Special move

Meta Knight's special moves in Super Smash Bros. Brawl

A special move (必殺技, Sure-Killing Art), also known as a special attack, is any move performed by pressing the special button, the B button by default. In many cases, special attacks provide more damage than smash attacks, although it's unlikely to provide a KO in some situations. Unlike other moves, special moves can have wildly different functions - for instance, Falco's side special is a quick running swipe familiar to a dash attack, whereas Samus' side special is a projectile that leaves Samus stationary. Usually, only special attacks can be projectiles (some exceptions are Snake's and Olimar's up smashes, and Mega Man's jab), and some are able to render the user helpless if used in mid-air (usually those that function as mid-air jumps, like most up special moves).

In Super Smash Bros., each character had three special moves: the neutral special, up special and down special. Super Smash Bros. Melee introduced one new special move for each character, the side special. Starting with Super Smash Bros Brawl, yet another special move was added, the Final Smash, which can be accessed when the Smash Ball is obtained. When obtained, the standard special move is then replaced with the Final Smash that usually does a very high damaging attack that can affect more than one person, but it can only be used once before obtaining another Smash Ball.

With the character customization introduced in Super Smash Bros. 4, there are three options for each character's special moves (effectively meaning 12 move options per character). For example, Yoshi's neutral special, Egg Lay, can be replaced with either Lick or Egg Launch.