YMMV / Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U

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• Abridged Arena Array: Super Smash Bros. Wii U/3DS is hit hard with this, as the vast majority of stages are even more dynamic than in past games. It tries to address the trope by having two modes of online play when playing with random players. "For Fun" removes Final Destination from the list of stages that can be picked while "For Glory" has people playing nothing but Final Destination and variants of other stages in the game that are a "Final Destination" version, or flat in other words. However, this has also been a controversial move, as there's some debate over whether or not it skews matches in favor of "campy" characters such as the Links, or, notoriously, Little Mac, even with the removal of chaingrabbing in Wii U /3DS taking out the largest game-changer on that stage^note In past games, Final Destination's lack of platforms was notorious for allowing repeated grabbing and throwing upward for massive damage unobstructed.
• Accidental Innuendo: In Bayonetta's trailer, Pit exclaims "They are huge!". The next line of dialogue makes it clear that he is referring to the limbs summoned by her Wicked Weaves, but viewers jokingly claim that Pit is talking about Bayonetta herself.
• Alas, Poor Scrappy:
  • The Ice Climbers were among the most divisive characters, especially considering their ability to "wobble" in Melee and their reliable zero-to-death chaingrab in Brawl. However, when it was discovered that they were cut from 3DS/Wii U, fans were outraged and heartbroken, especially considering that, along with Snake, this is the first time in the series that a universe had lost all playable representation. To make things even worse, Sakurai revealed they were in a working state on the Wii U version, but since the development team couldn't find a way to make them work on the much weaker 3DS no matter what lengths they went to, they were scrapped so that development could focus on characters that could work on both versions (and thus keep the roster across the versions the same), and only a trophy from them remains in the game. Thankfully, the Switch has no such issues and the Ice Climbers returned without a problem in Ultimate.
  • Pokémon Trainer, along with Ivysaur and Squirtle. While widely disliked as a character in Brawl due to his impractical stamina/forced switching and type-effectiveness gimmicks, many people missed the Trainer and his two other Pokémon when Charizard was revealed as a full character for the fourth game, especially with a few fans claiming that Squirtle and Ivysaur would have been more fun to play as solo characters than Charizard. Needless to say, everyone was happy to see them all return in Ultimate (and without the annoying stamina and type-effectiveness mechanics to boot).
  • Duck Hunt's inclusion has allowed fans to finally give the smug-ass dog the beating they always wanted to give him... but the dog's Star KO is a real dog's yelp... that has caused most of the dog's hatebase to peter out.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: The Villager being a cold-blooded sociopath based on his dissonantly serene expression in the trailer went memetic within minutes of the announcement.
• Americans Hate Tingle:
  • Corrin, with even some Fire Emblem fans in the West viewing their inclusion as the game's only first-party DLC newcomer to be evidence that the Fire Emblem cast has become a Spotlight-Stealing Squad. Ironically, Sakurai initially didn't want to add the character in concern for getting such a response, but his team convinced him otherwise by pointing out the moveset potential and Smash Bros.'s history of promoting Fire Emblem games.
  • Dark Pit was a highly requested character by the Japanese fanbase, and very well received as a result. The American fandom let out a collective groan of disappointment when they saw him, seeing him as a pointless space-occupier stealing a spot in the roster from somebody who wasn't a palette-swap Moveset Clone. The fact that he's a dark and brooding version of a goofy child character has led more than a few American fans to compare him to someone's edgy OC on DeviantArt.
• Animation Age Ghetto: The fourth game suffers more from this than previous entries. In North America, it has an E10+ rating rather than its predecessors' T for Teen (possibly for the sake of amiibo marketing). This, along with its brighter and more colorful palette as opposed to Brawl's comparative use of Real Is Brown (and the absence of Solid Snake) leads quite a few people (both fans and non-fans) to label Smash 4 as a "kids' game". This seems to have ended after all the game's DLC characters were revealed; except for Mewtwo and possibly Lucas, most of them are from series that skew more towards older fans, particularly the third-party characters (especially the M-rated Bayonetta) despite Snake not returning. Even Mewtwo and Lucas' presence could partially be directed at older fans, as Mewtwo is highly popular among fans of the first generation of Pokémon games and is based on the Mewtwo from Pokémon: The First Movie (who hasn't reappeared in years), and Mother 3 was only released in Japan over a decade ago, making Lucas one of the most obscure characters in Smash and therefore mostly unrecognizable among younger players.'.
• Awesome Art:
  • One of the biggest praising points for SSB4 on the Wii U is that it looks beautiful. The 3DS version is no slouch either, with some of the best graphics ever seen on the console — as noted below, it pushes the 3DS's processing power to the limit. While the graphics aren't as crisp, smooth, or detailed as their home console counterpart, they're consistently displayed in full 3D.
  • Many characters also got special "posters" with them interacting with many different fighters from the game, sometimes these can be a Mythology Gag such as Mega Man's art◊ being reminiscent of his old Japanese box arts featuring him with 8 Robot Masters with the Big Bad overhead, or just be thematically awesome as well as beautiful like Bayonetta's art◊, which shows her in the center of a grudge match of "light vs darkness".
• Best Boss Ever:
  • Master Core. It's long and it's hard, yet the pacing of the fight is faster than any boss in the series, and it breaks all standards that previous bosses established, including multiple phases and picking up Final Destination and dropping it. The presentation is fantastic as well, being one of the ultimate examples of an Eldritch Abomination, revealing the true form of Master Hand, and a satisfying final phase where the player is given free reign to cut loose.
  • Master Fortress counts, since it adds another layer to the awesomeness (though it is a Wii U-only form).
• Best Level Ever:
  • The Gamer stage, despite never having a chance of tournament play ever, is also considered pretty fun, even if it has a potentially lethal stage hazard. It's fun to dodge the Mother and laugh when unsuspecting players or even yourself get caught by her. Additionally, the stage's layout is randomly generated each time it's played. However, it can be a major pain in Crazy Orders. Just be careful not to hide under the easel.
  • Orbital Gate Assault is pure eye candy. The scenery is beautiful, complete with Arwings flying through space, and there's always something happening. Heck, it took Sakurai's team a year to finish the level. That should tell you something about how great it is. Visually at least... unfortunately, gameplay wise it has a decidedly... less positive reputation due to the erratically shifting platforms.
  • The Boxing Ring has also been ranked among 3DS/Wii U's best stages. The size is just right, not too big and not too small, and with the aesthetics of a sold-out crowd cheering on the fighters brings a unique atmosphere that makes any player hyped while playing on it. There's also the added touch of having the fighters being broadcast on the jumbotron a la Punch-Out!! Arcade (complete with aliases for all of the characters, ex. Mario = Mr. Video Game Himself, etc.)
  • Duck Hunt for being a relatively simple stage that looks a lot like the original game, and for having stage elements that add to the feel of it while having little if any effect on the actual battle. It also avoids having walk-off edges by having black space to the left and right of it. It's not uncommon for players to stop fighting for a second to attack the ducks. Originally a Wii U exclusive stage, its popularity saw it added to the 3DS version as free DLC.
• Breather Boss:
  • Crazy Hand. In the Wii U version, he's fought alone in Crazy Orders, and his battle is sometimes considered far easier than the Crazy Orders matches themselves, as he doesn't possess a particular OHKO attack involving rising platforms like Master Hand. In fact, there's only one attack that is hard to avoid, which is a black hole that gives you the Flower Status, and even then, the only hard part about the battle is probably the characters that assist it (or sometimes, even Master Hand).
  • The Master Beast phase (first phase on 6.0 to 7.4 difficulty, second phase on higher difficulties) of Master Core can be considered a Breather Boss for people who know its attacks. Compared to Master Giant preceding it (if fighting at the highest difficulty) and Master/Crazy Hand, this phase has predictable and easily telegraphed attacks that can be easily dodged and avoided with guards and rolling. However, Master Edges/Sabres the form that follows it, isn't so friendly.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • In his home game, Metal Face was a sadistic slaughterer of Homs who took pleasure in the carnage he caused, and was never easy to track down unless he was actively trying to cause misery. In Smash 4, he's a consistent stage hazard in Gaur Plains, and players can freely wail on him and make him croak in no time flat.
  • Admit it, it felt so good to finally get revenge on the Duck Hunt dog.
• Character Perception Evolution: The standalone version of Charizard was heavily mocked and derided upon this game's release for being one of the worst characters in the game, and for having a moveset that didn't work well outside of being a part of Pokémon Trainer's kit (let alone that Brawl Pokémon Trainer was himself very clunky and barely functional), even if it rose in the tier list over time similar to Melee Mewtwo. It got worse with the release of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where the Pokémon Trainer returned and was Rescued from the Scrappy Heap to become one of the best and most fun characters in the game, and provided a template for the even more popular transforming Breakout Characters Pyra and Mythra. Nonetheless, after a few years of Ultimate making its mark, some players began to miss this game's iteration of Zard and claim that it was more fun than its Ultimate iteration within the Pokémon Trainer (drawing special attention to Rock Smash and its Mega Evolution Final Smash), and hope that it returns as a standalone fighter in the next Smash installment. This sentiment was reinforced by Charizard's highly lauded unofficial addition to Super Smash Bros. Melee, again as a solo fighter, via The Akaneia Build Game Mod.
• Contested Sequel:
  • While general consensus says the Smash 4 games on the casual and competitive side are superior to Brawl (especially competitively, where its competitive scene was multiple magnitudes larger than Brawl's ever was, while it went into Ultimate with a still strong scene), some diehard Brawl fans have been vocal about their preference of Brawl and lament for a revival of its competitive scene. On the casual side, you have those who actually liked The Subspace Emissary criticize Smash 4 for its lackluster single-player mode. On the competitive side, in some irony considering what they faced from Melee players for years, you have Brawl players who lambast Smash 4 for its removal of advanced techniques such as DACUS and glide tossing, and its perceived overall lack of such techniques, claiming it has a lower "skill ceiling" among other things.
  • Smash For 3DS/Wii U has quickly become this in the wake of its sequel Ultimate with the latter being much closer to a mix between Melee and Brawl erring more on the side of the former compared to 4 being closer to the latter game as time went on. Not only that, but in addition to bringing back EVERY single fighter who ever was playable before in the series including fan-favorites like the Ice Climbers, Snake, and Wolf, Ultimate also has had even more hype worthy inclusions, including long time fan requests like Ridley and King K. Rool and internet-breaking third-party additions such as two Belmont men and Ken Masters. Complaints about a lack of an Adventure Mode were also addressed with World of Light being a lengthy single player campaign. And finally, with the Switch being a hybrid between handheld and home console, the one unique feature the 3DS version of 4 had is now irrelevant.
