This star-studded slamfest has not gone without some long-lasting problems; some of these have been around ever since Captain Falcon still had an active game series.
- Certain franchises getting more attention than others, such as Kirby, Fire Emblem, and Kid Icarus, tends to be a sour spot for some fans, and in some cases is viewed as a sign of Creator's Pet. However, when a franchise is introduced in a major way, it's usually introduced in a downplayed manner and then expanded on in future titles; for example, Kirby was the only playable character from his series until Brawl, Fire Emblem had only two characters in both Melee and Brawl and lacked a stage in the former, and Kid Icarus only had Pit in Brawl, with it bordering on In Name Only due to the large amount of liberties taken. In fact, the reason why the Kirby series was downplayed in the first place was due to avoiding Creator's Pet status, despite being (at the time) Sakurai's franchise, with the incorporations of Meta Knight and King Dedede as playable characters in Super Smash Bros. Brawl happening after Sakurai left HAL Laboratory, the developers of the Kirby franchise.
- Brawl and Smash 4 catch some heat for their use of ripped assets from other games (e.g. Trophies, music, even stages). SSB64 and Melee reused a number of assets due to their low-budget nature and short development cycle respectively. Most notably, all of the Pokémon in both games reuse their models from HAL's Pokémon Stadium series, and numerous character voices (in the case of the Pokémon, these voices come from the famed anime rather than the games) are recycled. Even Poké Floats is, at the end of the day, just a bunch of N64 Pokémon models floating over an empty void, perhaps the reason why the stage is one of the few past stages still not brought back in any later game.
- Fans often note Smash Bros. tends to lean toward later installments in a series. It was less obvious in SSB64 and Melee because every series was so much youngernote and there were few new games released in-between, but a number of representational choices in those games can be viewed through those lens. Most notable is how so much of the Yoshi universe in both games is actually drawn from Yoshi's Story rather than Yoshi's Islandnote , and Star Fox is mostly ignored in favor of Star Fox 64note .
- On the other hand, there was also more leniency on what games could be considered recent prior to Smash 4: Melee, for example, still focused on Ocarina of Time for its Zelda fighters even with The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask and the Oracle games being out, and Brawl added Pokémon newcomers that represented both FireRed and LeafGreen and Diamond and Pearl. 4 and Ultimate, in contrast, only added Pokémon newcomers which represented the latest generation at the time, that being X/Y for 4, and Sun/Moon for Ultimate.
- Ganondorf's moveset. A clone of Captain Falcon in Melee, Ganondorf note only had one canon appearance at that point (in Ocarina of Time). While not a perfect representation of his canon self, Ganondorf's depiction made quite a bit of sense up to that point, as a huge, intimidating man who uses dark magic to crush his foes. Furthermore, his OoT boss fight had a small repertoire of attacks, one of which was a Ground Punch, so Melee's portrayal could comfortably be seen to be an extension of this. By the time of Brawl, though, Ganondorf had been depicted in two subsequent games as a Master Swordsman and showed off more of his magical abilities. The spin-off Hyrule Warriors in particular had a fan-favorite portrayal of Ganondorf who was not only playable, but had many attacks based upon his canon boss fights, made use of his magical abilities, and had the choice between his swords and trident as his primary fighting style. However, in Smash, not only did he retain a slightly decloned version of his Melee moveset, but he was updated to his Twilight Princess incarnation, where he used a sword extensively during the final battle and was given a Black Knight-esque design. This caused some fans to label his moveset as the most blatant example of The Artifact in the series, not helped by him becoming one of the worst characters in both Brawl and 3DS/Wii U. The fact that his Down Taunt in these games has him pull out and inspect the very sword he brandishes in Twilight Princess, only to chuckle and put it away, did him no favors — many players perceived it as a deliberate jab at those who wanted Ganondorf to more extensively utilize swordplay. The developers seem to be aware of this, as Ultimate took steps to include a few sword moves in his repertoire while also reverting him to his Ocarina of Time design, but as per Sakurai's apparent desire to not anger fans of the character in previous games, he still largely retains his original moveset with somewhat different animations.
- Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U brought some problems with the Super Smash Bros. series to a head, with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate toning down some issues while exacerbating others:
- "Touring stages" (stages with a platform that moves around a pre-determined path, settles in various areas for a few moments before moving again and repeating the process) aren't inherently disliked. In fact, Delfino Plaza is an occasional counterpick. They started getting more heat in SSB4 because there were just so many of them. Melee only had Mute City (the first stage of this kind), while Brawl dropped it in favour of Port Town: Aero Dive, the aforementioned Delfino Plaza, and the Halberd. SSB4, however, had Prism Tower and Rainbow Road on 3DS, and on Wii U not only brought back Port Town, Delfino Plaza, and the Halberd, but also added Skyloft, Mario Circuit, and Wuhu Island, for a total of 6 on Wii U and 8 between both versions. Ultimate went on to feature the most touring stages in the series, bringing back every previous one except for Mute City and Rainbow Road and adding New Donk City Hall and Garreg Mach Monastery on top of that, totaling at 9.
- One of the biggest complaints regarding 4 was its overuse of Moveset Clone characters. This is something not unique to that installment — the first game already had a clone in the form of Luigi, and the much-loved Melee had over a quarter of its roster devoted to clones. The problem was that Luigi was the only clone in 64 and Brawl had done quite a bit to avert this, by cutting out some of the most obvious clones and Decomposite Characters (Roy, Young Link, Pichu, and Dr. Mario), diversifying the rest (Falco and Luigi), and making sure that its own "clone" additions (Lucas, Wolf, and Toon Link) were pretty unique. For 3DS/Wii U, meanwhile, went back to the well of decomposites (including adding Dr. Mario back in), and made its clone additions essentially identical (Lucina is just Marth without tippers, Dark Pit is just Pit with different knockback on two moves and Zelda's Final Smash). Compounding the problem further was that For 3DS/Wii U introduced alternate costumes to add more characters to the roster, which just made its clones feel even more arbitrary. Many wondered: why lump the Koopalings into a single character, then declare Lucina or Dark Pit to be too distinct to not get their own slots? The answer? The following game, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, managed to solve this by marketing clones differently by calling them "Echo Fighters" and making clear that they're offshoots of existing characters. By not promoting clones on the same level as original characters and placing them in an inferior position, not only doing this with Lucina and Dark Pit but with a few newcomers in the game as well, fans went from hating clones to loving the idea and wanting more of them.
- Counter has been a staple of nearly every Fire Emblem character's moveset since Melee as a nod to their series' battle flow, with Peach also having a variation in the form of Toad. However, whereas only five fighters total — and no more than four per game — in a cast of 25+ had access to moves of that nature between Melee and Brawl (Marth, Roy, Peach, Ike, Lucario), the amount suddenly doubled in For 3DS/Wii U (Lucina, Little Mac, Palutena, Greninja, Shulk, Mii Swordfighter, Corrin, and Bayonetta), and quadrupled in Ultimate (Daisy, Chrom, K. Rool, Incineroar, Joker, Sephiroth, and Sora). This greatly reduced the novelty of the move, frustrating players who had to endure fights that devolved into Counterfests and bypassing potentially more inventive attacks that could've been used in their place, the most blatant cases being King K. Rool and Joker in Ultimate, who had new moves made up out of whole cloth (respectively, Gut Check and Rebel's Guardnote ) that are counters, even though their home games weren't exactly lacking in potential alternatives. Some characters have justifiable reasons for having a counter note , but there were lengthy debates about who actually deserves to keep the move and sarcastic remarks that everyone might as well have Counter in the next game.
- Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes tend to be viewed as this. When they were first introduced in Brawl and 3DS/Wii U respectively, they garnered praise for including characters that weren't playable in the base game, as they were generally thought of as a nice consolation prize. Additionally, most Assist Trophies were characters that wouldn't have stood a chance of being playable anyway, such as Lakitu and his Spinies, Mr. Resetti, a group of Excitebikers, and some Infantry and Tanks, while most Mii Costumes were based on characters that were in the game anyway, like Mario, Wario, and Meta Knight (the only real exception being Barbara the Bat from Daigasso! Band Brothers). However, after For 3DS/Wii U and later games began to incorporate DLC, Assist Trophies went from being appreciated for letting other characters fight in battle to being treated as Second Place Is for Losers. It's generally considered a death sentence due to the (unconfirmed, but widely believed) notion that a character being added as an Assist Trophy or Mii Costume means they won't be made playable within the same installment (meaning fans of these characters would need to wait indefinitely for the next Smash game to come out before getting their hopes up again); though Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes (Little Mac in Smash 4, and Isabelle, King K. Rool, and Dark Samus in Ultimate) and one Poké Ball summon (Charizard in Brawl) have gotten promotions before, they've never been promoted within the same game they were already an Assist or Costume in. This wasn't helped by many highly requested characters with lots of name power, such as Krystal, Shadow, Tails, Knuckles, Isaac, Bomberman, Lyn, the Black Knight, Zero, Alucard, Shovel Knight, Lloyd Irving, Travis Touchdown, Dante, Shantae, Doom Slayer, and especially Waluigi and Geno only making it into Smash Bros. as Assists or Mii Costumes, leaving many players to lament the moveset potential of multiple fan favorite characters who get stuck in these non-playable capacities. The only Mii Costumes that generated any praise were Sans and Cuphead, but they had other factors that made them well-liked.note When the March 2020 Nintendo Direct announced that an ARMS character would join the fight as DLC, fans of these characters began hoping for the already-an-Assist Spring Man or the already-a-costume Ribbon Girl to get upgraded just to prove that Assist Trophies and Mii Costumes can be promoted without waiting an installment, but unfortunately didn't turn out to be the case when the fighter was revealed to be Min Min.
- The advertisement aspect of the series has also become controversial since 4. This started back in Melee with the addition of Roy. While Marth was a very requested character back in Japan and doesn't really count here, Roy debuted before his game came out, and was added as a last minute Moveset Clone of Marth. Back in Melee, people let him slide, since every other newcomer was an expected or well-known Nintendo character. Brawl also didn't cause any fuss, as most of the characters were other remaining All-Star characters; the only two who really counted as promotional characters were Ike and Lucario, and even then both were popular enough that it was overlooked. (Ike's appearance was additionally mitigated by the fact that his design was taken from his debut game as opposed to the more recent but contested Radiant Dawn. He wouldn't receive his Radiant Dawn design in-game until the next game, which released when his home series had already received three more installments and was about to unveil another.) 4's newcomer cast received criticism for most of the characters being nothing more than advertisements for Nintendo's latest games — and it really didn't help that the official website for the games linked, in turn, to the website for each character's most recent appearance if applicable, even when this would result in a Late-Arrival Spoiler. Certain characters were even cut from the base roster because they didn't have a game that released after Brawl. Even Duck Hunt, the game's obligatory "retro" character(s) who by definition didn't have a new game to advertise, ended up being announced alongside a Virtual Console rerelease of their original game. Not helping matters is that the majority of new stages were from the newest games that came out on the 3DS and Wii U. This all came to a head with Corrin, one of the most controversial newcomers and the sixth Fire Emblem character, who was added just to promote Fates (as the game hadn't released in the West yet at the time). Ultimate toned this down, as the game focused on being a celebration of the Smash franchise, with most of the newcomers that were decided upon being based on the DLC ballot from last game, but even it fell into this with Heronote , Bylethnote , and Soranote .
- Playable Fire Emblem representation became a hotly debated topic during the For 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate timeframe. Melee and Brawl only had two fighters each for the series; the former game had Marth and his Moveset Clone Roy, while the latter dropped Roy for a unique Mighty Glacier in Ike. During the Melee era, the Fire Emblem series was also extremely obscure outside of its native Japan, so Marth and Roy were seen as Unexpected Characters who raised enough awareness of their home games to save it from No Export for You, so their presence had a strong positive impact even outside of Smash Bros.. For 3DS/Wii U introduced two new characters in the base roster, and while some thought it was rather dubious that Lucina was another Moveset Clone of Marth, there was also a unique character in the form of Magic Knight Robin to balance it out. In fact, the reveal trailer for both characters did a Bait-and-Switch, with a majority of its focus centered on Robin while fans of Fire Emblem Awakening expected Chrom. Unfortunately, more and more fighters from Fire Emblem started to get added afterwards, which caused opinion of the series to drop rapidly:
- The Downloadable Content for the duology is when the problems began, as while Roy's return was celebrated, there were now two clones of Marth on the roster (though Roy was at least re-tooled into a semi-clone akin to Lucas). Corrin's announcement is when the Smash fandom really started to get tired of Fire Emblem characters, as the series had not only taken two DLC spots for the game, something no other series got, but had tripled the franchise's total playable fighters from two in the previous installment to six in a single game, surpassing the number of Legend of Zelda characters and equalling the number of Pokémon characters. Corrin themselves earned a fair amount of antipathy, as not only was Fates not out yet, but when it did, not only did Fates become the most divisive game in the franchise, but Corrin became a huge Base-Breaking Character within said game, meaning even large swathes of that crowd weren't exactly happy about it.
