Samus (SSB)

Samus in Super Smash Bros.
Universe	Metroid
Other playable appearances	in Melee in Brawl in SSB4 in Ultimate
Availability	Starter
Tier	C (8) (North America) ? (7) (Japan)

“	The greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, Samus Aran fights with the super-human power of her hi-tech power suit.	”
—Super Smash Bros's instruction manual

Samus Aran (サムス・アラン, Samus Aran) is a starter character in Super Smash Bros.. As in her games, she fights inside the hi-tech, powerful Varia Suit, giving her a strong endurance to attacks as well as varied options for attack. Her sound clips are entirely "technologic" sounds.

She is ranked 8th on the current tier list, placing her at the top of the C tier. Samus is a heavy, yet floaty, character with decent horizontal recovery. She has arguably the highest raw damage output in the game, courtesy of her many options for attacking, and due to the long range of her moves, she is able to space them well. The high damage output of her moves also translates well to her power, having many powerful finishers like her Charge Shot and her neutral and back aerials. Despite her weight, her floaty nature also allows her to not be comboed as easily as others.

However, Samus has many glaring weaknesses. One of them is her overall slow mobility: while she has a fast dashing speed, she is among the least mobile characters in the air due to her floatiness. Samus also has no reliable grounded or aerial options for approaching. Another weakness is her very sluggish frame data, with some of her moves having lots of ending lag. Altogether, this gives her an almost non-existent approach. While she seemingly has many combo starters due to said moves having low knockback, she has a low amount of combos due to her moves' ending lag. Lastly, she lacks a quick and easy-to-land KO move and relies on reads and predictable finishers to KO.

The few things that save Samus from being the worst character in the NTSC version are spacing, recovery, and the fact she is hard to combo. Even so, she still has mediocre matchups, as well as terrible representation and results in North America. However, she is ranked higher in the Japanese version at 7th, due to the different gameplay mechanics having an impact on her moveset, and she has a notable smasher in Jouske, who achieves great results with her (despite refusing to travel to North America).

Attributes

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Samus's ending picture in Super Smash Bros.

Samus in the Smash 64 instruction booklet.

Samus is a tall heavyweight character that is also rather floaty, an uncommon trait for most heavyweights. She has the 4th fastest dashing speed, but combined with the 4th slowest air speed, second slowest falling speed, and a long and slow roll heavily decrease her mobility. She has decent range and also has two projectiles, including Charge Shot, which covers a great distance and is fairly powerful, being quite useful for keeping opponents at bay, but requires a large amount of charging to have KO power, and Bomb, which can aid her horizontal recovery. Spacing works quite well with Samus, with her forward tilt and back aerial being useful. However, she has a high and slow short hop. Her grab is one of the three tether grabs in the game, giving it excellent range, but has sixty frames of ending lag, making it the laggiest grab in the game. Her back throw is a powerful KO throw and is also tied with Pikachu and Donkey Kong's back throws for the most damaging throw in the game. Her biggest flaw however is her notorious inability to perform a zero-to-death combo with her regular moves, though to compensate, she escape many zero deaths with her floaty weight and Screw Attack.

Overall, most of Samus's moves have a high amount of ending lag, and she has no quick, easy-to-land KO moves, though her down aerial is an extremely fast meteor smash. While Samus's dair is a great edgeguarding move, she has poor to mediocre edgeguarding ability outside of it, and her primary recovery move, the Screw Attack, travels extremely short horizontal and vertical distance, giving her a very poor vertical recovery. Her horizontal recovery, while still short and predictable, is slightly aided by her floatiness and Bombs.

Samus is known for being the only character in Smash 64 who cannot 0-death easily, though her floatiness and Screw Attack can slightly help her escape combos. Posting a legitimate Samus combo is considered to be an inside joke in the Smash 64 community, as there are players who state that Samus has no combos and that it is virtually impossible to make a combo video of her without hacking.

Difference between game versions

Japan to NTSC

Samus was nerfed in her transition to NTSC. Both of her nerfs have affected her noticeably, with the higher SDI presence making her moves even harder to correctly link into the other, and the Screw Attack has less invincibility frames making her easier to gimp. Overall, Samus is worse than in the Japanese version.