• Creepy Awesome: Master Core counts, considering it is an Eldritch Abomination that has multiple forms and attacks formed of a dark shadow, which include copying the player, picking up and dropping the stage, shooting lightning and energy blasts, and to top it off, its ultimate form in Wii U is a giant fortress swarming with enemies and deadly acid.
• Critical Dissonance: While the 3DS version of SSB4 is widely considered inferior to the Wii U version, it completely dwarfs the Wii U version in terms of sales, owing to the 3DS' much larger install base, and is the third best-selling game in the series after Ultimate and Brawl. It's also the second worst-reviewed game in the series next to the N64 original (though still very well-reviewed at an 85/100 Metascore), but is very widely preferred over Brawl due to its improved mechanics (shared with the Wii U version). Surprisingly, Famitsu readers voted it the best game of 2014, possibly owing to the Japanese market's even greater skew towards handheld systems than the rest of the world.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The Fighting Mii Team if you have custom enabled: They will (like all characters when you do so) make use of the best equipment you have. On higher Intensities, you are looking at a 10-man army (or a 20-man army in Wii U) who will pursue you relentlessly, beat you senseless like the sandbag you are, send you flying to your doom, replace the fallen to keep up the pressure against you, and who won't go down like the small fries they usually are. What especially makes this worse in comparison to other Team battles in 3DS/Wii U (and in former games) is that this particular team have a class of fighters with disjointed hitboxes (the Swordfighter), and a class that specializes in staying out of your reach and who will KO you with their ranged forward smash while you're busy handling the other two (the Gunner).
  • Whether with customs or not, the Mii Gunner is this, and not just in Cruel Smash. They have an unfairly-long-ranged side smash and up aerial that have a ridiculous amount of hitstun, so much so that with other Miis they can trap you in an inescapeable combo that racks up your damage to high percentage without much effort.
  • The Mimicuties in Smash Run are broken. These Chest Monsters are almost completely indistinguishable from real treasure chests, and, once you awaken one, they will proceed to attack you with extremely powerful kicks and spin attacks, being able to KO you at low percentages, and not only are they incredibly fast, but they can take all of your attacks and shrug it off. The worst part? If you try fleeing, they actively chase you down.^note Here's a tip: The Mimicuties are typically more brightly colored than the real treasure chests.◊
  • Devil Cars are quite similar to Mimicuties; they're fast, hit hard, and can follow you a good distance through the map. But while Mimicuties can be knocked down from a particularly powerful attack and left helpless like most other enemies, Devil Cars are Immune to Flinching, a trait shared only by special enemies that are nowhere near as fast.
  • Darknuts, again in Smash Run, will destroy you without so much as breaking a sweat. They block attacks from the front with their shield, and unlike most AI enemies, are more than capable of suddenly countering an attack from behind, and they actually get faster as you strip their armor off, meaning they act as a super-effective Lightning Bruiser.
  • Plasma Wisps don't seem too dangerous at first, until they reach their third charge. At this point, they become surrounded by a plasma shield that damages you and renders them completely invincible. They can also launch this shield as a projectile, which is big, fast, and launches you shockingly far. All of this is made worse by the Plasma Wisp being constantly airborne and a very common enemy.
  • Clubberskulls, like in their home game, manage to be the toughest enemy in a game where every enemy is either a Goddamned Bat or a Demonic Spider. Not only do they have a truckload of HP, they hit like one too; Clubberskull's method of walking alone can juggle you and smash your percentages up from zero into the high 100's. This is ignoring their other attacks, which all have massive range, power, and are designed to launch you as far as possible. The only mercy is that they're rare and you actually have to free them to fight them, but good luck beating one if you do. This is taking away that a stray bullet from an enemy might free them by accident anyways. That said, sometimes you can fight them in wanted sections, and due to being the toughest enemy in the game, they give the best item stats.
  • Yet another Kid Icarus enemy, Ornes are absolutely vile. First, they're completely invincible. Second, touching one instantly KOs you (and it doesn't even send you flying, you just get destroyed right there on the spot). Third, while there is music that plays when you're near one, this sometimes works in the Orne's favor: It usually appears just outside your field of vision, so you can't be sure where it is in relation to your character. In your haste to leave the area, it's entirely possible for you to run right into it, unable to react in time and turn around. Worse still, there's a "Survive!" Challenge Door that puts you on a small platform with an Orne, and you have to run from it for several seconds in the limited space available, which can be nigh-impossible if your character is slow.
  • Chain Chomps. Their attack has fairly good reach, and hurts you several times before sending you flying. The Chain Chomps themselves are actually invincible; you have to attack the stake that they're chained to to set them free. However, the Chain Chomps will hop around the stake between attacks, and are some of the few Smash Run enemies to inflict Collision Damage.
  • The Lentheniums (laser flowers). Not much of a threat in Smash Run, but is the biggest threat in Master Fortress, being able to hit you from offscreen, often sending you into the acid.
• Discredited Meme: The "better nerf Greninja" meme, which despite lacking a real basis to begin with (as Greninja was only ever nerfed in the very first balance patch and it was mostly focused on bringing a few broken moves inline), ended up going out of vogue when Greninja kept consistently getting generous buffs in patches all the way to the end despite never being considered worse than mid-tier, while several lower-tier characters were treated a lot less generously, especially Jigglypuff and King Dedede, who were never buffed despite being candidates for worst character in the game (the latter of which actually received a nerf to his already worst-in-the-game air speed in one of the last patches despite being considered one of the worst characters by then).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Takamaru. He hails from a fairly obscure game overseas that was initially only released in Japan, and although it was later released in mid-2014 for the 3DS Virtual Console, the game didn't sell much. Takamaru's appearance in Smash was warmly met though, mostly due to him being a Samurai and being voiced by popular Japanese Voice Actor Tomokazu Sugita. He gained a cult following, which actually wished he appeared as a fighter of his own in Ultimate.
• Even Better Sequel: 3DS/Wii U received this reputation from both casual and hardcore fans initially, due to marrying much of what was considered the best of both worlds from the previous installments. The Wii U version, which came slightly later, is itself considered a better sequel to the 3DS version in spite of sharing much of the same content.
• Fan Nickname: For the games themselves collectively, Super Smash Bros. 4 (sometimes abbreviated into SSB4) or Sm4sh.
• Gateway Series: Interest in the Xenoblade Chronicles series grew exponentially with a primary factor being Shulk's inclusion here.
• Genius Bonus: Master Core's boss theme includes a short little bit of Morse code, which spells M-A-S-T-E-R C-O-R-E.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Punch-Out! has a much larger fanbase in America than in Japan, to the point that Japanese players did not understand why American players were getting excited about Little Mac becoming playable.
  • Ike's buffed-up design (originating from Radiant Dawn) is memetically derided in Japan for looking like a gorilla. In America, Ike's design is far more popular for being manly, and became the subject of many positive memes.
• Goddamned Bats: Smash Run is infested with these.
  • The Pokémon enemies are not much of a threat on their own, but have annoying gimmicks that can disrupt the player: Chandelure takes no damage and becomes stronger if it's hit by fire or darkness-based attacks; Cryogonal's Ice Beam instantly freezes you and is hard to dodge; Gastly can't be hurt if your character doesn't have a projectile; Koffing has a large attack radius and can lower your stats; and Petilil can put you to sleep.
  • Fire and Ice Bubbles are difficult to fight due to being covered by an aura that will burn you or freeze you if you don't time your attacks perfectly. Being common airborne enemies that will actively charge at you doesn't help.
  • If you damage a Cucco too much, it will summon a flock of invincible Cuccos that will attack you relentlessly, making it difficult to accomplish anything. Even a defeated enemy bumping into one will provoke it, and they love to spawn right next to a group of enemies, making it very easy to hit them by accident.
  • Paratroopas can be very annoying to deal with, particularly in large numbers, as they attack rather quickly, and in large numbers, they may not give you enough time to dodge before another one attacks you. Of course, large waves of them is the game's preferred way of spawning them, making dealing with them all the more difficult.
  • Bacuras. They don't deal that much damage (only 4%), but they make up for that by hitting with a meteor smash. Also, they are completely invincible and can reflect projectiles. What makes them a real pain to deal with is that they can easily get in the way of navigating the Smash Run area. When trying to go up, they can be hidden off screen and be ready to hit with only a split-second's worth of time to react to. If they are among the randomly-selected enemy roster, they will also spawn frequently too and always show up in groups.
  • The Ghosts from Find Mii pose little threat on their own, but shield other enemies and reflect projectiles back at you. They also follow you around if you try to run from it, and slowly back away if you try to shoo it out.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • Yoshi had a few of these in the initial 3DS release, but they would be patched out though upon the Wii U version's release.
  • Wario's air control in the 3DS version can, in certain cases, allow him to fly. Usually, his flight takes him right to the blast line. This too would be patched out upon the Wii U version's release.
  • In the Wii U version, should a timed match including Wario as the player character on a team with someone else end as Wario's Final Smash is timing out, he'll be able to move around in the victory screen. (Though there's only so much you can do there, this also works with other transformation Final Smashes.)
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • During the early days of speculation for these games, it was widely speculated (even, though to a much lesser extent, after Sakurai confirmed that both would have the same roster) that the 3DS version's roster would focus more on characters from retro games while the Wii U version's roster would focus more on modern games, with many assuming the Ice Climbers would be exclusive to the 3DS version. When the games came out, it turned out that the Ice Climbers weren't in the Wii U version because the 3DS couldn't handle them.
  • Sakurai's decision to not make Takamaru playable due to Western unfamiliarity is this when you realize that Nintendo was fixing the issue during Smash 4's development, as The Mysterious Murasame Castle was the subject of a Nintendo Land minigame and got an international release on the 3DS Virtual Console.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When Cloud was added to the game, the fans accused Square Enix of being stingy, due to his DLC only featuring two music tracks and him not having an english voice actor. This hasn't improved in the next game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, which didn't even include spirits to represent the series. However, three characters from Square-Enix games (The Hero, Sephiroth (Also from Final Fantasy VII) and Sora), making Square-Enix the 3rd-party company with the most characters in Ultimate, with four playable characters^note Seven if the four costumes of the Hero are counted as seperate characters and many music tracks and spirits from three different franchises.^note  Sora and the Kingdom Hearts franchise are owned by Disney, but still.
• Ho Yay:
  • Robin's 3DS' All-Star credits panel pokes fun at the perceived commonness of this in canon Fire Emblem games.
  • In two of Palutena's ​guidance conversations, Pit calls Link handsome.
