Name

Selecting a name prior to a match in Brawl

Selecting a name prior to a match in Melee

Names are a feature in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl. It allows a player to input a short string of characters as a name to use in gameplay, where it will "float" above the character. In Brawl, the string could be five characters long, whereas Melee allowed a length of four. Names can also be used to store data and records under them. A name will have the records for things such as KO's, SD's, damage taken, pratfalls, etc., which can be seen in the Records pages of the games. Names can also be used to set Rumble on a controller and save a control preference for a player that uses different controls to the default setting. This effectively makes techniques like B-Sticking and T-Sticking available to use. In Brawl names can be transferred to the Wii Remote which can then be transferred to another Wii console.

Melee features "random names" that can appear when entering the name entry menu. Most of these names are of existing Nintendo characters. Strangely, though, one of the random names is "Ike", who did not exist at the time, and is a character that appears in Melee's sequel, Brawl.

In the European version of Brawl, Latin uppercase and lowercase characters, including diacritics, could be used, as well as punctuation and numbers. The PAL version of Melee held the same possibilities. The NTSC version of Brawl allows uppercase Latin letters, punctuation, numbers and Japanese characters.

Names appear in little boxes above the character's body in normal gameplay. These tags can temporarily disappear in some circumstances.

In Melee, the Names menu was the key to activating the Name Entry glitch, and therefore the Master Hand glitch.

Name Entry

The Name Entry is a console where names are put in and managed. In Melee, it was found in the VS. Mode menu, wheras it's found under "Options" in Brawl. In both games, however, new names can be typed in at the Character Select screen. In Brawl, this section is only called "Names".

Name Entry in Brawl