Alternate costume

Four of Mario's alternate costumes in Super Smash Bros. Brawl.

Four of Peach's alternate costumes in Brawl

Mario and Greninja with their alternate costumes in SSB4.

In the Super Smash Bros. series, each character has a set of alternate costumes (officially known as color changes). In addition to changing the appearance of characters, they distinguish players from other players using the same character. For Team Battles in Super Smash Bros, Super Smash Bros. Melee, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl certain costumes also distinguish teams. In Super Smash Bros. and Melee, most characters have purely color-based alternate costumes, while Brawl and Super Smash Bros. 4 introduce a number of alternate costumes changing entire outfits.

Costume Selection

In standard free-for-all matches, players can choose their character's costume on the character selection screen. Players cannot pick the same costume if they are using the same character. Every character has at least four costume choices, one being their default costume and the rest being their alternate costumes. In Brawl, choosing Random will randomize the character as well as the character's costume.

For Team Battles in Super Smash Bros., Melee, and Brawl, three of these costumes are red, green, and blue, which all double as team colors. Some characters' default costumes also represent a team color; for example, Mario's default costume is red, so he wears his default costume when fighting on a red team. In the Super Smash Bros., Samus and Captain Falcon's blue costumes and Mario, Kirby, Donkey Kong, and Captain Falcon's green costumes cannot be selected during regular matches and are only usable in Team Battles. In Brawl, Wario has 12 alternate costumes with six color variations of his WarioWare costume and his classic overalls. Each variation has red, green, and blue colors usable for Team Battles, making Wario the only character in Brawl with two color choices when on a team.

If two or or more characters share the same alternate costume in Team Battles or online multiplayer, the second player will have a lighter tint in their appearance. A third player uses a darker tint, and in Melee, a fourth is completely black. Data suggests that a fifth player would be completely gray, if possible.

In SSB4, players can pick whatever outfit they want in Team Battles, as teams are indicated by a colored outline (red, green, blue, or yellow) around the player.

The average number of alternate costumes per character is roughly 4.7 in Super Smash Bros. and Melee, 6.0 in Brawl, and exactly 8 per character in SSB4.

Costume Appearances

The appearance of alternate costumes varies from a simple change in hue (e.g. Yoshi, Mr. Game & Watch) to the incorporation of patterns, pictures and text (e.g. Captain Falcon, Ness, R.O.B., Snake, Lucina), or even the addition of accessories (e.g. Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Sonic, Pac-Man). Some characters have costumes derivative of their earlier or alternate renderings, such as Mario's "Jumpman" blue. Some costumes reference other characters who appear in other Nintendo games, such as Peach's "Daisy" alternate costume. A small number of costumes reference other costumes within in the Smash universe, such as Brawl Pikachu's blue "Pichu goggles", Melee Jigglypuff's blue "SSB bow", and R.O.B.'s "R.O.B. Launcher" green. Other costumes appear to be created primarily for the purpose of Team Battles or for the sake of fun and variety.

Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Robin, Corrin, and Mii Fighters have male and female variants. Little Mac possesses an alternate costume with a pink hoodie from the training montages in the Punch-Out!! series, as well as a wireframe alternate costume from the arcade version of Punch-Out!! along with a set of seven additional corresponding wireframe alternate costumes. Zero Suit Samus has two alternate costumes based on the crop top and shorts worn in the endings of Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion. Shulk has an alternate costume based on his swimsuit armor set from Xenoblade Chronicles. Cloud has four alternate costumes based on his appearance in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, with him wielding the Fusion Swords instead of the Buster Sword; two of these cover his Geostigma-infected left arm with a sleeve, and the other two reveal his left arm sans sleeve with a pink ribbon wrapped around it. Bayonetta has four costumes based on her appearance in Bayonetta 2 along with her wielding Love is Blue, and another four based on her appearance in the original Bayonetta along with her wielding Scarborough Fair. Olimar and Bowser Jr. have alternate costumes that change the character entirely: four of Olimar's costumes replace him with Alph, while Bowser Jr.'s costumes are the seven Koopalings riding mass-produced Junior Clown Cars. While they have their own unique announcer sounds, crowd chants, and voices, their gameplay is completely identical to their defaults.

Trivia

• Lucina, Dark Pit, and Dr. Mario were originally planned as alternate characters in SSB4, but were later made into full characters after Masahiro Sakurai gave them different characteristics.
• At 16 alternate costumes, Little Mac has the most amount of alternate costumes out of any character in the series.
• Wario in Brawl and Little Mac in SSB4 have twice the amount of costumes a character normally has in the respective aforementioned games.
• No visual differentiation exists for Mii Fighters no matter how similar they appear, even if they are the exact same fighter [1].
• Bowser Jr. is the only character in the series whose alternate costumes all change him into entirely different characters.
• Robin's official render incorporates both male and female variants together, thus making them the only character in the entire series to feature an alternate costume in their artwork.

See Also

• Alternate costume (SSB)
• Alternate costume (SSBM)
• Alternate costume (SSBB)
• Alternate costume (SSB4)

External Links

• Smash Bros. DOJO - Color Changes
• Video of all costumes