YMMV / Super Smash Bros. Melee

• Anti-Metagame Character:
  • Pikachu, ranked 9th on the tier list, is considered to have a decent matchup against Marth (ranked 2nd) in theory. In practice, this is even more lopsided in Pikachu's favor, with the best Pikachu player in the world, Axe, not having dropped a set to Marth in years until 2022.
  • Young Link, ranked 17th, has solid matchups against the top-tiered floaty characters Jigglypuff (3rd) and Peach (7th), despite struggling against most of the other top characters.
• Base-Breaking Character: The competitive Smash fandom has a divided opinion on Melee's incarnation of Fox. On one side, many fans love him for being the epitome of Difficult, but Awesome, being near-impossible to play well at the low level, but having many options that cover many different situations without any of them being a universal auto-win spam tool. Unlike top-tier characters in other Smash games (Pikachu in 64, Meta Knight in Brawl, Diddy Kong in early Smash 4, and Bayonetta in late Smash 4), he has an even skill-to-reward ratio for how dominating he is, is not significantly above the rest of the top characters in singles, and doesn't beat mid- and low-tier characters as hard as, say, Sheik or Falco do. On the other side, Melee detractors and even a handful of Melee fans dislike Fox for how common he is in Melee's metagame, particularly in doubles (where he is even better than he is in singles, with double Fox teams being incredibly prominent), and how frustrating a good Fox can be to play against, due to how oppressive his quick, powerful tools can be in the neutral game when utilized to the fullest extent. They also greatly dislike how demanding he is, requiring an extremely high amount of tech skill to play well (with some Fox players such as Hax and DruggedFox even suffering from hand injuries such as carpal tunnel because of this).
• Best Level Ever:
  • Fountain of Dreams is very well-remembered for not only being legitimately fun to play on while staying tournament-legal, but for being absolutely beautiful to look at and having one of the best songs in the game playing on it. Many have mourned its absence from Brawl and 3DS/Wii U and cheered wildly when it finally returned in Ultimate.
  • Temple. While it's banned in Tournament Play, it is one of the most beloved stages in non-serious play due to the combination of a large amount of room to move around and the lack of any hazards. It's also got a huge variety of terrain shapes to suit many situations. You have a section with a handful of small platforms, two platforms facing each other over a gap, a long platform with a solid floor under it, two cliffs leading to lower platforms, a tunnel, a small arena with a roof, a vertical tunnel, and a tiny arena with a ceiling over two pits. This lets you do whatever you want, from having air battles with the platforms and cliffs to having close brawls in the tighter arena areas to trying to go defensive when weak in one of the areas with ceilings. The cave/tunnel area in particular is popular for having impromptu "cage matches". Even seriously-heavy-hitting moves like Captain Falcon's "Falcon Punch" or Mr. Game and Watch's "Judgement #9" don't knock enemies out; they just entertainingly bounce around like pinballs due to the walls and ceiling. It's no surprise that it returns in both Brawl, Wii U, and Ultimate, with Brawl giving it a new song, and the Wii U version giving it a beautiful makeover as well as a plethora of songs, including songs from Zelda stages that didn't make it into SSB4, and from A Link Between Worlds.
  • Poké Floats, not necessarily for its layout, but because it's one of the most bizarre stage concepts in the history of Smash (fighting on top of Pokémon balloons in the skies of the Kanto region). Its status in competitive play has also been immortalized as a once-legal stage, with people (ironically and genuinely) clamoring for it to be legalized again. People lamented it being the only Pokémon stage not to return for Ultimate (if only for not being able to see what its Battlefield and Omega forms would look like).
  • Mute City and Big Blue from F-Zero are very much this. The former is the first of many touring stages to be seen in the series, where you taken around an F-Zero course and have to avoid racers on the places you land on, while the latter has you fighting on top of F-Zero racers, with the objective of not touching the ground and being subject to a KO. They both also come with epic remixes of the music their stages are based on.
  • Fourside is another fan favorite stage. It has an awesome visual design as it takes place on top of some of the buildings of the city at night including the Monotoli Building. The layout also makes it a Spiritual Successor of Saffron City from 64. Porky's Helicopter and a giant UFO will sometimes appear on the stage for a bit as well. The Fourside remix is also one of the best themes in the game. Like Fountain of Dreams, many fans were happy when it was confirmed to return in Ultimate with even better visuals.
