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 loosely 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  series, such as Mario, Samus Aran, Link, Kirby, and Pikachu. It also features many third-party characters, including Sonic the Hedgehog (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 and Blue. The original browser version for Super Smash Flash was first launched on August 21, 2006 on entertainment media website Newgrounds to mixed to positive reception. A downloadable EXE version was made available seven days later on August 28, 2006 on the McLeodGaming website.

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 based on 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, stock, 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 many 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 are 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 five attacks: a, an up attack, a side attack, a down attack, and a attack. 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 five 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, particularly those of the battering-type like Saber or the Home-Run Bat, which 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 and Burly-Brawl Melee, are unlocked from the beginning.

Regular Match
These modes are restricted for single-player only.

Classic
Classic is a game mode 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.

Adventure
Adventure is a game 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, will come to aid him, regardless of the difficulty selected.

All-Star
All-Star is an unlockable game mode that is automatically unlocked after all characters are unlocked. The goal is to fight against all 28 playable characters in succession with a limited amount of recovery items.

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 Silhouette 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 three 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 completion. 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 did not 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 prototype 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 Super 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.

Bugs and 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 with only starter characters and. Some glitches only occur with certain characters; in Classic mode, Mario always runs off and KO, and Samus shortly follows.

One of the most popular glitches happens when the player right-clicks at the start of anything, goes on settings, and while the settings box appears, right-clicks on the screen again, before clicking on 'play'. This will cause the player to instantly win the current stage/event. 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, were the Instant-KO attacks, which is a result of the game's knockback formula, that multiplies opponents' current speed when they get hurt by any attack. This caused moves to instantly KO opponents from 50% onwards. The existence of this bug made unlocking InuYasha and complete All-Star mode almost impossible. However, another glitch was found to counter this: pausing the game during fights against and, resulting in the bosses being unable to hit the player. This bug 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 Super Smash Flash received recognition. This was because it included lots of characters that many fans of different franchises wanted in the real Super 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

 * By stretching the size of the window widely in the game's title screen in the EXE version, the Newgrounds logo mark that appears in the Newgrounds version of Super Smash Flash will be visible; this mark could be also clicked leading to the Newgrounds homepage. The reason of its existance there is unknown, although it could have merely been an oversight of "Cleod9"'s part, as the Newgrounds version was released first, before the EXE version.
 * Similarly, the game's controls, which can be viewed during the loading screen, can also be seen by stretching the window during said screen. Curiously, the word "audio" appears at the center-left edge of the game window, and the word "resync" can be seen in the Classic and Adventure modes' character selection screen, as well.
 * Kirby and Meta Knight are 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 are finally present.
 * It was rumored that Wario was planned to be playable in this game, supported by the fact that sprites from Wario Land 4 are used in the game. However, there is no evidence to support whether it is true.
 * Like the first Super Smash Bros., the  universe, along with the Super Smash Bros. universe, is the only universe that has more than one stage in the game: Peach's Castle and Mushroom Kingdom II.
 * Super Smash Flash was originally hosted on Newgrounds, Kongregate, and Armor Games (the latter which still "sponsors" SSF), but due to legal issues was removed from Kongregate in early 2009. It is unknown when or why it was removed from Armor Games.
 * On the Newgrounds page, Cleod9 mentioned he did not add all the characters from Super Smash Bros. Melee for a reason; it was later revealed that it was because he did not have any available sprites online when the game was being created.