Super Smash Flash / YMMV

Awesome Music:
- Despite the game largely using MIDI sound, which is primarily because of the financial limitations, some tracks still manage to stand out. "Battlefield" and "Smashville" in particular are popular enough to see quite a bit of use in custom Project M setups.
- The remix of Gourmet Race is spicy.
- Rock n' Roll Gangplank Galleon.
Awesome Video Game Levels: Tower of Salvation is possibly the most popular competitive stage in the game to the point that, during a brief period of time when it was banned, competitors often arranged with each other to play on it anyway. The environment and music are generally held in high favor. It only grew more popular once Kalos Pokémon League was introduced in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U with a very similar layout.
Base-Breaking Character:
- Blade, Blue, Spikeman, Azrael, and Robo Ninja, the Original Characters who were all deconfirmed. Despite the fact that the majority are glad to see them gone, they all still have their vocal defenders who say they add variety to the game. Coupled with this, as time has passed, Blade and Blue have become increasingly looked upon nostalgically as symbols of a fondly-remembered era of the Internet by longtime SSF fans.
- Chibi-Robo. When he was revealed at Apex 2014 and nobody guessed him right, the chat absolutely erupted with comments demanding that Cleod rot in Hell, maintaining that he "stole" the last starter character position from fan-favorite requests like Bowser, Neku, Steve, and (especially) Luffy. The fandom gradually grew to like him, though, as v0.9b neared release.
- Mr. Game & Watch, though not so much the character himself as the time that he was revealed; he was the only character to be unveiled at APEX in 2015, which had traditionally revealed one character each day of the tournament for the past few years. Several fans were hoping for a newcomer to be revealed instead and were expecting him to be in the final roster anyway.
- Luigi, who got revealed at Smash Con 2015. While the SSF2 fandom had been waiting for (and expecting) him to appear for a while, the main Super Smash Bros. fandom was baffled that it took such a series mainstay almost a decade to be added. This incident had initially soured some SSF2 fans to his inclusion.
- Luffy. Widely loved by anime fans who clamored for his inclusion alongside Goku, Naruto, and Ichigo, and just as widely loathed by those who think the game's anime-related content has gone too far and who expected that the retool would move the game away from anime.
Broken Base:
- There are generally two camps for the Flash 2 fandom: "Just Here For The Anime Reps" and "Ew, The Game Would Be So Much Better Without Anime."
- The Peril Roulette in Classic Mode; a clever way of compensating for the general impossibility of programming a competent Smash AI, or a cheap handicap that rips control from the player? It was eventually scrapped.
- Keyboard controls versus wired controllers. The former is often hailed for allowing superior precision and advanced techniques not possible with an analog controller, but pro-controller players are quick to point out that there is nothing to stop a keyboard player from "accidentally" pressing their opponent's buttons, which would be very easy due to the keymapped nature of the game's controller support. There's also the "PC Master Race" stigma that makes keyboards rather uncomfortable to use with the game for some; while the game IS ON a PC, it's clearly meant to pay tribute to a series of console games, and many players prefer to treat it as they would a console game because of that.
- The air dodge is a point of contention, as while the game is largely more Melee-like in terms of higher gravity and faster movement, the game subscribes to the directionless, momentum-conserving air dodge of Brawl (albeit with the limitations of Smash 4 with a limit to once-per-airborne and no hitstun canceling). Many players would like the air dodge to be changed to be Melee-like to allow for wavedashing so that it can add more movement and offensive options, but many others feel that the game would be better without such a technique and/or the game's other aspects more than make up for the lack of wavedashing.
Casual-Competitive Conflict: Slightly less-so than its source series, but still there. Largely leans towards competitive in the community, though, as official tournament data is being used as a development-assisting tool.
Ensemble Dark Horse: Spikeman, one of the five Original Characters that were planned for 2 but deconfirmed, still has a few fans, possibly because of how awesome his fighting style was planned to be.
Epileptic Trees: The ending of the SSF2 v1.2.4 update direct had an ending stylized like Kamen Rider Ex-Aid. This has led to several Tokusatsu fans believing that the titular character himself will be added to the game at some point.
Game-Breaker: These often pop up in the second game's demos.
- In the early versions, Kirby's Final Smash would One-Hit Kill every player, every time. And Smash Balls were ridiculously common.