• Breather Level: There's a one-in-three chance that the Underground Maze in Adventure Mode will be like this. The goal of the level is to find the Triforce in one of six spawn points — the spawn points that don't have it will have a shadow clone of Link to fight. Two of these spawn points can be reached without any encounters (the others are beyond the second spawn point). Should the Triforce spawn in one of the first two spawn points, you can clear the level without any combat whatsoever (making it by far the easiest way to get the Switzerland end-of-level bonus).
• Casual-Competitive Conflict: Par for the course with Smash, but Melee gets it particularly bad due to nowadays being better known for its competitive depth rather than a celebration of Nintendo. Aside from the strife this creates with Melee fans who want to enjoy the game casually, later titles being deliberately geared towards the casual fanbase means they generally treat later entries with indifference at best and contempt at worst. One notorious instance of this occurred during the Super Smash Bros. for Wii U grand finals event at Apex 2015, when Melee players (whose grand finals event was scheduled right after this) began jeering at the game and chanting "Melee!" in a vain attempt to get its players to finish up.
• Cheese Strategy:
  • The Ice Climbers were, at one point, considered a Low-Tier Letdown, although they did have a few early representatives such as ChuDat who showed the duo's tournament potential. ChuDat's skill managed to keep the duo in the mid-tiers... until the discovery of the "wobbling" technique, which almost immediately put them into the top 8. Normally, when Popo and Nana pummel a grabbed opponent, they do so back-to-back so that there is still some room for an opponent to escape the grab like with every other character. However, if the Ice Climbers player manages to "desync" the two, they could have Nana instead strike the opponent with a weak tilt attack in-between the pummels, essentially stun-locking the opponent indefinitely as long as the Ice Climbers player could maintain the pummel and tilt rhythm, and essentially guaranteeing a KO every single time the Ice Climbers landed a grab. Following the widespread implementation of the technique (with top player and technique namesake Wobbles being the first to succeed with it in tournament), the Ice Climbers had a number of character-specific tournament rules put in place, legalizing the move but heavily regulating its use (such as a damage cap before an opponent must be KOed). Despite the restrictions, and the Ice Climbers' placement as the worst of the high-tiers even with their access to wobbling, it was still hated among much the community for how simple it was to use for the rewards reaped. This hate only grew from 2016 onwards, where more top Ice Climbers players such as ARMY, Flipsy, and Bananas appeared on the scene and began defeating fan-favorite top players in shocking upsets (albeit very inconsistently), re-igniting the discussion to ban wobbling entirely due to the extremely high variance it introduced to tournament placings. As of 2020, most major tournaments ban wobbling, to mixed receptions among both competitors and spectators.
  • Jigglypuff was once considered a low-tiered character, until pro players such as The King and Mango showed how dominant it was in the air, and how it could nearly effortlessly push opponents off-stage with its fast and disjointed aerials combined with fantastic air speed. There was certainly character hate levied against these players (especially Mango), but such hate was alleviated by the fact that they played Jigglypuff very aggressively. However, once top player Hungrybox rose to prominence, the character hate skyrocketed. Hungrybox figured out that it was more optimal to play Jigglypuff with extremely defensive hit-and-run tactics that slowly wore down an opponent, until they grew frustrated or desperate and made a mistake that could lead to a KO. He would even be willing to run the clock out if the game dragged long enough, winning on time with a stock lead. Hungrybox eventually rose to become the top Melee player in the world, dominating several tournaments, and his strategy became so reviled among some circles that they have raged to ban Jigglypuff simply because its slow, campy style supposedly "doesn't belong in Melee". Hungrybox has also become one of the most hated players in the Smash community, often receiving boos, verbal abuse and other harassment both online and at live events (including once getting a crab thrown at him after taking an event).
• Even Better Sequel: Melee is overall considered an improvement over the original, with Trophies, more options, characters, stages, modes, and a long-thriving competitive scene.
