Stage legality
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Banned stages are stages that are banned from most mainstream tournaments. Stages can be banned for several reasons, common reasons including but not limited to:
- Especially poor matchup balance by providing a rather extreme advantage for certain characters (such as allowing the character to utilise excessive, gamebreaking camping, or utilise infinite chain throws, as in the case of Fox in Temple for the former, or King Dedede in Shadow Moses Island for the latter).
- Allowing players to abuse glitches in the game.
- Possessing one or more "caves of life," allowing characters to survive much longer than feasibly possible under usual circumstances, and creating a general over-centralisation on the ability to tech.
- Possessing permanent walk-off blast lines and walls; the former creates unreasonably powerful camping positions and allow for potential easy zero-deaths that wouldn't occur normally, as well as marginalizing or completely eliminating offstage play, while the latter also creates powerful camping positions and allow for zero-death or otherwise heavily damaging combos that wouldn't be possible otherwise. Temporary walk-offs and walls that occur on a stage are considered detrimental, but acceptable enough to usually not result in a stage's banning itself.
- Drastically altering gameplay and the strategies needed to win (such as Icicle Mountain and Mario Bros.).
- Possessing elements that causes the stage to be too strenuous on the system's CPU and thus being capable of reducing the game's frame rate midmatch.
Most tournaments, however, have some variation of the "gentleman rule", a rule that allows players to choose any stage they want, including banned stages, if all players in the match agree to it. This is usually the only way for banned stages to see serious tournament play. However, even with this rule in effect, it rarely sees use to play on banned stages outside a much higher-skilled player letting an opposing more casual or very young player choose any stage they want, as most competitive players never want to willingly play on the banned stages for the same reasons the ruleset had them banned. Even with the rule in effect, TOs may still ban some stages from being played on via the gentleman rule, if the stage has a propensity to delay the tournament by causing much longer matches (such as Temple and New Pork City).
Major differences in communities
There are many community preferences in terms of stage choices, with there being no agreed-upon standard across all regions on what exactly constitutes a "proper stage", so a stage's legality can be dependent on the region the tournament is in. The most prominent example of this in Brawl is Pokémon Stadium 2, a stage players in stage-conservative regions generally absolutely despise and vehemently oppose ever playing on, while players in more stage-liberal regions generally either like the stage or see the bad rep it gets to be overblown. As such, while a player in the Tristate Area will almost never see Pokémon Stadium 2 legal at tournaments in the region, a player in Texas will see the stage as a legal counterpick frequently.
The popularity of characters in the region can also impact the stages seen in those regions. For example, tournaments in the aforementioned Tristate Area generally don't ban Meta Knight, while many of the region's best and lesser players play Meta Knight. As such, tournaments in this region started to ban Rainbow Cruise and Brinstar before other regions did, and when Meta Knight started to be deemed too powerful on Delfino Plaza, Frigate Orpheon, and Halberd, these stages started seeing more frequent banning in Tristate Area tournaments, while regions with not as severely high Meta Knight usage tend to keep them legal.
Banned stages in Smash 64
This is the US ban set. In Japanese tournaments, all stages are banned outside of Dream Land. For reasoning, see below the US ruleset.
| Stage | Status | Commonly cited reasons for banning |
|---|---|---|
| Mushroom Kingdom | Banned | Pipe camping; stalling |
| Planet Zebes | Banned | Acid disrupts usual gameplay by putting people in a disadvantageous situation |
| Sector Z | Banned | Overly large; Arwing lasers; camping; stalling |
| Yoshi's Island | Banned | Cloud camping (as characters on Yoshi's cloud could object to getting back on stage as it is very easy to attack them/put them in a disadvantageous position while recovering); stalling |
| Saffron City | Banned | Overly large; bottom area and helipad promote camping; Pokémon attacks |
Banned stages in Japanese Smash 64
This is the Japanese ban set. All stages in the US banned set are also banned for the same listed reasons. Note that all of these bans makes it so Dream Land is the only stage allowed.
