Super Smash Bros.

This isn't even all of the characters.

"Something's gone wrong in the happy-go-lucky world of Nintendo!"

—Don LaFontaine in the Super Smash Bros. commercial

SUPEEEEEER SMAAAAAAAAAASH BROTHEEEEEERS!

Super Smash Bros., known in Japan as Dairantō Smash Brothers, is Nintendo's very own Massive Multiplayer Crossover Fighting Game/Platformer with a twist. Remember all those times when, as a kid, you put all your Transformers and G.I. Joe and Masters of the Universe toys together and made them fight (and you know you did)? Super Smash Bros takes that idea and runs with it.

Characters from Nintendo's large stable of games, from Mario and Pikachu to Link and Samus Aran, face off in a four-player fight to the finish.

Unlike other games, however, the Smash Bros. series doesn't leave it at that. Several stages have platforms, bringing the carnage to multiple levels, while others have native dangers, such as rising acid and random airstrikes. In addition, various weapons will appear randomly on the field, from barrels and hammers from Donkey Kong, to beam swords (which look suspiciously like lightsabers), Super Stars, the old SNES Super Scope, and even Poké Balls, which of course, release Pokémon to help you out. Instead of simply trying to inflict damage, players are instead attempting to knock them off the stage, forcing them off the sides, or just smacking them harder and harder, until they eventually go sailing off as A Twinkle in the Sky.

The first game (1999), released for the Nintendo 64, is rightly regarded as one of the best games ever for the system. The Sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001) for the Game Cube, featured even more characters, such as the oft-rescued princesses Zelda and Peach opposite their oft-kidnappers Bowser and Ganondorf, a side-scrolling Adventure Mode, and collectible trophies. Two hidden characters in the game, Marth and Roy from the Fire Emblem series that until then was only released in Japan, led to that series getting a much larger worldwide audience and release, becoming another of Nintendo's flagship series.

The third game in the series, Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008) for the Wii, introduces Final Smashes, brings back the long-absent Pit from Kid Icarus, and even features third-party characters from outside Nintendo's stable; in this case, Sonic the Hedgehog and Metal Gear's Solid Snake, the former fulfilling a nearly two-decade-old fanboy dream. (The latter was because of a request by Hideo Kojima.)

Not to mention that the game now has an actual story. The Subspace Emissary tells of a world in which the characters (as implied in Melee) are trophies that come to life and fight each other, until the Subspace Army appears and tries to take the entire world for themselves by transporting it, piece by piece, into Subspace. The characters team up with each other and battle through worlds inspired by Nintendo games while trying to stop the Subspace Army.

A fourth installment for the 3DS and the Wii U has been released called, well, Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS/Wii U. This installment did away with the Subspace Emissary, while adding all sorts of other modes such as character customization, Smash Run which is basically a Metroidvania game with enemies ranging from all sorts of franchises, and Smash Tour which incorporates light party game elements with a series of challenges undergone by the players. This was the first Smash game to have DLC, with the final DLC character even being the winner of an official Nintendo-sponsored Smash Ballot.

The fifth installment, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, has been released for the Nintendo Switch on December 7, 2018. It features all characters from past Smash games while also adding few newcomers and the concept of Echo Fighters, which are this game's term for "clones" (think Lucina as Marth's alt instead of taking her own character slot). It also features a multitude of stages from past Smash games as well as a few new ones. All stages have the Final Destination-esque Ω form introduced in the previous installment as well as a brand new form that makes them look more like the Battlefield stage. Notably, this game does away with Trophies, replacing them with Spirits. Related to this, this game's Adventure mode is called World of Light which explains their presence and there is a special mode called Spirit Board. Both modes allow players to battle various opponents with special rules to collect Spirits.

This game pretty much kicked off the Mascot Fighter sub-genre in one go.

Features characters from:

Super Smash Bros. is the Trope Namer for:
Tropes used in Super Smash Bros. include:
  • Acronym and Abbreviation Overload: Competitive players communicate with a developed lingo using terms like "fair", "d-smash", "WD", "DI", "SHFFL", and "utilt", none of which you would find in an official strategy guide. For example, "SHFFL", pronounced as "shuffle", is an advanced technique executed by Short-Hopping, Fast-Falling, and Lag-canceling.
  • Airborne Aircraft Carrier: The Halberd and the Great Fox.
  • The All-Seeing AI: Assisting items that block the screen, such as the Nintendog and Togepi, have no effect on the AI. They are also immune to any interface screws that get thrown at you.
  • All the Worlds Are a Stage: Multiple-Choice Final Exam example in Brawl with The Great Maze.
  • Amazing Technicolor Battlefield: The Battlefield, Final Destination, and all of Subspace.
  • Animal-Themed Superbeing: Captain Falcon.
  • Art Shift: Most every character that appears in Melee, Brawl and Smash 4 has a level of detail miles higher than in their native series. This is most perceptible with Mario characters, like Peach [dead link] .
  • Artificial Brilliance: All the A Is in all 4 Smash games are quite good at grabbing people who are trying to recover.
  • Artificial Stupidity:
    • Smash 64's and Melee's A Is both suffer from rolling habits.
    • There are spots on every single map in both Smash 64 and Melee that cause CPU level 9s to try and hit you and then kill themselves. This is less common in Brawl.
    • CPU's in Brawl on a Custom Stage will always go to the lowest part of the stage and fight there. And if there's a fall-through platform over a pit with grabbable ledges, the CPU's will often try to reach the platform instead of the ledges, no matter how out of reach it is.
  • Asskicking Pose: Many of the taunts.
  • Attack Backfire: Ness' and Lucas' PSI Magnets absorb energy projectiles (i.e. Mario's fireballs, Samus' charge shot) and heal by the amount of damage the attack would have caused. Villager on the other hand grabs any projectile and puts them in his pocket in order to save for later use. And yes, this includes anything from arrows, fully charged Aura Spheres, to even Armored Phantoms!
  • Autobots Rock Out: In Brawl, the Final Destination theme is a hard rock remake of the main theme of the game.
  • Awesomeness Meter: Smash 64 and Melee gives you bonuses at the end of a match for playing in specific ways or doing certain actions; for example, scoring a knockout while standing on the revival platform. These bonuses only have value in a "special" match or in the one-player modes where they count toward your score.
  • Badass Boast: Some of the taunts qualify.
  • Banana Peel: One of the items in Brawl and Smash 4.
  • Battle Trophy: In Brawl, "The Subspace Emissary" campaign has the Trophy Stand, an item that, when thrown, turns weakened enemies and bosses into trophies that you can then pick up and add to your collection.
  • Big No: Most of the characters do this, only in Japanese.
    • Sonic and Snake do this in the English version though.
  • Bittersweet Ending: In Classic and All-Star modes in Melee and Brawl, your character is reduced to a trophy as a music box plays a bittersweet rendition of the theme. The ending for Smash 64 was much less of a downer, as it was strongly implied that the game was just a kid playing with some toys.
  • Blind Idiot Translation: Brawl's translation has quite a few examples, mostly trophies and stickers.
  • Boss-Only Level: "The Ruined Hall" and "Battleship Halberd Bridge".
  • Boss Rush:
    • All-Star Mode in Melee and Brawl, where you fight everyone in the game.
    • The last battle in Melee pits you against 25 (!) copies of Mr. Game & Watch.
    • In Brawl, you go through this in chronological debut order: Mr. Game & Watch being first, and Olimar going last. Oddly, this only applies to the debut of the series; perhaps the most Egregious example being Ness and Lucas, who are separated by more than a decade in the release dates of their respective games and are gauged by a game neither of them was in.
    • Completing Subspace Emissary unlocks an actual Boss Rush. They have a lowered difficulty than from their appearances within Subspace Emissary, but this is justified since sticker boosts don't apply here, and they are all played back-to-back in random order, except for Tabuu, who always comes as the Final Boss.
  • Bowdlerization: Melee featured the return of the Donkey Kong Rap from Donkey Kong 64, but with the "hell of a guy" changed to "heck of a guy."
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall:
    • The characters face the screen for many taunts.
    • Similarly, a top of the screen ring-out - if the characters don't go off as a Twinkle in The Sky - has them bounce off the camera as they fall.
      • In Melee's Sudden Death matches that were the due to a tie after time ran out: when Bob-ombs drop from the sky, occasionally one will drop right in front of the camera.
    • The Nintendogs that climb on the screen act like puppies climbing on a glass door.
    • Also, the crowd cheering and chanting a character's name if he or she is doing well.
    • When he first appears, Snake says "Kept you waiting, huh?" There was no one there for him to address, so it must have been directed towards the player.
  • Break Meter: The shield which can be used for defense will eventually break if used too much, stunning you for a short duration. Also, when a character reaches 100 damage, his/her/its ledge attack becomes slower.
  • Calling Your Attacks: Several instances. See the Character sheet for details.
  • Canon Discontinuity: You'll never find any reference to any of the CD-i games.
    • A handful of other games, too.
  • Canon Immigrant/Ret Canon: Elements of this series have been incorporated into the canons of some source series.
  • Cast Herd: The All-Star Event matches in Melee and Brawl are laid out like this:
    • Melee's All-Star Matches are grouped in Mario characters (Mario, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Peach, and Bowser), realistically-designed characters (Samus, Link, Zelda, Captain Falcon, Fox), cutesy characters (Kirby, Pikachu, Ness, and Ice Climbers), the more unique secret characters (Marth, Luigi, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, and Mr. Game & Watch), and the clone characters (Dr. Mario, Falco, Pichu, Young Link, Roy, and Ganondorf).
    • Brawl's Solo All-Star Battles group the characters in the default veteran characters from the N64 game (Mario, Donkey Kong, Link, Samus, Yoshi, Kirby, Fox, and Pikachu), most of the default Brawl newcomers (Wario, Meta Knight, Pit, Zero Suit Samus, Olimar, Lucas, Diddy Kong, and the Pokémon Trainer), the N64 secret characters (Luigi, Captain Falcon, Ness, and Jigglypuff), the returning Melee cast (Bowser, Peach, Zelda, Ice Climbers, Marth, Mr. Game & Watch, Falco, and Ganondorf), and the rest of the Brawl newcomers (King Dedede, Ike, Lucario, R.O.B., Toon Link, Snake, Sonic, and Wolf). The only Co-op All-Star Battle decided heck with it and threw everyone at you (with Samus variably appearing as either herself or Zero Suit Samus, and ALL 3 of Pokémon Trainer's mons must be fought).
    • Also, as noted above, the All-Star mode in Brawl going in order of the character's series' (or add-on's) Japanese premiere (going from Mr. Game & Watch to one or two Olimars, depending on if you are playing solo or co-op.)
    • And of course, in the Subspace Emissary, characters formed pairs or trios going through the story. Mario/Pit, Kirby/Princess (Peach or Zelda, depending on whom you save), Samus/Pikachu, Lucas/Pokémon Trainer, Meta Knight/Marth/Ike, Meta Knight/Lucario/Snake, Fox/Diddy/Falco, etc...
  • Cherry Tapping / Death of a Thousand Cuts: Tapping A to punch. The fan. Samus's bombs might count too.
