Summary
Super Smash Bros.is one of Nintendo’s most popular and successful series and is often praised for being one of the best multiplayer games for friends and family. It’s always a blast to play at parties, and even non-gamers can pick it up, recognize a character or two, and still enjoy themselves.
Despite thefocus on cooperative or competitive gameplay, the Super Smash Bros. series has had a handful of exciting single-player modes that allow you to test your skills in unique challenges. These one-player adventures will enable you to hone your skills, express your creativity, and play as characters you would normally avoid.
10Multi-Man Melee (Melee)
Fighting one to three other fighters at a time can be a challenge, but Multi-Man Melee puts you against up to 100 wireframe enemies. This mode is only single-player in Super Smash Bros. Melee, as each game released after it allows you to tackle it cooperatively with a friend.
There are six different challenges for you to face on your own: 10-man, 100-man, 3-minute, 15-minute, Endless, and Cruel Melee. Completing these challenges gives you new trophies for your collection, while finishing 100-Man Melee allows you to unlock Falco Lombardi. It can be grueling, but using Donkey Kong’s downsmash attack should make things easier.
9Board The Platforms (N64)
Board the Platforms is one of the few ideas from the original Super Smash Bros. that never found its way back into the series. Accessible as a bonus stage in Classic Mode, you are required to find and jump on ten platforms as fast as possible.
What makes this mode special is that all twelve characters in the original Smash Bros. had unique Board the Platform stages to master. Captain Falcon requires you to use speed and agility to reach every platform, while other characters like Kirby and Jigglypuff need to test their floating abilities to reach far-away platforms.
8Stage Builder (Brawl, Wii U, Ultimate)
The stage builder was introduced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl and has continued to be a staple of the series since. The tools at your disposal might not be as robust as other games like Super Mario Maker, but you can get creative with this mode to build intricate and complex stages or death traps that push everyone off the stage once the match begins.
Aside from inviting friends over to check out your stages, you can also share them online for other people to enjoy. This mode won’t be for everyone, but even if you don’t feel like building a stage, you should look at some of the creations players have made in the Shared Content section in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
7Break The Targets (N64, Melee)
Introduced in the original Super Smash Bros. as another bonus stage during Classic Mode, Break the Targets requires you to locate and destroy the ten bullseyes before time runs out. Unlike Board the Platforms, Break the Targets was a staple of every Smash Bros. game until the Wii U iteration.
Every character in both the original Smash and Melee have their own custom stages to master, providing you the opportunity to master each of their moves. The mode was cooperative for Brawl, but all stages were predetermined instead of being designed around each fighter. Even for long-time players, Break the Targets is a difficult mode worth playing until you finally complete it.
6Home-Run Contest (Melee)
When you enter a match against another player or CPU, you should always try to stack as much damage on them as quickly as you can so you knock them off the stage fastest. The Home-Run Contest allows you to practice your speed and power by landing blows on a sandbag to see how far you can launch it before time runs out.
This mode is perfect for figuring out the differences in strength between characters like Kirby and Ganondorf. While the former is more nimble and capable of dealing many tiny blows, the latter is capable of sending the sandbag flying with a singular punch. This mode was only single-player in Melee before becoming multiplayer in later titles.
5All-Star Mode (Melee)
Melee brought a lot of fresh ideas to the table, including the epic All-Star mode that is available after you’vefinally unlocked every character in the game. Now that you have them, you must face them all in a row with very few healing items to help you get to the end. It is one of the toughest challenges in the game, and completing it with every character requires hard work and patience.
As the Smash Bros. games continued to expand its rosters, the All-Star mode became harder to complete. While there were only 26 to fight in Melee, Ultimate requires you to survive 83 rounds without perishing. Since Brawl, you may tackle All-Star cooperatively with a friend, but completing it on your own is incredibly impressive.
4Event Match (Melee)
Melee introduced a plethora of new modes that became staples of the series, and one of the most fascinating and fun additions was Event matches. These brawls between CPUs are meant to put you in unique situations that directly reference a game, or are just incredibly challenging and designed to test your skills.
While most of these events allow you to choose your own character, others will force you to play as someone specific to clear the event. While Smash Bros. Ultimate got rid of these special fights, they did replace them with Spirit Battles, which also have predetermined conditions like the size and speed of the fighters, which items will drop, and other scenarios that provide unique challenges.
3Classic Mode (N64, Melee, Brawl)
Classic Mode has been around since the first Smash Bros., and before the Subspace Emissary and World of Light campaigns, it was considered to be the essential single-player experience. After choosing your character, you must face a gauntlet of challengers and bonus stages before facing off against the big boss: Master Hand.
The characters you face in Classic Mode are predetermined, either by the game you’re playing or which character you choose as your fighter. In every game after the original, you can select a difficulty that affects a few things - including the final battle, which can have you face off against both Master and Crazy Hand simultaneously.
2Adventure Mode (Melee)
The Adventure Mode from Melee is similar to Classic Mode, except it takes you through the worlds of most of the characters from the game and includes unique tasks inspired by titles like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and F-Zero. It feels great to run through all of these iconic locations, and completing it with every character presents different challenges for you to overcome.
Instead of facing off against Master or Crazy Hand at the end, you’ll face a larger version of Bowser on the Final Destination stage. If you can get to the end of the normal difficulty within 18 minutes, you’llface the true final boss - Giga Bowser.
1World Of Light (Ultimate)
Most of the single-player modes in previous Smash Bros. games took less than an hour to complete - except for cooperative adventures like The Subspace Emissary - but Ultimateraised the stakes and includes a massive and exciting adventurethat can take anywhere from 20 to 40 hours to play through depending on how much of a completionist you are.
The mode begins with all of our favorite characters working together to defeat an evil entity known as Galeem. Unfortunately, they lose, and the villain destroys almost every character from every game involved with Smash Bros. - except for Kirby. Starting as the tiny pink hero, you must traverse a massive map to face unique challenges, recruit lost fighters, and eventually save every world from ultimate destruction.
