Giga Bowser (SSBU)

Giga Bowser, is an unplayable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate and only playable via hacking. Unlike previous appearances in the franchise, he is unvoiced.

When playable, Giga Bowser is extremely sluggish, with slow moves all-around that have very large hitboxes. Despite their hitboxes, because many of them take a second to come out, they are very easy for characters like or  to avoid. Where the matchup shifts, however, is in Giga Bowser's durability: He has an eye-watering 95 units of knockback-based armor that make him almost impossible to launch, with his weight and other statistics further holding him down. In general, the only way to launch Giga Bowser prior to around 250% is with counterattacks and extremely strong moves like Aymr. This results in very linear matchups where the player avoids much of Giga Bowser's sluggish attacks and slowly chips away at him until he can finally be KOed; alternatively, attempts can be made to circle camp him.

In the event of winning in VS Mode, Giga Bowser will be seen with a t-pose. When losing, only his tail can be seen. While it is possible to use Giga Bowser in online play, it frequently results in bans, regardless of whether it's in Battle Arenas or on Quickplay.

Attributes
Giga Bowser is an extremely heavy fighter with 95 units of passive, knockback-based armor, and cannot be grabbed. This makes him impossible to combo until his armor "breaks", wherein he can be launched and sent into tumble like a normal character. His running is fairly slow and difficult to turn around, but he has a much better initial dash reminiscent of a dashwalk, so it's reasonable to use this instead.

Fire Breath is one of Giga Bowser's claims to fame, dealing around 70%, being decently fast, breezing through shields, and taking much longer to run out. This largely makes up for Giga Bowser's issues landing consistent hits by virtue of his high startup lag, and gives him some defensive play given how much of the stage it covers. In fact, with its speed and often going frame-neutral once finished, it largely replaces his forward aerial in usage. Thus, Giga Bowser can form a game plan around catching landings with Fire Breath. This, combined with his numerous huge attacks, such as forward smash, down smash, up tilt, and Whirling Fortress, he can cover significant portions of the stage and deal huge amounts of damage. With this range and power at his disposal, while he is slow, it isn't possible to just whale on Giga Bowser until he can be launched; he does have to be interacted with.

However, Giga Bowser is extremely reliant on his knockback-based armor to achieve his game plan, which consists of counterhitting most attacks with his own, much stronger ones. This is, by proxy, his only means of projectile defence, as his slow aerials mean he cannot stop them reactively like can. Ergo, Giga Bowser ends up with somewhat linear matchups where players have to gradually chip at his percentage until he is capable of being launched, which are made worse if there are any projectiles at play, such as Autoreticle or Charge Shot. This is made worse by Giga Bowser's endlag, which makes it nearly impossible to land any combos, and worse, makes him easy to whiff punish. Giga Bowser's attacks all last well over a second, and if he misses, it usually results in an easy 40% through repeated smash attacks from the opponent. If the opposing character has a strong special move, such as Warlock Punch, it's usually free to land it, and these can launch Giga Bowser early. This makes reactive play for Giga Bowser very difficult, instead having to watch the opponent and make educated guesses about the space they will occupy instead, catching their movement through understanding their jump arcs.

Once Giga Bowser's armor "breaks", he is launched at jarringly fast speeds, due to the sudden amount of knockback suddenly being allowed through; additionally, due to his weight and gravity, the launch angles are often brutal, especially from Sakurai angle attacks. This makes it easy to take a stock in tandem with his pitiful recovery, as he relies on Whirling Fortress to get anywhere, and it doesn't have as much lift compared to 's. Ergo, once Giga Bowser is launchable, he is most likely not coming back from it.

Changes from SSB4 to Ultimate
Giga Bowser is among the most-nerfed characters in Smash history from Smash 4 to Ultimate, due to his purpose shifting from a Final Smash to a boss. Every move is made extremely slow, he lost the ability to shield, his armor was made limited, and more. The sole compensation is a slight increase in damage on some moves, but even there, some have had it reduced.

Moveset
For a gallery of Giga Bowser's hitboxes, see here.
 * Giga Bowser has 95 units of passive, knockback-based armor. It largely works like Tough Guy, but with a much higher threshold, its effects seen in-game are drastically different.
 * Giga Bowser can crawl, but cannot run.
 * Unlike regular fighters, Giga Bowser lacks a dash attack, down tilt, neutral aerial, down aerial, and cannot grab or shield. However, he can use an air dodge, spot dodge, and roll.
 * All move names are sourced from the Japanese Dairantō Smash Brothers SPECIAL Official Guide. As there are no official English localized listings for the moves, many of the names used here reflect the Japanese names for certain subjects.

In competitive play
Being a character only playable through hacking, Giga Bowser has been banned from competitive play since Ultimate's release, much like his Melee appearance. He has seen sporadic experimentation, mainly in early periods of the game where he was playable online in Battle Arenas, chiefly by a player named. However, this wasn't done seriously and did not come with any talks of an unban. Thus, despite being possible to use online and not difficult to mod into the Character select screen, Giga Bowser has remained banned in all documented online tournaments, in part due to the potential for console bans if used online. Consequently, Giga Bowser gameplay has largely been relegated to experimental YouTube and Twitch content. Outside of online play, due to Giga Bowser's extremely polarising set of traits, requiring a rather elaborate, uninspiring, linear game plan to defeat him, in addition to the logistics of running a tournament with Giga Bowser modded into every Nintendo Switch console, there has been little discussion on unbanning him. With the Nintendo Community Tournament Guidelines disallowing modded setups for Ultimate, this status quo is unlikely to change.

In Classic Mode
Giga Bowser is fought during, , and 's routes. In the former two cases, his appearance mimics his Melee appearance, first appearing as before transforming after being defeated. In Sephiroth's case, he is part of a boss rush.

In the World of Light
In the World of Light, Giga Bowser is first found in the Molten Fortress in the Light Realm, seemingly intended to be the second boss in the game, given his appearance in the final battle. He is fought on Final Destination, and once defeated, the player unlocks. In the final battle, Giga Bowser is fought as part of a boss rush as Galeem and Dharkon battle in the background.

Trivia

 * Giga Bowser's move scripts frequently make calls for Final Smash variables, implying that the reason for Giga Bowser's character slot is that he was intended to act like his Brawl and Smash 4 appearances until late into development. This is further implied by his Final Smash being an unfinished version of Bowser's Final Smash from Smash 4, even featuring a slightly different version of the green flash featured in the previous game.
 * Giga Bowser's forward tilt has unused data implying it was meant to be angle-able like in previous games, but animations were either never made or scrubbed.
 * While Giga Bowser doesn't have a neutral aerial or down aerial, they do have landing lag values; 54 and 95 frames, respectively.