  • Color-Coded Multiplayer: Distinctive for a game with Polygonal Graphics.
  • Comeback Mechanic: The Pity Smash, which allows free use of a Final Smash for someone has been KOed multiple times in a match without having KOed anyone.
    • Lucario does more damage and can hit in wider areas the more damage he takes without getting KOed.
  • Composite Character - Characters take attributes from several of their respective Main Series games, but this gets complicated with Zelda Characters considering their timeline.
    • In Smash64 and Melee Link was mostly composed of Adult Link and Young Link (boomerang) From Ocarina of Time, along with Zelda II the Adventure of Link's downward and upward midair strikes. In Brawl his design is mostly The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Link, but appears in a tornado like The Legend of Zelda Link, and travels with Navi from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time (or possibly the Wiimote cursor). He also gets the Master Sword in a forest like A Link to The Past Link.
    • Young Link is also a composite of Adult and Young Link from Ocarina since he has the Deku Shield and smaller versions of Adult Link's gear, instead of the gear he used in Majoras Mask.
    • Mr. Game and Watch is a composite of no less than 20 generic Game and Watch stick figure characters
    • A good deal of Marth, Roy, and Ike's attacks are drawn from animations of other Fire Emblem Classes that they normally can't do in their own game
    • Ness and Lucas also have attacks from other characters in their games, though Word of God states that those characters trained them in preparation for participating in Smash Bros
    • Even though Pokemon Trainer is based off of the FireRed/LeafGreen design of Red and owns the Gen I starters, everything written about him on the official website and his character trophies make him seem as ambiguous as possible, meaning he could be any body that's ever played Pokemon and has no real identity.
  • The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: They know where you are in invisible mode, and the situation of the battlefield during Interface Screws.
  • The Computer Shall Taunt You
  • Conservation of Ninjutsu: In single-player game modes (especially Classic Mode in Melee and Brawl), the more enemies the player has to fight, the weaker they will be. For example, while a battle against a lone Donkey Kong would be rather long and dragged out, ten of them in a row can even be OHKO'd depending on the character and/or attack you use. Only the Cruel Melee/Brawl avert this with numerous tough enemies one after another.
  • Convection, Schmonvection: Falling into the lava or acid damages you, but being near it is A-OK.
    • In Brawl, Lylat Cruise is a platform in space that, throughout the background loop, enters Corneria's atmosphere with no ill effects. In a hidden conversation, the Star FOX characters make a Lampshade Hanging about it.
  • Cosmetic Award: The various trophies in Melee and Brawl.
  • The Cover Changes the Meaning: The Brawl cover of "Unfounded Revenge" is significantly more lighthearted and cutesy than its original incarnation, which was a theme associated with powerful Pigmask bosses.
    • Metal Gear's famous "Game Over" tune is used here as a fanfare for whenever Snake wins a multiplayer match.
  • Creative Closing Credits
  • Crosshair Aware: The Dragoon item and the Halberd's laser, as well as Snake's Final Smash.
  • Crossover: The series' concept and the commercial for Smash 64.
  • Cute Giant: The series often invokes this with giant versions of small characters. Giant Yoshi was an especially memorable case of this.
    • Jigglypuff's Final Smash causes her to get absolutely huge in Brawl. A glitch that messes with a lot of Final Smashes can cause her to stay that way.
    • Doshin the Giant, though his game never made it to North America, did have a trophy in Super Smash Bros Melee.
  • Dead Character Walking: By a certain glitch in stamina mode, both Wario and Bowser can become "zombies" where they can still be controlled and beat other players at 0 HP. Bowser could still win, but Wario cannot win at all after using this glitch.
  • Ditto Fighter: A variation: To choose a fighter randomly in tournament mode, you pick Ditto.
  • Difficult but Awesome: Several characters.
  • Doing It for the Art: What would be pretty much the base for the entire series. You really have to admire all of the extras and the songs they created for the game specifically. Even lesser-known games get revived by just being featured in the game, Kid Icarus being one such example.
  • Double Jump: All characters can do this; some have even more than 2 jumps, and most up specials count as jumps.
  • Drop the Hammer: The regular Hammer item and the Golden Hammer in Brawl, as well as those wielded by King Dedede, Kirby, the Ice Climbers, and Mr. Game & Watch.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: The first game has a very different tone compared to the sequels. It was made on a much smaller budget, and no one was really expecting it to catch on as well as it did. Also, a lot of game mechanics that are now mainstays of competitive fighting (like air dodging and side stepping) as well as a side-B move input, weren't added until Melee, so going back and playing Smash 64 can be pretty disconcerting at first.
  • Endless Game:
    • The endless Melee/Brawl modes. They end when you're KO'd for good.
    • Also, time battles on Versus mode with the time limit set to infinite. It will never end unless using the reset command in the pause screen. And if that wasn't enough, after unlocking the extra rules, it's possible to turn off the pause function, making turning off the system (or resetting it) the only way out of the game.
  • Exploding Barrels, and crates, and capsules, and party balls.
  • Face Ship: The Battleship Halberd, which has Meta Knight's face on it. Discussed by Solid Snake and Mei Ling in one of the codec conversations.
  • Fake Difficulty: In some stages have you fight alongside one or two CPU allies (when you're facing two enemies or a giant enemy). In the harder difficulty settings, while the CPU enemies get stronger and smarter, the CPU allies get more inept, to the point of standing there waiting to be KO'd or even committing suicide.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner: An item in Brawl is a plate of super-spicy curry that lets you breathe fireballs. You also erupt in a fiery aura. If you stand still, you can even get to see the character dance in agony.
  • Fire-Forged Friends: Heroes are willing to work alongside their arch-nemeses in Brawl, while still acting in character, just to illustrate how much more important it is for them to fight the Bigger Bad than each other.
  • Fixed-Floor Fighting: Final Destination fits this trope to a 'T', being just one flat platform suspended over the air.
  • Floating Continent: Most stages are floating platforms, others are just tall buildings. Also, there's the Isle of the Ancients in the Subspace Emissary.
  • Freaky Friday Flip: In Brawl, the Pokémon Manaphy's Heart Swap move causes you to play as an opponent's character temporarily. However, you have the same lives, so you can't commit suicide to your advantage.
  • Free-Floor Fighting: Most of the stages -- Big Blue is a particularly notable example.
  • Friendly Fireproof: Team Battles. Can be turned off and does not work with explosives that also hurt the user.
  • Game Breaker: The Master Hand Glitch is bad enough seeing as you can't die, then there's the Master Hand Laser Glitch where you can potentially make all of his moves a one hit kill as well.
  • Game Mod: The community has an extensive collection of codes for Brawl that can change everything from the mobility of the picture camera to default versus mode settings. Also, several full-on codesets were created to greatly modify Brawl, essentially turning it into different games:
    • Brawl+ changes everything from characters to game physics. It's no longer being worked on because of its decentralized development, over-frequent patching, lack of a strong idea on what the mod is supposed to be and the fact that it's still not Melee. It wasn't at all a waste of time, however, because Plus became the starting point for the mod team's next mod: Project M, which unlike Plus, specifically modifies Brawl to play like Melee.
    • Balanced Brawl mostly balances the characters by buffing all of them and only nerfing a select few, while keeping the core gameplay and physics as close to regular Brawl as possible. Also, there's no random tripping.
    • Brawl- might be considered a parody of the above; whereas Plus and Balanced try to balance the characters by making them stronger and weaker in specific areas, Minus makes balance by breaking everyone to the point of God Mode. Its physics and attacks also make it much faster-paced than Brawl.
    • Project M is made to be the "true" successor of Melee (Brawl being a general installment of the series). Currently in the closed Alpha testing stage with a public demo, it emulates the Melee physics engine while also adding in tweaks, major and minor, to the Melee veteran characters as well as the Brawl newcomers so that they play both Melee-esque and competitively viable. For instance, Fox:M is exactly like Melee FOX, and Snake:M is geared more towards quick tactical approaches, rather than his grenade-camping metagame established in Brawl. This mod will also change most of the stages to be tourney-legal, and include a few stages from Smash 64. Basically, it's Melee 2.0.
    • The community is big on character and stage mods, which in practicality come in handy for team matches by making characters that look too similar in every color slot (e.g. Sonic, Charizard) easier to distinguish (Red Sonic, Green Charizard). Other than that, it's quite entertaining seeing Hatsune Miku fight Boba Fett in The Great Desert.
  • Gang Plank Galleon: The Pirate Ship stage.
  • Gang Up on the Human: the AI will always favor attacking human targets. Except teammates. And low-level AI won't always follow that rule either.
  • Genre Busting: There's still some debate over whether it should be classified as a "true" Fighting Game on par with Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat, or a multiplayer-party game with Fighting Game elements.
  • Giant Hands of Doom: Master Hand and Crazy Hand. It gets worse when you fight them together, and they coordinate their attacks.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom: Whenever a character picks up a Smash Ball in Brawl.
  • Goomba Springboard: Goomba itself and Koopas, both in Melee's and Brawl's Adventure Modes, and Brawl's Footstool Jump.
  • Gratuitous English: Common in the Japanese versions of the games.
  • Gratuitous Japanese: In the English versions of the Melee and Brawl, Marth and Roy, as the games they star in were not (initially) given a worldwide release.
  • Green Hill Zone: Battlefield in Brawl. The actual Green Hill Zone appears in Brawl as well, but it averts the trope with its unorthodox shape, randomly appearing obstacle, and breakable floor.
  • Healing Checkpoint: The last level in the Subspace Emissary story mode of Brawl includes save points that heal you and revive fallen party members.
  • Heavy Voice: A character gets this whenever they pick up a Super Mushroom and increase in size.
  • Hit Points: Not in normal gameplay - each fighter's damage is tracked with percentages, ranging from a decimal number between 0% and 999%. However, in Melees Stamina Mode, Brawls Special Brawl "Stamina" option, the final Classic Mode fight (the Hands only), the Subspace Emissary (enemies only), and Boss Battles Mode (boss enemies only), Hit Points are utilized. Only the Stamina Modes and the final Classic Mode fight use visible numerical values; all other instances feature a red Life Meter instead.
  • Home Run Hitter: A major point in the series, because it is one of four ways to kill someone, the others being self-destruction, stamina mode, and making it impossible for the opponent to recover.
  • Hood Hopping: "Big Blue" has the fighters fighting on top of F-Zero vehicles, jumping from one to another as they get too far ahead or behind. Sonic, naturally, can just run along the raceway itself and keep up.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The CPU players on Brawl Versus mode are labeled, according to the number (from 1 to 9) as Puny, Wimpy, Weak, Normal, Hardy, Strong, Burly, Mighty and Nasty.
  • Immune to Flinching: Many of the slow, hard-hitting characters (Bowser, Ganondorf, etc.) have attacks that cannot be interrupted by an opponent's move, although they will still flinch from attacks in their default state. Certain special attacks (like Ike's "Aether" strike) also have short moments in which the character is not interrupted or knocked back by any attacks, even ones which would otherwise KO them.
  • Interesting Situation Duel: At least half of the stage roster.
  • Interface Screw: Togepi's Night Shade, the Nintendog, to some extent, Tingle's spotlight, Mr. Resetti, and Dialga and Palkia in Brawl.
  • Invulnerable Attack: Most Final Smashes.
    • There's also Super Armor, which makes the attacker invulnerable to knockback, but not damage.
  • It Will Never Catch On: The game itself was thought of this way. Also the various mods getting into tournament play.
  • Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Peach and Zelda wear their Pimped Out Dresses while in the middle of, well, smashing opponents.
  • Killer App: The Super Smash Bros. series reached the point that its arrival on a new console is almost as anticipated, if not more so, than Mario's.
    • Melee sold over 7 million units, making it the biggest system seller for the Game Cube. It's also the killer app of the series because it created the tournament scene for the series, and it still has its own tournaments ten years after its release.
    • Brawl has sold over 9.5 million units, making it the 8th best-selling game for the Wii. It's also notable for being Nintendo's fastest-selling game ever in the United States upon its release, selling over 874,000 copies on launch day alone.
  • Koosh Bomb
  • Lag Cancel: The lag canceling of aerial attacks was intentional in Smash 64, in which it was officially named Smooth Landing, though better known as Z-canceling. The technique is also present in Melee, but somewhat nerfed in that it only halves landing lag. The technique was removed from Brawl via the reworked air-dodge, though auto-canceling exists.
  • Late Arrival Spoiler: Quite a few of the plot points in various games are revealed by stages or trophy descriptions.
  • Lawyer-Friendly Cameo: Beam Swords and Motion Sensor Bombs. The latter is Lampshaded in Melee's trophy description.
  • Lethal Joke Weapon: Don't underestimate the power of the fan. Since the weapon hits as fast as you can mash the A button, you can deal out high amounts of damage without allowing the victim to escape or retaliate.
  • Lethal Acid Land: Norfair and Brinstar.
  • Let X Be the Unknown: The Japanese title of Super Smash Bros. Brawl qualifies as this: Dairantō Smash Brothers X.
  • Level 1 Music Represents: The music for the stages in all games (default music in the case of Brawl) usually follows this trope -- the "Ground Theme" from World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros serving as the most prominent example, being featured on both Super Mario stages in Super Smash Bros. 64, the Mushroom Kingdom stage and as part of a mix on Peach's Castle stage in Melee, and two different remixes on Brawl's Mushroomy Kingdom.
  • Level Editor: Brawl lets players build their own stages out of blocks and other features.
  • Levels Take Flight:
    • Melee has Poké Floats, Mute City (when you approach the looping on the track) and Rainbow Cruise.
    • At one point in Super Smash Bros Brawl's Subspace Emissary, you're working your way across the side of the Halberd to get to the deck of the flying ship. Also, you're dealing with a constant wind in your face, slowing you down.
    • Brawl has the Halberd and Delfino Isle.
  • Life Meter: Used to display the enemies' Hit Points in Brawl's Subspace Emissary and Boss Battles modes.
  • Limit Break: In Brawl, each character is permitted to activate this whenever they manage to obtain/shatter the Smash Ball.
  • Loads and Loads of Characters: Less in the first one, with only 12 playable characters. Melee and Brawl, however, have 25 and 35 playable characters respectively, some of which have multiple forms that play differently, one that is 2 characters at once (Ice Climbers), two that have alternate modes that drastically change their playstyle (Samus/Zero Suit Samus and Zelda/Sheik) and one that switches between 3 characters (Pokémon Trainer). And that's just playable characters, and not including the characters who are summoned by Assist Trophies, Poké Balls, Final Smashes, in the background, or even as hazards and weapons! Not to mention all the characters from the Trophy and Sticker collections!
  • Masochist's Meal: The Superspicy Curry.
  • Medley: Many of them, although it's possible you might not even be able to recognize some of them, since some songs are remixed heavily to the point of Crazy Awesome. Below-mentioned "Butter Building" song from Brawl, for example, has the Dream Land theme remixed as a sitar-heavy hard rock techno-ish song, compared to Melee's incarnation, which stayed close to the original's techno theme. Shows how much Nintendo is Doing It for the Art.
    • Brawl has an Ocarina of Time medley for the Bridge of Eldin stage. The Great Temple theme is a mash of The Great Temple and the normal Temple theme, both from Zelda II the Adventure of Link.
    • There's also a Kirby "Boss Theme Medley" for the Halberd.
    • There are also a number of medleys that aren't labeled as such--for example, "Tal Tal Heights" is a medley of the overworld music for the three Gameboy Zelda games and Tal Tal Mountain Range from Link's Awakening, "Song of Storms" has, in addition to the titular song, Ganondorf's theme and Serenade of Water, "Title (Legend Of Zelda)" has the dungeon music mixed in, "Butter Building" is a medley of Butter Building, Green Greens, and the title screen for Kirby's Dream Land, etc.
    • Two of the Mario-themed songs in Melee were medleys: the overworld theme mashed-up with the underworld theme of Super Mario Bros., and the Rainbow Ride theme of Super Mario 64 mixed with the underwater theme of SMB.
    • Credits Medley: The ending credits theme for The Subspace Emissary in Brawl is a mix of the Super Smash Bros credits theme, Melee's menu and opening theme, and the Brawl main theme.
  • Meet Your Early Installment Weirdness: Link with Young Link in Melee[1], and Toon Link in Brawl.
  • Mercy Invincibility: After you lose a life, after you grab a ledge and when getting up after tripping or having got footstooled.
  • Meteor Move: All 3 types described on the trope page appear in-game.
  • Mini Game: Target Test, Home-Run Contest, Coin Launcher, and others. Brawl also lets you play timed demos of several Nintendo "masterpieces".
  • Misguided Missile: You can pull this trick on the ROB Launchers and Duon.
  • Nerf:
    • In Smash 64, throws killed. In Melee, throws are of reasonable strength, as they generally help in building combos rather than finishing. In Brawl, throws are even weaker, and due to changes in physics their overall usefulness was somewhat nerfed as well.
    • Many people see Brawl's technical gameplay is extremely nerfed compared to its predecessors due to physics changes, reduction/removal of some advanced techniques, and strength reduction on some moves.
  • Nintendo Hard: Mostly, the hardest level in Classic/Adventure/All-Star/Boss Battles and Cruel Melee/Brawl, where you fight against Those Several Mooks.
  • Nostalgia Level: Not only of certain game levels, but previous Smash stages as well.
  • Not Drawn to Scale: Every character and stage have been compromised to not look weird (and give neither an advantage). Compare the 0.2 m Kirby or Meta Knight to the 5.2 m Lugia. Play Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64 or Super Mario Galaxy after having played on Princess Peach's Castle on Melee. And even the shortest characters are bigger than an entire floor of the Fourside buildings (measurable when they hang onto them - Mario, for example, is big enough to take up almost two floors.)
    • Also in Melee, a case that overlaps with Your Size May Vary is with the F-Zero machines: in the Mute City stage, compared to the fighters, they look like radio-controlled jet cars (to the point they can be crushed with a well-timed blow), but in Big Blue, they are of a more reasonable size, already big enough to fit Captain Falcon inside.
  • Old Save Bonus: In Melee, if you had Pikmin saved on your memory card, it would unlock the Captain Olimar trophy.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: The Final Destination theme.
  • One Hundred Percent Completion: So, you've played throughout the extensive Story Mode, unlocked all the secret characters... or have you? Did you remember to backtrack to that hidden room to fight (and defeat) Wolf? Or Jigglypuff? How about Toon Link? After that, there's 544 trophies to find, and after that, 700 stickers to collect! What's worse, one of the trophies can only be found by collecting all 700 stickers! What's even worse is that they all randomly drop!! Completionists will be foaming at the mouth before long...
    • For both Melee and Brawl, true 100% completion would involve getting all the possible Notices. In both games, one of these Notices is only obtained by playing a million matches.
  • Orchestral Bombing: The main theme to Brawl is almost ludicrously epic.
  • Ornamental Weapon: Ganon only ever uses his sword for one taunt.
  • Party Scattering: In Subspace Emissary, there are multiple times where party members are forced to split up (for example, Mario being shot into Skyworld by Petey Pirahna, or DK knocking away Diddy Kong to prevent Bowser from "trophy-fying" him). They all reunite late into the game to enter Subspace.
  • Pause Abuse: If you pause after every frame of movement, then the on-screen timer won't clock forward. This makes it possible to complete the Break the Targets and Board the Platforms challenges with a time of 0:00.
  • Personal Space Invader: The ReDeads in Melee (making a crossover from Zelda), the LikeLikes in the same level (also making a crossover from the Zelda series), and the Bucculus in Subspace Emissary.
  • Paper Fan of Doom: The item. Do not be fooled, especially in Multi Mook Melee mode.
  • Plot Hole: In the subspace emissary, Pit (who has wings) tries (and fails) to attack the airborne Ancient Minister. This creates a Plot Hole because it is never explained in game that he can't actually fly, at least not for more than a few seconds. The fact that he can fly for nearly ten full seconds when the player is controlling him (more than enough to catch the Minister) just makes things more confusing.
  • Pocket Protector: The Franklin Badge, as well as the Reflectors used by the Star Fox team.
  • Power Glows: Whenever a character picks up a Smash Ball.
  • Power Floats: The Smash Ball itself.
  • Power-Up Motif: Several examples; see the trope page for details.
  • The Pratfall: There's a random chance of pratfalling whenever the control stick is hit, discouraging excessive dashing and pivoting.
  • Production Foreshadowing: The Metal Gears that show up on Shadow Moses Island in Brawl ended up hinting at Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. Foreshadowing your work in a competitor's game takes guts.
