Super Smash Flash

Super Smash Flash, commonly abbreviated SSF or SSF1, is an non-profit Flash fan game developed by Cleod9 Productions and published by McLeodGaming. The game is based on Super Smash Bros. Melee in the menu format, music, and numerous other fields such as game play modes. The game features several characters from the Super Smash Bros. series, such as Mario, Samus, Link, Kirby, and Pikachu. It also features many third-party characters, including (who, at the time of the game's creation, was not confirmed to be a character in Super Smash Bros. Brawl) and Mega Man X. Besides that, it also includes original fan characters like Blade.

Super Smash Flash is getting rebooted with a new game called Super Smash Flash 2, which is completely ignoring the basis of the first game and starting a new with gameplay mechanisms that are more similar to the ones in the official Super Smash Bros. games.

On August 21, 2016, Super Smash Flash celebrated its tenth anniversary launch on Newgrounds. To commemorate this event, McLeodGaming released a video confirming the inclusion of "SSF mode" on SSF2 ' s special mode which purposely recreates the physics and quirks of SSF.

Gameplay
Super Smash Flash ' s gameplay is very similar to the official Super Smash Bros. games. Unlike most traditional 2D fighting games, each character's health is measured by a damage percentage counter. As the character is attacked, damage is accumulated and the percent value increases. The higher the percentage, the weaker the character is, and the easier it is for them to be KO'd off the stage.

The arrow keys (or A, S, D, and W for a second player) are used to move the character around and crouch. The O and P keys (or G and F for a second player) are used to jump and attack, respectively. Pressing a movement button and the attack button together will initiate a special attack, much like Melee's B button attacks.

Matches can be played in either time mode, stock mode, or a combination of the two. In Time mode, each player receives a point when they KO an opponent, and loses a point if they are KO'd or self-destruct. At the end of the designated time limit, the player with the most points wins. In Stock mode, each player is given a chosen amount of lives, and every time they are KO'd or self-destruct, they lose a life. When a player loses all their lives, they are out of the game, and the match's conclusion is reached when there is only one player left standing. In the Classic and Adventure modes, every level has both a time limit and a chosen amount of lives; if the player does not KO the opponent before time runs out, they lose a life and have to restart the level. Both modes can also be selected in the game's Melee mode, but if a winner is not decided when the time runs out, the player with the highest number of lives left is declared the winner. Melee ' s Coin is absent.

The game is loosely similar to Melee, but most, if not all game mechanics are missing. The characters only have five total attacks (not counting their jump, which surprisingly does some damage for certain characters) and it is almost impossible to recover since every character is lightweight, jumping does not send your character very high into the air, the character cannot perform a third jump, and all attacks do 50%+ damage (even the normal ones). Additionally, it is possible to rack up over 1000% damage, even though it is not possible in Melee. The game also lacks hit effects for all attacks. All of these mechanic flaws resulted in negative responses.

Characters
There is a total of 28 playable characters (30 if double characters are counted); 13 starters and 15 unlockable. Each one of these characters have a very simplistic moveset consisting of only 5 attacks (a standard attack, an up attack, a side attack, a down attack and an aerial down attack) and some have only 4 attacks. Due to this, in addition to the properties for some attacks, the Tier list had to have special conditions in order to be formed properly and was a very hard task. Though there are only 5 attacks for each moveset, some characters gain an extra attack while jumping.

Starter characters
These are the characters available right immediately after turning on the game for the first time:

Unlockable characters
These are the characters that become available after meeting certain criteria and by defeating them on a challenger match. To learn how to unlock them, go here.

Stages
Most of the eight stages are based on actual Super Smash Bros. series' stages but there are also some original stages not present in the official games.

Starter stages
Six of the eight stages do not have to be unlocked and can be selected in Melee and Training Modes.

Unlockable stages
Two stages can be unlocked for use in Melee and Training Modes by completing certain criteria in the game. They are also available in several one-player modes where the stages are automatically chosen:

Single-player stages
These stages only appear in the game's Classic, Adventure and All-Star modes and are not available in Multiplayer mode and/or Training mode.

Items
Items from the Super Smash Bros. series, among other series, are featured. Unlike how they appear in the original Super Smash Bros. games, all items have limited uses, even the Beam Sword or the Home-Run Bat, and disappear once they have been used a certain number of times. These are the items that appear in Super Smash Flash:

Game modes
Super Smash Flash contains several game modes based on traditional Melee game modes. All, save for All-Star, are unlocked from the beginning.