Ground attacks

• Up smash hits twice while grounded instead of once.

Special attacks

• Screw Attack has fewer invincibility frames on startup (11 → 3 frames).

NTSC to PAL

Samus was buffed indirectly in her transition to PAL, due to the teleport glitch covering more distance, which in turn gives her a slightly better approach option, though still inferior compared to Jigglypuff.

Attributes

• Teleport goes farther, making it a better approach option.

Moveset

Samus's aerial attacks

		Name	Damage	Description
Neutral attack			3%	A jab followed by a vertical cannon swipe.
			7%
Forward tilt	↗		12%	Does a kick forward, very fast, little ending lag. Good ground spacer.
	→		10%
	↘		9%
Up tilt			8% (upwards), 13% (down)	Brings her foot down in an axe-like way. Decent against aerial opponents, better suited for wall-based ground combos.
Down tilt			13%	She quickly does a grounded roundhouse kick, which knocks the foe forward. Has some KO potential at higher percentages near the ledge, can hit foes hanging onto the ledge.
Dash attack			12% (clean), 10% (late)	Charges forward and rams opponent with shoulder. Bad shield stun, and can leave her vulnerable against opponents even at moderate percentages due to its very low knockback. However, if used correctly, it can occasionally be a combo starter.
Forward smash	↗		20%	She thrusts her arm cannon forward for decent knockback, is quite fast, with good range as well.
	→		18%
	↘		16%
Up smash		Cover Fire	50% if all hits connect	She aims her arm cannon upwards and shoots flames in an arch. Multi-hitting, 10% per hit. Best usage against heavier or fast falling characters as an anti-air move.
Down smash			16% (front), 14% (back)	Does a round kick, first hits in front of Samus. Good spacing move or KOer near the ledge. Knockback wise, it is the weakest down smash in Super Smash Bros.
Neutral aerial			16% (clean), 13% (late)	Sex kick. Seems to be slightly angled upwards. Gets weaker the longer it's out.
Forward aerial			20% if all hits connect	Deals 20% (1-4 hits). Not the best air move due to number of hits, and how hard it is to have all the moves connect. However, the last hit can be linked into many other moves.
Back aerial			14% (clean), 10% (late)	A fast backwards kick with good range and speed. One of Samus's strongest finishers when sweetspotted, though it is usually difficult to land the sweetspot, due to her bad short hop and limited ways of comboing into it.
Up aerial			10% if all hits connect	Multi-hitting upwards drill kick. 2% per hit. Due to a developer oversight that prevents the final hitbox from spawning, Samus is left very vulnerable, making this an impractical move.
Down aerial			14%	Downwards arm thrust. Swings her arm cannon downwards below her in an arch. Is a meteor smash. Overall among Samus's best finishers, being able to KO earlier than most of her other moves. Against grounded opponents, it can also lead into moves such as back aerial.
Grab		Grapple Beam	—	Samus, along with Link and Yoshi, has an "extended grab". She uses the Grapple Beam while standing. This allows her to grab opponents from a distance, but the grab is very laggy if it misses. This can lead to various unique combos due to the large grab range.
Forward throw			16%	Grabs opponent via Grapple Beam and tosses him/her forward with good power. Very high base knockback and decent scaling.
Back throw			18%	Same as f-throw, but tosses him/her backwards and faces the position she was in before the throw. Also slightly stronger.
Forward roll Back roll		—	—
Techs		—	—
Floor attack (front) Floor getups (front)			6%	Does a breakdance-like spin with her feet, which hits on both of her sides at the same time.
Floor attack (back) Floor getups (back)			6%	Does a breakdance-like spin with her feet, which hits on both of her sides at the same time.
Edge attack (fast) Edge getups (fast)			6%	Gets up and kicks.
Edge attack (slow) Edge getups (slow)			6%	Picks herself up, leaning on arm cannon, and jabs in front.
Neutral special		Charge Shot	3-26%	Chargeable in the same way as Donkey Kong's Giant Punch - pressing the B button starts charging, and the charge can be saved with the Z button, then continued by pressing B. The projectile is quite large but easy to dodge. Usually used as a combo extender or finisher.
Up special		Screw Attack	15% if all hits connect (ground), 14% if all hits connect (air)	Does a Screw Attack upwards, recovery move that does multiple hits and can trap opponents to rack up damage. Useful against opponents on soft platforms above Samus.
Down special		Bomb	9%	Drops a Morph Ball Bomb that explodes within a few seconds. Does extremely minimal knockback, though it causes Samus to fall slightly slower than normal, meaning it can be used for horizontal recovery. However, using it before a double jump will cause Samus to be unable to perform her double jump until she lands.