  • Lucas's ending video shows a clip of him and Ness, where Ness's hands are near Lucas's crotch and Lucas seems to be struggling.
• I Knew It!:
  • Now seriously, who didn't expect Mega Man to join the cast?
  • Many people also predicted Villager (since the only content related to Animal Crossing that was missing in Brawl was a playable character), Miis (the precedent being Mario Kart Wii), Palutena (because of the popularity of Pit in Brawl as well as Sakurai's involvement in Kid Icarus: Uprising), and Pac-Man (because of Namco's input in the game).
  • An early screenshot showed Kirby in the middle of a starry sky. Several people predicted that this starry sky was a Super Mario Galaxy stage. Sometime after the stage was revealed, a lot of people were speculating that this confirmed that Rosalina would be playable. One month later, the December 18, 2013 Nintendo Direct proved this to be true, and the reveal trailer even starts with Kirby on the Warp Star.
  • When previews of Pokémon X and Y featured the Mega Evolutions, people were already saying they would be in the fourth Smash game. Lo and behold, Lucario and Charizard have their Mega Evolutions. It didn't hurt that Sakurai himself mentioned that he was considering them if he decided to bring back Lucario or Mewtwo (neither of which were confirmed at that time). Mewtwo itself got one as well for its Final Smash, though it only lasts for one attack.
  • The reveal of the Smash Arena boxing ring stage at E3 2013 had people guessing that it would eventually be revealed as a Punch-Out!! stage and we'd get a Punch-Out!! character. The latter was confirmed the following February 13, 2014 when Little Mac was revealed to be playable. Try to find a single reaction video on YouTube that doesn't have someone say the name of the trope. ^note You won't find one. Then, as of the Smash Bros. Direct on April 8, the stage's icon is revealed to be a boxing glove, confirming it to be the Punch-Out!! stage.
  • A fan managed to piece together the full layout of the Garden of Hope stage◊ from development screenshots before it was officially revealed in the 04/08/14 Smash Direct.
  • Several had guessed that the Wii U version would come out on November 21st, 2014 in North America, given how Nintendo usually releases a big game one week before Black Friday.
  • People figured that an 8-Player Smash mode might have been available upon looking at unused data. It justifies that if 8 Ice Climbers were to cause slowdown on the 3DS version, how would 16 Ice Climbers look like on the Wii U version? This isn't even going into characters with multiple forms (Zelda, Samus, Pokémon Trainer).
  • Fans have thought up the idea of Pit and Palutena (and Viridi) having conversations about Pit's opponents much like Snake's Codecs in Brawl. Turns out it actually exists on the Wii U version.
  • A couple of people figured that the tagline for Duck Hunt's trailer would be "Duck Hunt Takes Aim!"
  • Many people correctly predicted that Duck Hunt would get their own stage in the Wii U version, as the Wii Fit Trainer doesn't have any home stage in the 3DS version, but has the same Classic Mode stages as Duck Hunt.
  • Many fans guessed that "Mewtwo Strikes Back" would be Mewtwo's tagline for its trailer.
  • Barring Cloud, many of the DLC characters were predicted by most hardcore fans: Mewtwo, Roy and Lucas were fan-favorite veterans (the former two missing out on Brawl) left out of the vanilla version. Mega Man was one of the first newcomers introduced, which made it easier for a second Capcom mascot (Ryu) to appear. A similar argument can be made for Bayonetta; besides Nintendo helping with the development and publishing of Bayonetta 2, fellow Sega hero Sonic returned from Brawl as well. Lastly, Corrin continued the trend of Nintendo using Smash to promote upcoming or recent titles.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The developers must have been aware of this when making the Wii U and 3DS games, as various characters that are usually unlockables are available from the start in those games, plus the process of unlocking all the characters is much quicker.
  • When the game launched in 2014, all mentions of the Final Boss, Master Core, were spoiler-tagged. Now, knowledge of Master Core is so widespread that there is no reason to keep it a secret.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: It was in this pair of games where the backlash regarding Ganondorf's portrayal started to come to a head. His status as Moveset Clone of Captain Falcon was tolerated in Melee since Ganondorf in his human form had only appeared in Ocarina of Time and he was a last-minute inclusion. It was also fairly tolerated in Brawl where most fans understood that it wouldn't be a good idea to alienate fans of Melee even though requests for his moveset to be revamped were building. But come for 3DS and Wii U, fans who wanted a Truer to the Text portrayal of Ganondorf started to become much more vocal since some characters had moves altered to better reflect their games (Bowser and Pit being standout examples) and other characters debuted with detailed references to their respective games (such as Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, and Mega Man). Meanwhile Ganondorf only got a few animation changes, but largely looked and played the same as in Brawl. This was particularly disappointing for fans who had played Hyrule Warriors one month earlier, since said game featured an acclaimed potrayal of Ganondorf using many different weapons and magical attacks from his various games. Due to this backlash, the succeeding Ultimate finally gave him the use of his sword in his Smash attacks.
• Memetic Badass:
  • Captain Falcon is this, as always, but this game really kicked it up a notch in his extremely badass reveal trailer, where he holds off Robin, Chrom, and Lucina bare-handed. Many jokes about him Falcon Punching Chrom straight out of the roster followed.
  • The Animal Crossing Villager became this practically within minutes of being announced due to his axe and constant smiling expression (for example◊). Thanks to this, fans have interpreted him as an Ax-Crazy serial killer.
  • The Wii Fit Trainer is headed in this direction as well; just look at the Memes page.
  • Ike was already considered badass by the fandom, but his beefier design in this game kicked it overdrive, and he is now considered a paragon of brawny manliness on the level of Captain Falcon, with "I was a wimp until Anchor Arms" jokes and the like following afterwards.
  • Yoshi became one because of this victory animation which brings Akuma to mind. It's Older Than They Think though, as he's had that victory animation ever since 64.
  • Bayonetta has been getting this treatment due to the massive flame war she's causing in the competitive community, aside from the fact that she's prime Memetic Badass material in her home series. Not even that long in and some areas have already either banned or consider banning her. Many people have taken to her just being so unbelievably badass that people can't handle her and need to ban her.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Chrom, due to his treatment in the trailer and in Palutena's Guidance on Robin. The most common joke is that he got Falcon Punched so hard, he was knocked out of the roster. The ribbing only got worse when it was revealed that he would be included as a Mii costume. And when Corrin of Fire Emblem Fates was announced as DLC, the teasing became even worse, with many people snarking about how Chrom has been passed over yet again, this time for a character whose game was only six months old and not even out in America yet at the time of the announcement. He became playable in Ultimate, yet that wasn't enough to rid Chrom of his loser status - he got hit with some more Memetic Loser status within the Fire Emblem fanbase, and the meme is well and alive because of it.
  • Little Mac has also been getting this treatment due to the major Hype Backlash he got when it was discovered he wasn't a Game-Breaker but instead a very lopsided and easy-to-handle Skill Gate Character. The revelation from Sakurai that Little Mac wins far less than he loses online doesn't help much, nor are the many YouTube videos making fun of his poor recovery or the fact that it's dangerously easy for him to dive off of ledges with his side special. Also, Mac just happens to be on the receiving end of Ryu's Shin Shoryuken in the latter's Final Smash trophy, so it's possible Nintendo has caught on to this one.
  • Greninja also got this treatment due to the exaggeration of the nerfs it received in patches, to the point where jokes were made about it every time people discussed upcoming balance patches. It's now discredited due to people being more knowledgeable about the patching history (thus you no longer have people thinking it kept getting nerfed after the first patch), the repeated buffs Greninja kept getting in patches, and it being apparent that many other characters were treated far worse by the patches (namely Jigglypuff and King Dedede).
  • Jigglypuff and King Dedede ended up becoming this because, despite being considered strong candidates for the absolute worst character in the game, neither ever received a single buff in any of the patches, while every other character around them got a plethora of buffs (including resoundingly much better characters like the aformentioned Greninja). Dedede got more of this when it was discovered that one of the last patches actually nerfed him for some inexplicable reason (granted it was just making his already worst-in-the-game air speed slightly worse and had little, if any, practical effect on his viability, but it was the thought that hurt). Both would end up significantly buffed in Ultimate, and would end up not getting ignored by patches this time with receiving some farther welcomed buffs through them, getting them out of this rut.
  • Palutena was frequently mocked by fans for being a generally bad and boring character since release. Ultimate would flip this on its head when Palutena got some significant buffs and became a bonafide High-Tier Scrappy as one of the game's best and most played characters.
  • Poor male Corrin has been insulted by people just because he's not a cute girl. It has to do with how male Vanilla Protagonists are seen in a much worse light than their female counterparts.
  • Charizard. Relentlessly mocked for being one of the worst characters in the game prior to its Balance Buffs and widely ignored even afterwards, its moveset was designed for a three-fighter Stance System without the other two fighters to cover its weaknesses, which was only emphasized when its reunion with its Trainer in Ultimate helped skyrocket all four (five?) members of the crew to beloved top-tier status. Some fans joke that Charizard's treatment in this game was its "punishment" for disobeying its Trainer and alienating its buddies.
• Memetic Troll: Ganondorf players, thanks to his slow but hard-hitting attacks, and for his aerial Flame Choke always stocking the opponent first, making him a poster boy for disrespect and salt. This fits with Ganondorf's canon portrayal in Ocarina of Time, where he was smug, condescending and frequently talked down to the heroes. Him keeping his artifact moveset is sometimes seen as him trolling his "Canondorf" fans.
• Misblamed:
  • While the reason for his exclusion has never been said by Sakurai, Snake's exclusion from this game has been often blamed by fans to be the result of Konami's relationship with Kojima falling apart, since Sakurai's friendship with Kojima was the reason why Snake was included in Brawl. However the game's roster was decided in 2012, when Phantom Pain was early in development, and thus whatever kept Snake out of the roster happened before Kojima's fallout with Konami. Furthermore, his inclusion in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate shows that Sakurai holding a supposed grudge against Konami for their treatment of his friend was never a thing.
  • Dr. Mario, Dark Pit, and Lucina have been accused of being "slot thieves" whose presence in the game prevented more interesting fighters from being added. This ignores that the work needed to get three clone characters is much smaller than the work needed to make one all-new fighter, which would have resulted in delays and/or budget issues, and these characters were initially intended to be mere alternate skins before being upgraded to separate characters, so if anything, more characters were added beyond the intended amount.
• Most Wonderful Sound:
  • Meteor Smashes now make an unique noise when they connect. This sound feels good knowing you just sent your opponent into the pits.
  • If you're lucky enough to stop the roulette in Classic mode on 5 trophies or five custom moves, the spinner makes a strange yet smile-inducing noise.
