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 distinguishing allies from opponents in team battles, or so that players can choose their favorite alternate costume for their chosen character. In Super Smash Bros. and Melee, most characters had purely color-based changes, while Brawl and SSB4 introduced a number of alternate costumes changing entire outfits.

Costume 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 are using the same character. In Brawl, choosing Random will randomize the character as well as the character's costume. Every character has at least four color choice, one being their default color and at least three alternate colors. With the exception of SSB4, three of these four colors are red, green and blue, one of which a character must wear when participating in a team battle 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 in team battles.

The average number of color changes per character is roughly 4.7 in the original Super Smash Bros. and Melee, and 6.0 in Brawl. In SSB4, every character (except for Little Mac, who has 16) has exactly 8 alternate costumes; consequently, players can now pick whatever outfit they want for Team Battles, as team colors are indicated by a colored outline around the player. At four possible alternate costumes, Pikachu has the least amount of color options in Melee and Brawl. In Brawl, Wario has 12 alternate costumes, with six color variations of his WarioWare costume and his classic overalls. Additionally, the red, green and blue variations of both his WarioWare costume and his overalls costume may be used in team battles, making Wario was the only character in Brawl with two color choices when on a team.

In Team Battles and online multiplayer, if two characters share the same alternate costume, the second player will 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.

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 (e.g. Captain Falcon, Ness, R.O.B., Snake, Lucina), or even the addition of accessories (e.g. Pikachu, Pichu, Jigglypuff, Sonic, Pac Man). Some characters have costumes that are derived from earlier or alternate renderings of themselves, such as Mario's "Jumpman" blue. Some costumes reference other characters who appear in other Nintendo games, such as Peach's "Daisy" alternate costume. A small number of costumes reference other costumes within 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 or else are invented simply for the sake of fun and variety.

The Wii Fit Trainer, Villager, Robin, Corrin, and Mii Fighters all have male and female variants. Little Mac possesses an alternate costume with a pink hoodie from the training montages in the Punch-Out!! series, as well as eight additional wireframe alternate costumes, the default from the arcade version of Punch-Out!!. Zero Suit Samus has two alternate costumes based on the crop top and shorts worn in the endings of Metroid: Zero Mission and Metroid Fusion. Shulk has an alternate costume based on his swimsuit armor set from Xenoblade Chronicles. Cloud has four alternate costumes based on his appearance in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, with two of them covering his Geostigma-infected left arm with a sleeve, and the other two revealing his arm sans sleeve with a pink ribbon wrapped around it. Olimar and Bowser Jr. have alternate costumes that change the character entirely: four of Olimar's costumes replace him with Alph, while Bowser Jr.'s costumes are the seven Koopalings riding mass-produced Junior Clown Cars. While they have their own unique announcer sounds, crowd chants, and voices, their gameplay is completely identical to their defaults.

Trivia

Lucina, Dark Pit, and Dr. Mario were originally planned as alternate characters in SSB4, but were later made into full characters after Masahiro Sakurai gave them different characteristics.
At 16 alternate costumes, Little Mac has the most alternate costumes out of any character in the series.
Little Mac in SSB4 and Wario in Brawl have twice the amount of costumes a character normally has in the respective aforementioned games.
No visual differentiation exists for Mii Fighters no matter how similar they appear, even if they are the exact same fighter [1].
Bowser Jr. is the only character in the series without palette swaps as alternate costumes.

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