Smash Bros. glitches have been around ever since the series began, but they’ve only gotten crazier since then.
Ah, glitches. They exist as bugs in code and are oh-so-tantalizing for players. We all wanted to catch MISSINGNO in Pokémon Red, or go to the rooftop of Princess Peach’s castle in Super Mario 64.
While the Smash Bros. games are tirelessly playtested, there are still quite a lot of glitches in the latest iterations of the Nintendo brawler. Entering the void and moving the camera behind the scenes are child’s play when compared to these funky Smash Bros. glitches.
From flattening out to the size of a Final Destination-wide pancake to letting you play as NPC characters, here are the strangest, zaniest, and most fun Smash Bros. glitches throughout time.
‘Smash Bros.’ gltiches
Isabelle assist trophy glitch — ‘SSBU’
Villager was joined by Isabelle in Ultimate, and with her, she brought her trusty fishing pole side-b to assist her in grabbing items and taking stocks. Her fishing rod glitch duplicated items, which was particularly annoying when it came to the endlessly spawning assist trophies. To perform it, two Isabelles needed to stand an equal distance away from each other and attempt to grab an assist trophy at the same time with side-b. The player stuck in the summoning animation would be stuck like that until the match ended.
Terry/Ice-Climbers freeze glitch — ‘SSBU’
Terry from the Fatal Fury games is quite the powerhouse, but with such an incredibly strong and wonky move as his “GO” strong side-b is, it’s not outside of the realm of imagination that some characters are interacting in funny ways with it. When Terry first released, if he used his strong GO side-b on Ice-Climbers while they were performing their own side-b, Terry and an Ice-Climber would be frozen in time… forever (which is pretty appropriate, given the Ice-Climbers’ freezing powers).
Pac-Man trampoline glitch — ‘SSB4’
Pac-Man was a God in this Smash 4 trampoline glitch. To perform it, players needed to set up a trampoline on-stage, and then wait for their opponent to jump on the trampoline. Once the opponent hit the trampoline, if Pac-Man generated a new one, the opponent would fall through the stage, ultimately to their death. Only characters with super high recoveries like Villager and Jigglypuff could survive this glitch, making pre-patch Pac-Man the ultimate top-tier character. With this being one of the most game-breaking of the Smash Bros. glitches, Nintendo made sure to wipe this one out promptly before it became too widely known.
Peach turnip ban glitch — ‘SSB4’
Peach’s item ban is one of the most famous Smash Bros. glitches of the series. When Smash 4 released for the 3DS, a glitch known as the Peach Turnip Ban Glitch was blocking Japanese players from playing online, even though they had done nothing wrong. A bug in the game’s code would sometimes automatically ban Peach players for a day if the player performed a turnip pull at the start of the match. The game would wrongly calculate that the player had cheated to get the item into an item-less For Glory match and would thus instate the ban. Nintendo apologized and promptly patched out the glitch days later.
Jigglypuff expansion glitch — ‘SSBB’
Jigglypuff’s final smash is one where she inflates well past the size of Final Destination, cries out at the height of her inflation, and then goes back down to normal size again… that is, if she isn’t interrupted. If her final smash is activated inside of the Bridge of Elden’s rebuilding animation, she will retain her giant size. This is one of the Smash Bros glitches that I miss the most. It was simple to pull off and was hilarious to do in online battles.
Kirby rollout glitch — ‘SSBM’
Kirby can be as flat as a pancake in this Melee glitch. Have Kirby face off against Jigglypuff in a battle, and then have Kirby inhale and copy Puff’s rollout ability. Have Kirby charge his neutral special rollout in the air and Puff charge hers on the ground so as to make them collide and negate each other’s momentum. If you’ve done it right, Kirby will slowly become flatter and flatter upon each collision. His hitbox and hurtbox detection goes a bit wonky here, as can be expected from a severely stretched out pink alien.
Master Hand playable (!) glitch — ‘SSBM’
This is my personal favorite of the Smash Bros. glitches because of how easy and cool it is. If you want to play as Master Hand, all you need to do is a simple setup with two controllers. One player in the third port hovers over the name entry, while another player in any port selects a character and hovers over the back button. If they hit A at the same time, the game will glitch out a bit, then load up a match where player 3 controls Master Hand. You get access to his full moveset, giving you the ultimate power in the world of Smash Bros. right at your fingertips.
Teleport glitch — ‘SSB64’
The Smash 64 teleport glitch is best performed by Jigglypuff, as it requires specific input timing in relation to a character’s jumps. With this broken glitch, Smash 64 players are able to, as the name implies, teleport forward. Check out the specifics of this particular glitch at the timestamped embed above to see how you can perform this oddity out of the Smash Bros. glitches.
What are some of your favorite ‘Smash Bros.’ glitches?
Do you know of another glitch in the series not talked about here? Smash Ultimate is mostly glitch-less, but with more characters periodically joining the brawl, the likelihood of new glitches is high. For more info on the coming Smash Ultimate DLC characters, check out our handy guide here.
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