• Fandom Rivalry: Smash in general has this with other fighting games, but Melee in particular has it bad due to its competitive scene being the most well known of all the Smash titles. One incident among many include Melee fans jeering during the CEO 2016 Top 8 finals of Guilty Gear. The rivalry exploded when it was revealed that Melee would no longer be at EVO 2019, in favor of the then-unreleased Samurai Shodown and the niche anime fighter Under Night In-Birth.
• Fan Nickname: The cloud that moves back and forth on the Yoshi's Story map has been christened "Randall" by the competitive community.
• Fountain of Memes:
  • Fox, who's the face of competitive Melee, if not the entirety of competitive Smash. He's also very quotable thanks to his usual ham-fisted Engrish delivery from Shinobu Satouchi.
  • Captain Falcon is this across the entire series, but in competitive Melee in particular he's well-known as a symbol of hype as opposed to the more fundamental characters frequently seen in tournament play.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Counters in Wii U/3DS are often hated by people due to a combination of being unoriginal and sometimes being a case of That One Attack for specific ones like Shulk's Vision, Bayonetta's Witch Time, and Corrin's Counter Surge. Counters have been a concept since Melee; the difference is that there were only three characters on the roster (of 26) with a type of counter, compared to the (technically) sixteen/fifteen counters different characters can potentially have, including custom moves. Also, the Melee counters lacked the raw power that several of the ones in Wii U/3DS have, making them purely a "keep away" option in certain situations.
  • Ganondorf's moveset. He was a very last minute addition to the game in Melee, and was made a clone of Captain Falcon due to their similar builds. Ganondorf^note Not counting his One-Winged Angel form, Ganon had only made one game appearance at that point (in Ocarina of Time). While not a perfect representation of his canon self, Ganondorf's depiction made 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, Ganondorf had been depicted in two subsequent games as a Master Swordsman and showed off more of his magical abilities. The spinoff 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 developers seem to be aware of this, as Ultimate took steps to include a few sword moves in his repertoire, but as per Sakurai's apparent desire to not anger fans of the character in previous games, he still largely retains his original moveset, though with his Mighty Glacier attributes made even more noticeable and with some differing moves.
  • Marth and Roy's inclusion was a seen as a shock to western gamers, but spurred interest in Fire Emblem. This continued into Brawl, which kept representation to two fighters by switching Roy out for Ike. However, 3DS/Wii U and Ultimate got flak for the inclusion of even more Fire Emblem characters (eight as of Ultimate), leading to a Fandom Rivalry between those who enjoy their inclusion and those who find it to be a case of favoritism.
• Friendly Fandoms: Fans of the game have developed one with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl. The latter game's devs, who previously made the similarly Melee-influenced Slap City, have comitted to making a platform fighter with the speed, technical upper limit, and wavedashing of Melee whilst having modern conveniences such as rollback netcode and regular updates. The game even feeds back into the Fandom Rivalry between Melee fans and Ultimate fans, with many Melee fans hoping that All-Stars Brawl usurps Ultimate at events like EVO.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The competitive community for Melee has become a case of this since the release of 3DS/Wii U. In Japan, local tournaments have been becoming increasingly infrequent, and only one monthly tournament remains in the whole country. Even then, said monthly tournament only gets about 30 entrants, with a Smash U tournament in the same region getting anywhere from 5 to 10 times those numbers. Everywhere else in the world, the Melee community remains just as big as those of later games, and even bigger in some areas.
  • Poké Floats is an unusual stage case, as the stage is much more popular on the west than on its country of origin. This can be attributed to the stage's original name: Pokémon Subspace, implying much more bluntly this stage as a surrealistic environment with floating models of Pokémon, while the western localizations masqued it much more favorably as a parade of giant balloons taking place in the skies of Kanto, making this stage much more fondly remembered in the west.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • There's a glitch that lets you, among other things, play as Master Hand (who is invincible outside Stamina Mode, which can be exploited to clear Event matches and some of the Multi-Man modes), though it is prone to crashing. Note that this glitch went undiscovered for seven years; it involves synchronized use of the A and B buttons to confuse the "go to name entry menu" and "back to main menu" commands, causing the game to give up and skip ahead to the stage select menu. If a player has not selected their character by the time this happens, it will default to the character with the ID value of "0" — which just so happens to be Master Hand.
