Listen to the man himself explain it!
Minus Bros. are the vessels that host the souls of X's victims. They all appear as crude recreations of Mario's original Super Mario Bros. sprite. Unlike the vessels in Soulless Sonic, which are all indistinguishible from the characters they are an imitation of at a glance, Minus Bros. bare an abstract resemblence to the source material. This version of X doesn't seem to have the eye for perfection its Soulless Sonic counterpart does.
A common misconception is that the Minus Bros. are meant to appear glitchy. In reality, their corruptions are physical deformities; these deformities just so happen to often manifest in ways that resemble graphical glitches. This is evidenced by the Minus Brother appearing on the Brother Race mock-up's appearance behind the Window.
Briefly, the Window is a concept established in Soulless Sonic that is the rationale for how X's realm appears as a 16-bit video game on the outside and hyper-real on the inside. The game window literally translates what exists on the inside into what is seen on the outside. The same holds true for Minus Bros.
Most Minus Bros. possess at least the bare-minimum required to properly play Super Mario Bros.: legs to run and jump, arms to climb and shoot fireballs with, and a head to look with. If a Minus Brother is too deformed, to the point one or more of these minimum requirements arent good enough, this will be reflected in their gameplay. For example, the Reverse-Headed Minus Brother has their camera view behind them, hindering the player's ability to see oncoming hazards.
No promises, but it's POSSIBLE we could need MORE MINUS BROS. for future projects! If you wanna get a head start on that, (or if you just wanna make your own Minus Brother and show it to us, (It's fun!)) please adhere to the following guidelines:
Send your Brother to Chewing on Twitter (@TheEXEHater) or Bluesky (@chewinguhcharacter.bsky.social). If your Brother has a gameplay deformity in mind, please include it in your post! Again, no promises we'll ever actually need these, but we want to see them anyway. They're fun.
WARNING : This is Chewing Character. I may edit your Minus Brothers to better fit what I interpret as the style of these vessels, but I will make sure to credit you if these appear in any projects.
minusbros.neocities.org is not affiliated with JoeDoughBoi.