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 different number of alternate costumes (officially known as Color Changes) - different appearances for the purpose of distinguishing themselves from other players who are using the same character or for the purpose of distinguishing allies from opponents in team battles, or just for the purpose of choosing the player's favorite alternate costume. In the first three games, most characters had pure color-based changes (except for some, namely Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Wario, and Sonic), but the fourth game introduced a number of alternate costumes changing entire outfits (such as the ending outfits from the GBA Metroid games for Zero Suit Samus, a swimsuit costume for Shulk, or Little Mac's Wireframe form).

Color change selection

Players may choose their character's costume on the character selection screen, and, with the exception of team battles, two players may not pick the same color if they use the same character. In Brawl, choosing Random will randomize the character as well as the character's costume. Each character in every Smash game has a default color, and at least three alternate colors, making for a minimum total of four color choices. Three of these four colors are red, green and blue, one of which a character must wear when participating in a team battle, in order to represent the red, green or blue team. Some characters possess a default color that also represents a team color; for example, Mario's default color is red, so he wears his default costume when fighting on a red team. In the original Super Smash Bros., Samus and Captain Falcon's blue costumes and Captain Falcon, Mario, Kirby, and Donkey Kong's green costumes could not be selected during regular matches and were only usable for the purpose of team battles.

Costume appearance

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 (Snake, Ness, R.O.B), to the addition of accessories, sometimes animated, as is the case with Jigglypuff's waving green ribbon in Melee. Some characters have costumes that are derived from earlier or alternate renderings of themselves, such as Mario's "Jumpman" blue. Some costumes make references to other characters who may or may not appear in Smash games but only appear in other Nintendo games, such as Peach's "Daisy" palette swap. A small number of costumes make references to other costumes from elsewhere 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, such as Pichu's red, or else are invented simply for the sake of fun and variety, such as the Ice Climbers' white.

In online Brawls and Team Battles, if two characters shared the same palette swap, the second player would have a lighter tint in their appearance. A third player uses a darker tint, and in Melee, a fourth is completely black, such as the characters in Co-Op Event 7: Battle of the Dark Sides. Data suggests that a fifth player would be completely gray, if possible.

Range of choices

Brawl includes a significantly larger number of alternate costumes than its predecessors, with the average number of color changes per character being roughly 4.7 in the original Super Smash Bros. and Melee, and 6.0 in Brawl. Pikachu is the only character to appear in the first three games with only four color options, and is the only character in Brawl with only four color options. Wario is special in that the player may choose color variations of either his biker costume from the WarioWare series, or his classic overalls. Both costumes have six palette swaps, making for a total of twelve choices. Additionally, the red, green and blue variations of both the biker costume and the overalls may be used in team battles, and before the fourth installment, Wario was the only character with two color choices when on a team.

Super Smash Bros. 4 expands on Brawl's range of choices by introducing Male and Female variants for the Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Robin, and Mii Fighter characters. Despite the fact that the Villager has different costumes for each of the genders and the Mii Fighter has fully customizable features, the Wii Fit Trainer has been shown to have similar color variations for both the male and female genders. In the fourth installment, each character has at least eight different alternate costumes, giving players the largest range of choices in a Smash Bros. title. Also, in SSB4, you can now pick whatever outfit you want for the battle, as team color is indicated by the player's outline color. Little Mac is the only character with more than eight palettes, possessing eight additional palette from his wireframe version from the arcade version of Punch-Out!! Little Mac has an alternate costume where he wears his pink hoodie from the training montages in the Punch-Out!! series, and Shulk has an alternate costume based on his swimsuit armor set from Xenoblade Chronicles. Olimar and Bowser Jr. have palettes that change the character entirely. Four of Olimar's palettes changes the character to Alph, and all seven of Bowser Jr.'s alternate palettes replaces him with one of the seven Koopalings. While they have their own unique announcer sounds, crowd chants, and voices, their gameplay is completely identical to their defaults. Lucina from Fire Emblem: Awakening was originally planned to be an alternate costume for Marth in a similar vein, but was made into a separate character.

See Also

• Palette swap (SSB)
• Palette swap (SSBM)
• Palette swap (SSBB)
• Palette swap (SSB4)

External Links

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