  • A related bug by the same method but with other circumstances allows "shadow players" (start a team match with all four characters on the same team, causing the recolor mechanic to become confused) and one-player matches.
  • There's an A.I. bug that causes all computer opponents to come to a complete standstill if the player stands still in certain locations on stages. This can be heavily exploited in the Multi-Man modes, particularly in Cruel Melee.
  • The Freeze glitch, while a Game-Breaking Bug in normal gameplay, is this in the Home-Run Contest, where players have been able to exploit it to get the maximum distance in HRC with the Ice Climbers.
  • The "wavedash" exploit, which has a reputation among some people as a bug, though it isn't^note Basically, the physics engine is functioning properly, but the wavedash application appears to be a rather creative use of the air dodge, though director Sakurai noted that wavedashing was already discovered during the development of the game, allows a character to slide along the ground by air dodging into it diagonally. This bug would end up becoming a core part of Melee's competitive gameplay.
  • One glitch involving the super scope gives it infinite ammo. This is done by shooting 15 small shots, followed by two charged shots, then getting hit as you charge a third one.
  • The "Shrinking Yoshi Glitch" involves Kirby copying Yoshi's ability and using it on him. If Yoshi mashes out fast enough, his model will shrink. While it is subtle, this can be stacked as many times as you like, to the point where he is no longer visible.
• Growing the Beard: While the first game was darn fun, this is the one that established most of what would become standard for the series. There were more single-player modes, a more robust fighter selection with significant differences between them, a greater stage variety and collectables. The first game was merely a side project with a shoestring budget, while Melee was developed with the backing of a frontline Nintendo game.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • In the opening, we see the Ice Climbers climbing platforms. Popo almost falls, but Nana saves him. The music helps too.
  • In the same vein, we see a collage of Link's adventures as a child in Ocarina of Time, almost like a lead-up to his legendary status. These scenes showcase Saria, Malon, Darunia, Ruto, Rauru, Impa, and of course Zelda, showing that Link has not forgotten any of them.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: One of Peach's alternate costumes resembles a wedding dress. 16 years later, she was forced to actually wear one.
• Hype Backlash: Melee is the one game in the series prior to Ultimate that hasn't drawn significant criticism on its own merits. However, the general elitist attitude of a portion of the Melee playerbase, which includes bashing any or all of the other games in the series (except the N64 original due to it having combos), takes the Casual-Competitive Conflict aspect of the Smash fanbase to new levels and discourages quite a few new players from trying out Melee. Not helping matters is the scene's very high entry barrier, reliance on very specific equipment (such as old CRT televisions), and perceived "de-personification" of the game where characters such as Fox and Sheik are seen more as avatars for cult players than the Nintendo heroes that they are. Many players who indeed believe Melee to be the best game in the series are afraid to express their opinion because they don't want to be lumped with its infamously elitist fanbase. In fact, the backlash is so strong that in some circles, even those that praise other games in the series don't like this game primarily because of the elitist members of its fanbase. Over time, the Melee community has taken note of some of this backlash, and has launched serious efforts to make the game more accessible. Of particular note are online matchmaking systems such as Smashladder, where players can chat and seek matches hosted through the Dolphin emulator, and Project Slippi, an entire self-sufficient client that features rollback netcode for a smoother gameplay experience. Neither of these require antiquated equipment to play, only requiring a reasonably capable computer, and modders have even created low-resolution texture packs such as Diet Melee for those with weaker graphics cards. As for the technical barrier, mod packs such as the 20XX Training Pack and UnclePunch Training Mode have streamlined the learning experience for advanced techniques for all levels of play. Finally, mods such as The Akaneia Build bring in additional content to appeal to newer players and rekindle the interest of players who dropped off, including music, stages, game modes and even additional fighters a la Project M (such as Wolf, Diddy Kong and Charizard).
• Just Here for Godzilla: The Melee competitive scene is based on the opposite premise, where most of its players and fans are far more invested in the mechanics, metagame, and tournament scene than the game's mission statement of bringing together Nintendo heroes and history, to the point that they treat famous Smashers like Mew2King, Leffen, and Mango as iconic personalities rather than the playable fighters themselves. Essentially, most of the current fanbase of Melee treat it more like a professional sport than a video game, as opposed to other entries in the series, which have more prominent casual followings alongside their competitive fanbases.