| Stage | Status | Commonly cited reasons for banning |
|---|---|---|
| Hyrule Castle | Banned | Overly large; tornadoes disrupt gameplay |
| Congo Jungle | Banned | Reason never definitely given. |
| Peach's Castle | Banned | Bumper and other areas of the stage disrupt gameplay. The inability to grab ledges. |
Banned stages in Melee
In the current Smash Back Room rule set, all stages are listed definitively as a starter, counterpick, or banned stage. Following is the ban list.
| Stage | Status | Commonly cited reasons for banning |
|---|---|---|
| Big Blue | Banned | Random terrain; scrolling stage; circle and run away camping; stalling; track that the cars move on carry characters extremely quickly towards walk-off blast lines |
| Brinstar | Banned | Acid disrupts gameplay; breakable platforms distort already-awkward stage structure; over-centralization of the aerial game, causing many characters with poor aerial games to have an unfair disadvantage |
| Brinstar Depths | Banned | No ledges to grab; irregular stage design and frequent rotating of the stage causes drastic changes in gameplay; contains caves of life; abnormally low ceiling gives a disproportional advantage to vertical finishers; various, unreasonably strong camping and stalling positions |
| Corneria | Banned | Overly large; excessive camping/stalling behind the big fin; fin allows for wall infinites; random, powerful stage hazards in Arwing lasers; several positions from which characters cannot recover which can be easily achieved, especially characters with good aerial games; overall gives unfair advantages to fast characters on the stage and aerial-based characters off of it |
| Flat Zone | Banned | Extremely disruptive stage hazards (such as falling, damaging materials, appearing and disappearing platforms, and oil slick); stage is overly small; no bottom blast line; walk-off blast lines |
| Fountain of Dreams | Banned (doubles only) |
Potential for lag during doubles play, as well as the onstage portion being too small to properly accommodate doubles play |
| Fourside | Banned | No large, stable platforms for fighting; stalling; walls allow infinites and stalling; the UFO being right under the upper blast line can allow for extremely early vertical KOs |
| Great Bay | Banned | Solid, middle platform above two lower platforms causes stage spikes that result in frequent, low percent KOs and gimps that would not occur in usual circumstances; stage design allows for the potential of circle camping and stalling; left blast line is too close to the stage |
| Green Greens | Banned | Over-centralizes gameplay on camping; randomly appearing bomb blocks disrupt normal gameplay |
| Icicle Mountain | Banned | Randomly moving stage; disproportional advantage to characters with high, fast jumps; over-centralizes gameplay on keeping up with the stage's scrolling |
| Jungle Japes | Banned | Overly powerful stage hazard in Klap Trap; unusually high ceiling gives a disproportional advantage to horizontal finishers; high potential for camping and stalling; very poor matchup balance, giving a disproportional advantage to characters with projectiles and those that can traverse the stage well |
| Kongo Jungle | Banned | Powerful camping position on the rock platform on the bottom right of the stage; Klap Trap too powerful and difficult to avoid when it enters the Barrel Cannon |
| Kongo Jungle N64 | Banned (singles only) |
Above average size gives an advantage to fast or projectile-bearing characters; higher ceiling forces characters to rely more on horizontal KOs; disruptive aesthetics, especially in one-on-one play (pitch-black background, camera errors) |
| Mushroom Kingdom | Banned | Irregular stage design forces major gameplay changes; bricks create caves of life and camping spots and can block hitboxes; walk-off blast lines |
| Mushroom Kingdom II | Banned | Walk-off blast lines; stage is too small; random, disruptive stage hazard in Birdo; lack of proper "center" platform hinders gameplay, particularly in doubles |
| Mute City | Banned | Lack of ledges on main platform; main platform poorly accommodates doubles play, being too small and potentially causing slowdown in gameplay; car hazards are overly powerful against fast fallers |
| Onett | Banned | Unusual geometry; overly powerful and frequently appearing stage hazards in cars, which deal in excess of 30% damage and can KO at low percents; no lower blast line; permanent walls promote camping and infinites; walk-off blast lines |
| Poké Floats | Banned | Irregular terrain; scrolling stage; circle and run away camping; stalling; potential for stage spikes |
| Princess Peach's Castle | Banned | OHKO stage hazard in Banzai Bill; walls allow infinites; permanent walls promote camping; separation of large portions of the stage through a castle tower, making it difficult to traverse |
