Combo counter

In any of the games in the Super Smash Bros. series, the combo counter refers to a function in Training mode designed to keep track of combos. The combo counters starts at 0 and will increase to 1 when the opponent is hit. If the player hits the opponent again before hitstun elapses, the counter will increase to 2, and will continue to increase in this manner for every consecutive hit until the game registers that the opponent has exited hitstun for more than one frame. The counter then resets to 0 and the player can try again. Due to the counter registering every single hit on an opponent, including all phases of multi-hit attacks, this quirk can be exploited to make challenges related to the combo counter easier. Grabs and landing or teching will reset the combo counter.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, the maximum number of consecutive hits that the game can record is 32,767. This irregular value can most likely be explained by binary data storage, as it's equal to 2¹⁵ – 1.

Challenges

There are several Challenges throughout the series that unlock rewards involving the combo counter:

Brawl

• Banana Peel Trophy: Get a 10-hit combo with a character in Training.
• Ouendan Trophy: Have 400 hits in combos between all of your characters in Training.

Smash 4

• Huge Header (custom move): Get a max combo of 10 or more in Training.
• Beam Sword Agility Badge (equipment): Get a max combo of 40 or more in Training.
• Leaper Agility Badge (equipment): Get a max combo of 400 or more between all fighters in Training.
• Protective Gear (outfit): Get a max combo of 100 or more in Training.
• Title Theme (Wii Sports Resort) (music): Get a max combo of 30 or more in Training.
• Unharmed Speed Demon Agility Badge (equipment): Get a max combo of 50 or more in Training.

Ultimate

• Lion spirit: Get 20 continuous hits in Training.

Exploits

• An infamous method of raising combos with Mewtwo (in Melee) and Lucario involves going up against a wall, such as one in Fourside in Melee, charging their neutral special and continuously pressing Start to reset the CPU's damage to keep it stuck in the attack.
  • Another trick available in Brawl and Smash 4 is to set the CPU's damage to 999%, grabbing it and pummeling repeatedly; each pummel racks up a number on the combo counter, and the high damage causes the CPU to be grabbed for much longer than usual, allowing the player to pummel a large amount of times.
• In Brawl onward, Smart Bombs can rack up a large number on the combo counter by being thrown in a timed fashion so that each Bomb detonates right as the previous one finishes.
• Characters such as Mr. Game & Watch and Sheik can use their rapid jab to rack up hits on a cornered opponent. King Dedede's rapid jab in Brawl can be easily exploited in this way on a custom stage by hitting the opponent between two walls. In Smash 4, this is not possible due to rapid jabs (and other multi-hitting moves) pushing the attacker back after landing many hits on the foe, breaking the combo.
• In Melee, the Freeze glitch, Soul breaker glitch and the Ice Climbers variation of the Black hole glitch allow infinite combos on any affected characters; these glitches also enable the player to reach the maximum of 32,767 combos without hacking.

Trivia

• In SSB, the game wrongly resets the counter to 0 when a character bounces off a wall, is grabbed, or gets sucked into a tornado on Hyrule Castle.
• In Ultimate, a bug exists where the combo counter does not function properly for attacks with an electric effect, often resetting after the second hit of an attack with such an effect even if it is a true combo. This is likely due to electric attacks using a unique flinching animation, which is not properly taken into account by the combo counter. Some attacks that clearly show this bug when comboed into from others are Pikachu's neutral aerial and Pichu's back aerial.