Super Smash Bros. has gained something of a legendary status in the video gaming industry. Though on the surface, the title is a party game where players choose their favorite Nintendo icons to duke it out, the game has a competitive play scene comparable to Street Fighter or Tekken. Smash might not play like a typical fighting game but the competitive scene is just as tense and complex as its more traditional counterparts.
The series has been running for nearly 20 years, with the original Super Smash Bros. being released on January 21, 1999, and the most recent entry coming out in 2018. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate catapulted the series into its legendary status with its bold selection of guest characters giving fans from nearly any game hope that their hero will appear in Smash. Countless characters have made the list but throughout the entire history of the franchise some stand out as completely unbalanced and broken fighters that are leaps and bounds ahead of their competition.
Updated on October 24th, 2021 by Hodey Johns: In fairness to Nintendo, there is a surprising amount of balance in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. According to the Wiki that follows the tournaments, only four characters have ever actually been banned in an official capacity. Most bans pertain to stages and items that provide uneven playing fields. However, banned or not, there are times the community gathers together to demand a nerf on a particular character that is hogging the limelight. This guide has been updated to add a more historic flair, looking at each character when they were at their most imbalanced. As a result, many of the entries have been altered, reordered, or replaced to reflect the most overpowered top ten characters in their prime.
10 Shiek (Smash Melee)
For the first several years, Shiek was the unrivaled best in Smash Melee. Being able to start as a quick combatant that racks up massive damage and then change into Zelda with her huge launch moves was an advantage that played to the core goal of the game.
Patches, time, and player abilities even got the best of her, but there's little doubt that, for that period of time, there wasn't even a character regularly coming in second place against her sheer dominance.
9 Mythra/Pyra (Smash Ultimate)
It's commonplace to call new heroes overpowered until the community figures them out. Unfortunately, as of yet, nobody has been able to figure out Mythra/Pyra. And it's been a while, so this feels more like a permanently overpowered character than a flash in the pan.
Mythra and Pyra are an extremely versatile duo that can dominate neutral play and hand out oppressive amounts of offense. They are the only character that can transform aside from Pokemon Trainer which gives them a unique playstyle that can be hard to play against. Mythra can hit two frames at the ledge with her Up B attack and she also has an air dodge that is comparable to Bayonetta's from Smash 4. To top this all off, Pyra can KO opponents at lower damage thresholds than the heavy-hitting Ganondorf!
8 Fox (Smash Melee)
After Sheik lost her top spot in Super Smash Bros. Melee, Fox took over and remained the unquestionably top character until the next game was released. His blinding speed and great frame data make him a handful to deal with, but these attributes also make him difficult to master. Fox is difficult to track and hit in combat and this elusiveness makes him great for quick bursts of damage to his opponents.
Fox's greatest asset is his Down B ability, often called a shine. Shines come out on frame one and can deny opponents a jump which makes the move great for edge guarding and offensive pressure. The move also reflects projectiles giving Fox an extra layer of protection in his already overpowered arsenal.
7 Kirby (Smash 64)
The main goal of Super Smash Bros. is to damage your opponent enough to hit them offstage and hopefully off-screen. This fundamental is directly challenged by Kirby. Behind one more character still to be named, he was widely considered to be the second-best in the entire game for the duration of its release.
Kirby's incredibly fast air movement made him surprisingly difficult to KO. When he wasn't floating around the stage, he had some of the best shield pressure in the game which allowed him to shatter shields easily. His great movement made air combos a punishing part of his kit and ensured that nowhere on the stage was safe from his offense.
6 Pikachu (Smash Ultimate)
Pikachu is one of many Pokemon in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate but he reigns as the best Pokemon in the game and arguably the best overall character in Ultimate. In the opening seconds of his video breaking down Pikachu's matchups, top-level competitor ESAM claims that Pikachu has the best overall matchup chart in the entire game, with fewer losing matchups than any other character.
Though he's often considered the best in the game, it takes a talented player to maximize his output. But where there's a will, there's a way, and many pros have but in the hours to unleash his fury. He's subtle enough to not get banned, but he's never outside of anyone's top-tier list for a good reason.
5 Pikachu (Smash 64)
One of the unique aspects of Smash 64 is the long hit-stun times in the game. The game is generally a little slower than Melee and other titles in the series in part due to the intense hit-stun effects. What makes Pikachu so good in Smash 64 is his ability to abuse the hit-stun in his favor. Pikachu can stun-lock opponents with barrages of attacks and can quickly confirm KOs after combos. And the overpowered throws in Smash 64 were very evident when he was involved.
For further evidence, consider that Pikachu was ranked number one on expert tier lists from 2008 until 2015, never once slipping from his number one spot.
4 Diddy Kong (Smash 4)
The dominance of Diddy Kong was legendary, even if it only happened for a brief moment. Much like the character at number one on this list, it was discovered that Diddy's moves were executed at a faster rate than other characters, giving him an edge in speed and overall damage.
He'd have ranked much higher on this list if he were permitted to continue his path of destruction, but after only a few tournament bans, he was nerfed permanently with a patch. It's a testament to his power that most other characters on this list, while broken, got no such patch targeted so directly at them.
3 Cloud Strife (Smash 4)
Cloud Strife joined Super Smash Bros. WiiU (Smash 4) on December 15, 2015. Many fans were ecstatic to see the protagonist from the beloved Final Fantasy VII redesigned for a new game, even if that game wasn't a new Final Fantasy. Perhaps the developers at Nintendo were sticking too close to the source material for Cloud though, as he would quickly become one of the most powerful characters in the game.
Cloud's Limit Charge absorbed damage and turned it into offense. In a one-on-one, it wasn't so bad, but in group play where lots of chaotic damage is happening all over, he became unbeatable. He was eventually banned from group play as even the best heavyweight fighters couldn't match up with him.
2 Bayonetta (Smash 4)
Fans who have only played Smash Ultimate might not know about Bayonetta's complete and utter dominance of Smash 4. There were tournaments with nothing but Bayonetta participants in the rare event that she wasn't banned.
Bayonetta's list of broken mechanics is seemingly endless. Witch Time and Bats Within gave Bayonetta safe combo starters that could realistically lead into zero to KO combos, many of which were guaranteed. She was nearly impossible to displace on the stage and her main counter was just another Bayonetta. If an opponent didn't SDI perfectly, Bayonetta could KO at nearly any percentage. She's not an easy character to learn, but those who did were not popular among their friends.
1 Meta Knight (Brawl)
There's automatically going to be a problem with a character whose moves are executed in fewer frames than the rest. At top-tier tournaments, these frames might look like a fraction of a second long, but that's all opponents need to make a match hilariously one-sided.
He was outright banned in most single-player tournaments. In team play, each team was limited to one meta Knight. When making a tier list for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, he's in a league of his own and no DLC character in the series can compete with Meta Knight in his prime.
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate was released on December 7, 2018, and is available on the Nintendo Switch.