- In v0.7, both Tails and Goku qualified as game breakers. Tails had lots of jumps as well as infinite horizontal distance with his down special, making him impossible to touch, let alone kill. Goku, among other things, had his side special, which fires two Ki Blasts that can be spammed over and over again for ridiculous amounts of damage.
- In v0.8a, Yoshi. Good at racking up damage, powerful smashes, and his Egg Lay can kill you if used off the edge. Unfortunately, this resulted in him getting hugely nerfed in v0.8b, making him a Low-Tier Letdown at the time.
- v0.8b had a largely broken cast in general, but special mentions go to Tails, Mega Man, and Ness.
  - Tails had multiple jumps and a good recovery in a game where most characters were writing their will upon being knocked off-stage and he was also easily able to chain together combos in the air. Not to mention that his Neutral B hit an absurd amount of times, easily dealing 30% or breaking your shield if you dared to block it.
  - Mega Man had a huge variety of tools to use with Down B: the infamous brick, annoying crash bombers, spammable saws, and that goddamn black hole. The black hole had a powerful pull and could keep you in free fall, even before the button was actually released. Having an up-air with absurd range and a projectile-reflecting Side B were just icing on the cake.
  - Ness is by far the most broken character in v0.8b, and a good contender for most broken character in all of the demos. His PK Flash could go across half of the stage and he could spawn two of them if he was hit mid-animation. PK Fire was easily spammable, racked up a lot of damage, and even had a pseudo-spiking effect if used in midair (since the fire would fall and bring down the enemy with it). Plus, it would sometimes just activate on the ground so you could set traps. But none of the above comes close to the absurdity of PSI Magnet, which had a ridiculous windbox when you ended the move, which allowed you to do pretty much whatever you wanted, from denying approaches, to safely gimping enemies from a distance, to a tool to return to neutral. It's essentially the game’s version of Shine, something you need to see firsthand to believe.
- In early versions of v0.9.0, Pikachu could chain-grab and throw any character in the game over and over again to rack up huge amounts of damage, without the enemy being able to do anything to stop it.
- Black Mage is often Mis-blamed by more casual players as being one due to the massive range of his fully-charged smash attacks. However, the charging time generally doesn't grant any opportunities to actually use them, and he's, in v0.9a, lower-middle tier.
- Tails in 1.0.3.2, to the point where people compared him to Meta Knight in how he absolutely destroyed most of the cast due to his amazing edgeguarding, stage control, and recovery.
Genius Programming: You really have to admire the dev team's efforts. You could almost swear you're playing a console game, and you completely forget that this is the same engine that's known for how absolutely horrible the things in it are. That said, make sure you have a powerful enough gaming computer, because whether we remember it or not, it still is Adobe Flash, and that makes it a memory hog...
Goddamned Bats: The Buzzers in Race to the Finish in Super Smash Flash. There are a lot of them, they know exactly where you are, and they will run into you over and over again until you fall to your death. At best, they'll delay your progress a bit, which wouldn't be so bad if this weren't Race to the Finish.
Good Bad Bugs:
- Super Smash Flash:
  - A bug allowed you to skip any level in the game (except Target Test), making unlocking the full set of characters much easier.
  - The unlock method for Super Sonic was stated to involve beating Classic Mode with Sonic on the Very Hard difficulty without getting a game over. However, a programming oversight will allow you to unlock Super Sonic on any difficulty.
  - Combos were possible with some characters by rapidly pressing the attack button while holding the same direction. This made Mario, Captain Falcon, and Zelda viable choices.
  - The Finishing Move that every character had by using certain normal attacks against an opponent with 50% or more damage, inexplicably turning it into a One-Hit Kill. Arguably, this glitch alone makes the game enjoyable in its own right despite its relative failure to emulate Smash - the game became a race to land the fatal move first and watch the helpless opponent fly. Unfortunately, though, this also applied to Master Hand, which would have made unlocking Inuyasha a nightmare if it wasn't for the fact that...
  - Since Master Hand was coded differently from other characters, one could pause as he attacked, and the animation would harmlessly continue until the attack was over.
- Super Smash Flash 2:
  - Hidden Leaf Village was a bit of a troubled stage during development... For several demo versions, the wall of the building on the right was for some reason irresistible to the AI — they often spent the entire match just running into it.
