Super Smash Bros. (video game)/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


While not as bad as with later games, even back in the late nineties Super Smash Bros. inspired plenty of divisive opinions among fans.

  • Base Breaking Character: Pikachu is the series' earliest example of this, and draws exactly two reactions from fans: love for his cuteness and amazingly powerful moveset, and hatred for him being an annoyingly fast and overpowered little rat who never shuts up.
  • Cult Classic: The game's competitive scene. While definitely not as big as that of Melee, Ultimate, or 4 in its prime, it still has a loyal and involved following that regularly host tournaments for it. Hell, its competitive scene has outlived that of Brawl and 4!
  • Ensemble Darkhorse: Ness and Captain Falcon, for being relative unknowns in a game full of Nintendo icons that possess fun and powerful movesets. Their appearances in this game would in turn make them far more popular in general as time went on (with Captain Falcon in particular becoming the series' resident Memetic Badass).
  • Game Breaker: Quite a few game-breaking items made their debut here, while Pikachu, Kirby and Captain Falcon are playable examples of this trope.
    • The Hammer was a useful powerup in its home game, but nothing too outrageous. But in this game? If one pops up on the stage and you pick it up, you just earned yourself at least one free KO thanks to its insane damage output and the way you can send your opponents flying just by walking into them! Later games would nerf this item into the ground... but even then, you still really, really don't want to get hit by it, it's that powerful.
    • The Home-Run Bat, which is guaranteed to score a one-hit KO if you nail someone with a smash attack.
    • Pikachu, Kirby, and Captain Falcon, as mentioned above. All three are absolute monsters capable of moving fast, hitting hard, and possessing some of the most dangerous combos in the game. Pikachu and Kirby combine the above with the best recovery in the game, making it hard to reliably KO them. Captain Falcon, on the other hand, is about as tanky as Donkey Kong despite being a lot nimbler than he is.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Kirby's top-tier status here can make his fans cringe, since his status in every other game is far on the other side of the spectrum, bordering on Joke Character status in Melee. It's definitely wince-worthy for the pink puff's large and loyal fanbase.
  • Most Annoying Sound: Pikachu's noises are infamous for being ear-grating and obnoxious. The same goes for Ness' "OGEY" taunt, though it's less for being painfully annoying and more for being such a spammable taunt.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: While an undeniably fun and influential game, its small list of unlockables, shallower movesets, and far more bare-bones content mean that it definitely hasn't aged as well compared to later entries such as Melee and even the controversial Brawl.
  • That One Boss: Metal Mario is known to cause problems on higher difficulties, since he's insanely hard to knock off the stage thanks to his weight and durability, but attacks just as quickly and hits even harder than normal Mario. Ness is also the hardest character to unlock, if only for the fact that you have to be playing on at least Normal difficulty to unlock him, and he's one of the game's most powerful fighters (albeit not quite to the point of being top tier).
  • Tier-Induced Scrappy: Pikachu's on the high end of the spectrum. Not only is he stupidly fast and powerful, but his attacks have weird hitboxes and his recovery is by and large better than the rest of the cast combined. While never officially banned a'la Brawl!Meta Knight, early Smash 64 tournaments often had a "soft ban" where there was an unspoken agreement that he was an obnoxious and unfair character best left unplayed.
  • The Unexpected: While far from surprising nowadays (to the point that they're far more remembered for being in Smash than they are from their home series'), back when the game was first released, it's hard to find anyone that expected Captain Falcon and Ness to be playable given how obscure their games were at the time. Doubly so for Cap, since he's a racecar driver who never showed any capacity for combat!
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