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Beta elements are components of the Super Smash Bros. series that, for whatever reason, are removed or altered before that game is released. Known info about beta elements usually comes from one of two sources. The first is information released about a game, by its creators, before the game is complete. The second is data found within the coding of a game that serves no purpose, but could have been implemented into the game at one point.

Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros. was initially developed by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata in their downtime, in a form titled 格闘ゲーム竜王 (Kakuto-Gēmu Ryūō, or Dragon King: The Fighting Game), which lacked Nintendo characters. Sakurai, however, felt that the game could not provide the proper atmosphere on a home console without Nintendo characters, and they were soon added and the game was renamed.

In the final game, two beta Kirby stages are only playable with a GameShark. The stages have strange elements, such as invisible barriers. A working Dream Land stage can be viewed in the "How to Play" tutorial, which itself can be seen by waiting on the title screen. Also, in the character select, the question mark boxes were supposed to be colored and Saffron City had pink with purple on the rooftop. Also, Bowser, Peach, Mewtwo, Meowth, Pit, and King Dedede were cut during development.

Also, according to a recent talk between Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata, Sakurai revealed he intented to add the Final Smashes in this game; with the proof he already had the voices effects when the characters uses their Final Smash, but for some limitations the Final Smash had to wait 9 years until the launch of Brawl. In fact, just a few of these sound effects are already in the game, but as mentioned, were never used. These sounds include Ness yelling, "PK Starstorm!", Pikachu charging energy, and Captain Falcon saying, "Come on!" Other characters heard include Kirby and Link. In addition to the unused Final Smash clips, there are two unused Announcer voice clips: "Are you ready?" and "Final Stage."

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  Dragon King: The Fighting Game

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  An early character select.

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  Saffron City with a pink/purple rooftop.

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  A beta version of Dream Land in the game's coding. The green Luigi is standing, preparing to run, on the invisible barrier.

• Yoshi ssb.PNG

  The different Peach's Castle in the game's opening sequence.

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  Dream Land, with taller grass and darker leaves.

Super Smash Bros. Melee

Through an Action Replay, a large, gray stage with the background appearing to be some kind of pub, is accessible. The music is the same as used on Fox and Falco's stage Corneria. This is assumed to be a test stage because of its name, which on the debug menu is TEST, and Sheik seemingly was originally planned to have her own Target Test stage, separate from that of Zelda. There are also four stages, named AKANEIA (a possible predecessor to Castle Siege from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a homeworld for the Fire Emblem series), 10-2, IceTop (a possible precursor to the Summit stage from the sequel, which belongs to the Ice Climbers), and DUMMY; all four freeze when accessed normally, though 10-2, IceTop and DUMMY can be accessed with other cheats, while AKANEIA remains inaccessible to this day. In addition to this, the entire Debug Menu, which was used in pre-release testing, can be used when the game is hacked, allowing for complete editing of anything in the game. Giga Bowser, both male and female Fighting Wire Frames, Master Hand, Crazy Hand, and even Sandbag are all playable (to a limited extent) via the Debug Menu. The game was also to only have 10 starter stages: Princess Peach's Castle, Kongo Jungle. Great Bay, Brinstar, Yoshi's Story, Fountain of Dreams, Corneria, Pokémon Stadium, Mute City, and Onett. Oddly enough, some stage placement was different, notably Brinstar being on the top row and Corneria being in the middle.

Early screenshots showed the Motion-Sensor Bomb to be much different; these screenshots actually showed it to be a Proximity Mine from Perfect Dark rather than the Motion-Sensor Bomb from "TOP SECRET" (actually GoldenEye 007) that appeared in the final game. A screenshot of this Proximity Mine's trophy has also been released, and this screenshot shows that (in an almost cheap manner) the text in the Proximity Mine trophy was only tampered minorly (with only a few removals of references to Perfect Dark) for the final Motion-Sensor Bomb trophy. Why the Perfect Dark Proximity Mine was changed to a GoldenEye 007 Motion-Sensor Bomb remains unknown to this day and is rather ridiculous, especially considering that the games from which the items originated were even made by the same company, although the fact that Nintendo hides the Motion-Sensor Bomb's trophy's debuting game entry with the words "TOP SECRET" in the final game suggest that the item change may very well have had to do with copyright infringement. The Temple stage originally had an elevator that led to the bottom of the stage, as well as two strange platforms. These platforms strangely appear in the game's "Special Movie", when Peach is introduced. Players could also could walk through the laboratory in Great Bay. Stages Yoshi's Story, Yoshi's Island, Kingdom had different designs altogether; the first had a design where the rightmost walkable part was a plateau followed by a curved path up to another plateau; the second was larger and had more blocks, while the third looked more similar to the Mushroom Kingdom of the previous game. Early images of Pokémon Stadium shows different element icons in the background screen, which looked more alike the icons of the Pokémon Trading Game Cards. Eagleland: Onett was also titled Eagle Land: Onett and had music that sounded different.

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  Super Smash Bros. Melee's beta Motion-Sensor Bomb's trophy. This happens to be what the Sensor Bomb looks like in the Japanese version of the game, but reasons on the change on the North American version are unknown.

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  The old character-selection screen before the final version of the game. Note that Kirby, Peach, Zelda, and Ice Climbers are missing.

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  Zelda missing in this picture from the Japan website

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  The test level.

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  Two platforms from the Temple stage that appear in the Special Movie but not during gameplay.

