Magnifying-Glass Damage
Hoop damage is the damage that a character receives when they are out of the camera's boundaries but not at the blast line. The character is still shown, but only inside a small "hoop" at the edge of the camera boundary. The damage is applied at a rate of 1% per second to prevent players from simply hiding near the blast lines of a stage. Once a character reaches 150%, however, hoop damage stops, meaning that stalling is still possible in Sudden Death. Hoop damage is present in both Melee and Brawl. It was mentioned on the Smash Bros. DOJO!! on April 14, 2008. Hoop damage occurs in every mode, except for Training Mode.
In Melee, the "hoop" was called the Magnifying Glass, as evidenced by the Lost In Space bonus.
In Brawl, Meta Knight and Kirby have up throws that go beyond the upper blast line, but hoop damage is not taken.
In the Subspace Emissary, if Player 2 is in a situation that would usually trigger hoop damage, they will often instead Space Jump.
Trivia
- In Melee, characters in the Magnifying Glass have a blockier, lower-resolution model compared to ordinary gameplay; these models cannot properly emulate some animations, such as blinking, and the use of some moves or attacks can result in unusual visual behaviour, such as Jigglypuff keeping its eyes open when using Rest.
- These lower-res models are also used to render the water's reflection effects in Fountain of Dreams; as a result, the reflections in the water can have unusual visual abnormalities.