Regular match
These modes are resticted for single-player only.

Classic mode
Classic mode is a single-player game where the player advances from level to level, fighting a certain amount of enemies on each level. These battles can range from anything between one single opponent to a Multi-Man Melee-like showdown. At the end is the final boss fight against Master Hand.

Adventure mode
Adventure mode is a single-player mode in which the player goes through several diverse worlds, fighting enemies as they go along. Some are traditional battles, but a few stages force the player to reach a designated finish line before time runs out. At the end, the player encounter Master Hand here as well, however, once his HP has been depleted to the half, Crazy Hand will come to aid him, regardless of the difficulty selected.

All-Star mode
All-Star mode is automatically unlocked after all characters are unlocked. The goal is to fight against all 28 playable characters.

Stadium
Several sub-games can be found on Stadium for single player mode.

Target Test
Target Test is a relatively short minigame in which a character must destroy eight targets as fast as they can. This mode is also included in SSF ' s Classic mode and is based on Super Smash Bros. ' s Break the Targets and Melee ' s Target Test.

Multi-Man Melee
Multi-Man Melee has several sub-modes. However, the Endless Melee mode is absent, getting replaced with a brand new sub-mode (the only unlockable sub-mode, denoted with an asterisk below), and the opponents are simply grayed-out versions of other playable characters denominated the Fighting Shadow Team. The sub-modes are:
 * 10-Man Melee
 * 100-Man Melee
 * 3-Minute Melee
 * 15-Minute Melee
 * Cruel Melee
 * Burly-Brawl Melee*

Melee
The only multiplayer mode in Super Smash Flash. Melee allows for up to two humans to battle simultaneously, as well as battle against up to 3 computers. This mode allows the player to set up single battles between computers or another human. As well as the standard free-for-all battle, Melee mode also allows for team battles, much like Super Smash Bros. Melee.

Development
Super Smash Flash began development some time around mid 2006 and roughly took about from two to four months for completition. All development process, including coding, was all handed by Cleod9 himself with little help from fellow users of the McLeodGaming Forums. Intended to be his first big Flash project, following very small Flash projects like the Pong games or school projects like The Cell, Cleod9 initially envisioned a platformer game with a combat-oriented gameplay, back then, he didn't intend it to be a Super Smash Bros. fan game. To make the first prototype, Cleod9 ask permission to use one of Equinox-Twilight's Sonic fan characters, whom was redesigned by users in the Forums to become an early prototype for. For the staging, he created an early protoype for Emerald Hill Zone and included Buzzers as the incoming enemies. Certain products were released periodically in the form of small demos.

As a vivid Super Smash Bros. player, Cleod9 noticed the fan games made at the time based on the Super Smash Bros. series, particularly Super Smash X. He felt those games delivered a very short experience and were invariably incomplete, buggy and one may get bored after playing a certain amount of time. He thought a more complete Smash fan game was possible and now envisioned about a Flash-engineered game suggesting the name of "Super Smash Flash" as an example. Wanting to fulfill this dream, Cleod9 began to rework his Sonic fan game into full-fledged Smash Bros. fan game, whom he initially called a "flash Smash engine", and started to incorporate new characters and update the sprites of previously-added characters, as well as new stages and items to accommodate a proper Smash game, all this as development progressed. The availability of sprite sheets in sites like the Spriters-Resource determined who would become playable in Cleod9's fan game now appropriately called by the name he had previously suggested: Super Smash Flash.

Super Smash Flash was released on August 21, 2006 on several gaming sites including its home site McLeodgaming, as well, as other major sites like Newgrounds and the Flash Central.

Glitches
As the game was created in a very short time by an inexperienced Cleod9, there are a lot of glitches. Notable glitches include Knuckles' down jump and the possibility of unlocking Final Destination with only starter characters and Jigglypuff. Some glitches only occur with certain characters; in Classic mode, Mario always runs off and dies, and Samus shortly follows.

But the most popular glitch is that if the player right-clicks at the start of anything, goes on settings, and while the settings box appears, right-click on the screen again and click on 'play'. This will skip the stage/event and count as a win. If this is used on one of the multi-man melees, the player will automatically be sent through all the events before being challenged.

This glitch does not work on the Newgrounds version, or the Mario Games sites. Instead the player must press forward. If the player presses rewind, they will be sent to the loading screen.