- Ultimate brought even more rage when Chrom was announced... as an Echo Fighter of Roy, thus making him the third Marth clone in the game. This forms the second tenet of Fire Emblem character detractors; other franchises that are seen as overrepresented, like Super Mario Bros. and Pokémon, have very few clones, ironic given that the two are Nintendo's primary franchises, while Fire Emblem has four characters with almost identical base movesets, with Lucina and Chrom being added in back-to-back releases. Perhaps even more bizarrely is that despite Chrom's addition to the roster, he still appears as part of Robin's Final Smash, thus begging the question of why they didn't get a brand new Final Smash for this installment similar to several other fighters, or at least replace Chrom with someone like Morgan. The vitriol is less noticeable in this instance, as some were just happy that Chrom got out of benched status.
- Then came the announcement in January 2020 that Byleth from Three Houses (then the most recent release and a commercial and critical success comparable to Awakening) would be added as the fifth and final character of the first DLC Fighters Pass in Ultimate. Even though Byleth's moveset was shown to be significantly different from the other Fire Emblem characters (most of their attacks don't involve a sword, and those that do are done with a Whip Sword), the series' reputation among Smash fans was already tainted enough at that point that the announcement caused the fandom to explode, with even those who also counted themselves among the Fire Emblem fandom being soured by the news and the announcement trailer
getting over 80,000 dislikes on YouTube. Byleth also suffered from being the last character to be announced for Fighters Pass 1, and had followed four rather surprising (and one highly-requested) characters from third-party franchises that had never been represented in Smash before (Joker, Hero, Banjo-Kazooie, and Terry Bogard), meaning expectations for characters from new series, such as Dante or Crash Bandicoot (both of whom were highly rumored in the days before the reveal of Byleth), were much higher. It's telling that "Mr. Sakurai Presents "Byleth"" was capped off by announcing that the DLC after Fighters Pass 1 would be a second Fighters Pass featuring another six characters, indicating Sakurai and his team were well aware of the ensuing controversy (something Sakurai confirmed in an interview with Famitsu magazine a few weeks after the reveal, where he said he was aware of complaints about the quantity of swordsmen and Fire Emblem characters, which is why he gave Byleth multiple weapons to make them more distinct). - One particular aspect complained about is how Fire Emblem having this many playable characters means it outnumbers series such as Metroid, Donkey Kong, and Kirby in terms of fighters. Fire Emblem outnumbered these series in Melee too, as Samus, Donkey Kong, and Kirby were the sole fighters for their franchises (as was the case in 64) while Fire Emblem had both Marth and Roy. However, the proportional difference between their number of fighters was a lot smaller (having half of what someone else has isn't too bad when the other person only has two things), Roy was a Moveset Clone thrown in at the last minute which made it even easier to discount him, and Brawl mitigated these franchises' playable character counts discrepencies via the introductions of Zero Suit Samus, Diddy Kong, and Meta Knight/King Dedede respectively (while Roy was dropped for Ike). It wasn't until 3DS/Wii U, which increased Fire Emblem's character count to six while leaving Metroid and Donkey Kong at two each and Kirby at 3, that the difference between these series' (and others') fighter counts compared to FE's grew to a point where it couldn't be as easily ignored, and despite the Metroid and Donkey Kong franchises trying to catch up in Ultimate with the additions of Ridley, Dark Samus, and King K. Rool, Fire Emblem still had a big lead overall. It's even worse for Kirby, which hasn't gotten any new playable reps since Brawl with the only notable addition since being Marx's boss battle in Ultimate, which also yielded further accusations of Sakurai's favoritism towards games he made. There's also the matter of series like Yoshi's Island, WarioWare, and Sonic the Hedgehog, all of which have only one representative each (those being Yoshi, Wario, and Sonic respectively) despite their longevity.
