidestepping and airdodging.
- There is also (fittingly enough) Link's Mortal Draw.
- Practical Taunt: Several! For example, many taunts in which characters wave their weapons around are changed so that they do damage when the opponent gets too close.
- Pre-Mortem One-Liner: When doing his up-throw, Meta Knight says "Come back when you can put up a fight," which becomes this if it KOs.
- Promoted to Playable: While an assist trophy in the base game, Waluigi becomes a playable character as of version 4.0.
- Purple Is Powerful:
- Possibly. Purple is the main aesthetic of the game, and since the game is about making everyone overpowered...
- Ganondorf primarily uses purple for his attacks, which are some of the strongest moves in the game (including, of course, the Demon Punch).
- Purposely Overpowered: The entire point of the mod is to do this to everyone!
- Shout-Out: Waluigi's poses for his alternate costumes are based on the members of the Joestar Family.
- Silliness Switch: Inverted. As of Version 4.0b, the vBrawl download removes the sillier aspects of the game.
- Spinoff: Brawl- started off as one to Brawl+, and itself spawned a Japanese one called Brawl Minus Zeus.
- Stylistic Suck: The most apparent example are the character portraits: The earliest cases from builds such as 2.x.6 were basically crayon doodles of the characters. Pin Clock's art in the recent builds, while being much better artistically, still gives off this vibe compared to the 3D renders that most other mods use (including the "vBrawl" version of Minus). Given that this is Brawl-, it fits well.
- Take That!: The entire mod was created to make fun of Brawl mods, specifically Brawl+ and its successor Project M, which were oriented around rebalancing the game, often to "fix" the characters to be more competitively viable. Brawl- goes the completely opposite direction by making everyone so ridiculously overpowered that the game is, in its own strange way, balanced.
- Time Master: Luigi's new Final Smash, Minus World, freezes time for everyone except him.
- Teleport Spam: Zelda combines this with aspects of being a Puppet Fighter: When Zelda uses certain moves, she creates a hitbox some distance in away from her. If the player holds the A button and the attack connects, she can teleport to that hitbox.
- Uniqueness Decay: If everyone is broken, noone will be.
- Wholesome Crossdresser: One of Luigi's costumes in version 4.0BC is once again Princess Peach's dress.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Bowser takes a page from Zangief's book and trades his fire breath for a walking grapple move with four unique throws.
