Trivia / Super Smash Bros. Melee

• Blooper:
  • A few trophies contain incorrect information or other errors.
    • Daisy's trophy states that after her appearance in Mario Golf, she's become Luigi's answer to Mario's Peach. This information was mistranslated from her Japanese trophy, which stated she appeared in Mario Open Golf, which was released in the US as NES Open Tournament Golf. Also, Daisy's trophy infamously has a third eye on the back on her head in earlier versions.
    • An example bordering on Orwellian Retcon, the Poison Mushroom trophy says the item debuted in Super Mario All-Stars (which contains a remake of Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels a.k.a. the Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2) instead of the then Japan-only original game. Since Melee, Nintendo has rereleased the original Lost Levels in Western markets and acknowledges its existence openly, so the trophy has the correct attribution in later games.
    • Meta Knight's trophy says he debuted in Kirby Super Star, but he actually first appeared in Kirby's Adventure. It also incorrectly writes his name with a hyphen as "Meta-Knight".
    • The Sheriff trophy says that the game was only released in Japan, but it was actually released outside of Japan under the title Bandido.
    • The Banzai Bill trophy states that they first appeared in Super Mario Bros., but they actually debuted in Super Mario World.
    • Marth's Classic Trophy as well as the one in Super Smash Bros. Brawl claim that Akaneia destroyed Altea at the end of Shadow Dragon & The Blade Of Light, when in reality, Akaneia merely controlled Altea for a time and Altea was reclaimed by Marth at the end of Mystery Of The Emblem.
  • Due to a programming error, the conditions of earning the Materialist and Minimalist bonuses are reversed.
  • An unused announcer call for Giga Bowser can be heard in the sound test. If you're playing in English, the announcer will say "Giga Koopa". Likewise, he'll say "Giga Bowser" if the language is set to Japanese.
  • Mewtwo's Confusion will reflect projectiles, but for some reason, the reflected projectile won't belong to Mewtwo. Smash 4 would correct this.
• Colbert Bump:
  • This game saved Ice Climber from being totally forgotten.
  • Fire Emblem was put on the map outside Japan thanks to Marth and Roy's inclusion.
• Development Gag: Two of the event matches' names, "Super Mario 128" and "Kirby's Air Raid", respectively reference a GameCube tech demo^note which served as a basis for Pikmin, Super Mario Sunshine and even Super Mario Galaxy and the then-stuck in Development Hell Kirby Air Ride.
• Dummied Out: Trophies of Mario riding Yoshi and an unmasked Samus exist in the game's code, but can't be obtained without hacking due to only being released via distributions in Japan. Rather interestingly, Prima's Official Strategy Guide for Super Mario Sunshine says you can get the Caped Mario and Yoshi trophy if you have a memory card with Super Mario Sunshine on it and start Melee, akin to how you get the Olimar trophy by having save Data for Pikmin on the memory card. A trophy of Tamagon also exists in the code. It can be obtained normally in the Japanese version, but can only be obtained by hacking elsewhere.
• God Never Said That:
  • A series of answers to fan questions (published during the development of Melee) confirmed that James Bond and Banjo & Kazooie would not be in the game, as they would be difficult to include. This gave rise to a widely-spread rumor that these characters were planned for inclusion but cut because Sakurai couldn't secure the rights, but Sakurai never said this in these responses. The rumor was later re-popularized after Source Gaming translated Sakurai's answers and speculated that they were considered, which doesn't mean planned but cut. Furthermore, Source Gaming is a fan group and is in no way connected to Sakurai, Nintendo, or anyone else involved with the game, so again, even the notion that they were considered is their own speculation.
  • Sakurai never said anything about considering Lip for the original game or Melee. He did call Panel de Pon a "masterpiece" when asked by a Japanese fan if Lip would be in the second game, but to all appearances, she was never planned to be included in either.
  • Due to a Neogaf post claiming to have information about Melee's development from early 2000s Famitsu issues that appeared legitimate, it was for a long time that things such as Dedede being planned for inclusion, Leif and Wolf being originally planned to be clones of Marth and Fox respectively before Sakurai decided on Roy and Falco, and the Pokémon Trainer with the Gen 2 starters being planned but scrapped because of development issues, were considered accepted fact about Melee by the Smash community. The Neogaf post was later found out to be a complete fabrication.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The most pronounced case in the series, as Super Smash Bros. Melee has never received a re-release despite being the best selling game on the system, with second-hand copies having become increasingly expensive as a result. According to Kit Ellis and Krysta Yang, the former hosts of Nintendo Minute, an HD remaster or a re-release of Melee will likely never happen because Nintendo doesn't want to bother with the game or the competitive community anymore.