• Memetic Loser: Pichu and Kirby are easily the most infamous Low-Tier Letdown characters in the series, with their diminutive "cutesy" designs not helping matters, and having very poor stats all around. No matter how awful other bottom tier characters in the series may be (and even though Pichu itself is no longer a contender for the worst in the game), this game's Pichu and Kirby will forever be viewed by the overall fandom as the weakest and most pathetic characters in the series. While Kirby is only an example due to poor balancing, Pichu's case might have been fully intentional, given how half of its attacks inflict recoil damage. It went the opposite way for Pichu in its return in Ultimate, as it was made a Lethal Joke Character; Kirby also got the Memetic Badass treatment, but this was due to World of Light's beginning.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Whenever you get a Notice, unlock a new character or stage, or complete a Challenge, as shown here.
• Narm: Metal Mario and Metal Luigi's Epic Fail-like entrance ^note Falling headfirst from the sky, then tipping over like dominoes. in Adventure mode. While that wouldn't be out of character for regular Mario and regular Luigi, these Metal counterparts are supposed to be Darker and Edgier Implacable Men.
• Never Live It Down: Pichu stopped being a contender for the worst in the game, being ranked 22nd at highest in a tier list. However, Melee Pichu's image as an intentional joke character and former consideration as the worst character haunt it even to this day. It's often considered the worst character by many fans just because it's Pichu, despite its recoil damage not mattering that much (its best moves are not electric-based), and it having several advantages in speed and power that give it legitimate (albeit still weak) options to use in serious matches, unlike the truly terrible characters in the game such as Zelda and Bowser.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Among casual players and some competitive players of the future less-technical Smash games, the game's infamous advanced techniques. Some consider these techniques an unnecessary technical addition to the game with loads of characters and Mascot Fighters. Others contend that the advanced techniques make the game fun to watch, but are discouraged from actually playing it due to how difficult these techniques look to master.
  • The most contested of these techniques is L-canceling^note Smooth landing officially, a mechanic that allows you to cut the landing lag of your aerial moves in half if you press a shield button as you land.
    • Detractors see it as something that heightens the technical barrier just for the sake of technical skill, as the same effect could be achieved by a universal landing lag reduction without any extra button presses, and unlike something like wavedashing where the technique has unique applications and must be used intelligently to be effective, there's never a time where you wouldn't want to L-cancel your aerials. The fact so many people have infamously suffered hand pain issues from playing Melee intensifies the debate against L-canceling, as the amount it contributes to Melee's notoriously high BPM is one of the chief causes of hand issues. Supporters of L-canceling argue that the technique is an "awareness check" at the highest level, as the L-cancel timing differs depending on what the player actually hits with their aerial (a shield, the opponent, or nothing at all) and also when they land the aerial. They contend that forcing opponents to miss L-cancels through careful spacing and shield angling is a legitimate skill, and thus the technique adds more depth to the game despite it appearing unnecessary at first glance.
    • Regardless, some Melee players would rather have universally reduced landing lag instead of L-cancelling in the game, if only to increase the game's accessibility and help alleviate hand pain issues. There's also been debate in the Project M community on if L-canceling should have been implemented, with the mod's developers seriously contemplating not bringing it back. It's important to note that in Project M, there is not as much stun when an aerial hits a shield, thus removing the ability for players to consistently force missed L-cancels with clever shielding. Thus, the debate for removing L-canceling is much more decisive in that game.
  • Inverted with Melee's lack of universal input buffering. This is retroactive; future Smash games "buffers" all inputs, while Melee does not, making Melee feel stiffer and unresponsive to people who primarily play these games (as if you input your next action a few frames too soon while still in the lag of your current action, your input will go ignored and your character will just end up doing nothing). It is also a significant contributing factor to Melee's technical difficulty, which while competitive Melee players love, serves as another significant barrier to entry. This is exacerbated by how newer entries of even hardcore fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken have implemented some level of universal input buffering, making Melee feel even more archaic to newer players in comparison.
