Did you know? Two decades after it’s release,
one of Super Smash Bros Melee’s weirdest mistakes still isn’t fully understood. The oversight in
question can be encountered on the Dream Land stage, but only if one player is either Marth or
Roy. On the stage, players must wait for Whispy Woods to blink twice in the background. If any
player fighting as Roy or Marth performs a jab, forward tilt, up tilt, down tilt, dash attack, or
a standing grab before Whispy's eyes are closed completely on the first blink, something strange
can happen. Regardless of how far into their animation cycle the player is, two frames before
Whispy’s eyes close completely, Marth or Roy’s attack will continue in a very slow and awkward
looking way until the animation ends. The attack lasts as long as usual, but the hitboxes will be
glitched. One example is that the hitbox for the standing grab appears to extend the full distance,
despite the player not lunging forward at all. The inner workings of this oversight alluded
players for some time, until a reddit user named Evsen gave a possible explanation as to why
this happens. Evsen stated that Marth and Roy’s blinking animation was somehow linked to Whispy’s,
with the idea being that if Marth or Roy’s blinking animation synced up with Whispy’s, and
one character performed the aforementioned jab, tilts or grab, the glitch would be triggered.
However, due to some investigation conducted by YouTuber AsumSaus, this theory was debunked, and
the mechanisms behind the glitch remain unknown. This isn’t the only strange oversight in Melee
relating to grabs. Another mistake is that Yoshi’s dash grab will routinely miss its target. This is
because the hitbox is misaligned on the Z-axis, appearing behind the playing field. Unlocking the
camera gives a better view of what is happening. Characters with thinner hitboxes such as Marth and
Zelda can avoid the grab simply by standing still, as Yoshi reaches behind them. Super Smash
Bros Melee was the second Super Smash Bros title produced, but had the shortest
development time of any Smash game to date. Possibly due to only having
a year of development time, several mistakes like these slipped under the
radar and made their way into the final game. Another small oversight has been exploited by
some savvy players. In the game’s All-Star mode, Mr. Game and Watch can heal himself in-between
the stages in the Rest Area. By spamming the Judge move, players can spawn a fruit if they’re
lucky enough to roll a 7, which they can use to heal themselves. As you might expect, this makes
battling on higher difficulties much easier. In Super Smash Bros. Brawl and subsequent releases,
the oversight was fixed. On the flip side, players could actually damage themselves by using moves
such as Roy’s Flare Blade within the rest area. This issue would be present in the series much
longer than the ability to heal -- and wouldn’t be addressed until Smash for 3DS and Wii U, where
all damage done in the rest area is negated. One more oversight relating to Mr. Game
& Watch is that the character’s neutral, back, and up aerials are flagged as special moves,
not as aerial attacks. Due to this oversight, these moves cannot be L-canceled, even
though it should be possible to do so, just like with every other character’s aerial
attacks. This error was also fixed in Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Bowser’s down throw in the
Japanese and North American versions of Melee does zero damage to Jigglypuff and Mr. Game
and Watch. This is because the down throw does damage dependent on the enemy’s weight. And since
Jigglypuff and Mr. Game and Watch are so light, they don’t actually take any damage. This
mistake was corrected in the PAL version of Melee so that Bowser’s down throw does
damage to any character, regardless of weight. Another mistake has actually been seen by just
about every single person ever to play Melee. It can be found in multiple short videos in the
final game which were recorded during development of the Temple stage. Two platforms that don’t
exist in the game’s final build are present in the video -- they even make an appearance in
the game’s promotional materials. By loading up the “Special Video” within Melee, players can see
these mysterious beta platforms. They also show up in the short clip that plays after Luigi completes
the single player mode for a split second. But that’s not the only place these platforms
appear -- they’re even in the game manual. Melee also features 290 trophies, and since
every trophy is fairly detailed and comes with a paragraph of text, some errors were made. Several
mistakes came about from the localization process, such as the Herlirin trophy
being spelled wrong in English. Another error made during localization
can be seen with the Great Fox trophy, where its description erroneously states that the
Great Fox debuted in Star Fox, when it actually first appeared in Star Fox 64. The correct
game was listed in the Japanese version. This slip-up was also fixed in the PAL version
where it was changed to read Lylat Wars, the European name for Star Fox 64, making the North
American game the only version with this mistake. The trophy for Meta Knight also has a factual
error. The trophy says his first appearance was Kirby Super Star, but the masked swordsman
actually first appeared in Kirby’s Adventure. In addition, the name has a hyphen in between
Meta and Knight, which is used to distinguish the Meta-Knight army and the Meta Knight
character. And if you’re wondering, the Japanese game lists the correct titles and has the
correct name. Naming isn’t the only issue though: his body is silver in the trophy, whereas in
both Kirby’s Adventure and Kirby Super Star, Meta Knight’s body is blue. In Melee’s Japanese
release, the Banzai Bill trophy is incorrectly labeled as a Bullet Bill. Bullet Bills and
Banzai Bills are different enemy types. Banzai Bills first appeared in Super Mario World and are
bigger, more deadlier versions of the Bullet Bill. In the US version and PAL release, the trophy
name was updated but the game origin wasn’t fixed, so the trophy has errors in all versions.