• Killer App: Melee sold over 7 million units, making it the biggest system seller for the GameCube. It's also the killer app of the series because it created the western^note There have been Smash 64 tournaments in Japan as early as 1999. tournament scene for the series, and it still has its own tournaments over twenty years after its release.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": The Trope Namer.
  • Marth, star of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon & the Blade of Light, made his Western playable appearance in Melee (his Western debut overall was the Fire Emblem OVA, which was released in the U.S. in April 1998), and would not appear in the West in his own series until the remake of his game released for the DS in 2008, nearly seven years after Melee, and his actual original game took 19 years after Melee to see the light of day.
  • Roy takes the trope to extremes, also being from a Fire Emblem game that not only was limited to Japan, but hadn't even been released before Melee hit shelves; he really did debut in Smash Bros., in other words. Fire Emblem: The Binding Blade wasn't released until late March of 2002, while Melee came out four months prior.^note Sakurai has noted that Binding Blade's release date had actually been internally delayed, so his situation was unintentional.
  • Lip's Stick wouldn’t be seen in its natural habitat until 2020, when its game was added to the Nintendo Switch’s library of SNES games.
  • K.K. Slider and Tom Nook appear as trophies in this game, a year before the first localized Animal Crossing game was released; as a result, the overseas versions' trophy calls calls the former by his Japanese name, Totakeke, and their game of origin is listed as "Future Release".
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The Pokémon models used in the Poké Floats stage were directly ripped from the Pokémon Stadium games.
• No Dub for You:
  • Most of Fox and Falco's voice clips were muted, even though they spoke in the Japanese version. This was changed in Brawl.
  • In English localizations, Mewtwo only grunts and laughs, while in Japanese it has spoken victory lines.^note This extends into the fourth game, likely due to the different portrayals it had in the Western and Japanese markets.
  • Marth and Roy speak entirely in Japanese. They would finally get voiced in English in Ultimate.
• The Other Darrin:
  • Jeff Manning is replaced by Dean Harrington as the announcer and Master Hand. To great "Success!".
  • For the Star Fox Smash Taunt in Corneria and Venom, Fox, Falco, Peppy and Slippy aren't voiced in English by their original voice actors from Star Fox 64^note Mike West for Fox, Bill Johns for Falco, Rick May for Peppy and Lyssa Browne for Slippy. Fox is voiced by Steve Malpass, Falco by Ben Cullum, and Peppy and Slippy by Chris Seavor of Rare fame. All three would reprise their roles in Star Fox Adventures.
• The Other Marty: The Special Movie depicts Peach being voiced by Leslie Swan for Bowser's segment and the ending (her voice actress from Super Mario 64, Super Mario 64 DS and Super Paper Mario) whereas in the game itself and in Peach's segment, Jen Taylor does the role.
• Production Lead Time: Despite its short, accelerated development cycle, Melee made sure to feature content from games that still felt fresh in people's minds by the time it was released, in order to minimize this trope. However, due to the game being released shortly after the launch of the GCN, the game only has a trophy referencing Luigi's Mansion, another trophy referencing Pikmin (2001), and a character whose game wasn't even out yet back then (Roy, being a Moveset Clone of Marth and thus having very little in common to his actual portrayal from his own game).
• Referenced by...: In the Spanish version of Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, Rawk Hawk says that "losers should stay home and play Super Smash Bros. Melee" after winning a fight in the Glitz Pit.
• Role Reprise:
  • As with 64, Charles Martinet, Nobuyuki Hiyama and Kazumi Totaka reprise their roles as Mario and Luigi, Link, and Yoshi respectively, using repurposed voice clips from Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time and Yoshi's Story. Martinet's portrayal of Mario from Super Mario 64 is also repurposed for Mario's clone, Dr. Mario. Luigi also reuses the "high-pitched" version of said portrayal.
  • Jen Taylor reprises her role as Princess Peach.