  • Another inversion is Melee's lack of any control customization, which has been standard in all future Smash games. Most players of the post-Melee Smash games customize their controls in some way, turning them off from Melee when they can't use their preferred control setup. This is especially so with Tap Jump, which can be turned off in the post-Melee games through control customization, but can't be turned off Melee, meaning players who only jump with the jump buttons are stuck with a useless input that frequently causes mechanical errors, such as jumping and doing an up aerial instead of doing an up tilt, or inadvertently burning their midair jump when trying to use their up special to recover. Several players have cited the inability to customize their controls, or even just the inability to toggle Tap Jump, as the sole reason they won't play Melee.
  • In all 1-P Modes, the C-Stick's function changes from letting you do Smash attacks and aerials quickly to... being able to zoom the camera in and out (but not out any further than normal). To be blunt, the camera controls have no use at all, even before factoring in their replacement of quick and accessible attacks. It's common for players to mod in the standard C-Stick functionality into single-player.
  • For high-level play, meteor canceling, which is the ability to negate the downward knockback of getting hit by a meteor smash. While the game provides penalties for trying to mash to meteor cancel, high-level players can simply memorize the timing to break out of being meteor smashed. Because of this, the intended high-risk-high-reward nature of meteor smashes is negated except for the strongest meteors at unreasonably high percents. It really says something that out of all of Melee's minor mechanics, this one was not faithfully recreated for Project M, and while Brawl took steps to nerf it, Wii U/3DS and onward scrapped the mechanic entirely due to how much it gutted most meteor smashes.
• Sequel Displacement: When Melee was young, a number of fans failed to realize that there was a game that came before it, despite the information being in the game.
• Signature Scene:
  • Melee's FMV opening is among the most iconic in the series, made to show off what the then new GameCube was capable of. Amazingly, not only does the opening hold up even decades after its original launch but the opening has also been recreated time and again using characters from other series or even different media types.
  • Giga Bowser's introduction cutscene at the end of an Adventure Mode run on Normal also left its mark on the playerbase for it was quite the Shocking Moment back in the day.
• Suspiciously Similar Song:
  • Some find the menu theme to sound like the title screen music in Terranigma. More directly, it's based off of the Bowser level theme from Super Mario 64.
  • The opening theme has also drawn comparisons to the Butter Building theme from the Kirby series. Supporting this is that Masahiro Sakurai and HAL Laboratory directed and developed both Kirby's Adventure and Melee.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Tingle makes a cameo as part of the "Great Bay" stage. During gameplay, it's possible to send him for a dip in the ocean, and American players have been known to call a truce to do just that.
• That One Achievement: There's the "No Damage Clear" bonus, which you can only get by beating Classic, Adventure, or All-Star without taking any damage whatsoever. There's also the "Switzerland" bonus, which requires you to neither attack nor take damage for the whole match, though certain Adventure Mode stages (Underground Maze with a bit of luck or the Zebes escape or F-Zero Grand Prix with good jumpers) can be used to cheap this out.
• That One Boss: The Event 50 battle with the hands. In Classic Mode, Master Hand initially shows up alone, and Crazy Hand only appears when he is brought down to half health on at least Normal. This isn't the case with Event 50, where you fight both of them from max health right off the bat, with both of them at their most aggressive. Last but not least, you only get one stock, compared to Classic Mode where you could have up to five.
• That One Level: Some stages can be aggravating to play on. While they're of course banned in competitive play, even most casual players prefer to steer clear of them for several reasons.
  • Jungle Japes: One platform barely large enough to contain four fighters lies in the middle, while two significantly smaller platforms hang out on the sides. Getting a K.O. requires that you go to these ledges and attempt to prevent your opponent from making it. Easier said than done, as the lack of leg room will either see you pushed off, or actually land a blow if you're lucky. There are also Klaptraps that can blindside you and pull you into a K.O. if they bite. Later games with a swimming mechanic, such as Brawl and Ultimate, add rushing water to push you off the side of the stage, and the Klaptraps make a return. It's at its worst in the 3DS game, as these hazards return despite swimming not being implemented, meaning you don't even have the swim lag to save you in this installment. The wonky physics on that version of the stage could potentially spell your doom in a worst-case scenario.