• Narm Charm:
  • In the Wii U version, Ganondorf's up taunt looks very silly at a certain angle, but otherwise is a rather cool taunt.
  • It's hard not to love the questionable delivery on some of male Robin's lines, especially during his reveal trailer.
    "It seems our fates are joined."
• Never Live It Down:
  • Diddy Kong will always be remembered for his "Hoo Hah" and being an utterly broken character, due to the massive amounts of bile that he raised before his nerfs in versions 1.0.6 and 1.0.8. It didn't help that Diddy still won most major tournaments for a few years afterward, thanks to - and only thanks to - his best player ZeRo, which to many people is a painful reminder of the 1.0.4 days.
  • Bayonetta will also be infamously remembered for being another Game-Breaker who destroyed the meta of the game with her devestating ladder combos and complete lack of a disadvantage state, while unlike Diddy, the nerfs she got in the final patch, version 1.1.6, didn't stop her from becoming the clear most dominating character in the game up to the end of Smash 4. Bayo would end up being the most cited factor for Smash 4's tournament attendance declined in its later competitive life, and few felt any sympathy when she got nerfed into the ground in Ultimate.
• Older Than They Think:
  • In a rare instance of the developers themselves doing this, the April 8th, 2014 Nintendo Direct gave a comprehensive rundown of Mega Man's moveset and where nearly each attack of his originates from, but erroneously attributed the Mega Upper to the original Marvel vs. Capcom (1998). It actually first appeared in the arcade fighter Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (1996).
  • When Ike was confirmed to return, some people talked about his more muscular design as if it was brand new. They weren't aware of the design's actual origin, which is Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn for the Wii, which predates these games by seven years.
  • This isn't the first time something Duck Hunt-related appeared in a 3D game. The ducks make a cameo in Wii Play's "Shooting Range". You can even hear the dog barking before they appear.
  • "I'm really feeling it" was one of Shulk's battle quotes from Xenoblade Chronicles 1.
  • Ryu's Dancing Bear of being able to switch between light/heavy attacks by changing the length of the button held dates back to some versions of Street Fighter; there, too, it was used to make up for the absence of more direct commands in two-button ports.
  • Smash 4 isn't Cloud's first appearance on a Nintendo console - he makes appearances in Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (first released on the Game Boy Advance), Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, and Final Fantasy Explorers (both of which are on the 3DS).
  • A lot of Smash players don't realize that Cloud's Omnislash predates Ike's Great Aether, or any similar Final Smash used by swordsmen (the Links' Triforce Slash, Kirby's Ultra Sword, Robin's Pair Up). Sakurai, on the other hand, most likely did, hence why Ike is on the receiving end of Omnislash in Cloud's trailer.
  • Corrin's inclusion to promote Fire Emblem Fates was predated by Roy's appearance in Melee as a promotion for the then-upcoming Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade. The only difference is that Corrin's game was already out in Japan (but had yet to reach foreign shores) when he was confirmed.
• One True Threesome:
  • Ever since their reveal, Villager, Wii Fit Trainer, and Mega Man have been put together in a massive amount of fan art.
  • Because of their links together as the last 3 DLC characters, we have Cloud/Corrin/Bayonetta.
• Pandering to the Base: 3DS/Wii U takes immense steps to play accessibly to tournament fans. Almost every stage is available in a Final Destination-style format with a level playing field and no platforms or hazards; character movesets can be adjusted; characters with randomness involved are altered (Olimar's Pikmin now come out in a set order; transformations were given separate slots); and the online "For Glory" mode is a competitive selection with no items, the option for one-on-one fights^note as opposed to 4-player free-for-alls only, and utilizing Final Destination.
• Periphery Demographic: Pac-Man's inclusion has been known to attract older adults (parents, grandparents, etc.) that fall outside the demographics that Smash is generally marketed towards, however broad. Obviously, as gaming's first true mascot (as well as the simplistic nature of his source game), this accounts for his popularity with adults who witnessed his success first hand.
• Replacement Scrappy:
  • Lucina was initially seen as this for Roy. Although Roy was still some sort of a base-breaker since Melee, when it was revealed Lucina was a clone of Marth, many Roy fans (and initial detractors) were heavily disappointed to see he was not making a return from Melee, citing him as the much better clone of the two due to his sword's fire powers and his reverse tipper mechanic, in contrast to Lucina, whose sword doesn't have elemental powers and deals equal damage all along its length. After Roy's inclusion as DLC (as a semi-clone to boot), the sentiment died down. As of Ultimate, thanks to Sakurai clarifying her inclusion was as a bonus character (as was the case with the newly-named Echo Fighters), Lucina has finally fully averted this trope.
  • After the release of Ultimate, the Smash 4 version of Charizard became this for Pokémon Trainer. Initially, Charizard's return as a solo character was debated but generally warmly received, because Charizard's marketing in the Pokémon franchise started to ramp up and because Pokémon Trainer was widely disliked in Brawl for his very convoluted and difficult-to-manage playstyle, and it provided for a solid dynamic with Greninja as its "rival". However, Charizard was also one of the most unpopular characters in the game in its own right, being considered one of the absolute worst characters for the first couple of years of the game and getting flak for its clunky moveset. When Pokémon Trainer returned in Ultimate, their mechanics were extensively reworked and they instead became one of the most popular characters in the game, aided by the addition of a female Trainer option, and a solid top-tier in competitive play. This, in turn, made Charizard itself into a more well-liked fighter as it was now part of a much more fun and versatile team dynamic, particularly after some Balance Buffs that made it stronger than it was in either of its prior appearances. As such, some fans therefore see its Smash 4 incarnation as a lackluster replacement for a more mechanically interesting fighter. Even fans who were initially miffed that Charizard was no longer its own character were able to warm up to the new Pokémon Trainer because of how they helped Charizard's case in Smash.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Mewtwo, in the competitive scene as one of the least-popular characters in Melee, but one of the most missed characters from Brawl. When it was announced to be returning as free DLC for the Wii U and 3DS games a few months after the release of the game, fans were ecstatic. This also vindicated its Super Mode of Mega Mewtwo Y, which was a Base-Breaking Character in the Pokémon fanbase for its strong association with the controversial Replacement Scrappy Mewtwo from Pokémon: Genesect and the Legend Awakened. The fourth game gives it to the original and far more beloved Mewtwo character, weakening the link.
  • Many people weren't happy with Samus's Combat Stilettos in Metroid: Other M. How does Sakurai fix that? Turn them into much cooler-looking and mechanical rocket stilettos. In fact, while still the subject of a Broken Base, the Other M designs became a bit less of a Brown Note for some fans due to their being used in a context without any of the game's more controversial elements, with Samus keeping her classic personality and Brawl quotes rather than inexplicably switching to her Other M characterization.
  • The Duck Hunt dog is one of the most popular newcomers in the fourth game, despite being one of the most iconic Scrappies in video game history. Some of these reasons include finally giving players a chance to beat him up, reminding a lot of players of Banjo-Kazooie due to being paired up with a duck, referencing several NES games that used the Zapper in his moveset, and being the perfect Troll/Lethal Joke character thanks to his reputation and infamous signature laugh. It doesn't hurt that he looks quite a bit cuter compared to his original appearance, looking like a cartoon dog, and comparisons between him and Iggy from Stardust Crusaders.
  • Dr. Mario, while having a rather small fanbase in Melee, was generally considered among the least original and most lazy clones and was derided for his jumping height and recovery. Cue him making a surprising return two games later, and many seemed to be happy to have him back. The fact that he keeps his old down-special unlike Mario, adding another difference between the two, has been particularly well-received.
  • Bowser. In Melee and Brawl, he was always considered a bad, slow nonfunctional character, and in the former game even a candidate for the worst character in the game. In the fourth installment, he was both significantly buffed to be faster and hit harder than ever, and now resembles his in-universe incarnation (standing up straighter and with much brighter colors). His extreme damage and knockback outputs and heavy weight has earned him plenty of fans, while the patches also gave him a very effective setup throw that caused very high damage and could true combo into kills for a very long time, which working off of his amazing grab turned him into a very terrifying grappler that gets seen at the very top levels of competitive play.
  • Bowser Jr. In his debut game, he was derided for being a Replacement Scrappy to the Koopalings as well as being an annoying character in general. His appearance in Smash, on the other hand, has been fairly well received due to his usage of the Koopa Clown Car setting him apart from other fighters. It helps that the previously mentioned Koopalings are also playable as alternate characters, along with his trailer making him (and the Koopalings) genuinely intimidating.
  • F.L.U.D.D. was widely disliked for replacing Mario's Tornado in Brawl and being a charge move that doesn't even deal damage, only pushing the opponent back a few inches, leaving it mostly useless. However, the move was significantly buffed by being given a much stronger pushing effect, which allows to be used effectively to gain stage control and to gimp opponents.
• Saved by the Fans: While Mewtwo, Lucas and Roy didn't make it into the initial roster for the game, they were included as the first three DLC characters due to fan request. This is particularly notable for Lucas, whose home game was largely derided in Japan for deviating too much from previous EarthBound games and only had a cult following overseas. Furthermore, shortly after Roy's (and Ryu's) announcement, a write-in poll for future DLC characters was implemented onto the main site, allowing potentially every character that had been cut from a previous game to return (in addition to possible newcomers).^note Though after Bayonetta's inclusion, this never came to be until it was revealed that the poll was mostly for Ultimate, influencing multiple of its character choices, and Sora was eventually revealed as the true Smash Ballot winner... in 2021.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Unlocking custom moves is extremely tedious in this game. The only way you can unlock custom moves is by winning them as rewards in the single player modes, and that's mixed in with a bunch of costumes, equipment, and other trophies that are more cosmetic awards. And since there are 376 custom moves in total, that means you'll have to play single player a bunch in order to get every single one of them. What the worst part about all of it is that it's possible to get repeats of a custom move, which means there's a very high possibility that you could go through a perfect run of single player and not get any new moves out of it because the Random Number God decided to screw you over. Combined with how broken some of them are, the fact that so few people will likely ever get every single custom move is the main reason they were completely banned from Tournament Play after an early short trial run. Little to no fans were saddened when custom moves were all but removed in Ultimate save for the Mii Fighters.
