Poké Floats

Kanto Skies: Poké Floats
Poké Floats in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Universe	Pokémon
Appears in	Melee
Availability	Unlockable
Unlock criteria	Play 200 VS. matches.
Music Bolded tracks must be unlocked Melee Poké Floats
Tournament legality Melee Singles: Banned Doubles: Banned
Article on Bulbapedia	Poké Floats

Poké Floats (ポケモン亜空間, Pokémon Subspace) is a stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee. In All-Star mode, Jigglypuff and its teammates are fought here.

The Sudowoodo trophy is unlocked alongside this stage.

Stage overview

Contrary to popular belief, Poké Floats is not an auto-scrolling stage but rather the camera stays in place as the floats move across the screen. The match takes place on top of giant floating models of Pokémon (hence the name) above the skies of the Kanto region, which are in a constant cycle and whose movement, while deterministic, keeps getting more complex until the cycle is reset. Staying on a float too long can cause the player to lose a stock, as the floats can cross blast lines as they leave the battlefield.

The floats, in order of appearance, are:

Pokémon	Picture	Behavior
Squirtle		The starting float. Starting from the middle of the screen, it slowly floats downwards until it disappears. Its head and arms act as solid platforms.
Onix		Appears when only Squirtle's head is still visible. Enters from the right, then starts slowly floating down along Squirtle. Its whole body is a bumpy hard platform.
Psyduck		Its head rises upwards from the bottom left corner, pushing Onix upwards and tilting it diagonally. Afterwards, its whole body floats upwards until it disappears. Can cause Star KOs or Screen KOs if stayed on for too long. Its head and bill act as solid platforms.
Chikorita		Enters from the left near the middle of the screen, then moves to the bottom-right quadrant (at which point Psyduck starts rising), hangs on the right side of the screen for a while, then drifts away. Its body (head included) is a hard platform, while its leaf is soft.
Weezing		Rises from the bottom of the screen, then gets progressively smaller (as if it were floating away into the background) until it crosses the upper blast line. Unlike Sudowoodo and Psyduck, the fighters that are still on it when it passes the blast line will be dropped off, rather than Star/Screen KO'd. Its heads form a single hard platform.
Slowpoke		Enters from the left side of the screen, slowly uncurls its tail, then disappears on the right. Its whole body is solid; its tail act as a wall and ceiling while curled. Caution should be taken, as being on its tail when it's uncurling will cause the player to fall and put them into a position where it will be difficult to recover.
Porygon		Three Porygon traverse the middle of the screen, right-to-left. Their bodies are completely solid.
Wooper		Quickly rises from the bottom-left corner to the middle of the screen, then moves to the right part of the screen. After Venusaur appears it moves to the left, then it floats above Venusaur and Seel until it disappears on the top-right corner of the screen. Its head is solid, while its gills act as soft platforms.
Sudowoodo		Slowly rises along the left side of the screen. Its right arm, despite being part of its model, never appears onscreen. Its head, head structure and leg act as hard platforms, while its arm and foot act as soft ones. Like Psyduck, can cause Star or Screen KOs if stayed on.
Snorlax		Rises from the bottom of the screen, remaining almost stationary until it gets pushed down by Venusaur's passage. Its head and body form a single solid platform.
Venusaur		Its head peeks from the right side of the screen; afterwards its whole body comes into view and traverses the screen right-to-left. Its body and stem are solid, while its leaves and petals act as soft platforms.
Seel		Traverses the screen right-to-left while slowly bobbing, directly following Venusaur. Its head, body and tail form a single solid platform.
Wobbuffet		Quickly peeks and retreats on the bottom-right, then reappears, floats completely into view and disappears again on the right. Its whole body is a single hard platform.
Unown		Shortly after Wobbuffet's appearance a line of several Unown starts slowly traversing the middle of the screen, from left to right. Shortly after Chansey appears, a second line traveling in the opposite direction starts moving above the first. They disappear completely at the end of the cycle. Their bodies all act as soft platforms.
Goldeen		Quickly jumps up from the bottom-left, then rises down almost offscreen. After two more quick jumps it disappears back down. Its tail and body form a single soft platform.
Lickitung		Appears from the left with its tongue outstretched, then floats to the right, retracts its tongue, and disappears on the right while extending its tongue again. Its body and tongue form a single hard platform.
Chansey		Peeks up from the bottom-left part of the screen, then from the bottom-right, then from the bottom-left and finally from the bottom-right before disappearing. Its head acts as a hard platform.
Geodude		Appears from the left side of the screen, hangs around the middle of the screen for a while and finally disappears on the right. Its body and arms act as a single hard platform.