    • Pit's presence in Brawl gives this impression since a lot of the elements made for Brawl were used in Kid Icarus: Uprising, but there was no intention to do another Kid Icarus until after Brawl was finished.
  • Random Drop: the Pokéballs make a random pokémon appear out of them.
    • Rare Random Drop: the legendaries will be this, with a very low chance of appearing compared to the rest of pokémon. Frustrating because they give the best rewards.
  • Real Is Brown: The Mushroomy Kingdom stage is probably a parody of this trope. It is World 1-1 of the original Super Mario Bros., but decayed over the years. It's entirely brown.
  • Recovery Attack: When knocked onto the stage, or tripped, some regular attacks behave specifically to allow the player to get up. Alternatively, these can be used to get back up from ledges or back onto the stage. However, once a fighter's damage exceeds 100%, the fighter's ledge recovery attack typically has a slower animation but deals slightly more damage.
  • Reflecting Laser: Franklin Badge, Gardevoir, and Gray Fox have reflectors that reflect projectiles back at 180 degrees exactly.
  • Ring Out: This is the ONLY way to win (except in Coin Mode; Melee and Brawl also have an Hit Point-based Stamina Mode that simulates the traditional beat-em-up fighting style).
  • Rule of Cool: The game's main reason for existing.
  • Ryu and Ken: Melee featured characters that were "clones" - characters who shared models and animations with another character. Brawl did not feature any "true" clones, since even returning clones had unique animations and models.
  • Shifting Sand Land / Underground Level - Mushroomy Kingdom.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The Trophy Room is a veritable treasure trove of shout-outs to Nintendo's library, and the series itself can be considered one massive Shout-Out to everything Nintendo. Brawl includes a non-videogame shoutout with the song "Go K.K. Rider!", which is a cover of the Kamen Rider V 3 theme song done by K.K. Slider.
    • Nearly every alternate costume a character can put on in the series is one of these, although some are extremely obscure.
    • Many of the random names include references to characters that didn't make it into the game - MIDNA, FWFUL, RAWK, LIP, etc. There's even shout-outs to other big-name franchises in there - one of the random names in Melee (at least) is R2D2.
    • We like Ike!
  • Shown Their Work: Mixed with Continuity Porn. Nintendo won't leave the smallest aspects of other games out.
  • Sleeper Hit: The original Super Smash Bros. started a side project by Masahiro Sakurai that Satoru Iwata allowed him to do on the weekends at HAL Laboratory. Eventually Iwata became interested in this "King of the Hill"-like fighter, and the company asked Nintendo if they could use some of their characters. Nintendo was iffy on the entire thing: keeping the budget on the game incredibly small and planning on a Japan-only release. Despite little promotion, the game took off in Japan and was brought to the United States and Europe later that year, becoming a Killer App for the Nintendo 64.
  • Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Ice Climber stages, Pokémon Stadium's ice transformation, and anything made with the ice blocks in Stage Builder.
  • Some Dexterity Required - While Smash 64 and Melee were intended to be simple fighting games with easy controls, the competitive community created incredibly complex combos and advanced techniques that ultimately made Smash require as much skill as other fighters (though it's a little more about responding to the game's physics instead of stringing together quick button combinations for singular attacks). Brawl, intentionally avoids this.
  • Soundtrack Dissonance:
    • The TV commercial for the first installment showed Mario and DK ganging up on Yoshi to the sounds of "Happy Together" by the Turtles.
    • Calling to the Night.
    • Some songs are fun to fight to, but really don't gel with the stages they're on. The happy-pop themes on Halberd and the Crush 40 songs on Green Hill Zone are the most notable.
  • Space Zone: Lylat Cruise.
  • Splash Damage: Alongside the various explosives, there are some attacks that have hitboxes that extend farther than what you'd expect, and are capable of hitting multiple opponents.
  • Spoiler Opening:
    • Ness and Marth, being secret characters, appear in Brawl's opening, and the Green Hill Zone battle stage not only appears in said opening, but on the back of the game's box too. The Guest Fighters Snake and Sonic are excused since even though they are heavily featured in the promotion, Sakurai outright said that they're unlockable to begin with, and Snake's stage was one of the game's default stages.
    • Not to mention some of the cutscenes from the Subspace Emissary appear in the opening which could spoil which characters team up with each other, and maybe a few other things from the story.
  • Spoony Bard: Some fighters have unique traits compared to others. Subverted in they tend to be more or less as effective as the more straightforward characters.
  • Standard Female Grab Area: Male characters are grabbed by the chest or clothes near the chest, while female characters (excluding Jigglypuff) are grabbed by the arm. Justified because grabbing a female by the chest would lead to some Unfortunate Implications.
  • Sticky Bomb: The Gooey Bomb.
  • Sudden Death: In the event of a tie, rankings are decided by a round in which everybody has 300% damage. The last player to get knocked off the stage wins. If a Sudden Death match goes on for too long, Bob-ombs start raining from the sky.
  • Super Mode: Several characters' Final Smashes.
  • Super Move Portrait Attack: Most Final Smashes use the alternate version.
  • Sword Lines: The second type, made evident with the many bladed weapons present in the games.
  • Take a Third Option: Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata and series creator Masahiro Sakurai discussed which platform to develop the next Smash Bros. on. Sakurai went with both the 3DS and Wii U and planned to have some connectivity between the two.
  • Take That:
    • Sakurai wrote a Dojo post for Brawl's website that includes a screenshot of a battle with the caption "I'm finished registering." Rather than translating it properly, Nate Bihldorff switched it entirely to say "Real men use items!", a jab at the no-items-allowed playstyle of some players.
    • Some people think that Starfy's general uselessness as an Assist Trophy is a jab from Sakurai (maker of Kirby) at the Starfy series. The line "Starfy, why did you even come here?" in his Dojo update is probably what cemented the idea.
  • Temple of Doom: The Zelda-themed "Temple" stage, and the Ruins from the Subspace Emissary.
  • The Theme Park Version: Pretty much all the stages and elements regarding Star FOX, Metroid, MOTHER, and possibly even Pokémon are like this, and are quite jarring for some fans.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan fan Critical Hit!
  • The Three Faces of Eve: The three recurring Smash Sisters, Peach (child), Zelda (wife), and Samus (seductress, though only visually).
  • Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Melee weapons like the beam sword can instead be thrown for fairly absurd damage and knockback.
  • Time Keeps on Ticking: At least in Break the Targets, and probably the other Timed Missions.
  • Timed Mission: Target Breaking, Zebes Escape, and Home Run Contest, among others.
  • Title Scream: Both in Smash 64 and in Melee, but not in Brawl.
  • Tournament Play: Melee has a thriving tournament scene to this day. Brawl and its mods have tournaments as well.
  • Training Dummy: The CPU in Training Mode and Sandbag in the Wi-Fi waiting room.
  • Try Not to Die:

