F.A.Q.
This page is designed to answer common questions and concerns.
Q. Is this illegal?
A. No. Balanced Brawl is a non-commercial venture that affects copyrighted files but does not distribute any means of circumventing copyright. We encourage the purchase of Nintendo products and neither condone nor support piracy methods or ideas in any way.
If you are still concerned, check here.
Q. Will this damage or alter my Wii? Do I have to mod my Wii?
A. No. Balanced Brawl is completely safe; there is zero risk whatsoever of it causing damage to your Wii or your game disc. Balanced Brawl can be run on a completely unmodified Wii, and it has no permanent effect on the Wii, the game, or your Brawl save file. Once you turn the Wii off or reset it, nothing of Balanced Brawl remains. The next time you boot up Brawl, it will be standard Brawl, and you will have to enter the Stage Builder with the Balanced Brawl SD card in the Wii to play Balanced Brawl again.
Q. Can I remove the SD card once I start Balanced Brawl?
A. No. Balanced Brawl reads from the SD card during gameplay; if the SD card is not present nothing bad will happen, except the Wii will not load the modified files. This will result in characters loading their original, unmodified versions. Putting the SD card back in will let BBrawl version load again.
Q. I have a custom stage from WiFi, and I can’t delete it. What do I do?
A. Advance the internal clock on your Wii forward a day or more. This will cause Brawl to automatically delete such stages. Set Smash Service to “off” to prevent this from happening in the future.
Q. Hanenbow appears in My Music. What happens if I pick it?
A. Hanenbow is not supposed to have music options, so the game will freeze. Do not pick it. If you do pick it, don’t worry as it will cause no damage to your Wii or game disc. Simply hold the “power” button on your Wii for four seconds to safely power down.
Q. Will my Balanced Brawl replays work in standard Brawl? Visa-versa?
A. No, replays are stored as input sequences for human players. This means watching a replay in a version of Brawl other than what it was recorded in will desynchronize and look goofy. (Although it won’t crash, so don’t worry.)
Q. I found a bug! What should I do?
A. First consult the list of known bugs provided below. If it is not on the list, please inform one of the developers via whatever channel you prefer. We will do our best to address the situation.
- Halberd and Rumble Falls are not frozen during intro animations. Pokémon Trainer’s Pokémon occasionally starts in t-pose on Rumble Falls; they can be hit to return to normal.
- Hanenbow appears in My Music. The game freezes if it is selected.
- Setting the stage selection method in the rules menu to “Random” causes the game to lock up upon starting a match.
- The Random Stage Switch menu under Tournament Mode displays Hanenbow instead of WiFi Waiting Room.
- In the Replays tab, the textual name of all stages appears to be “Home-Run Contest”.
- Using Sheik’s chain right above the ground causes unusual behavior and occasional crashing. (This is a bug in standard Brawl.)
- Sometimes when entering the Additional Rules menu, the stock mode timer will increment by one minute automatically.