  - This game's version of Shadow Moses Island (which was removed in Beta) made the two barriers indestructible, with no way to get over them... unless you play as Bomberman with Low Gravity mode on, in which case two jumps and an Up Special are just high enough to send him over the barrier.
  - In many versions, if a player is eaten by either Kirby or Yoshi and then hit with an item that would freeze them (Freezie or an ice flower) while still in their mouth, not only would they immediately escape, but they'd be invisible until they are KO'd. This also worked with Kirby exhaling an opponent into a mushroom, causing the star he spat out to remain stationary for a few seconds.
  - Similar to Melee's Black Hole Glitch, if a player places two Unira beside each other and throws a third one in between them, there is a chance they will get stuck and continually activate one another. Any poor opponent that touches them will get heavy damage and be trapped unless the Uniras themselves are separated with a strong attack.
  - When Ganondorf was first released, pushing a character with a smaller hitbox up to a vertical wall and performing his Forward Throw on them had the chance of clipping them into it. The game deals with players getting stuck in walls by pushing them up vertically. This allowed for situations that are impossible during normal play, such as Star KO'ing a player on Sandbag Basketball, which is enclosed in a box.
  - The mushroom on the Fairy Glade was capable of glitching out Final Smashes if a player performs them right before being launched by it. For most characters, it simply gets interrupted. But some have unique effects:
  - Some characters that are typically immobile when performing their attack are capable of moving around (Mario, Samus, Ganondorf).
  - If Marth hits it during his dash forward, his horizontal speed will increase to the point where he is guaranteed to die from hitting the blast-zone.
  - HUD final smashes will be canceled, but the HUD overlay effects will remain on screen permanently (DK, Falco, Tails).
Growing the Beard:
- The sequel, departing from its "one attack type only, bad sprites" roots.
- The retool, which marked a departure from merely being a just-for-fun fangame.
- v0.9b, which marked a breakthrough into the competitive community and held the first-ever SSF2 tournament, along with adding online play.
High-Tier Scrappy:
- Poor Yoshi; after he got the stick for being the absolute best character (v0.8a), he eventually became the absolute worst character in v0.8b.
- Mega Man X in the first game — while every character had at least one of the game's signature OHKO attacks, his were projectiles, and could be shot in multiple directions.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Sonic appeared in the original Super Smash Flash before he was announced for Brawl. Mega Man appeared in his classic appearance in Super Smash Flash 2 before he was announced for 3DS/Wii U.
- Early on, it was planned for a stage called "Battle of Origin◊" to appear — the site of where Groudon, Kyogre, and Rayquaza fought thousands of years ago, the fighters getting caught in the crossfire between the three. This was before Spear Pillar, which has a similar hazard, was revealed to appear in Brawl.
- The Cucco was a mainstay item in SSF2 long before it was announced to appear in 3DS/Wii U. SSF2 players had a good laugh when they were shown to have an identical functionality and animation.
- A stage hazard toggle was in SSF2 three years before the Wii U version of Smash 4 automatically disabled some stage hazards while in the 8-Player Smash mode, and seven years before a designated stage hazard toggle was implemented in Ultimate.
- The stage Nintendo 3DS (with the hazard switch turned off) is essentially Final Destination with minimal differences, making it an Omega Stage (a concept first introduced in 3DS/Wii U).
- Skyward Voyage was a stage touring through different locations from The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. The Skyloft stage in Wii U was later revealed to be... a stage touring through different locations from Skyward Sword.
- Cloud was a hidden character in the first game that people were expecting to be cut in the sequel. And while he's not in SSF2 at the moment, funnily enough, he has gotten into Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U.
- Along the same lines, SSF2 has a cartoony mascot character and an anime-like human character representing Square Enix and Namco respectively (Black Mage and Lloyd Irving), while the opposite is true for canon Smash (Cloud/Sephiroth and Pac-Man). With the addition of Kazuya in Smash, this no longer applies.
- Goku's inclusion in the series predates his becoming a hugely memetic yet highly polarizing character suggestion for the real Super Smash Bros. series in The New '10s. Additionally, Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection 'F' introduced a new "Super Saiyan Blue" form for him, which is officially abbreviated as "SSB."
- In the most ludicrous case to date, Simon Belmont was revealed to be playable in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate two days before he was scheduled to be revealed by the SSF2 team at Super Smash Con 2018, much to their horror.