| Rainbow Cruise | Banned | Several ungrabbable ledges; disappearing platforms; scrolling stage, giving disproportional advantages to characters with good aerial games, and punishing those which have sluggish aerial speed; over-centralizes gameplay on keeping up with the stage rather than actually fighting; extremely skewed character matchups |
| Temple | Banned | Overly large; large cave of life in lower area over-centralizes gameplay on teching; multiple areas allow for run away and circle camping; stalling; over-reliance on vertical KOs due to sheer horizontal size; gives an extreme advantage to fast characters or characters who can circle camp around the stage with horribly skewed character matchups, most notoriously towards many already-top/high tier characters (such as Fox, Jigglypuff, and Samus) |
| Venom | Banned | Slowdown; walls allow for infinites; several, unreasonably strong camping positions; disruptive and powerful stage hazards; separation of portions of the stage by the Great Fox body makes it difficult to traverse; Jigglypuff notably gains a huge advantage here, as the small blast lines make it easier for it to KO opponents, and then infinitely camp below the Great Fox. |
| Yoshi's Island N64 | Banned | Camping on clouds to the stage's right and left hand sides; run away stalling; characters with poor recoveries who are lured to the clouds, such as Link and Falco, cannot recover |
| Yoshi's Island | Banned | Rotating block platforms create caves of life; walk-off blast lines; marginalizes offstage skills; rotating blocks in the middle pit can block recoveries; left and top blast lines too close to stage; potential for easy and inescapable shine combos from Fox |
Banned stages in Brawl
Brawl has a highly fragmented and argumentive community when it comes to legal stages. As a result the ban list is significantly messier than the previous two games, with most stages being disputed in one way or another. Additionally, a stage's legal status is heavily influenced by Meta Knight's legality, as he tends to gain even more drastic advantages on many fringe stages. Thus tournaments that ban Meta Knight tend to have less limited stagelists than tournaments that keep him legal.
This table shows the status of a stage using a four-tier system. One could consider "tier 0" stages to be legal in all rulesets.
- Tier 1 stages are usually legal, but banned in Japanese and other restrictive rulesets.
- Tier 2 stages are the most contentious; they may be legal, or they may be banned.
- Tier 3 stages are usually banned, but may be legal in experimental rulesets.
- Tier 4 stages are universally banned.
| Stage | Status | Commonly cited reasons for banning |
|---|---|---|
| 75 m | Tier 4 | Overly large; camera has zooming issues and difficulty following characters; excessive stalling potential; random, powerful stage hazards; too difficult to move around the stage; walk off blast lines; very poor matchup balance, where characters with powerful and flexible air games, as well as those who can camp with projectiles, have a disproportional advantage |
| Big Blue (Melee) | Tier 4 | Random terrain; scrolling stage; ground too close to the cars; gives a disproportional advantage to faster moving characters; stage moves too fast for usual gameplay; too much emphasis on platforming |
| Bridge of Eldin | Tier 4 | High potential for camping/stalling; walk off blast lines; overly powerful stage hazard in the bomb thrown by King Bulbin; bottom blast line is not always available; abnormally high ceiling and walk-offs give a disproportional advantage to horizontal finishers. Note that the stage has seen legal usage in Japanese doubles tournaments however. |
| Brinstar | Tier 2 | Irregular stage design; acid disrupts gameplay; main platform allows sharking, poor matchup balance, where air based characters gain a significant advantage, most notoriously Meta Knight. Meta Knight's advantage on the stage is so large that it's universally banned nowadays in Meta Knight legal tournaments, but it may see legality in Meta Knight banned tournaments. |
| Castle Siege | Tier 1 | Second stage transformation and the transition between stage transformations have walk offs; second stage transformation has no access to a bottom blast line and thus does not allow offstage gameplay; second transformation is very large and allows ease of platform camping. |
| Corneria (Melee) | Tier 4 | Close blast lines and an abnormally low ceiling, which gives a disproportional advantage to vertical finishers; excessive camping/stalling behind the big fin; fin allows for wall infinites |
