YMMV / Smash Remix

• Abridged Arena Array: Aside from the enforcement in the in-game settings, players coming from other games in the series will be confused, amused, or both that the usual suspects for neutral stages are all banned. Battlefield is gone in favor of Dream Land — the long-standing only legal stage in the original game — and Final Destination is gone due to its upper blast zone being way too high, which makes the boss battle against Master Hand much more survivable, but matches played on it take far longer. These arenas eventually became legal again in later updates.
• Awesome Moments:
  • The Dr. Mario update achieved something thought to be impossible: the ability to expand the playable roster without replacing any existing character. Even people outside of the Smash community took notice when it first happened.
  • Dragon King's reveal trailer. Mario, first landing after the triumphant "Happy Together" montage, first gets plunged into darkness, a figure in the distance with the Freeze-Frame Bonus message "Fighter 0" appearing over him while the haunting "Game Over" melody plays. He finds himself transported to the Dragon King Remix stage, turning around to find the figure waiting patiently. He prepares to fight, and the stage's drumbeat transitions into the Final Destination theme as his reveal splash appears. While he's in reality a placeholder dummy, the entrance characterizes him as if he were a long-lost legendary warrior instead; the type of person who would be worthy of being called "the Dragon King"^note While it's just the literal-translated name of the area the prototype was developed in, people have taken notice of how well the name just happens to fit him as a character.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • Dark Samus. Her being both anachronistic to the Nintendo 64 era and being a Moveset Clone — something which Smash fans tend to view as a waste of roster space that could have gone to a more unique character — means that she has some rather vocal detractors. At the same time, those not opposed to her being there have praised her moveset and playstyle, especially compared to her lackluster appearance in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
  • Lucas is similarly contentious to Dark Samus, but to a much lesser extent. The main issue people have with him is that he uses his familiar but anachronistic Mother 3 appearance instead of the one he would have had in EarthBound 64.
• Character Rerailment: Within the main Smash games, Sakurai tends to portray Bowser as more of a sinister Kaiju-like villain with very little comedic traits. For Smash Remix, what little animations Bowser has seem to capture his more Laughably Evil traits from canon. One of his victory poses has him dancing and lying down taken from the Mario Party games, and another has him doing his Evil Laugh from Super Mario 64.
• Character Tiers: While there's no "canonically accepted" tier list, the characters from the original game — and their alternate region counterparts — are completely unchanged from their source material, so the North American and Japanese tier lists still apply to their respective region's characters^note As of this writing, there is no PAL Smash 64 tier list. The strongest characters in Remix are universally considered to be, in descending order: the Purposely Overpowered Giga Bowser and Super Sonic, followed by PAL Pikachu, NTSC-J Pikachu, and NTSC-U Pikachu. All of these except for NTSC-U Pikachu are banned in tournaments. Who's in what order on the lower end is debatable, however.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: A common complaint about the game earlier in its development was how many stages were reskins of Dream Land — the only legal stage in Super Smash Bros. 64 tournaments. However, these complaints have considerably lessened as of subsequent versions, with more varied and dynamic stages entering the picture and some of these Dream Land reskins being updated with new unique layouts. Having tournament settings be the default — that is to say, 8 minutes, 4 stocks, and items off — has also turned some casual players away.
• High-Tier Scrappy: PAL Pikachu is significantly buffed compared to NTSC-U Pikachu, who is himself a High Tier Scrappy in the original game. Tellingly, PAL Pikachu (as well as Japanese Pikachu, Japanese Kirby, and Japanese Captain Falcon) are banned in official "Remix Tour" tournaments.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: In 2018, the Smash 64 community got news about a scam on Kickstarter known as Super Smash Bros. Overload (link goes to a YouTube video about it) which claimed to double the roster size, among other things. Not only has Remix actually managed to expand the roster, all but one of the characters that Overload claimed to add^note Conker, Goemon, and Banjo; the missing one is Rayman. The other eight slots in the "double sized roster" were not shown. eventually made it into Remix.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Of the original twelve and their regional variants, it's debatable which region's bottom spot is worse: NTSC-U Luigi or Japanese Donkey Kong.
    • This is the reason for not including Australian Link^note the only character who's different between the Australian and European versions of the original game, as he would have been even worse than both of them if he were present.
  • Those who expected an unstoppable juggernaut with the Promoted to Playable Giant Donkey Kong will be sorely disappointed. His hitboxes are very spaced-out so that attacks will often miss when they look like they clearly should have hit, his hurtboxes make him a huge target (an especially damning weakness in this entry with high global hitstun), and worst of all, he's lighter than the ordinary Donkey Kong, the Japanese Donkey Kong, and even Polygon Donkey Kong. He only seems to be dangerous in Classic Mode because opponents there have a knockback modifier applied; it's clear that Giant DK was not balanced expecting him to ever be without that modifier.
  • Among the non-variant cast, Lucas is generally accepted to be alongside Link and Luigi in the bottom tier, which has led to fandom jokes about any character whose name starts with "L" that the "L" stands for "Loser".
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • Invoked with the option to turn on random tripping.
  • Friendly Fire is on by default, and unlike the original game, appears during the 1P modes. While this could help get the AI opponents to hurt each other, it can make some of the rounds harder than necessary as the player's allies can become liabilities and makes getting some of the bonuses (True Friend and DK Perfect, both which require the allies remaining unharmed) that much harder.
• Unexpected Character:
  • Conker, Marina, and Goemon are the only characters to be canon foreigners to official Smash, and guest characters no less.
  • Mad Piano as a boss character also qualifies, as it was initially teased as an April Fools' Day joke.

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