  • Equipment (sometimes called "loot") has similar issues with acquisition; it works like a simplified Diablo, which in some aspects works great, but it means that two players will have a lot of trouble fighting each other on exactly even terms while still using fancy equipment. For example, maybe you want to speed up the game by equipping loot that adds up to whatever to speed and as small as possible change to the other attributes, but the chances of both of you getting the exact same numbers for this are slim to nil, since in the 3DS version you can't trade or loan others' equipment, even while you're fighting with them (in the Wii U version, everyone can pick from a shared pool, but this equipment can't be passed on to other Wii Us). Also, the equipment could have been organized a little better, and you can't mark favorites like you can with powers. Fortunately, all this is completely optional in multiplayer and not as problematic in single-player. A few final nails in the coffin are that you can still get worthless Level 1 loot no matter how high your difficulty level is in Classic, All-Star, and Master Orders. Turning the perceived belief that you have a better chance at getting rarer equipment on the hardest difficulties into a blatant lie. Spirits had more or less replaced equipment once Ultimate rolled around.
  • Another complaint that many people have are the emphasized stage bosses/interferences in the game that turns the stage into "playing against each other" to "surviving against the stage". Notable hazards are Koume & Kotake in Gerudo Valley, Yellow Devil in Wily's Castle, Flying Men in Magicant, and the Dark Emperor from Find Mii. Many people feel like these bosses make the stage very obnoxious and unfun, and although there is an "Omega Form", people feel that it causes the stage to go in the other direction and become too boring. Many people were hoping for an off switch against these stage bosses. In the Wii U version, the Yellow Devil is still there, but we get Metal Face in Gaur Plain - although the stage is crazy enough already, Ridley in Pyrosphere (many people thought that Pyrosphere was going to be a Neutral stage until Ridley was revealed), and Nabbit in Mushroom Kingdom U. Although not as bad as the 3DS version, Nabbit is considered to be very annoying as he pulls a Boss Galaga/Beetle on opponents. To add insult to injury, the January 2015 patch for the Wii U version turns off stage hazards for some stages... but only so those stages can support matches with 5 or more players, with no actual switch available to turn them off for matches with fewer fighters.
  • The revamped C-stick/Right stick mechanics has come under a lot of criticism. The fact that it charges a Smash attack instead of throwing out an instant, uncharged Smash is seen as an obnoxious feature that hurts a previously convenient control feature. But this isn't as bad as the fact that using the C-stick to use a directional aerial causes you to halt your momentum. This would be justified for Robin, since they have the ability to use aerial Smash attacks, but the problem is that every character is subject to this inconvenience. The only way to alleviate this problem is to switch the C-stick from "Smash" to "Attack" which will allow you to keep your momentum while using the C-stick, but loses the ability to throw out a quick Smash attack.
  • In the initial 3DS release, launch speed influence, abbreviated as LSI (and was initially known as vectoring). When launched by an attack, in addition to traditional DI, you can increase and decrease the amount of knockback you sustain to a significant amount by holding up (to increase) or holding down (to decrease). This had a practical effect similar to hitstun cancelling in Brawl; you could effectively increase your launch distance when hit by setup moves, making combos very difficult to achieve, and you could effectively decrease your launch distance when hit by potential KO moves, allowing you to survive much longer, exacerbated by the stages in the 3Ds version having very large blastzones (characters could almost survive as long as characters with proper DI and momentum cancelling could in Brawl). The first balance patch, version 1.0.4, that came with the release of the Wii U version, significantly nerfed LSI by making it so that moves with vertical launch angles could no longer be affected by it, making combos a lot more prevalent and KOs require a lot less damage. LSI remained for horizontal and diagonal launching moves, but since holding up or down for LSI tends to give you a lot worse DI on these moves, the mechanic was balanced out.
  • Initially, the game having ledge trumping instead of edge-hogging was seen as this; unlike prior games, where grabbing a ledge prevented another character from being able to grab it, a character will now be bumped back off the ledge if another character comes in contact with the ledge. Ledge trumping, when combined with the fact a trumped character won't have their ledge invincibility restored, can be used by edge-guarders to their advantage like edge-hogging. However, it's a lot more difficult to utilise in such a way, as a recovering character can always prevent being trumped by buffering a getup option when they grab the ledge, and a trumped character can act almost as fast as the trumper can. So for it to be successful, a trumper has to catch an opponent offguard, and then usually get a good read after that to convert off it. As such, many players lament the replacement of the much more simpler-yet-effective edge-hogging.
  • The mechanic known by fans as Rage; in Smash 4, as a character's damage rises, all their attacks start dealing gradually increasing knockback, capping at 150% damage where the attacks will have about a 15% knockback bonus. The simple effect is that characters can KO at lower damages the higher their own damage is. For why it's disliked by so many players varies; some deride it simply because they claim it's a "comeback mechanic" that "rewards" a player for "losing", while some others claim it unfairly rewards the winning player by giving the player who gets the first KO an advantage (as the player who KOs first will be damaged and thus have rage boosting their knockback, while the other player will be fresh and thus have to build their rage again). Then you have players who don't like it because it can make combos harder to pull off (or easier in certain cases), players who don't like the "jank" early KOs that can happen when the rage effect is applied to a move with especially high base knockback near a blastline (this is especially notorious with some multi-hitting recovery moves, where they tend to have initial hits that deal obscene set knockback to launch the opponent into the followup hits, which can then potentially KO at ridiculously early damages when they get boosted by rage and miss the followup hits, as seen in this infamous video), and players who don't like it because it detracts from Lucario's signature gimmick. This detraction of Rage as a negative impact on competitive Smash 4 would lead to the mechanic getting significantly toned down in Ultimate, where it scales slower, caps at a 10% boost, and does not apply to any hitboxes with set knockback, eliminating the very early kills it enabled and multi-hit moves becoming nonfunctional at high Rage.
  • In the Wii U version only, you can't change the default controls. Instead, you have to associate any control changes to a nameplate, which then has to be selected every time you start playing any mode if you want to keep your customized controls. A less important but related lack-of-feature is that the Wii U version won't remember the most recent Palette Swap you've used with each character, even if you do enter your name. However, this has been changed in the patch that added Mewtwo, where nameplates are saved for each controller port.
  • DLC characters being integrated into the All-Star mode. It makes the mode and the challenges associated with it a bit tougher to complete, especially since they're congregated in certain stages. Also, despite DLC characters being downloaded in patches whether one buys them or not (so they can be fought against online), the DLC opponents still don't appear in All-Star unless purchased, possibly giving people reason to delete and re-download their DLC repeatedly, as they get more points with the DLC but easier challenges without.
  • Smash Run occasionally has Enemy Fests, where every onscreen enemy disappears to make way for waves of a specific type of enemy. On paper, it doesn't sound too bad, and a Souflee Fest is extremely welcome. However, the player might have been about to defeat a strong enemy like a Darknut or a Clubberskull after a grueling battle, only for it to suddenly be replaced with Shy Guys or Bullet Bills, and thus denied a great bounty of stat boosts, while keeping the accrued damage and waste of several powers.
  • Characters throwing away shooting items after they run out of ammo. In previous games, once you knew an item had run out, you could then take the opportunity to throw it at another player. This time, however, unless you are good at keeping track, it is all too easy to throw the item away by accident.
  • "With Anyone" in online play has no skill-based matchmaking, despite it being claimed in one of the game's Directs that the mode would feature it. While this is perfectly fine on "For Fun" mode, as nothing there is meant to be taken seriously, the more serious alternative, "For Glory", really suffers from this, as you're just thrown into a game with anybody who happens to be seeking a match at that moment. In the end, you might end up going from fighting someone that barely knows how to hold their controller, to then fighting an actual top professional the very next match, and everything inbetween. It was also disliked that "With Anyone" had no sort of region locking, so you could get matched with someone literally on the other side of the world and be stuck in a match with an unplayable amount of input lag. Whenever you play these modes, you were stuck with whatever the game spits out.
  • If your opponent is hit with a spike while they're already on the ground, they can tech it. CPUs do this perfectly. Ultimate notably removed the ability to tech spikes while on the ground entirely.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • An unfortunate side-effect of the 3DS' limitations, animations for Assist Trophies and Poké Ball Pokémon run at 30 frames per second while the rest of the game runs twice as fast, making them appear to move more choppily than the rest of the game. This is especially obvious with Nintendog since it takes up the whole screen. Olimar's Pikmin are also weighed down by this limitation, and the effect is more glaringly obvious, since Pikmin are in constant play.
  • Unlike the other characters with capes or flowing outfits in the 3DS version, Cloud's "Cloudy Wolf" outfit's coat end and belts are seemingly attached to Cloud's leg and don't move like the capes do, which looks strange.
  • DLC fighters starting from Roy and Ryu onward have noticeably low-quality voice clips on the 3DS version.
• Tainted by the Preview:
  • While it was said that the gameplay would be a mix of Melee and Brawl, many fans had already decried it for not immediately appealing to their playstyle. The effect worsened with the actual demo, with a few irrational fans throwing out "Brawl 2.0" for it not being exactly what they want. To be fair, some of the issues that held back Brawl's gameplay (such as random tripping) have been fixed, but other issues (such as the butchered dash-dancing, the amount of landing lag for aerial attacks, and how long it takes for someone to be KOed) are still present.
  • Lucario's return◊ caused this for certain fans who view it as a substitute for Mewtwo in Brawl and were anticipating a quick return for Mewtwo. Greninja also caught some of this due to its trailer being framed in a manner to suggest Mewtwo being confirmed, as its silhouetted pose greatly resembled Mewtwo's silhouette.
  • The April 8th, 2014 Smash Direct had this in regards to Ridley, one of the most highly-requested characters in the Smash and Metroid communities. When the Direct implied that Ridley would return as a boss, the fanbase was predictably scattered in pieces, with many Ridley fans calling foul on Sakurai for "misleading" them after months of speculation.^note When the Pyrosphere was revealed, it was the least-hyped stage out of all of those revealed for Wii U/3DS because of its connection to Other M and Ridley himself (whether it meant he was playable or not). After months had passed since its reveal, fans were starting to speculate that because Ridley hadn't been revealed for so long, that the Miiverse post which indirectly referred to him without using his name was only making a reference to what happened in the original game itself. When his shadow appeared on the Pyrosphere just after Sakurai explained how Yellow Devil worked on Wily's Castle, all hell broke loose.
  • Some detractors of the Pokémon anime series hoped that 3DS/Wii U wouldn't use voices and portrayals from the series as has been tradition. When it was shown that the game would continue to use anime portrayals for Pokémon (particularly Greninja having unexpectedly silly and childish Pokémon Speak), some fans took issue. This was mostly rectified when Mewtwo was confirmed to be based on its portrayal from the first movie and Melee; given that the anime had introduced a second, more controversial Mewtwo as a Replacement Scrappy and that the original Mewtwo hadn't been used in any material since 2001, its return came as a pleasant surprise for nostalgic fans.