  • Brinstar Depths: If you're in the wrong place when Kraid rotates the stage, it can be impossible for you to recover. Also, due to its nature as a rotating stage, it has no grabbable edges, making recovery more difficult than usual. Subverted in the stage's return for Ultimate, as though Kraid still rotates it, now it has grabbable edges.
  • Any stage that forces players to keep up with its movement. Two of them in particular stand out:
    • Icicle Mountain, for many. For starters, the stage isn't really much to look at, being a snowy mountain with lots of platforms. Second, the stage randomly moves at speeds ranging from a standstill to incredibly fast, meaning that quite a few characters are at a disadvantage when it comes to maneuvering around in time to keep up. Also, the stage will sometimes go the opposite direction without warning, meaning that, if you were at the very top/bottom of the stage, you could very well find yourself KO'd.
    • Poké Floats. While it's loved by some for its visuals, music, and concept (hence why it's also listed under Best Level Ever), other fans can't stand it. In addition to having all of the usual aggravations that come with moving stages, the collision on the Pokémon can be wonky at times, making it hard to reach, grab onto, or even just stand on them when you think you otherwise would. It's essentially an auto-scroller combined with the aforementioned Brinstar Depths.
  • Event 33: Lethal Marathon is the F-Zero Grand Prix level from Adventure Mode but much, much faster and under a strict time limit (45 seconds, but since it's at double speed, it's actually 22.5 seconds of real time), effectively meaning that you don't time your movements well, you will be run over.
  • Event 48: Pikachu and Pichu. You would assume that an Event Mission like this would be one of the easier ones, right? Nope. You have to deal with a Pikachu with infinite stock and two Pichu with one stock each, the latter of which must be KO'd to complete the mission. Unfortunately for you, your opponents (mostly Pikachu) are very aggressive and Whispy Woods can blow you off the stage.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Some characters don't appear in Classic Mode; Mr. Game & Watch exclusively appears as an enemy in the team battle, Ganondorf is never used as an enemy fighter, Zelda is never used as an ally, which also means that Sheik isn't used either, and Roy never appears at all in the mode.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The Adventure Mode can be seen as this by some. Instead of the mode appearing as an actual adventure, it is mostly just a rehash of Smash 64's 1P Game, only with a few new levels representing different franchises. In turn, only around half of them are represented properly; The Mario universe starts the mode with a Mushroom Kingdom level, and later The Legend of Zelda series has an underground maze, full of ReDeads, Like Likes, and Octoroks; the Metroid series ends with the trademark Escape Sequence designed similarly to those of the first game and Super Metroid, and F-Zero uses the Big Blue track with the racers driving across the track as an obstacle. However, all the other series' stages have is a battle or two, no unique mine cart segment for Donkey Kong, two battles against Fox (or Falco), no traversing through a Pokemon-themed town, and no EarthBound based level, such as the Dusty Dunes Desert or Threed's Graveyard. Lastly, likely due to the associated characters being hidden, neither Fire Emblem nor Game & Watch are represented in any capacity in this mode.
• Tough Act to Follow: Being the game that really drew the crowds and showed off what this series was capable of, it's become the measuring stick for the games since. In the competitive scene, it's used as the measuring stick to which later Smash games are compared to, due to Brawl drastically changing the game engine and being unpopular in tournament play as a result.
• Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The fighters' color palettes have realistic textures that look off-putting. Examples include Mario and Luigi's overalls that look darker, Captain Falcon's racing suit is dark navy colored instead of being regular blue, and Bowser has dirt brown skin rather than his trademark yellow-orange.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The FMV segments of Melee's opening were made with the explicit purpose of showing off what the Nintendo GameCube was capable of, and by consequence that this would've been a much bigger game than the 64 incarnation (since Nintendo 64 cartridges lacked the capacity for full-motion video for most of the system's lifetime, but optical discs were fully capable of it from the outset). They succeeded, and the scenes look great to this day.
  • The in-game graphics are no slouch either, and are easily some of the best on the GameCube despite being one of the first games released for it.
• Woolseyism: "Poké Floats" was originally called "Pokémon Subspace" in the Japanese version. The word "Subspace" is frequently used in Nintendo games to denote alternate dimensions, implying that the stage is actually a vacuum filled with giant Pokémon. The localizations changing the theme to parade floats instead went over really well, as it made the stage feel a lot more charming.

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