Alternate costume

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

Four of Peach's alternate costumes in Brawl

In the Super Smash Bros. series, each character has a different number of palette swaps (also colour changes) - alternate costumes that they may wear, usually either 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 palette swap. These different costumes usually alter only the character's colour scheme in a true palette swap fashion, but some, namely Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff, and Sonic, incorporate modeled accessories.

Colour 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 colour if they use the same character. In Brawl, choosing Random will randomise the character as well as the character's costume. Each character in every Smash game has a default colour, and at least three alternate colours, making for a minimum total of four colour choices. Three of these four colours 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 colour that also represents a team colour; for example, Mario's default colour 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, Brawl Samus' "Fusion Suit" blue, various commercial versions of R.O.B, and Squirtle and Ivysaur's "shiny Pokémon" green. Some costumes make references to other characters who may or may not appear in Smash games, such as Peach's "Daisy" palette swap, Mario and Luigi's "Wario" and "Waluigi" costumes, Lucas' "Claus" outfit, and Jigglypuff's green hat in Brawl, which refers to Kirby's sleep hat. 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, (Pichu's red, Diddy Kong's green), or else are invented simply for the sake of fun and variety (Ice Climbers' white, Bowser's black, Luigi's orange).

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 colour 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 all three games with only four colour options, and is the only character in Brawl with only four colour options. No character in any game has more than six palette swaps, with the exception of Wario. Wario's outfits are special in that the player may choose colour 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, making Wario the only character with two colour choices when on a team.

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