  • Similar to the Ridley example, the reveal of King K. Rool as a Mii costume caused many fans to become disillusioned with the game and/or Sakurai himself and soured K. Rool fans' expectations and opinions of the Smash Ballot.
• That One Achievement:
  • The Challenges in the Wii U version make the Challenges in the 3DS Version look like a walk in the park. Almost all of the ones in the top two rows that aren't of the "collect all X" variety are downright nasty. Here's a sampler:
    • Clear Classic Mode on 9.0 Difficulty without losing a single life^note For added difficulty, a Golden Hammer can't be used on this challenge.
    • Clear Classic on intensity 9.0 without any customizations.
    • Clear Classic on intensity 9.0 with Marth within 12 minutes.
    • Clear All-Star Mode on Hard with all characters^note This is especially hard if you've downloaded all of the DLC characters.
    • Clear the true Solo All-Star mode on hard while playing as Duck Hunt^note This is especially hard if you've downloaded all of the DLC characters. A Golden Hammer can't be used on this challenge, either.
    • Clear Kirby's Crazy Appetite on Hard.
    • Score more than four KOs in Cruel Smash with Pit.
    • Play Cruel Smash alone with Luigi and survive for a single minute.
    • Score more than eight KOs in Cruel Smash, first with anyone and then with Lucina ^note Golden Hammers can't be used on the one that requires Lucina..
    • Hit the Sandbag between 1640 and 1656 feet in Home-Run Contest with R.O.B.
    • Complete the reward conditions for all of the Solo Events^note Which includes beating Kirby's Crazy Appetite on Hard.
    • Clear "Crazy Orders" after surviving 20 rounds as Mario^note There's a hard-capped ten minute time limit, meaning that you'd have to clear each round in less than 30 seconds a pop, made even more difficult by Mario not being overly powerful in terms of raw damage, and the tendency for the game to throw time-consuming Giant and Metal enemies in later rounds, as well as 20+ enemy Horde Battles which make this virtually impossible. Additionally the damage carries over between rounds, minus a percentile-based healing, meaning that without KO Healer or Lifesteal customizations it's VERY hard to even LIVE that long. And even then, you'd STILL have to beat the Hands, who have copious AI support at that level— and IF KO Healer or Lifesteal came into play, putting you at low damage when you started the final round, you start with less health for the final boss due to the way the final round's HP is calculated. A single bad item spawn can quickly spoil a perfect run, so if a Giant enemy picks up a Hammer, kiss that run goodbye, let alone some of the stage hazards..
    • Break 50,000 blocks in Trophy Rush ^note Not difficult in itself, but this challenge is extremely time consuming since you have no way of keeping track of how many blocks you've broken until you've hit 50,000 blocks..
    • Recover the stat boosts a Metroid stole from you in Smash Tour^note This one isn't hard per se, but it is annoying. First of all, Metroids don't always spawn on the map, so you must have a bit of luck if it shows up. Even if the Metroid shows up, it isn't guaranteed it will go to the same human player twice. If a CPU touches a Metroid at any point, you'll be locked out of the challenge for the remainder of the session. Worse, if it steals the stat boosts from you, it will warp away, and it's possible it will be close to another player, also locking you out of the challenge..
• That One Attack:
  • Master Hand has a new attack not seen in previous games; he throws out several orange cards onto the platform, before each one rises up off of the screen in an attempt to lift your character into the upper blast line. Unlike most other attacks, this can very quickly KO your character regardless of your percentage if you cannot get off of them quick enough. And Crazy Hand's grab can bury you into a card.
  • The Mii Gunner's Forward Smash and Up-Air when fighting the Fighting Mii Team, especially in Cruel Smash and on Intensity 9.0. These attacks have ridiculous range, the hitbox hit multiple times and lasts a long time and they have a huge amount of hitstun. This can cause a lot of Miis to rank up your damage extremely quickly.
  • All-Star mode has a few attacks that stand out as frequent sources of Game Overs. Charizard's Flare Blitz has high knockback and can come from far away, and its Cast from Hit Points property doesn't mitigate much in this mode. Ness's PK Flash can easily end a run unless it's looked out for. Dedede's Gordos are fast, long range, and dangerous if not hit back at him, and he loves using them in All-Star. Projectiles in general, in fact, are utter hell, as unlike your foes' melee attacks, they are not nerfed. This extends to anything the game considers to be a projectile, like Villager's Forward Smash, all of Olimar's attacks that involve Pikmin and surprisingly Ness's Yo-Yo. Each version also has a couple of stage hazards that are tricky to avoid and deliver high knockback should the stage be selected; The Wii U's F-Zero racers may be the worst in that regard. Fortunately, the moves that would be the worst, such as Little Mac's Knockout Punch, have their knockback removed in All-Star. But of course, Mega Man's Charge Shot (his forward smash) is indeed a powerful contender for this spot since it's fast, doesn't even need charging up due to all the damage you may have racked up, and is a projectile so it doesn't have the melee damage reduction.
  • Some Assist Trophies and Poké Ball Pokémon can be very annoying to deal with.
    • Sheriff fires bullets that hit very hard (15% damage per hit and a decent knockback even at fairly low damage percentages), which, while not horribly difficult to dodge period, are extremely hard to get through until he despawns without getting hit at least once. If he does hit you, he'll frequently keep firing at you and rack up plenty of damage with a combo this way. The fact that he remains on-screen for quite a long time (about 25 seconds) considering how powerful his attacks can be, it's very easy to get KOed if your opponent summons it.
    • Zoroark teleports next to its target and attempts to hit them with what is essentially Greninja's Final Smash. It does a ton of damage and unlike other enemies with similar attack styles, it doesn't give up if it misses the first time and will try again several more times.
    • Skull Kid is a different version, as unlike most other Assist Trophies, his effects will almost always have a negative impact on everyone on the field, including the one that summoned him.
    • Keldeo has slash attacks that not only take up about a third of the screen on smaller stages, but also have a big enough knockback to put people in danger of KOs at relatively low damage.
    • The Color TV-Game 15, which places almost the entire screen in the middle of a Pong-alike, where the players who didn't summon it will spend almost as much time being knocked around as the ball. It hits hard, can hit anywhere on the screen, and due to taking things like level geography into account in the game, the way the ball moves is almost completely unpredictable.
• That One Boss:
  • Master Hand and Crazy Hand. While the two are stronger than ever, the engine has hampered them via faster game speed and forgiving dodge mechanics. In their stead is Master Core, fought once the Hands' HP has been reduced by 25%, and boy is it one hell of a boss. Master Core hides its high HP in a black swarm, has difficult-to-avoid attacks with not-so-obvious telegraphing (especially Master Giant and Master Edges), and has up to four forms that each take a while to beat. It has a little less HP per form in the Wii U version for a given intensity level, but on intensity 8.0 or higher, there will be an extra form to worry about: Master Fortress. First of all, want some practice? Too bad, you need to defeat all of Master Core's forms at high difficulty just to attempt this thing. How about the battle itself? Well, as the name implies, you have to enter it, and the obstacles within are absolutely merciless and have no problem trapping you into Cycles of Hurting until you're at a ripe 100%, then knock you into a Danger Wall or acid pool that are an instant KO at that value. For each section, you have to reach and destroy a core. Half of the cores are two feet away from a Danger Wall. Think you're coming in ahead because you didn't lose a life against Master Core? Think again.
  • Master Edges counts as That One Form, especially compared to the ones that come before. While Master Giant has relatively weak attacks that are unpredictable and hard to dodge, and Master Beast has slow, choreographed attacks that hit hard and launch far, this form combines the worst of both worlds, throwing out ridiculously powerful attacks (especially if they come from the main sword) at light speed with almost no tells. Suffice to say that most of your game overs to this boss will be against the swords.
  • Duck Hunt can be a pain to unlock in Wii U. One of their unlock methods is to get one KO in Cruel Smash, and the other one is to do 100 VS battles. Both of these requirements will cause the character's AI to be turned up to a surprisingly high level, not helped by the fact that their variety of projectiles can make it difficult for some characters to get a hit in.
  • Of all the stage bosses, Ridley on the Pyrosphere stage stands out. Whereas the other stage bosses, such as Yellow Devil and the Dark Emperor, have periods where they stand around for a few seconds, leaving themselves vulnerable, Ridley is in constant motion, and his attacks are far more powerful than the other stage bosses, especially when he moves along the floor constantly swiping his claws, possibly taking out some of the smaller platforms in the process. And then when he clings onto either edge of the stage and absorbs energy to become Meta Ridley, he becomes even stronger. God help you if an opponent attacks Ridley enough so that he joins on their side and teams up on you.
  • Wii U's final Co-Op Event makes Brawl's final Co-Op event look like a joke. Both events are a Boss Rush which involves fighting every single character... the Wii U version has about 50 or so characters as compared to Brawl's 35... and there are no items to help you out like the Brawl version. Remember those free KOs you got on that Final Smash? Well, this time it's based on skill and skill only. Little Mac and Lucario are two characters you should really take caution of, as Little Mac can sneak in a OHKO Punch on you while Lucario is more powerful when he accumulates a lot of damage. Not helping is the fact that a large number of fighters have fast counters that can easily blindside you when you least expect it, though Lucario's at least has the disadvantage of being relatively weak when he's at a low damage percentage. The Normal difficulty is tolerable, but the Hard difficulty is one of the hardest in the game. Thankfully, it is not mandatory for Challenges.
  • Any properly built level 50 amiibo can become an absolute nightmare. A Perfect Play A.I. that is simply faster, stronger, and more resilient than any player character, possibly combined with brutal special abilities like regeneration. Vinesauce Vinny's experiences with his Link amiibo puts things into perspective.
• That One Level:
  • Stages:
    • Once the fanbase got over their initial excitement and started actually playing the stage, Wily's Castle drew some flack for this. The chief complaint is that the Yellow Devil's attacks are simply too difficult to dodge (yes, even compared to the source material), and the boss takes up too much of the stage, leaving very little room for people to actually play. Worse, while the stage looks just fine visually, the actual layout is a bit lackluster compared to some of the more dynamic stages. Expanding on this, every stage with a "boss" is almost universally hated, since they interfere with the fight and cause unneeded chaos when the players are trying to focus on each other, forcing them to turn on Omega Mode and turn Wily's Castle into a flat, unexciting stage devoid of the unique platforms it would have with Omega Mode off. Guar Plains is a particularly notable case, due to both the stage boss Metal Face being very large and hard-hitting and because of the large gap in the middle of the stage, which only has three semi-solid platforms on each side.
