Editing Northern Cave

|caption = [[File:FinalFantasySymbol.svg|50px|class=invert-dark]]<br>Northern Cave as it appears in ''Smash''.

|ultimatesingles=Counterpick/Banned

|ultimatedoubles=Counterpick/Banned

'''Northern Cave''' ({{ja|北の大空洞|Kita no Daikūdō}}, ''Great Northern Cavity'') is a {{uv|Final Fantasy}} stage in ''[[Super Smash Bros. Ultimate]]''. It is bundled with {{SSBU|Sephiroth}} in Challenger Pack 8, which is also part of the [[Fighters Pass Vol. 2]]. It was released on December 17th, 2020.

The stage has a singular main platform with two smaller platforms at the very ends, similar to [[Kalos Pokémon League]]. The background depicts the events at the end of ''Final Fantasy VII'', where [[Cloud Strife]] and his party set off to defeat [[Sephiroth]]. The platforms stay frozen in place regardless of the background events, making it similar to {{SSBU|Final Destination}} in this regard. The main platform is congruent to the main platform of {{SSBU|Battlefield}} and Final Destination. The small platforms are exactly as high and almost exactly as long as Battlefield's small platforms, and the [[Blast line|blast lines]] are close to Final Destination's.

[[File:Northern CaveFFVII.png|thumb|Northern Cave and the Highwind as it appears in ''Final Fantasy VII''.]]

The party learns from the sage Bugenhagen that Sephiroth's will is holding back Holy, a spell Aerith had managed to cast before her death—and the only thing that can stop Meteor. After Shinra's Sister Ray pierces the barrier over the crater, the party enters the Northern Cave for a final confrontation with Sephiroth. When they defeat his Bizarro and Safer forms, the party believes the threat of Sephiroth to be over, but Cloud passes out and has one final confrontation with him within his mind. Upon Sephiroth's final defeat, Holy activates and the party scrambles to escape in their airship, the Highwind. It seems that all is lost and Holy is too late to stop Meteor's impact, but the planet's Lifestream rises up to aid Holy. The ''Super Smash Bros.'' stage depicts the Highwind entering Northern Cave, the activation of Meteor, and the intervention of both Holy and the Lifestream, the latter two events having pragmatic alterations from the original ending, as Meteor was originally shown on a collision course with [[Midgar]] versus appearing outside the Northern Cave.

The original game's ending is ambiguous as to what happened after the Lifestream intervened, only featuring a scene set 500 years later where party member Red XIII is seen approaching the ruins of Midgar, but later entries in the ''Compilation of Final Fantasy VII'' series make it clear that Meteor was stopped in time to prevent Sephiroth's plan for mass extinction — though not without damage to the planet — and that humanity also survived.

 

Northern Cave has previously appeared as a stage in the ''{{iw|wikipedia|Dissidia: Final Fantasy}}'' series of arena-based fighting games. This specific version of Northern Cave was referenced in ''Ultimate'' by the background after descending into the crater and immediately before the scene of Holy being activated being directly based on the former's layout and design. As in ''Dissidia'', the stage's main platform is based on the floating rock where Cloud and his party battle Jenova∙SYNTHESIS in the original game.

Due to the stage lacking stage hazards and possessing a layout similar to [[Kalos Pokémon League]], several players have suggested legalizing the stage. Compared to Kalos Pokémon League, the blastzones are smaller, while the platforms are lower and stick less out from the edges, and the stage doesn't have vertical walls; overall, these changes might make the stage less favorable for camping than Kalos Pokémon League. However, there have been some concerns that the background is too visually busy and distracting, especially during the meteor section. There are also occasional concerns with music licensing issues when it comes to playing ''Final Fantasy'' music on the tournament livestreams, due to Square Enix's tighter copyright, which some tournaments, such as [[Low Tide City 2022]], outright replacing it with Kalos Pokémon League because of this, along with the aforementioned background problems<ref>https://twitter.com/LTCesports/status/1519135553698021376</ref>. Due to releasing during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a lack of showing even at offline tourneys, the legal status of the stage was unclear until after the return of offline tourneys, in which this stage is picked as a counterpick in many tourneys.

**Because of this, Northern Cave is the only stage in ''Ultimate'' that has had to be actively unlocked.

*Discounting the image of Lady Luck on the Highwind, Northern Cave is the one of two paid DLC stages without any visible background characters, along with [[Hollow Bastion]] (if the Stations of Awakening are discounted).

*Masahiro Sakurai revealed in a [[YouTube]] video<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKQ2v9kno9I=167s Odds and Ends of Supervising <nowiki>[Graphics]</nowiki>]</ref> that he took several photographs of a model jet to show what the Highwind escaping the Northern Cave should look like.