One of the most crippling game bugs, however, was that all attacks were capable of KOing in one hit. Virtually all of the playable characters in the game had at least one move that would instantly kill an opponent at approximately 50% or higher. Most of the time, this move was an up tilt attack that would send the opponent flying perfectly sideways until they died (which was usually within moments of getting hit, causing the move to appear as an instant kill). Other variations of this move include Master Hand's push (which sends the opponent straight up), and Master Hand's fist (which sent the player straight downwards and through the main platform). The existence of this bug made the game nearly impossible to unlock InuYasha and complete All-Star mode because one was almost certain to lose at least one life. But another glitch was found to help this, in which, when you fight Master hand, if you pause the game as Master hand is attacking, you will take no damage, and Master hands attack continues. This glitch does not work against any other opponent.

Reception
Super Smash Flash was met with mixed reviews from the day it was launched. Various reviewers on multiple websites, including Newgrounds (which gave this game a 4.18 / 5.00) and McLeodGaming itself, declared that it was one of the best Smash fan games ever created because unlike other fan games, it was complete with a full character roster and single-player modes. Many others, however, were more critical of the game, pointing out its horrendous physics flaws, lack of item regulation, lack of VS. mode customization, and game-breaking glitches, such as the infamous Skip glitch.

The character roster was met with mixed reception, although it was arguably the main reason why Smash Flash received recognition. This was because it included lots of characters that many fans of different franchises wanted in the real Smash Bros. games, such as and, and many were excited that they could finally pit these characters against their favorite Nintendo characters. Many others criticized the selection, claiming the character additions were excessive and out of place. They stated that there were more Sonic characters than Mario characters (including a "" character and even custom Sonic characters known as and  who are nothing more than recolors of Sonic but with swords) which is ridiculous in a work that should be based on the Nintendo-created Melee. A lot of people were also fed up with the insane number of other third- and fourth- party characters, including, , , , , and most notoriously , who all have little to no backing of being in a Smash game, have seldom or never showed up on Nintendo console games, and have extremely inaccurate representations in Smash Flash (for example, Naruto cannot use anything but kicks and headbutts, while in his original series he could use ninja-based attacks.) All of these pieces of criticism accumulate into the idea that the creators randomly chose characters with no regard to whether they would fit into Smash Bros.

The controls and physics also garnered criticism. Super Smash Flash is notable for having an extremely watered-down control scheme, using only two buttons and four directional keys to play. All attacks, including some jumps, deal insane amounts of knock-back even at low percentages, sending characters either horizontally or on a semi-spike trajectory that is impossible to recover from. This is exacerbated by the fact that most characters only have one midair jump for their recovery and lack an up special move to gain more distance, causing matches to end crazily, unfairly, and too quickly. Characters with projectiles and five midair jumps also dominated to the point of complete centralization. Overall, while the game was received well by fans for introducing desired characters into a Smash Bros.-like environment, it was panned by critics for lacking the depth that defined the series as a whole.

Trivia

 * Kirby and Meta Knight were a 2-in-1 character in this game due to the lack of Kirby's inhale and copy ability. In the reboot, they are now separate playable characters and Kirby's inhale and copy ability is finally present.
 * It was believed Wario was planned to be playable in this game, supported by the fact sprites from Wario Land 4 are used in the game. However, there is no evidence for this rumor to be truth.
 * Like the first Super Smash Bros., the Mario universe, along with the Super Smash Bros. universe is the only universe that has more than 1 stage in the game: Peach's Castle and Mushroom Kingdom II.
 * According to the game's credits, the real name of the stages Dream Land, Emerald Hill Zone and Mushroom Kingdom II are Whispy Woods, Emerald Hills and Subcon respectively.
 * Super Smash Flash was originally hosted on both Newgrounds and Kongregate, but due to legal issues was removed from Kongregate in early 2009.
 * It was rumored that the game was supposed to feature Poké Balls as an item, but could not because of difficult programming.
 * On the Newgrounds page, Cleod9 mentioned he didn't add all the characters from Super Smash Bros. Melee for a reason, most likely due to programming or just the fact the producers had their own roster and didn't include those characters. Them being the Ice Climbers, Donkey Kong, Yoshi, Pichu, Dr. Mario, Marth, Falco, Roy, Bowser, Peach, Ganondorf, and Ness.
 * However, the real reason was because the characters stated above, including Wario, did not have any available sprites online when the game was being created.