- Cinematic/Cutscene Final Smashes became this in Ultimate. Back in Brawl, only one character had a Cinematic Final Smash (Captain Falcon) while all the others had more varied and unique Final Smashes, so no one complained. Then, in Smash 4, five newcomers had Cinematic Final Smashes (Mega Man, Shulk, Duck Hunt, Bayonetta and Corrin) and the number rose to six characters with Cinematic Final Smashes, but fans didn't mind the Uniqueness Decay as there were still characters with different Final Smashes. Then, Ultimate made Final Smashes faster, which caused many old Final Smashes to be replaced or redesigned, which led some veterans (Yoshi, Fox, Falco, Wario, King Dedede, Wolf) to have Cinematic Final Smashes, and then, most of the Ultimate newcomers came with Cinematic Final Smashes. Take note that of the 24 Ultimate newcomers, 16 of them have Cinematic Final Smashes (Ridley, Simon, Richter, King K. Rool, Incineroar, Joker, Hero, Banjo and Kazooie, Terry, Byleth, Min Min, Steve, Sephiroth, Pyra, Mythra and Sora), something that made some people get tired of these, calling them lazy and/or uninspired. It doesn’t help that many of them are mechanically identical and very easy to dodge due to the predictable hitboxes the starting attacks have.
- Comeback Mechanics are contentious in the Fighting Game Community in general, mainly being perceived as features that punish players for being good while rewarding bad players, but they're even more controversial within the Smash fanbase. The first character to have this kind of gimmick would be Lucario in Brawl with its Aura mechanic but a) it was the only character in the entire Brawl roster who operated as such; b) Aura was not that much of an issue, being a double-edged sword that required Lucario to be at very high percentages in order to reliably score a KO, which would in turn leave it vulnerable to easy KOs; c) Aura is something Lucario is known for in its home series; and d) the mechanic helped to set it apart from Mewtwo, a Melee character many perceived Lucario to be a replacement for (similar to Roy being swapped out for Ike). Later installments would garner complaints for upping the number of Comeback Mechanics, either making them exclusive to new characters or implementing them across the board:
- 4 had two particularly infamous examples, one of which was added to the game via DLC. The first was Rage, a universal mechanic where characters would deal more knockback (but not damage) at higher percentages. While not inherently comeback-friendly (due to the increased knockback potentially messing with combos), the mechanic was deemed to benefit heavyweight characters the most due to their higher endurance and typically lower reliance on combos — and this is before you realize that Rage stacks with the aforementioned Lucario's Aura. The second was Cloud's Limit Break, which improves his mobility and the properties of his special moves when his Limit Gauge is full. This was especially notable since Cloud was already a character with many innate strengths (powerful attacks with long range and disjointed hitboxes, good combo ability, deceptively fast on the ground and in the air, high aerial maneuverability, etc.) and the community was quick to designate him as the second-best character in the game, only behind fellow DLC character Bayonetta. These two elements, along with the accusations of 4 being pay-to-win on account of the strength of its DLC newcomers (the most recent tier list has Corrin as the lowest of the four... at 13th) and their general ease of use (save for the complex Ryu, who wasn't considered to be a High-Tier Scrappy despite his high standing in the tiers and metagame thanks to being a Mechanically Unusual Fighter who was difficult to master), had a hand in the game's early end in the competitive scene.
