Updated: Feb. 10, 2011; 7:49 a.m. PST

Can superfans make a better Nintendo game than Nintendo itself? Die-hard players of the Super Smash Bros. series say they have.

Unhappy with changes Nintendo made in Super Smash Bros. Brawl , the Wii version of the popular fighting game, a group known as Project M Backroom has tweaked the title, making it more balanced, more competitive and — as far as the group’s members are concerned — more fun. The game hackers released the first version of the mod, called Project M, on Monday.

In short, Project M tweaks Brawl ‘s gameplay so it plays more like the 10-year-old GameCube title Super Smash Bros. Melee .

“ Melee has incredible depth and excitement,” Project M leader Shane Mulligan said in an e-mail to Wired.com. “It was approachable to new players, but at the same time it allowed for highly variable combos, embraced technical skill, and always left room for improvement.”

Mulligan said he considers Brawl a big step backward in terms of that depth, although he admits it is more approachable for casual players. He calls Project M an “evolution of the series.”

To play the mod, all users have to do is download Project M to an SD card. It requires them to own a copy of Brawl .

With more than 7 million copies sold, 2001’s Super Smash Bros. Melee was the biggest seller on Nintendo’s GameCube console. The game features 26 characters from across Nintendo’s franchises engaging in over-the-top battles royal, answering the question “Who would win in a fight between Pikachu, Mario and Kirby?”

Melee proved quite popular with casual gamers, but some took it extremely seriously and played the game competitively. When Nintendo released the Wii sequel, casual players were perfectly happy with Brawl’s expanded 37-character roster, but the hard-core players lamented the loss of what they considered perfectly refined gameplay.

The shift was deliberate on Nintendo’s part. In Japan’s Famitsu magazine, Smash creator Masahiro Sakurai recently said he doubts Nintendo will ever make another game in the series that’s “as geared towards hard-core gamers.”

“ Melee fans who played deep into the game without any problems might have trouble understanding this, but Melee was just too difficult,” he wrote.

Melee featured fast-paced and free-flowing combat, but Brawl ‘s fighting system proved slow and poky. Melee rewarded players who could string together a succession of moves in combination; Brawl rewarded players who hid in corners and took fewer risks.

What’s more, the Project M team says many of the characters in the Wii game are considerably weaker than others, making the game quite unbalanced. Rarely would a competitive player choose the characters Ganondorf, Bowser or Link, according to Mulligan.

“Many characters throughout the series … aren’t truly viable in competitive or even friendly play,” he said, but “some tweaks here and there truly make them a force to be reckoned with.”

A prime example of a character that was heavily edited, says Mulligan, is Solid Snake, the hero of the Metal Gear Solid series who appears in Brawl but not Melee .

“Snake [players] relied largely on camping with his disjointed upwards kick and grenades,” he said. “We didn’t want him to just sit back and camp all day; we wanted him to have depth and trickiness where he can place C4 on opponents in a combo while controlling the stage with grenades, mines and more.”

Mulligan said he doesn’t intend for Project M to replace either of Nintendo’s official games. Instead, he sees it as a complement to the existing titles.

“There will surely be purists out there for both Brawl and Melee , but we ask them to be optimistic to try this out because there is a ton of great new content available for them to enjoy,” he said.

Images courtesy Project M.

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