| Delfino Plaza | Tier 1 | Several stage transformations have walls and/or walk offs; primary section of the stage on the hovering platform allows sharking. Meta Knight legal tournaments that don't intend to be as limited as the Japanese ruleset may ban the stage, solely due to Meta Knight's prowess on the stage. |
| Distant Planet | Tier 3 | Walk off blast line; an instant KO stage hazard in the Red Bulborb, which can drag players off screen; unreasonably powerful camping position at the bottom of the ramp underneath the platform; stage design allows the potential for circle camping |
| Flat Zone 2 | Tier 4 | Randomness of the stage; overly small; numerous damaging and powerful stage hazards; no bottom blast line; walk off blast lines |
| Frigate Orpheon | Tier 1 | The stage flipping between its two transformations is susceptible to causing what is commonly seen as unwarranted self destructs; the first stage transformation has no grabbable ledge on the right side of the stage, giving a disproportional disadvantage to characters with tether recoveries and other characters who heavily rely on the ledge to recover. Meta Knight legal tournaments that don't intend to be as limited as the Japanese ruleset may ban the stage solely due to Meta Knight's prowess on the stage. |
| Green Greens | Tier 3 | Over-centralises gameplay on camping; randomly appearing bomb blocks disrupt normal gameplay; blocks allow for wall infinites |
| Green Hill Zone | Tier 4 | Excessive camping near checkpoint hazard; walk off blast lines; bottom blast line is not always available; horizontal blast lines that are close with walk-offs and a high ceiling give a disproportional advantage to horizontal finishers |
| Halberd | Tier 1 | Stage has a rather low ceiling, giving a disproportional advantage to vertical finishers; the hovering platform portion of the stage allows sharking; the Halberd Bridge portion of the stage has powerful stage hazards. Meta Knight legal tournaments that don't intend to be as limited as the Japanese ruleset may ban the stage solely due to Meta Knight's prowess on the stage. |
| Hanenbow | Tier 4 | Stage is overly large; irregular stage design forces major gameplay changes; high camping/stalling potential |
| Jungle Japes | Tier 3 | Overly powerful stage hazard in Klap Trap; unusually high ceiling gives a disproportional advantage to horizontal finishers; high potential for camping and stalling; very poor matchup balance, giving a disproportional advantage to characters with projectiles and those that can traverse the stage well (most notoriously Falco, to where the stage is seen as an autowin for Falco in most matchups). |
| Luigi's Mansion | Tier 3 | Impassable platforms create caves of life; stage design allows the potential for circle camping |
| Mario Bros. | Tier 4 | Gameplay is vastly altered by stage enemies; overly powerful stage hazards; impassable platforms create caves of life; walk off blast lines; no lower blast line |
| Mario Circuit | Tier 4 | High potential for camping/stalling; walk off blast lines; frequent stage hazard in karts that often disrupt gameplay; no lower blast line |
| Mushroomy Kingdom (1-1 and 1-2) | Tier 4 | Scrolling stage; stage moves too fast for usual gameplay; bricks create caves of life, especially in 1-2; ledges are not grabbable; walk-off blast lines |
| New Pork City | Tier 4 | Stage is overly large; walls allow for wall infinites; excessive stalling/camping potential; camera has zooming problems; OHKO stage hazard in the Ultimate Chimera; stage is abnormally difficult to traverse, disrupting gameplay |
| Norfair | Tier 3 | Overly powerful, frequent stage hazards that disrupt usual gameplay; stage has many, unnecessary ledges that can be easily abused. |
| Onett (Melee) | Tier 3 | Irregular stage design; frequent stage hazard in cars disrupt gameplay; walls allow infinites; walk off blast lines; no lower blast line |
| Pictochat | Tier 3 | The order in which the drawings appear on the stage is random, and the time to prepare for each drawing is minimal; some drawings can cause a player to be KO'd or fail a recovery against their control (such as the Eyes drawing preventing a recovering character from grabbing the left ledge, or the Gusty Gus drawing appearing and stage spiking a character after they been knocked back); some drawings create walls, allowing wall infinites; some drawings promote camping; overly powerful stage hazards; numerous glitches can occur on the stage, such as the Earthquake glitch and the Spin glitch |
| Pirate Ship | Tier 3 | High potential for stalling in the water or under the ship's rudder; overly powerful stage hazards |