"Try to stay alive, huh Fox?"

  • A Twinkle in the Sky: Occasionally happens to your character when he/she/it gets knocked above the upper blast line.
  • Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny: Comes with the game being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover.
  • Urban Legend of Zelda:
    • Rumors of Sonic and Tails being unlockable characters in Melee. In Brawl, the very same rumors actually came to fruition this time around -- at least for Sonic. (Tails is just randomly-occurring stage decor, along with Knuckles and Silver.)
    • The announcement that Solid Snake would be joining the roster led to dozens of rumors about other possible characters, including Simon Belmont and Mega Man.
    • There were also some rumors (or at least wishful thinking) that Bomberman would make it into the roster.
    • There was an infamous rumor that Toad was unlockable in Melee by shooting every credit at the end of the game.
  • Versus Character Splash
  • Victory Pose:
    • The winner of each match does one at the results screen, and some of the taunts count. Also, you gain bonus points for taunts after a KO in Smash 64 and Melee.
    • You also got points for attacking someone who's in the middle of a taunt.
    • Thanks to Luigi having a damaging and knockback-causing taunt, there are two Luigi-exclusive bonuses: one for damaging a foe with a taunt, and one for KO'ing a foe with a taunt.
  • Video Game Flight: Winged characters can glide in Brawl. It's not quite "flight", but close.
    • Played straight with certain character's Final Smashes, like Sonic and Yoshi for example (though they only last for a limited amount of time like all Final Smashes do).
  • Wall Jump: Most that can do it in their games do it here and many others gain the ability.
  • What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?: Orchestrated Pokémon music (at least the Viridian City song), orchestrated Tetris music, and Kirby Heavy Metal.
  • The Wiki Rule: SmashWiki.
  • X-Ray Sparks: Most characters when hit by an electric attack in the first game, although some (like Kirby and Jigglypuff) simply get ash-faces.
  • Yeah! Shot: Many cinematics end in a variation of this as the player gets to choose which of the available characters to play. Also, the camera zooms in on the player and takes a snapshot for the results screen of Classic matches. The player can set up some good victory shots with this.
  • Yin-Yang Bomb: Master Hand and Crazy Hand are supposedly the antithesis of each other, but when one fights them simultaneously, they coordinate their attacks.

