Floating Islands

Floating Islands
Intro card.
Game	Super Smash Flash
Universe	Super Smash Bros.
Level #	3
Time limit	5:00
Note(s)	Infamous level that has a series of platforms the player has to scale to reach the top.
Previous	Peach's Castle
Next	Target Test

Floating Islands is an infamous Adventure level in Super Smash Flash composed of Wario Land 4 sprites. The objective of the level is to climb to the top of the tall stage while avoiding several enemies. Despite having content from the Wario series, this is not necessarily a Wario-centric stage due to the fact that the Wario universe was never introduced in SSF.

Layout

As the name implies, Floating Islands is made up of many beach-rocky platforms arranged one above the other. There are two kinds of platforms, with some being large and most being small. The stage is also populated with several enemies hailing from Wario Land 4, including Spear-Masks, Beezleys, Mayu Birds, and Glass Birds, that all will attempt to engage and attack the player to stop them from reaching the top. At the top of the stage is a large platform with a cave mouth at the center, which the player must enter to clear the level.

Controversy

Floating Islands has been one of the many elements that SSF has been criticized for mainly due to the lag it causes. To prevent this problem, a skip button was added in the upper right corner of the downloadable version of the game, in which clicking the button will automatically clear the level. The player would also receive any points they are eligible for so far as if the stage was cleared normally, albeit without any further points earned beyond that, generally always resulting in a lower score.

As time has passed and computers have become more powerful on average, lag has become less of an issue. Smaller frame rate drops may still occur, but not normally to the level of severity that it had initially.

Gallery

Screenshots

Knuckles standing on the starting platform.

Luigi traversing the Floating Islands.

Knuckles standing on the top platform at the end of the level.

Trivia

• The existence of this stage started a rumor that Wario could have been planned to be playable character in Super Smash Flash, due to the Wario Land 4 sprites present.
• The All-Star Rest Area uses exactly the same sprites as the top platform of this stage and has identical music.
• In the SSF2 Dev Blog that introduced Super Smash Flash Mode, Floating Islands' notoriety was joked about; namely, players were reassured that it would not be returning.