    • Magicant in the 3DS version, due to the presence of the Flying Men. They have one fixed spawn location, provide help to the first player to touch them, and pack quite a nasty punch. Matches quickly turn into something closer to King of the Hill than Smash Bros., at least until the five Flying Men per match are all killed off, but by that point the match is usually decided. However, the stage still gets praise for its beautiful visuals and soundtrack, and being the first EarthBound stage to reference the original game.
    • The 3DS version of Mute City, mostly for taking the moving platform design of the first Mute City stage and splitting it to two platforms that drift apart and together seemingly at random. There are also two cars underneath them that will often zoom offscreen very suddenly and kill anyone unlucky enough to be standing on them. It also doesn't help that the two upper platforms, which are the safest to stand on in the stage, are fall-through, meaning it's very easy to accidentally drop through them and slam into the road while going for a down attack. That said, the stage was still fairly well received.
    • Paper Mario in 3DS is a transforming stage with three versions. The third version, Bowser's Castle, is very annoying. The only footing in this phase are two up-and-down platforms set far apart from each other with quite a bit of vertical movement and a giant, rotating Bowser head that isn't safe to stand still on for more than a few seconds at a time. The fighters are generally shoved to the outside platforms, which are barely big enough to hold a fight anyway. In a case of Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking, the stage also earns ire from longtime Paper Mario fans for being mostly based on the much-reviled Sticker Star with only one transformation alluding to The Thousand Year Door, despite Masahiro Sakurai's Pic of the Day promising that it would be representative of the Paper Mario franchise as a whole.
    • Pac-Land on the Wii U. Many people hate the design for being overall ugly, criticizing it for being "something made on MS Paint" (although it was based on the the arcade game of the same name), and it involves side-scrolling and has some annoying hazards. Worse, it's the only stage in for Wii U and Ultimate to represent Pac-Man, meaning that if you want to listen to those awesome Namco remixes, you'll have to play them on this stage.
    • Smashville on the Wii U version for competitive players, not because of any annoying hazards or anything like that, but because of how often it is played. To explain, the first stage of a match is decided by each player striking out from the 3 available starter stages, Battlefield, Final Destination, and Smashville. Final Destination is already infamous for giving a big advantage to projectile spam characters and being the only stage available for For Glory, so it's usually struck out first. Battlefield's three platform layout greatly aids combo-oriented characters, and the ledges have been known to be finicky at times. This kind of hate most likely wouldn't be as great if Smashville itself had more dynamic visuals and music, being based off of the calm and peaceful Animal Crossing series with calm music as well. Bizarrely, it's only Smashville that is the subject of hate; the similarly designed and equally low-key Town & City stage doesn't get nearly as much vitriol.
  • Event matches:
    • "Aura Mastery" is one of the hardest events in the game, as it relies heavily on Luck-Based Mission. In the mission, you take on Wii Fit Trainer and Sheik with Lucario alone. Doesn't seem like a big deal, right? Here's the kicker: You start the level at 200% damage, which means even the Wii Fit Trainer's volleyballs can blast you away. Additionally, Wii Fit Trainer and Sheik are invisible, which means you have to fight two foes at once, at a percent you can easily be KO'd from, and you can't even see them. While the event gives you two stocks, they get two as well. See for yourself what an ordeal this is. You have to either be a ledge camping master or pray that the Smash Gods are kind to you provide you with items to improve your odds like the Metal Cap, Lanayru Beetle, or Home Run Bat to have any chance of winning this.
    • "Kirby's Crazy Appetite", an Event match in the Wii U version, is extremely hated by many because you're Kirby and, on the hard difficulty, you have to heal yourself to 0% … from 140%, and a gang of Dededes are chasing after you … and the Event Match is timed. To make matters worse, it takes place in the humongous Great Cave Offensive stage; even with a big HD TV, food entering the stage can easily be missed, and though you can pause to check out the area, actually doing so is painfully tedious. Since the camera is dynamic, food, danger zones, and mine carts barreling at Kirby could be right next to him and still off-camera. You have two minutes. Food is scarce in the first minute. In the second minute, there's a little more food (still far from plentiful), but then more Dededes enter, for a total of five, and now they eat the food. Sound annoying yet? Well, there's also the fact that it's very much a Luck-Based Mission, for many reasons^note a) food appears in random locations, b) big containers containing three food items can appear, but very rarely, how many you'll get and where is random, c) the actual food items that appear are random; you could get the 15%-healing roast chicken, but far more often it will be one of many food types that only heal for 2 or 3%, d) The King Dededes are at just a level where they might walk right past you, or might decide to make Kirby's life hell, and you don't have very much control over that if they're near the food you need, e!) treasure chests still have a chance of being booby trapped and containers still have a 1/8 chance of exploding, in both cases providing no food and possibly damaging Kirby. There's supposed to be an Easy Level Trick: inhale Dedede to copy his inhale ability, which increases the healing power of food. Though, the process of inhaling food this way is so cumbersome for the small benefit that, depending on the player, it might be harder to win this way. The Easy and Medium versions are also among the hardest when compared to other events at the same difficulty, even if you don't bother with customizations on other events (they're allowed in most events, but not this one). It also doesn't help that the music track is the same during each try of the event ("Through the Forest"), and after a while of resetting so you can complete it, it gets really annoying.
    • "Unwavering Chivalry" hasn't won any fans either. In this event, you're Meta Knight on the Halberd and your goal is to KO Marth without KO'ing Peach or Zelda. Unfortunately for you, the ladies are ridiculously aggressive and Marth even more so, and when he's not joining in on the beatdown, Marth is constantly hiding behind them. Even worse, the princess' launch rate is much higher than usual, and an uncharged smash attack can KO them at as little as 25%, making accidental losses extremely easy. And to get the reward, you have to do it on hard difficulty. It is possible to win this one completely by accident by leaving Marth behind when the platform launches upwards to the sky portion of the stage, but the chances of replicating this is fairly slim.
    • "It's Past Your Bedtime!" is an exercise in masochism, even if you're good at playing with Jigglypuff. You have to use Sing to put three opponents to sleep all at once. Sing has very short range, only works on grounded opponents, Jigglypuff is immobile and vulnerable while using it, and even at point-blank it can be easily blocked. Furthermore, Jigglypuff can under the best circumstances put only two opponents to sleep at once, forcing you to chase down the third opponent before the others awaken. And of the three opponents, only Bowser Jr. tries fighting back - Ness and Toon Link run at every opportunity, and Jigglypuff's atrocious speed makes them nearly impossible to catch. And to top it all off, this takes place on the Gamer stage - while getting caught by Mom can damage opponents, making them sleep longer, it can also easily KO them, letting them respawn with full health and undoing all your hard work. It can also damage those that are ALREADY ASLEEP, WAKING THEM UP! The only good thing about this is that there is no time limit — but Jigglypuff only has one stock, making it very easy for Bowser Jr. or Mom to end it all with a cheap shot.
    • "When Lightning Strikes" is another annoying example of a Luck-Based Mission. You have to KO 3 giant Pikachu as a small Pikachu, and for the reward you have to do it in under a minute. You're supposed to use the Lightning item to even the odds in your favour… but Lightning has a chance of backfiring and either doing nothing, making you even smaller or making all your foes even bigger. Hitting one of those random chances is basically an auto-fail when going for the reward.
    • "That Elusive 9" is not kidding about the "elusive" part. As Mr. Game & Watch, you have to KO another Mr. Game & Watch by using the character's forward special and pray that the attack rings a 9 for an instant KO. The problem? It's a pure Luck-Based Mission. The opponent has permanent metal status so that you don't accidentally KO him easily and the stage will spawn only Pitfalls and Deku Nuts to help you immobilize him, but it offers little comfort when you're sitting there spamming the required attack until the 9 pops up. Knocking out your opponent by any other method won't count and his damage will be reset to 0% if it happens.
    • "Fitness Junkie" on Hard. You're the Wii Fit Trainer and you're up against two giant Warios. They hit hard enough and take up enough of the screen that they can easily KO you in under ten seconds. On top of that, it spawns food for them to heal themselves and they rack up damage on you too quickly for it to help you very much. And to top it all off, guess what difficulty you have to play the event on to earn its reward. Hint: it's not "Easy".
    • "Keep 'Em Off the Ship!" requires you (and a buddy) to defeat several waves of Mr. Game and Watch as Fox and Falco. The problem is that in order to win, not a single enemy character can make contact with the stage; if one manages to slip by, it's an automatic Game Over. Both partners have to be in perfect synch with one another in order to deal with the sheer number of enemies coming in from all sides - if you're off by even a millisecond it's all over - and for this reason it's considered to be one of the most challenging co-op levels in the game. A similar event exists in single-player mode, but it's far easier since less Mr. Games and Watches show up.
    • In general, a lot of events that require the player to beat them on Hard and/or in a very short amount of time to earn their rewards draw ire from players.
  • The entirety of All-Star Mode. The sheer amount of characters you have to face (every character you've unlocked except for DLC you haven't purchased), having less recovery than Brawl (one special fully-healing Heart Container [two after unlocking all characters], one Fairy Bottle, and one Maxim Tomato compared to Brawl's three special Heart Containers), and no longer being given the option to continue from a loss with a penalty to score and prizes makes this iteration a nightmarish Marathon Level that can be extremely difficult to complete even at the lowest settings. Special mention goes to the 1994-1998, 2001-2006 & 2007-2015 stages, which have had numerous DLC characters added to each of them post-launch (Mewtwo and Cloud for the first one, Roy and Lucas for the second one, and Corrin and Bayonetta for the third one) as well as some stages that can serve as major hindrances, such as Magicant in the 3DS version and Mario Circuit in the Wii U version. Thankfully, you can easily throw opponents into the blast lines on Mario Circuit and Eldin Bridge in the Wii U version, but you'd also run the risk of being quickly KO'd yourself. It says something that All-Star mode was reworked into a variation of Multi-Man Smash in Ultimate.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • "Engage the Enemy", a song from Xenoblade Chronicles 1, was included in Smash Bros. But the quieter part of the song was cut, causing it to jarringly cut ahead to a portion of the song where a note is halfway through being sung. A few have argued that, while it's OK that Nintendo wanted to shorten the song or keep the energy high to fit a fight, a fan could do a better cut by messing around with Audacity.
  • Some of the longer songs from Melee, returning for the Wii U version, have been edited down to the now customary 2-minute length, even though this wasn't deemed necessary for Brawl, which had much less disc space. The DK Rap and Pollyanna are the most notable victims of this. Players of Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn will notice that "Crimean Army Sortie" and "Ike's Theme" are also cut short. Even worse, despite Switch cartridges having much more storage space than 3DS ones and the game itself only being available on one platform, it's the neutered versions that made it into Ultimate instead of the originals.