- Sora appears as a playable character in Super Smash Flash 2. Years later, the Keyblade Master himself would finally appear in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as that game's final DLC fighter. He even has a neutral special that's remarkably similar to his down special in this game, in that it cycles between Firaga, Blizzaga, and Thundaga, the main differences being the version of Firaga used^note and the order of the spell cycle^note. The series symbol for the Kingdom Hearts series is almost exactly the same crown used in SSF2, and unlike Simon, Sora can match his default SSF2 appearance in Ultimate as he has his KHII outfit as an alternate costume.
- As noted below, Ichigo's inclusion in the second game was seen as a particularly odd choice, since while his inclusion was likely done due to Bleach's status as one of the "Big 3" of Shounen^note, the popularity of the series was generally agreed as having peaked in the late 2000s^note. Fast-forward to 2020, and the series sees a huge resurgence in popularity due to Bleach getting an anime to adapt the final arc, as well as a new chapter, on top of having received a spin-off in the form of Burn The Witch (2018).
- An interesting case with the first game: The first game had Inuyasha be an unlockable fighter with Kira Buckland voicing the announcer. 14 years later, Inuyasha would receive a sequel series with Kira Buckland providing the voice for one of his nieces, Setsuna.
It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: Especially as differences in existing characters from their original versions disappear, it's often criticized for copying Melee and Brawl too well.
Low-Tier Letdown: Up until v0.8, Kirby was a joke, perpetually stuck dead last or very near it in the tiers. The bottom tier is still affectionately dubbed the Kirby Tier.
Mis-blamed: After Project M was dropped from APEX 2015, presumably for legal reasons, Flash 2 was repeatedly accused of supposedly taking its place. However, PM had a full tournament bracket, and Flash 2 only had an exhibition booth like it's had for a few years beforehand.
Once Original, Now Common: The first Super Smash Flash was made in 2006 as a nascent McLeodGaming's first real game, and was met with enough positive reception to reach Newgrounds's front page for being one of the very first attempts to recreate the Super Smash Bros. formula by its fans. Nowadays, with the far more advanced features of not only its successor Super Smash Flash 2, but also other indie Smash-esque Platform Fighters such as Rivals of Aether, Rushdown Revolt and McLeodGaming's very own indie platform fighter, Fraymakers, the original game clearly shows that it was made in four months, with its severe gameplay glitches and cheap graphics, and would appear more akin to a low-quality knockoff of the aforementioned games instead of their precursor.
Periphery Demographic: The current game is aimed primarily towards those who have been growing up with its development since the beginning, and thus in recent years aims for a level of deepness and quality to satisfy the more discerning older audience. There is, however, a growing number of young children taking up an interest in the game; ironically the minority, as this was initially the state of the primary audience who would later grow up to be the main demographic.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- From the first game, the fact that you lost a life if you fell in "Race to the Finish." This wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for those buzzers swarming everywhere... Good luck getting through if you're not a character who can deal jump damage...
- The execution of Sora's Final Smash was widely loathed, until v0.9b changed it.
- The keyboard controls, which are banned in offline tournaments due to nothing stopping a player from disrupting the opponent. The developers strongly recommend using a USB controller along with JoyToKey or XPadder, but the game itself doesn't tell you that.
- The way the camera is zoomed in draws quite a bit of ire. Fine for the default window size, but not for full-screen.
Surprisingly Improved Sequel: You almost can't tell that the second game is supposed to be a sequel to the first game because of the vast differences made between the two. The gameplay physics and the graphics were greatly improved.
That One Achievement:
- Unlocking Lloyd in the first game. He required an hour of cumulative play in Adventure Mode, so he was the only character^note that couldn't be cheated into using the Level Skip Glitch. Not a problem in itself, but since the game used cookies to store data (which are frequently wiped, remember), this could be a real issue for those who wanted to keep a consistently full roster.
- Thought completing all 50 event matches to unlock Event 51 in Melee was a pain? In Beta, they go the extra mile. All 50+ events give a ranking, with S as the highest and others ranging from A through F, and if you want to see the secret Event 51, you'll need at least an A rank on every single one of them. And if you'd like to S-rank them all for the sake of 100% Completion, well!
- Unlocking the Meta Crystal stage in the second game. You have to go through Classic mode without continues on the Hard difficulty; you start off with two lives, and you won't get an extra life like in Normal mode. Even if you make it through the normal stages, you also have to deal with two metal characters instead of one (the Super Mario Bros. to be specific), and they prove to be one hell of a challenge to beat. And then you have to deal with an even stronger Master Hand.