After Geodude disappears, the last few Unown clear the screen. Finally, after the last Unown, the cycle restarts (looping back to Squirtle). Squirtle quickly appears from the bottom and the process repeats all over again. A full cycle takes about three and a half minutes.

The camera will remain in a fixed position for the whole game and will not zoom in or out.

Origin

Onix, as seen in Pokémon Stadium. This is an example of how Poké Floats took its design of the "floats" from the character models in Pokémon Stadium.

This stage is not directly based on any Pokémon game, though its "Kanto Skies" designation refers to the Kanto region in which the original Game Boy Pokémon games, and their remakes, are set. It is rather a collection of Pokémon models taken from the Pokémon Stadium series of games.

Interestingly, the Japanese name of the stage, "Pokémon Subspace", does not directly refer to the Pokémon as floats, and the models do not appear to be balloons. The concept of "Poké Floats", added during localization, was later used in other Pokémon media: examples include the Wi-Fi Plaza in Pokémon Platinum and Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver, and the climax of the Pokémon Detective Pikachu movie, which features a battle between Pikachu and Mewtwo on Pokémon balloons.

Tournament legality

Poké Floats was originally deemed legal as a counterpick, on the basis that its movement was entirely deterministic and not fast enough to cause an overreliance on mobility, though some characters could have trouble recovering or going from float to float. Eventually, however, the stage was banned from tournament play due to the possibility of stage spikes, and recovery being made difficult by the odd movements and collision detection of some floats, as seen in this clip. It was also deemed as giving a major advantage to Fox because of how easy it was to time out opponents by stalling and the small vertical blast zones, which Fox's KO moves are oriented around.

All-floats glitch

This glitch can be performed only in version 1.0 of Melee, as a subset of the Name Entry Glitch. If a 0-Second Melee is started on this stage, all floats appear on the screen at the same time before the match ends (image courtesy of Andrewajt62), occasionally freezing the game. This glitch was discovered by Simna ibn Sind at the end of 2013.

Names in other languages

Language	Name	Meaning
Japanese	ポケモン亜空間	Pokémon Subspace
French	Poké Flotte	Poké Fleet
German	Poké-Flug	Poké Flight
Spanish	Poké Globos	Poké Balloons

Trivia

• This is the only non-Past stage in Melee that does not appear in Classic Mode. However, the music will appear when fighting Mewtwo; as well as Mewtwo's Credits theme song.
• Despite its unlockable status, the song from this stage plays in Pikachu's section in the Special Movie, as well as being one of Pikachu's Credits themes.
• 9 of the stage's platform Pokémon have appeared as Poké Ball Pokémon.
  • Onix is the only one of the 9 to not be a Poké Ball Pokémon in Melee, though it is a Poké Ball Pokémon in Super Smash Bros.
• Slowpoke, Seel, and Porygon are the only Pokémon that don't appear in Melee's opening cinematic.
• Squirtle is the only Pokémon on this stage to become a playable character in later Smash installments.
• Poké Floats, along with Mushroom Kingdom, Mute City, and Icicle Mountain, are the only stages from Melee not to return as a playable stage in later Smash installments. This applies to Flat Zone as well, though that stage is incorporated in Flat Zone X in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Ultimate.
  • Poké Floats is the only Pokémon stage from the entire series not to reappear in Ultimate.