Tournament rulesets (SSB)
- This is the US ruleset in Smash Bros. 64. For other rulesets and general info on tournament legal settings in Japan, see Tournament legal (DSB). For other rulesets and general info on tournament legal settings, see Tournament legal.
Please note that as per mid/late 2015 all stages outside of Dream Land were banned after a collective effort by TOs of the community along with members of the backroom. Prior, Kongo Jungle, Hyrule Castle, and Peach's Castle were occasionally legal. The ruleset below is for post these years. Please see Apex 2012 an an example of an pre-backroom ruleset
1-on-1
- Matches are only played on Dream Land, the only neutral stage. Tournaments with Smash Remix or 19XXTE have alternative versions of this ruleset.
- Examples of modded stages that have seen competitive play include Zebes Landing (A Dreamland copy from Smash Remix,) Yoshi's Island with no clouds, and Dreamland without wind.
- Sets between players are played best 2 out of 3 matches.
- 3 out of 5 matches apply for all (or occasionally most) of Top 8, which is Winner's Semis, Loser's Semis, Winner's Finals, Loser's Finals, and Grand Finals. In most majors, top 32 is also 3/5 as long as time permits.
- Double Elimination.
- The banning of cargo stalling is up to the tournament organizer's discretion.
- Each match is played with stock and 4 lives.
- The Timer is preferably set to 8 minutes if 19xx or another mod in usable.
- Players can request to wait for a setup with a timer.
- Items are turned off.
- For the first match, characters are chosen double-blind - at the same time, so that neither player knows their opponent's character beforehand. In practice, this rule is often ignored, but players always reserve the option to force a double-blind pick.
2-on-2
- Rules that apply to 1-on-1 apply to team tournaments. Occasionally other stages are legal in regionals such as Final Destination.
- Team attack (sometimes called friendly fire) is on.
- Players are allowed to steal lives from their teammates.
- Overclocked N64s are preferred as otherwise there is lag in doubles.
Low tier ruleset, emulation legality and other various rules
- "Low tier" characters are considered to be in the C tier: Samus, Donkey Kong, Ness, Link, and Luigi.
- Gameshark stages are in general banned as they are hard to set up and many of them have glitches or oddities that don't occur on normal stages
- Examples of this are:
- Battlefield- DI'ing into the ledge causes characters to die via being pulled to the center of the stage. The other main issue with the stage is that the platforms are too high for characters to platform cancel.
- Final Destination- There are glitches occasionally that cause the game to freeze. An example of this can occur after 5 minutes (possibly due to Master Hand's timer in 1 player games. 4 player games occasionally freeze. The stage also has issues due to it being flat as multiple characters thrive on platforms.
- Debug only stages- All of these stages have either invisible walls, excessively large/small boundaries far beyond, and/or weird ledge physics.
- A Nintendo 64 console is strongly recommended over using a Wii (due to frame skipping) or laptop, though laptops and Wiis aren't discouraged, particularly if there are special requests. A lagless laptop in particular is usable, as it has no frame skipping or input delay, but console is still strongly recommended.
- If there are requests to play using GameCube controllers, a Wii with the Virtual Console version of Super Smash Bros. can be used. Alternatively, suitable PC adapters may be used if they are connectable to the Nintendo 64.
- Disrupting your opponent physically or intending to disrupt their play will result in a warning. Repeated action will result in disqualification from the tournament. Observers who physically disrupt players are to be dealt with as the Tournament Organiser sees fit. Disqualification is recommended if possible.
- Pausing is discouraged, and should only be done at the end of a stock, if at all. At other times, the pauser loses their current stock. If the pause causes the opponent to lose their stock, the pauser loses two stocks.
- Extreme stalling is disallowed. Any reported case of such will result in a warning, followed by automatic forfeit of the match. If this is reported again, automatic forfeit is enforced without a warning. If there is no movement from either player, the player with fewer stocks/loser percentage is considered to be stalling.
- Pausing and resetting (A+B+Z+R) should not be done unless both players have given consent prior. It is strongly recommended all tournament matches are left to finish, without any resets, even for the sake of saving time. This clearly shows who would have (and did) win a match. If resets do occur and there is a valid dispute, the person who reset forfeits.
- Late player DQ is enforced. When a match is called, both players must promptly arrive. If a player is 2 minutes late, they receive a warning. At 4 minutes late, they lose the first game of the set and forfeit counterpick rights. At 6 minutes late, they forfeit the entire set.
- Pool play should preceded brackets play if the number of participants is suitably large. This is left to the Tournament Organiser's discretion, given 64 has low dedicated attendance rates.
- ZPK (meaning Zero Pikachu (or) Kirby) Doubles is a format that bans the use of Pikachu or Kirby. Most tournaments that utilize this format add more legal stage. For example, Genesis 6 used Kongo Jungle, Hyrule Castle, Peach's Castle and a modded version of Yoshi's Island that removed the offstage clouds from the stage. There's also alternatively SPK (meaning Single Pikachu (or) Kirby.)
- If the tournament has enough time, both ZPK/SPK and "regular" doubles can be ran together (with ZPK generally being a side event.)
- Due to these names, people have jokingly named normal doubles DPK as Pikachu Kirby/Double Pikachu is an expected team.
- If the tournament has enough time, both ZPK/SPK and "regular" doubles can be ran together (with ZPK generally being a side event.)
Waterfall Bracket
The Waterfall Bracket (otherwise known as the WTF Bracket) is a bracket style designed to let everyone attending the tournament be able to play a lot of matches against players of similar skill. It was created by Shears and Dark Gentleman and became popular in 2017 and was used in most majors since then.
There is the option to start off with a Placement Pool where pools of 5 to 8 people play Round Robin style. The pools are designed to contain 1 elite player, a couple well respected players that aren't elite yet and the rest of the players beginner level. After that placement pool - or by seeding if there is no placement pool - the attendees are put into different rounds of round robin pools: The tournament is then separated into multiple division (for example 4 divisions, usually named by numbers 1-4) with multiple round robin pools in each division (for example 4 pools, named 1A-1D for division 1). The lowest seeded players / worst players in placement pools are put into the pools lowest division (for example division 4), the highest seeded players start in the first division (1). The matches of the lowest divisions are played first then and the best players in each pool make it into the next highest division (for example from division 4 to division 3) and the other players are out of the tournament. Then the next divisions are played one after the other and the best players of division A's pools usually play a top 8/16/24/32/64 double elimination bracket.
More recently, these brackets have been ran without round robin pools due to players (such as SuPeRbOoMfAn and others at Shine 2018 sandbagging to get extra practice. Players are seeded by conceived skill and advance as per above to the next pool if they do well enough in their division.