The Subspace Emissary Mode in Brawl provides examples of:

  • All There in the Manual:
    • This page clears up some of the less obvious parts of the narrative.
    • And that doesn't even cover the scene from Mother 3, which would not make sense if you weren't at least familiar with the series.
  • Asskicking Pose: Besides the taunts, which work here too, many of the cutscenes end with one, as the screen freezes for you to choose the characters you're using.
  • Back-to-Back Badasses
  • Badass Crew: All of the characters start off divided into their own sub-groups and achieve multiple feats of Badassery before joining together into a Badass Army for the finale.
  • Berserk Button: The scene where (depending on who you saved from Petey Pirahna) either Link thinks Mario has killed Zelda, or Mario thinks Link has killed Peach. There's no other way to describe the rage that follows.
  • Big Damn Heroes: A fair few, but the most impressive is Sonic coming out of nowhere to save the day at the end.
  • Big Door: The door to Tabuu's room.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Tabuu is defeated and all the locations are sent back to their original locations in the World of Trophies, but strangely enough, the Island of Ancients doesn't return to the world. Since Tabuu is responsible for the destruction of the R.O.B.s due to the detonation of the Subspace Bombs, this also makes the playable R.O.B. the Last of His Kind.
  • Boss Subtitles: Master Hand and Tabuu, when they first appear, are the only bosses to receive them. The Ancient Minister, the Subspace Emissary's initial antagonist, gets one as well, despite him never actually being featured in a boss fight. Furthermore, although not bosses, each fighter (excluding Mr. Game and Watch) receives one during the first time he/she/it is seen in a Subspace Emissary cutscene.
  • Bullet Time: Too many instances to count.
  • Character Development: A few instances as the characters begin working together. A notable example is Lucas, who, through his travels with Pokemon Trainer, eventually gains the courage to stand up to bullies like Wario.
  • Cloning Blues: The so-called Shadow Bugs can imitate characters by using their trophy.
  • Cutscene Incompetence: At the beginning of the story, Mario and Pit try to catch Ancient Minister as he flies away with another bomb, but they both fail to jump up and reach him and he gets away.
  • Cutscene Power to the Max: Too many to name.
  • Darkest Hour: After Tabuu turns everyone into trophies, you can't replay any stages you've already cleared, and when you go to save your game, you'll find that everybody is gone from your file. Of course, in the only stage available at that point, Dedede saves the day.
  • Desolation Shot: "The Ruined Zoo" opens with this.
  • Duel Boss: Mario vs. Kirby at the start of the first level, as well as Meta Knight vs. Lucario in "The Glacial Peak". In a twist, you can actually choose to play as either one. For 100% completion and to get every cut scene unlocked, you have to do both. Also King Dedede vs. Bowser in one of the Subspace levels.
  • Eldritch Location: Subspace, of course.
  • Enemy Mine: By the nature of this plot it's to be expected. The most notable case is between Link, Zelda, and Ganondorf. While standing over Ganondorf's statue, Link and Zelda agree that they do need his help. They awaken him and point him toward the Great Maze. As they walk away, Ganondorf starts loading up an attack to go after them, but realizes that, sadly, he needs their help as much as they need his, and follows along.
  • Faceless Eye: Feyesh are enormous floating goldfish with tentacles and a single large eye where their face should be.
  • Five-Bad Band:
  • Five-Man Band: Many, including:
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation: Many cases:
    • The most extreme being, after mowing through R.O.B.s by the dozen in the preceding stage, the characters are completely unable to damage them in a cutscene.
    • Also oddly averted near the beginning: Zelda teleports onto the field, and later, gets captured in a cage without even trying to escape. However, this is completely accurate to the actual mechanic of the attack, which does not let you go through things, just turn invisible and quickly move in one direction.
  • Heroic Mime: The entire mode contains no dialogue (which is an interesting variation per se) save one No Fourth Wall moment from Snake. Several characters call their attacks and make some interjections, but that's it.
  • Humongous Mecha: Galleom and Duon.
  • Jump Physics: Jumps and general recovery effectiveness was turned down in this mode to make platforming harder.
  • Marathon Level:
    • The Great Maze, which is straight Metroidvania style, in contrast to the linear levels used in the rest of the game. It also counts for roughly one third of your completion percentage.
    • As far as linear levels go, Subspace Factory (Lower) is a long trip. It also has multiple cutscenes, a big turning point in the plot, and Meta Ridley.
    • The Cave and the first stage of Subspace are relatively short, but the fact that they only consist of one long section rather than multiple short ones makes them strenuous for players who keep getting Game Overs.
  • Mecha-Mooks: The R.O.B squads.
  • Mooks: Primids, Goomba, basic R.O.B. models, etc.
  • New Game+: As the story progresses, Subspace Bomb explosions prevent you from replaying certain levels (including the very first level of the game), and when you finally enter Subspace, the Halberd gets destroyed in the movie building up to it, so you can't replay the Halberd levels either (though you still walk on it at the beginning of the Sea of Clouds level, somehow). The only way to replay these levels at this state is to beat the game.
  • Only Mostly Dead: Characters become trophies instead of dying. All one has to do is touch their trophy stand in order to revive them.
  • Original Generation: Master Hand, Tabuu, the Fighting Polygon/Wireframe/Alloy teams, and the Subspace Army Mooks.
  • Out of the Inferno
  • The Sadistic Choice: In the first level the player, has to choose to save Peach or Zelda. (Even if you break both cages at once by attacking Petey Piranha's head only, the game randomly picks a princess and acts as if you chose to save her instead of the other one.) You eventually are able to play the character not chosen later in the game, though.
  • Sphere of Destruction: Subspace Bombs basically eat perfectly spherical chunks of the universe, sending them into the subspace.
  • The Starscream: Ganondorf. He's secretly planning to usurp power from Master Hand.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: Since there's no dialogue, the only concrete information you have to go on within Brawl itself are the relevant trophies.
  • Timed Mission: Oddly averted in part of the second Subspace Bomb Factory stage. In-story, the heroes have to escape from the factory before the Subspace bombs explode, but you aren't timed at all, and even in the room before Meta Ridley, you can practically sit there forever, waiting for the explosion that never comes. However, the plot catches up to the gameplay in Meta Ridley's fight itself, which the player must complete before the explosion hits the Blue Falcon.
  • Unexpected Gameplay Change: The final level is done in a non-linear, Metroid-esque style.
  • Unflinching Walk: Princess Peach. Of course, she has her umbrella out, so maybe that's what's shielding her.
  • Unique Enemy: Mizzo, whose trophy description is a Lampshade Hanging.
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: Manages to include one within one!
  • Videogame Set Piece: At certain points during gameplay, the screen suddenly goes purple and you're forced to go through a Multi Mook Melee in order to bring things back to normal and continue on.
  • Wave Motion Gun: The Subspace Gunship has one that tears a hole to subspace.
  • We Cannot Go on Without You: If you play the Adventure Mode with a friend, the game ends if Player 1 is knocked out and has no extra stock left, regardless if Player 2 is alive.
  • What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: Seriously, it's really hard for this section of the game not to feel like this when Jigglypuff grabs a rocket launcher and blows up a giant floating fish with a roman helmet and swords, or when the Final Boss is a giant floating blue angel thing with rainbow wings.
  • Xanatos Gambit: Played by KING DEDEDE! If the heroes beat Tabuu the first time, well and good. But if they don't, no biggie, Dedede has the trophies of Ness and Luigi to be revived by his badges for just that occasion. This is Dedede's Crowning Moment of Awesome.

And by contesting, and by fighting fiercely/Surely our splendor grows.

  1. ↑ technically, both of Melee's incarnations of Link are the same character from the same game, merely differentiated by age
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