- Ultimate nerfed Rage and slapped a 15-second time limit onto the duration of Cloud's Limit Break, but the same overall problem persisted as even more newcomers — all of whom were also DLC characters — came with Comeback Mechanics of their own. Joker has Arsène, who manifests once Joker's Rebellion Gauge fills from damage incurred, successful use of his Rebel's Guard special, or simply if Joker is behind in stock or score and greatly increases his damage and knockback while his Persona is active; Terry can use two powerful moves when his damage percentage hits 100%; Sephiroth goes One-Winged Angel (literally, as in Advent Children and Dissidia) when damaged enough, granting him an extra jump, faster movement speed, increased damage and knockback power, and armor on all smash attacks able to absorb up to 20% of damage, with his Winged Form only disappearing after KOing an opponent or being KOed himself; and Kazuya has his own Rage Mode that automatically activates once his damage percentage is at 100%, which increases his damage and gives him a highly damaging Rage Drive, only disappearing after using said Rage Drive, being KOed, or being hit a certain number of times. While unique and (generally) accurate to the source material in most cases, these character traits were also considered to be overpowered among many parts of the playerbase, only adding to the accusation of "Pay to Win" with Smash's DLC.
- 4 had two particularly infamous examples, one of which was added to the game via DLC. The first was Rage, a universal mechanic where characters would deal more knockback (but not damage) at higher percentages. While not inherently comeback-friendly (due to the increased knockback potentially messing with combos), the mechanic was deemed to benefit heavyweight characters the most due to their higher endurance and typically lower reliance on combos — and this is before you realize that Rage stacks with the aforementioned Lucario's Aura. The second was Cloud's Limit Break, which improves his mobility and the properties of his special moves when his Limit Gauge is full. This was especially notable since Cloud was already a character with many innate strengths (powerful attacks with long range and disjointed hitboxes, good combo ability, deceptively fast on the ground and in the air, high aerial maneuverability, etc.) and the community was quick to designate him as the second-best character in the game, only behind fellow DLC character Bayonetta. These two elements, along with the accusations of 4 being pay-to-win on account of the strength of its DLC newcomers (the most recent tier list
- Fans who wish to see more Nintendo characters become playable lament how Ultimate's Fighters Passes both focused primarily on third-party titles, each adding four more to the game. A similar pattern could already be seen with 4's DLC newcomers: Of the four added, only Corrin was a first-party character. However, 4's DLC still brought back three veterans who were all first-party (Mewtwo, Lucas, Roy), balancing out the first-/third-party focus.
- Regarding the Sonic the Hedgehog stages in Ultimate, many fans have taken issue that both of Sonic's stages are of the Green Hill Zone archetype, with one coming from a rather divisive game. Both of these complaints stem from sources found much earlier in the Smash series.
- Using the most common type of level to base a stage on goes as far back as Melee, where the Mario series would use the grass areas of Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64. Even more stages of this template would be added in later games based on Super Mario 3D Land, New Super Mario Bros. 2, and New Super Mario Bros. U. Additionally, series receiving new stages with aesthetics similar (or even identical) to older ones they replaced was a trend started as early as the transition between the first three games (the Peach's Castle stage of 64 was replaced with a new castle stage in Melee, the Great Fox stage of 64 was replaced by a new Great Fox stage in Melee, the Ice Climber stage of Melee was replaced with a new Ice Climber stage in Brawl, etc.). However, the bigger series have generally had more stages added of different aesthetics (such as the Kirby series getting a replacement Green Greens-based stage and an entirely new stage based on the Fountain of Dreams in Melee). With the Sonic series only receiving one new stage in Wii U and Green Hill not returning in said installment, Ultimate marking the first time both stages were finally in the same game made the lack of difference more apparent.
- Another reason for the contention is that the stage comes from Sonic Lost World, a more contested game that, while having its fans, is nowhere near as popular as other Sonic games to draw stages from, and felt like it was included to promote a Sonic Team-created game that was released exclusively for Nintendo hardwarenote (note how Lost World is listed as Sonic and Dr. Eggman's second game on their Trophies and how the Deadly Six, the antagonists of the game, have their own Trophy in the Wii U version of 4). A similar situation happened in Brawl, where a lot of content came from the Wii-exclusive Sonic and the Secret Rings (between Sharha and Erazor Djinn being among the Stickers, being the second game listed on Sonic's Trophy, being the source of his in-game design, and "Seven Rings in Hand" being used as his Classic Mode/All-Star Mode roll-call track). However, due to being Sonic's first appearance in Smash, the game also heavily promoted the very first game (among the games to provide more direct moveset origin, Stickers of Classic Sonic's American and Japanese designs, the only game to get two music tracks, and the stage itself), making the Secret Rings promotion less obvious.