The Sheriff trophy has a mistake of its own It states that Sheriff, the 1979 Nintendo
arcade game, was released only in Japan, but this isn’t the case. The arcade title
was rebranded as Bandido in the West, and was licensed to a company called Exidy. He’s one of
the oldest characters in the Smash Bros. series, and would later appear as an assist trophy in
Smash for 3DS and Wii U onwards. It seems that even Nintendo had a difficult time remembering
when some of their games were released. The Samus trophy in Melee erroneously
states that Metroid was released in 1989, when it was released in 1986 in Japan,
and the US version was released in 1987. In fact, no Metroid titles were released
in 1989 at all. This error doesn’t exist in the Japanese version, as there are no dates
listed in that version’s trophy descriptions. There’s also a minor mistake in
the Four Giants trophy. The first part of the description quotes Tael,
one of the fairies in Majora’s Mask, but uses a different translation than what
was in the English game. The trophy says, “Swamp...Mountain...Ocean...Valley” while in game
it says “Swamp. Mountain. Ocean. Canyon.” It’s possible that when translating the text for Melee
they didn’t check what was used in Majora’s Mask, and instead relied on the Japanese, thus
leading to a different interpretation. Luigi's trophy erroneously states that he debuted
in the Arcade game Mario Bros., but in reality, Luigi debuted in Mario Bros. for the Game
& Watch, which released about three months before the arcade game. Outside of the shared
name, both games have no relation to each other. Another mistake can be found in the
description for the Master Sword, which says it first appeared in The
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The sword actually first appeared in The Legend
of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The Daisy trophy’s description incorrectly claims she appeared in
Mario Golf for the Nintendo 64 and Game Boy Color. This error is due to a mistranslation from the
Japanese game which says Daisy appeared in "Mario Open Golf". This title was released as "NES Open
Tournament Golf" in the West, and features Daisy as Luigi’s caddy. Early versions of Melee also
feature an unusual error on Daisy's trophy; if the player zooms in on her hair and looks at
the back of her scalp, a third eye can be seen. The trophies even spread misinformation about how
Melee’s mechanics work. Dr. Mario’s in-game trophy states that, “There's hardly any difference
in the abilities of Mario and Dr. Mario, so choosing is largely a matter of taste. Dr. Mario
is a tad slower due to his lack of exercise…” However, Mario and Dr. Mario have the same
in-game speed. Ganondorf, another clone, also had a curious error in the first versions of Melee.
In 1.0, if the player had a Bunny Hood equipped, Ganondorf could perform a second jab. While this
was probably a leftover from when Ganondorf was created using Captain Falcon’s base, the second
jab has no hitbox, so it couldn’t actually damage the opponents. The jab was fixed in later versions
of Melee. Ganondorf has another oversight that exists in Melee’s sound test. Going to the 30th
entry for Ganondorf will play the sound effect for Falcon Punch. This was probably also a leftover
from when the team used the Captain as Ganon’s base. As players collect more trophies, they
will be able to see more of the trophy room. If the language is set to Japanese, a
Virtual Boy can be seen next to the plant. Despite being released in the United States, the
Virtual Boy cannot be seen in the English version of the game. Since the Japanese language option
doesn’t exist in the European version of Melee, this means that European players can never
hail the wonderful Virtual Boy in Melee. The Home Run Contest had several errors that
were addressed in subsequent updates of Melee. In pre-PAL versions of Melee, it was possible
to hit the sandbag even after it lands, allowing players to score a few extra feet if they could
get to the sandbag before the score is tallied up. In the NTSC versions of Melee, the counter for
how far the sandbag goes will stop updating after 999.9 feet. Bizarrely, despite not displaying
the full distance, the game will still record the actual distance past this number and update the
character’s record appropriately. Another thing that isn’t visible in-game can be found on the
texture for Roy’s Sword: it actually has copyright information on it. What’s interesting is that
Hal Laboratory is spelled incorrectly, as ‘HAL LABRATORY.INC’. Roy has a number of other oddities
associated with him. He can’t appear in the game’s single player Classic Mode as a CPU character.
Despite this, there’s still an intro image for him within the game’s files. In the intro image,
official art, victory poses, and his portrait on the game’s CSS, Roy has a sheath. However,
the sheath does not appear during gameplay. Another mistake in Melee can make characters
appear entirely black. This dark color scheme is normally only assigned to a single CPU
enemy in the event match Link's Adventure to illustrate Dark Link, but this shade
can be seen in multiplayer using a glitch. To see it, the game mode must be set to
Team Battle with four of the same character, all on the same team. The player must then enter
the name entry menu and go back a menu at the same time using two controllers. This will cause
the game to progress to the stage select screen, letting players start a round under illegitimate
conditions. These illegitimate conditions can be several things, such as a player entering a match
alone, which will instantly end a Stock match as the game sees no opponent has any Stocks. But in
our case, the game will render character four with a fully black overlay. This is because when two or
more of the same character are on the same team, those same characters have to be various shades
of the same color. Player one is unchanged, player two is lighter, and player three is darker.
It was never planned by the developers to have four people on one team, but the game loads the
next shade in the list regardless -- all black. The part of the glitch where players open the
name entry menu and go back a menu at the same time is known as the Name Entry Glitch, and
it’s a very versatile glitch -- it can even be used to play as Master Hand. If the
player picks any character for slot one, then opens the name entry menu without
choosing a character on slot three, then performs the Name Entry glitch,
player three will spawn as Master Hand. And if the player has their controller in slot
three, they can control Master Hand themselves. Did you also know that Mario’s buttons
will magically disappear from his dungarees when he performs
a sweep kick in Mario 64? Or that an error can be found in Pokemon Red
and Blue almost immediately? For more facts about mistakes in Super Mario and Pokemon
games, check out the videos on screen.