| Pokémon Stadium 2 | Tier 2 | Stage transformations can cause what many players see as large, disruptive gameplay changes; wind transformation reduces gravity; ice transformation has slippery terrain; electric transformation has large, fast moving conveyor belts that disrupt usual gameplay; all transformations but ice have powerful camping positions and high potential for stalling. One of most heavily debated stages, as many players have vouched for the stage and argue its transformations to not be as disruptive as commonly claimed, or in some cases its transformations to even be beneficial to gameplay. Many other players however, adamantly refuse to touch the stage regardless, and thus it remains commonly banned. |
| Port Town Aero Dive | Tier 3 | Randomness of the stage; overly powerful stage hazards in the cars (which can KO under 50%); cars can be difficult to see coming due to the colors and their speed; main platform has no grabbable ledges |
| Rainbow Cruise | Tier 2 | Scrolling stage; some portions of the stage have no grabbable ledges; some portions of the stage have walls, allowing wall infinites or walk-off blast lines, creating an over-centralisation on horizontal KO moves; poor matchup balance, where air based characters have a significant advantage, most notoriously Meta Knight. Meta Knight's advantage on the stage is so large that it's universally banned nowadays in Meta Knight legal tournaments, but it may see legality in Meta Knight banned tournaments. |
| Rumble Falls | Tier 4 | Scrolling stage; gives a disproportional advantage to characters with fast, high jumps; punishes characters who rely on tether recoveries; first spike is an OHKO stage hazard if not teched; irregular stage design forces major gameplay changes, given an emphasis on keeping up with the stage instead of fighting |
| Sample Stages | Tier 4 | As the community at large has universally agreed to ban the Sample Stages from day one, no attempt at providing a reason to do so has ever been provided by ruleset-makers, and the existence of the stages is in fact completely ignored by all rulesets. Despite this it is still trivial to reason for the stages' banning: Hole has no edges that can be grabbed from the outside and contains a stalling location in the lower-left spikes, Bath blocks all but vertical KOs and allows for wall infinites, and Maze's irregular design makes it easy to stall, circle camp and survive by teching much like Temple. |
| Shadow Moses Island | Tier 4 | No lower blast line; walls block access to side blast lines when not destroyed; over-centralisation on teching; game mechanics change too quickly when walls are destroyed or up, giving a disproportional advantage to vertical finishers when the walls up, and giving that advantage to horizontal finishers when they're down; walls allow for wall infinites; walk off blast lines when the walls are destroyed; a glitch can allow characters to stay on the other side of the walls when they rebuild, allowing the character to safely camp there until the wall is destroyed again |
| Skyworld | Tier 4 | Impassable platforms; cave of life in centre of stage creates an over-centralisation on teching; the combination of "supersoft platforms" and the aforementioned impassable platforms results in frequent onstage stage spikes, that cause frequent low damage KOs on the stage from what should be a neutral position; potential slowdown in doubles |
| Spear Pillar | Tier 4 | Randomness of Pokémon attacks; overly powerful stage hazards caused by Pokémon; Pokémon can cause disruptive changes in gameplay, such as slowing down time, reducing gravity, and reversing control; stage design allows the potential for circle camping; lower area of the stage provides a large cave of life |
| Summit | Tier 4 | Terrain is slippery; lower gravity occurs at one point of the stage; instant KO stage hazard of the fish, which quickly drags characters beneath the lower blast line with no hope of survival; ledges are not grabbable, giving a disproportional disadvantage to characters who rely on ledges to recover, especially those with tether recoveries; lower area provides a cave of life; stage design allows the potential for circle camping |
| Temple (Melee) | Tier 4 | Overly large; large cave of life in lower area over-centralises gameplay on teching; multiple areas allow for run away and circle camping; excessive stalling potential; gives an extreme advantage to fast characters (most notably Fox) |
| WarioWare, Inc. | Tier 4 | Random bonuses from Microgames have an over-centralising effect, to where someone can win being luckier with the bonuses; walk off blast lines during microgames; overly powerful stage hazards during microgames |
| Yoshi's Island (Melee) | Tier 3 | Rotating block platforms create caves of life; walk off blast lines; marginalizes offstage skills; blast lines are abnormally close to the stage |