On-screen appearance

• Exits a Super Metroid-style save point.

Taunt

• Takes her left arm off of the arm cannon and puts her left hand on her hip, at the same time raising her right arm so that her upper arm is perpendicular to her body, and her lower arm (the cannon) is parallel to her body. She then shakes the cannon like a fist.

Crowd cheer

	English	Japanese
Cheer
Description	*clap* Sam- *clap* -us	Samus-u
Pitch	Crowd chant	Crowd chant

Victory poses

A flourish originating from Metroid that played whenever Samus got a new power-up, obtained a Power Suit upgrade, or defeated Ridley and Kraid.

• Flashes gun towards screen.
• Shoots fire upwards.
• Cocks her cannon (also her character selection animation).

In Competitive play

Matchups

International versions

Super Smash Bros. (N64) Character Matchups

Avg.

Japanese versions

Super Smash Bros. (N64) Character Matchups (JPN Version)

Avg.

Notable players

See also: Category:Samus professionals (SSB)

Numbers in brackets indicate position in 64 League Rankings 2017

•  A-Wall - Ranked 2nd in Missouri in 2016
•  Cobr (#46)
•  HAMMERHEART (#43) - Dual mains Samus and Jigglypuff, 3rd at Keystoned 2017, 13th at Let's Go! and 25th at Super Smash Con
•  JaimeHR (#25) - Mains Pikachu and Captain Falcon but has a strong Samus secondary
•  Jousuke - One of the best Japanese players of all time
•  kino - 25th at Kansai 2018
•  Kiyoshi G - 25th at Kanto 2016
•  meipon - 17th at Kanto 2016 and Kanto 2018
•  Mr.Sir (#Honorable Mention)
•  NTA (#40 (2016))
•  watari - 17th at Kanto 2017

Inactive

•  Kabal - 25th at Apex 2015

In Single-player

In the game's Single-player mode, Samus is fought on the Planet Zebes stage.

Techniques

Bomb recovery

In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Samus can bomb jump to greatly extend her horizontal recovery. In Smash 64, Samus cannot bomb jump. However, using bombs and immediately DIing towards the stage aids in her horizontal recovery to a degree, although not nearly as much as bomb jump recovery does. However, when a bomb jump is used, her double jump cannot be used until Samus lands.

Description

From the Game

Samus Aran is the toughest bounty hunter in the galaxy. Using a special suit powered by the technology of the bird people which allows her to execute daring acrobatic feats, Samus pursues the airborne life form, Metroid, throughout the universe.

Works:

• Metroid (NES)
• Metroid II: The Return of Samus (GB)
• Super Metroid (SNES)

Alternate costumes

Trivia

• Samus is the only female character in Super Smash Bros.
• While all other characters show their skeletons (or lack thereof) upon being hit with an electric attack, Samus's suitless outline becomes visible instead.
• This is Samus' only appearance on the Nintendo 64. The only other playable character to share this distinction is Ness.
  • This is also her first appearance in 3D. Ness also shares this distinction.
• In the PAL version of the game, Samus's character description in French uses male pronouns with female ones in speculatory brackets (the equivalent of "his (her?)"), in contrast to both the English and German descriptions using female pronouns throughout. This might be a reference to the instruction booklet from the original metroid, where Samus is referred to as a "he".
• On the Character selection screen, Samus's portrait greatly resembles her artwork from Super Metroid.