That One Level:
- From the first game, Floating Islands. Ridiculously long, had homing enemies, and slowed most computers at the time down to a crawl. A "skip" button was added in the downloadable version. The official McLeodGaming website even references how Floating Islands was hated in the 10 year anniversary post.
- Event 10 in the very first release of SSF2 v0.9. The ferocious AI doesn't seem to help.
  - The developers acknowledged this, so, in a updated version, they allowed the option to play as every character rather than being forced to use Mario.
- EVENT 7 in v0.9. The idea is to as the player, who has two stocks, defeat Fox who has three stocks. Now from the start you notice you're already given an unfair disadvantage, and with demo v0.9a CPUs being notoriously brutal, expect to fail many times due to how quickly Fox moves around the stage and the amount of times he can get a well-placed KOing move onto you.
  - Like Event 10, this was a major problem during the initial release of the demo; however a new patch made this event a bit easier by adding a Smash Ball.^note
- Beta includes over 50 events, a list which is bound to contain some extra-tough entries. One of the most cited is "Battle of the 99 Heartless?", featuring Sora facing off against 99 Mr. Game and Watches in a row. And of course, completing these events is a walk in the park compared to ranking well in them...
They Copied It, So It Sucks!: A common reason for people not wanting to try the game is that they can just pick up the official Super Smash Bros. titles instead of what they see as "Super Smash Bros.... with ANIME CHARACTERS."
Unexpected Character:
- From the first game, Mr. Incredible, but arguably not in a good way.
- Before v0.7 of the SSF2 demo, there was a set roster of playable characters that became known to the public with time. However, when v0.7 was released, it became clear that the roster everyone knew of was abandoned in favor of a second, secret roster. As such, most of the characters that weren't on the original roster are unexpected, but if we're going to go with the most notable ones...
  - Black Mage. The one that started it all, Black Mage was the first character that wasn't on the publicly-known roster. He was the secret character of v0.7, completely unannounced.
  - Chibi-Robo. Announced at Apex 2014, absolutely no one saw him coming, which unfortunately led to some fans resenting his inclusion, initially.
  - Behold, the most out-of-left-field confirmed character yet... Sandbag. That's right, the training dummy of the official Smash series is playable here, and it's surprisingly dangerous. Even crazier when you take into account that it was announced in a reveal trailer on April Fools' Day 2016, which ensured that no one would be sure that it was an actual character until a dev blog two days later.
  - Bandana Dee. Before Dee's reveal, he was actually a Joke Character Assist Trophy in the game. It was also expected that if another Kirby character would be added, it would be King Dedede; even though King Dedede was not in the original roster, he has been a mainstay in Smash since Brawl.
  - Pichu. Revealed at Smash Con 2017, no one expected the Melee Joke Character that didn't make future appearances in the Smash series (well, at that point in time, anyway) to be a playable character here, and yet here he is. This was especially surprising since Pichu was earlier announced to be a summonable Pokémon, and even more so since the summonable Pichu is still in the game.
Unintentional Period Piece:
- When the first game was made in 2006, Brawl was still a ways off, so several Smash series traditions were not yet solidified, and the roster for the Flash game was decided largely by what sprites were available to use on the Internet. Thus, characters such as Inuyasha, Mr. Incredible, and Sonic fan-characters are present, while series mainstays such as Donkey Kong and Ness are absent.
- Ichigo is often accused of dating the second game. He was one of the first characters coded into the game in 2007, when Bleach was at a height of popularity; years later, fellow anime characters Goku, Naruto, and Luffy have maintained some longevity while Ichigo's series has largely fallen by the wayside.
Vindicated by History:
- Goku, like the other anime characters in the game, was initially regarded as an absolute joke in terms of character choice, which wasn't helped by the many ironic memes requesting him as a character for an actual Smash game (often paired with Shrek, of all things). However, around the time of pre-release hype for the Switch installment, many fans started requesting Goku unironically and he subsequently gained a lot of popularity as a Super Smash Flash character, to Just Here for Godzilla levels in some cases.
- Sora went through a similar reaction, except that he has been more positively received overall for being a video game character and had grown to become one of the most requested characters for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and was later revealed as the final DLC character for that game.

YMMV / Super Smash Flash

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