  • Making Mega Man's nickname on the Wii U game's Boxing Ring stage "Blue Metal Hero" received much outcry from fans who thought that he should have had his official nickname "The Blue Bomber" or "Super Fighting Robot". It didn't help that Sonic actually had his official nickname "The Blue Blur" on said stage. The European release of the game corrected the title to the former… but changed Sonic's nickname from "The Blue Blur" to "Speed Is His Game", causing an outcry from other fans. Ultimate thankfully had both characters use their official nicknames on all English versions.
  • Fox's and Falco's voices were well-liked in Brawl, but they were recast to their voices from the Star Fox 64 3DS remake for 3DS/Wii U. Both voices are widely considered to be inferior to their predecessors (Fox especially). Part of the issue comes from the differences in vocal talent required for Star Fox 64's script and the generic grunts from the Super Smash Bros. games, which Fox and Falco's latest (or earliest, depending on how you look at it) English VAs were unsuited for.
  • For Wii U's Classic Mode has gotten a lot of flak for changing and/or removing certain elements. Such elements include having a less interesting way to progress through the mode, removing stadium modes between fights, not having themed battles (at least not intentionally, you could still have fighters on related stages but it comes from random luck), and more opponents per round on average with a dependence on the RNG for what kind of battles you face (you have limited control over how many opponents you face for rounds 1, 2, and 4, but whether you get a team battle or a chaotic free-for-all is up to chance, and you're unlikely to get any more than two 1v1s out of five battles, if that).
  • The Palutena's Guidance conversations in Wii U are disliked by some as replacements for the Snake codec calls in Brawl. A lot of people miss seeing Metal Gear characters, a series so far removed from anything Nintendo, react to the cartoony antics of the rest of the cast (such as Roy Campbell talking about Wario's weaponized flatulence and Snake's subsequent disbelief) compared to the more fantastical Kid Icarus characters making jokes or dumb statements, and overall putting less focus on the characters Pit is fighting and even more spotlight on his already highly represented franchise. It also doesn't help that DLC characters have the same conversation clip for each of them (including Lucas, who Pit shouldn't have forgotten about, since they both started in Brawl). It hurts when there are new Palutena Guidances in Ultimate but no new Codecs due to the death of Roy Colonel's Japanese voice actor.
  • The returning stage builder in the Wii U version no longer uses the block-based building system from Brawl, instead requiring the player to draw out the stage using the touch screen. This makes it difficult to precisely design platforms, even if it gives more freedom in the overall design process. There also aren't as many stage hazards to place as were in Brawl, with ladders and conveyor belts taken out entirely. This makes designing stages specifically for collecting music CDs both less visually appealing and also less precise.
  • Sandbag no longer drops CDs, making it much more annoying to farm them and fill out your playlist.
  • Bowser's Anthropomorphic Shift changing his monstrous, Kaiju-inspired Primal Stance into a stance more befitting a semi-agile wrestler made some fans unhappy. Even though the latter portrayal is Truer to the Text in terms of canon, some preferred his older portrayal for making him much more of a menacing tank.
  • While it was a change to one normal move, Wario's Forward Smash being changed from his shoulder-first body slam to a back-handed punch received major outcry from many Wario fans, seeing as the most iconic move of his franchise went completely unrepresented. Thankfully, Ultimate corrected this, retaining the back-handed punch Forward Smash, but this time replacing his Dash Attack with the iconic move, thereby making the move itself Truer to the Text.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: As far as Assist Trophies go, there's the disembodied holographic head of Dr. Kawashima, which is proportioned and detailed in such a way that he looks far more human than the other characters (primarily because Ryuta Kawashima is actually a real-life neuroscientist), but he's made of such large polygons that he clearly seems off. He also faces the screen directly and doesn't change his expression save for an unnaturally big smile.
• Underused Game Mechanic:
  • The Mii Fighters. It is at its core a great idea, offering the possibility to create your own smasher, but in the game itself it is very difficult to really make the character you want as its characteristics and even cosmetic elements are unlocked via very frustrating Random Drops. To add to this, the Mii Fighters cannot be rolled by the Random Character selector, nor do they appear in All-Star mode and Classic Mode outside of Fighting Mii Team, making their presence severly limited unless the player plays with Miis already or goes out of their way to make them CPUs in Versus Mode. Though their biggest setback is that the Mii Fighters aren't available to play online in "With Anyone" mode, needlessly limiting their interest for hardcore players.
  • Character Customization as a whole. The fact that Custom Moves need to be unlocked^*outside of the Mii Fighters and Palutena, with the possibility that you could receive duplicates, severely limits their potential unless one wants to make the daunting task of unlocking all them. Not helping is that some of the moves are borderline Game Breakers at worst. As for Equipment, while the idea sounds good on paper (customization of your characters stats and give them new abilities), it is a total Game-Breaker in practice, and is mainly used to cheese through Crazy Orders in order to unlock the tediously-obtainable aforementioned Custom Moves. Not surprisingly, these aren't available online in "With Anyone."^*To put this in perspective, the only mention of Custom Moves and Equipment in Ultimate is when they talked about the Mii Fighters.
• Vindicated by History:
  • To some extent, the Mii Fighter costumes representing fan-requested characters that didn't make it into this iteration are being seen less as an unintentionally-insulting Consolation Prize and more as an acknowledgement that certain characters matter as much to the developers as the fans. While plenty of people were annoyed that King K. Rool had been reduced to a character's outfit after being absent from the Donkey Kong series for so long, the revelation that Sakurai was using the ballot to gauge what audiences wanted for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate — which was in early development at the time the last bits of DLC for this game were being released — has led fans to retroactively appreciate the nods to characters who wouldn't fit into this version of the game. It helps that some of the Mii Costumes included characters that people enjoy but don't have a chance of being a fighter like Chocobo. Among the characters who were Promoted to Playable from a Mii Fighter costume in the sequel are the Inklings, Chrom, King K. Rool, and Isabelle.
  • The online mode has begun to see this in the wake of Ultimate's release. Many have pointed out that while 3DS/Wii U's online was rather limited, at least you knew exactly what you were getting: a free-for-all or team match with items on and every stage but Final Destination in For Fun, or a free-for-all, team match or 1-on-1 on Final Destination and Omega stages in For Glory. By contrast, Ultimate's online matchmaking can pair you up with people who searched for the exact opposite of what you want, meaning your search for a team battle on a Battlefield stage can end up as a free-for-all on a scrolling stage, or vice versa.
  • The Smash Ballot after the reveal of Ultimate's roster. Many people were upset with Bayonetta seemingly being the winner of the Ballot that made it into 4; while some people being upset was inevitable since only one character could win, many people accused Nintendo of manipulating or ignoring the results since they thought Bayonetta could never actually win, and ire became widespread after the revelation that data for Bayonetta existed in the game's files as far as back as version 1.0.6 (which was released only two weeks after the Ballot's launch, while the Ballot was open for six months). Come the reveal of fan-favorite characters like Ridley and King K. Rool for Ultimate and Sakurai's claims that their inclusion was influenced by them ranking high in the Ballot, and many opinions of the Ballot changed as they started to think that Nintendo had listened to them after all. Eventually, Sora, whom Sakurai revealed as the real winner of the ballot, was added to Ultimate as the final DLC character.
  • For 3DS was quickly forgotten about once For Wii U came out, due to the better graphics and it being more accessible at the time. Fast forward to a few years later, where Wii Us are much more harder to find, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate exists to fill the niche features For Wii U introduced like 8-Player Smash, and having its entire roster available in the base game. Nowadays, you'll find more people saying that For 3DS is the better of the duology due to its single player options, something that many felt For Wii U was lacking. Smash Run in particular is often cited as something players keep coming back to.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The 3DS iteration pushes the system's graphical capabilities to their limits. Whether it's a faithful recreation of Mode 7-style scrolling for Mute City or the dimensional tear in Magicant, each stage (including Final Destination) looks amazing, and that's before mentioning the fact that it all runs at a silky-smooth 60 frames per second, with full 3D on! This does come at a cost: the game pushes the 3DS's processing power so hard that ^note on the original Nintendo 3DS a number of features on the home menu (most notably Miiverse) have to be disabled to free up more power.
  • The other two eighth-gen consoles have a number of highly anticipated games that struggle to render single player at 900p & 30 FPS. Smash 4 Wii U is able to support up to 8 players at once, at 60 FPS, at true 1080p (higher than 1080p if you take into account that it also streams to the gamepad in real time), in real life, on a console with roughly a quarter as much RAM reserved for games and much lower processing power overall.
• Vocal Minority:
  • During a certain point in the game's development, there were some people who complained about the amount of Nintendo characters in comparison to non-Nintendo characters (primarily due to a lack of confirmed information from the development team about the game's roster). They seem to have died down, though.
  • Bayonetta ended up being the unexpected victor of the Smash Ballot. Going by message boards posts in the fandom, you'd assume someone like Wolf, King K. Rool, or Banjo were the front runners. Sakurai claimed that Bayonetta finished within the top 5 votes in North America, while being the outright most voted in EU, and the #1 pick worldwide among characters that were considered "realizable". Though those that thought the Ballot was rigged or that Sakurai lied got some major ammo when dataminers found that Bayo had data in the game's files as early as version 1.0.6, which was released only two weeks after the Ballot's launch, thus implying Bayo was already decided and had development started prior to the Ballot (or that the decision for her was rushed from very early Ballot results, instead of waiting for the actual final results after the six months the Ballot was up). This would end up becoming water under the bridge though, when Ultimate came not long after, with not only every veteran character returning, but also a slew of other big fan favorites, including the aformentioned ones, all in a bigger and better game.
• Win Back the Crowd: Old and new fans hated the random tripping mechanic from Brawl, so seeing it absent from then on was a welcome treat.
• Woolseyism:
  • You know those puns in the English character reveal trailers, like "Little Mac punches in!" or "Charizard fires it up!"? In the Japanese versions, those were all "[character name] 参戦^note sansen!", literally "[character name] joins the battle!" Only Mega Man's trailer uses a similar phrase in both Japanese and English.
  • The trophy descriptions seem to rely on this in the 3DS version, as the one for the Pokémon Trainer goes all-out in Waxing Lyrical about the original English theme song and a lot of trophies in general rely on wordplay and puns in their English descriptions.
  • Bowser Jr. and all the Koopalings share a Boxing Ring title in the Japanese version, which translates to "All-Purpose Chariot" and merely refers to the Clown Car. The English translations (and other translations) instead give a unique title to each of the Koopalings, describing their role and personality.

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