• Pokemon Stadium Beta.PNG

  A different fire image appears in the background of Pokémon Stadium.
• 5.jpg

  Yoshi's Island with 5 much smaller blocks

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  Mushroom Kingdom's First design

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  Sheik standing on most likely the beta version of Jungle Japes.

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  Ness walking out of what is now a part of the Great Bay background.

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  The beta version of Yoshi's Story.

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  Peach standing on the unknown platform of the beta version of Temple.

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  The Ice Climbers and Samus both on what appears to be the All-Star Teleporter, which is not possible in the final version.

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  Early versions of Pokémon Stadium had blank screens.

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  Here all four players have the same color scheme, impossible in the final version sans glitches.

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  Early versions of Fourside had more generic, black-and-white buildings in the background.

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  An early layout of Rainbow Cruise with notable differences from the final version.

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  A beta version of the Lottery interface.

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  Sheik's beta Target Test stage.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Some of the game world icons were initially the same as in the previous two games, but they were revised as time went on (Mario's Mushroom icon was refined and given spots, the Poké Ball icon has the top half colored in to properly represent how it is usually red, etc.). Also, the description for the My Music options originally said, "Adjust how often a song will appear on this stage." It has since been revised in a general tone to say, "Adjust how often songs appear on stages." Along with this, one piece of music that was planned for the Delfino Plaza stage was later moved to Luigi's Mansion. Solid Snake was also meant to be more muscular, and was to have a gray suit rather than blue; along with this, his down smash mine looked different. Wario Bike, Drill Rush, Summit, Halberd, Rainbow Cruise, and "The Flowers That Bloom in the Echoes" were originally called Wario Chopper, Triple Dash, The Summit, Battleship Halberd, Rainbow Ride, and, "Flowers Bloom on the Notes" respectively. It's unknown why they changed these names, however, they likely changed Rainbow Ride because it was a Melee stage, in which it was misnamed Rainbow Cruise (although it remains Rainbow Ride in the PAL regions, mostly because it was called Rainbow Ride on the PAL version of Melee). Lastly, there were scenes taking place before the events of the Subspace Emissary where the Subspace Army takes over the Halberd and King Dedede unintentionally stalls Meta Knight from preventing it from happening. Masahiro Sakurai confirmed that he decided to cut this out and an update was made to confirm this together with how various events and characters in the Subspace Emissary comes together. Also Mario instead of Kirby was the one seen fighting Petey Piranha in one of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl TV spots.

Another beta element in Brawl was Kirby's Hammer move. When he uses hammer in mid-air in SSBM, he does a vertical spin; in SSBB, however, he does a horizontal spin. This was seen in the first trailer, where he does the former. Also seen in the first trailer is Zero Suit Samus' weapon. Instead of using her whip, she appears to be using a lightsaber-like weapon. In the second trailer, when Fox appears, he has his Blaster in his hand during the whole battle despite the fact in the final release he only uses the blaster when using his standard special move. Another beta element is the Link's "up-especial" move, that in the first and second trailer its showed doing more than one cut in air/earth like in SSBM. Another changed element is the Pikachu's "up-especial" move, in the first trailer it's showed doing 2 "bip" sound's when he get's teleported, however, in the final version the sound from his "up-especial" move is different and it make just 1 in the first teleport. Another beta element is the "grab" move from Snake, that it's showed in some beta picture's grabbing some character's with more accuracy than in the final version, in one picture show's "Snake" grabbing Ike from his right arm and mouth, but in the final version his "grab" move its showed with less accuracy and grabbing every character from the head, another thing that we can note in the final version, is when "Snake" grab's Sonic, you can note "Sonic" putting his arm on his back, meaning in beta version "Snake" grab "Sonic" (and maybe some other character's) from the arm and mouth.

Also, unused files for Dixie Kong, Toon Zelda, Toon Sheik, and "Pra_Mai" (speculated to be Plusle & Minun of Pokémon fame) were found as scrapped newcomers. There were also files for Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, and Roy, possibly meaning that they were planned to be brought back at one time, or that their data was imported for some reason. A scrapped Assist Trophy for Ridley was also found. It was most likely scrapped in favor of a boss version of Ridley. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong had different trophy designs before they had the final in-game versions. In the E3 2006 Trailer, Many minor differences to the final version were seen. One of which was Mario's Up-A, being slightly faster than the old version.

By examining the textures of certain characters it appears as if visible battle damage was at one point planned to be in the game, as evident by such unused textures as a Meta Knight mask texture with large gashes over the eye slot and a cracked helmet for Captain Falcon. Other oddities within the textures include textures for Link's Ordon sword from Twilight Princess as well as its sheath.

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  A less gloomy version of Battlefield Fortress.

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  The beta icons.

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  Snake's original down-smash mine.

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  A beta version of Delfino Plaza's My Music with a song later moved to Luigi's Mansion.

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  A beta version of the sticker album.

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  Fox with his Blaster in his hand, as seen in the E3 trailer.

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  In the Tokyo vs Kyoto video on the DOJO!!, which was the first full match that was shown there, there were several minor differences from the released version. One example of this is Samus's Zero Laser, which lasts about 2 seconds longer in the video.

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  A beta image from The Plain of the SSE. Note that the font for the enemy name (Primid, here) is different.

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  Kirby using his forward special from Melee on Halberd in the E3 2006 trailer.

See also

• Kirby Beta Stage 1
• Kirby Beta Stage 2
• Test (stage)
• AKANEIA
• IceTop