Nerd Mentality

Off the Record, Vol. 2 - Super Smash Bros. Melee

Posted August 8th 2005 by James Ondrey.

Page 5

It's official folks — Sonic is not a character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Okay, we already knew that, but now it's officially official. So what characters, if any, are hidden in the game? We've cycled through all the characters in the debug menu... there's good news and bad news.

The bad news is there aren't any hidden or beta fighters in M. That's right, chances are you've already seen every character there is in the game. The good news is that characters that we couldn't normally control, such as Giga Bowser and the wireframe fighters, are playable!

The debug menu reveals that a total of six "extra" characters were programmed to be controlled manually at one point or another. Here's the list of characters (debug reference name followed by character):

MASTERH - Master Hand

BOY - Male Wireframe

GIRL - Female Wireframe

GKOOPS - Giga Bowser

CREZYH - Crazy Hand

D_SANDBAG - Sandbag

D_POPO - Popo (solo Ice Climber)

The obvious question is, if these characters were programmed to be manually operated, why couldn't HAL just throw them in as bonuses? In all probability, the developers only wanted "Nintendo All-Stars" to be playable. I suppose you could make the case that the lonesome Ice Climber could qualify as an "All-Star," but that argument is for Nintendo to decide.

It's pretty interesting though that even the Master Hand was purposely engineered for player use. Every move in his arsenal can be executed with specific button combinations. We've catalogued all of his moves for you below (button combinations followed by attack description):

D Pad Up + A = Coiling Finger Assault

D Pad Right + A = Airborne Punch

D Pad Down + A = Earth Slap

D Pad Up + B = Laser

D Pad Right + B = Gun

D Pad Up + Z = Grab and Harass

D Pad Right + Z = Grab and Molest

D Pad Left + R = Three Stooges Finger Jab

D Pad Right + R = Shattering Ground Punch

D Pad Down + R = Earth Slap 2: The Secret of the Ooze

D Pad Up + R = Skydiving Twist Finger

D Pad Up + L = Mr. Miyagi Sweep

D Pad Down + L = Stroll in the Park Ambush

But it should be noted, not all of the "new" fighters are bug-free. Just as some stages were designed for specific use in certain gameplay modes, a couple of the characters weren't designed to fully exploit all of the "normal" fighting moves.

For example, Sandbag was never designed to fight in matches. Thus, when you fight as him, the game will often freeze. He can move a bit and jump, but attempting to attack or double jump will crash the game. This is because there is no programming code written for Sandbag when those button combinations are carried out.

In the same way, the game freezes after a match when the results screen is initiated. The results screen wasn't designed to take into consideration any of the "new" fighters (another hack can be utilized to mask each character as Mario to keep the game from freezing).

On the other hand, Giga Bowser plays just like he'd been a playable character all along. More or less, the same can be said about both the male and female wireframe fighters. All in all, it really is too bad at least a couple of these characters didn't make the final cut because, just like the extra stages, they open up new, refreshing gameplay opportunities (especially when mixed with Develop mode).

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