  • Jun Mizusawa, Takashi Nagasako and Fujiko Takimoto reprise their roles as Zelda and Sheik, Ganondorf and child Link (Young Link) from Ocarina of Time. Nagasako and Takimoto reprise their roles via repurposed voice clips, with Nagasako's portrayal of Ganondorf being completely unaltered unlike in Ocarina of Time, where it was digitally altered to sound deeper and gruffer (ironically, this is the portrayal Ganondorf is attributed to).
  • Makiko Ohmoto reprises her roles as Kirby and Ness, providing both with new voice clips.
  • Shinobu Satouchi and Hisao Egawa reprise their roles as Fox and Falco. The former provides Fox with new voice clips to boot.
  • Ikue Otani, Satomi Koorogi, Rachael Lillis and Masachika Ichimura reprise their roles as Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff and Mewtwo from the Pokémon anime. Otani provides Pikachu with newly recorded voice clips, whereas Lillis' portrayal is reused from 64. Mika Kanai's Japanese portrayal of Jigglypuff consists mainly of voice clips from 64 and episodes 45 and 62 of the anime.
  • Ryō Horikawa reprises his role as Captain Falcon, using a combination of reused voice clips and newly recorded ones.
  • Hikaru Midorikawa reprises his role as Marth after voicing him in the Fire Emblem OVA.
• Screwed by the Lawyers:
  • Melee was supposed to boast a bevy of trophies from Rare games, but they didn't end up in the final version (probably because of the incoming buyout). By extension, this is likely why Diddy Kong doesn't have a trophy despite Dixie, K. Rool, and even Donkey Kong Junior and Stanley having one.
  • Sukapon was supposed to have a role in the game (apparently as an item), but had to be dropped due to unspecified legal issues. It would take until Super Smash Bros. Ultimate to be implemented as an Assist Trophy.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot:
  • The reason why Melee infamously had so many of its newcomers as clones (with 6 of the 14 newcomers being clones). Originally the planned roster was going to be what it ended up minus the clones, as Sakurai couldn't add many newcomers with the very short development time he had for the game. However, mid-development, he felt fans would be expecting a larger roster and would be disappointed with the roster size, so he wanted to add more characters to the roster, but it would have been impossible to create even just one more unique new character with the time he had, thus he had to create clones of existing characters to beef up the roster. Ganondorf's controversial status as a Moveset Clone of Captain Falcon in the series stemmed from this decision. Despite doing very well on the official Smash 2 poll (where Ganondorf outperformed all the other Zelda characters combined), Ganondorf wasn't planned to be on the playable roster, with Zelda and Sheik instead being the newcomers from the Zelda series. However, during the cloning process, Sakurai needed some clone candidates, where he decided to add Ganondorf, as Ganon's immense popularity and status made him an ideal pick, while having a very similar body build to Captain Falcon made him an ideal clone candidate (as you could put his model over Falcon's skeleton and have him be able to use all his moves with minimal-to-no technical issues). As such, he was given an altered version of Falcon's moveset to include him in Melee, and due to Sakurai not wanting to change characters heavily from their debut appearance to avoid alienating fans who enjoy playing the character in Smash, Ganondorf has remained a semi-clone of Captain Falcon since.
  • Luigi doesn't use the Poltergust because HAL wasn't aware of Luigi's Mansion until well into the development cycle. He would later gain the Poltergust as a Final Smash in For 3DS/Wii U and later as the method for his grab in Ultimate due to how iconic it became for Luigi.
• Throw It In!: According to an interview with Sakurai in Nintendo Power, the infamous wavedashing exploit was discovered before Melee had finished development. He didn't have it removed because he didn't think it would affect the game heavily. Boy howdy, would it backfire spectacularly on him once it became a staple in competitive play...
• Urban Legend of Zelda:
  • Rumors of Sonic and Tails being unlockable characters. In Brawl, the very same rumors actually came to fruition this time around — at least for Sonic. (Tails is just randomly-occurring stage decor, along with Knuckles and Silver.) The rumors about Sonic and Tails got so out of hand that the official Melee website had to clarify that they were not unlockable in its FAQ.
  • There was an infamous rumor that Toad was unlockable by shooting every credit at the end of the game.
• What Could Have Been: Has its own page along with the rest of the series.

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