Giga Bowser


 * Not to be confused with Giant Bowser.

Giga Bowser (, Giga Koopa) is a gargantuan, powered-up version of Bowser. He first appeared as the hidden final boss in Super Smash Bros. Melee's Adventure Mode and as one of the final opponents the player must face in Event Mode. He eventually made his semi-playable debut in Super Smash Bros. Brawl as Bowser's Final Smash. While the character he is based on, Bowser, is from the universe, Giga Bowser is considered a part of the  universe, due to having debuted in the Super Smash Bros. series.

In Adventure Mode
In Melee, Giga Bowser appears as a hidden final boss. To encounter him, the player must reach the final stage of Adventure Mode on Normal difficulty or higher and defeat him within 18 minutes. If done correctly, a new cutscene will be shown after Giant Bowser is defeated - his KO'd trophy will return to the stage and be struck by lightning, causing it to come back to life as Giga Bowser. Defeating Giga Bowser leads to the completion of the Adventure Mode; defeating him without using a continue rewards the player with his trophy.

In Event 51: The Showdown
Giga Bowser also appears in Melee's final Event Match, alongside and. The match is similar to his appearance in the Adventure Mode, but with the presence of two teammates. Clearing the Event Match allows the player to use Final Destination as a Versus stage, as well as rewarding Final Destination's trophy; as an added bonus, clearing the match without losing a stock rewards the player with an exclusive Notice.

Unlike most other bosses, Giga Bowser has a damage percentage as opposed to HP (in both of his appearances) and takes knockback; the player must KO him by knocking him offstage as opposed to merely attacking him.

As a playable character

 * Main article: Giga Bowser (SSBM)

If the game is hacked through the use of the, it is possible to use Giga Bowser as a character. Giga Bowser is mostly functional, and his name is even displayed on the Jumbotron in Pokémon Stadium (as "G-Bowser"). Internally, Giga Bowser is known as GKOOPS. He posseses 20 units of knockback-based armor.

Due to a lack of victory poses to display for him on the results screen, the game will usually crash if Giga Bowser wins a match, due to a panic event being called.

When the game is played on the Dolphin emulator and panic events are deliberately suppressed, when Giga Bowser wins a match, the game will not freeze, and the results screen will appear. The game, however, will display 's name in red, and Giga Bowser's stock icon will be a Target. The announcer, however, will properly say Giga Bowser's name.

As a Final Smash
Giga Bowser makes his debut as a semi-playable character in the Smash series as part of 's Final Smash. When the Final Smash is activated, Bowser transforms into Giga Bowser, allowing players to take advantage of his increased power and range, as well as different hitbox properties. While Giga Bowser does not flinch during this transformation, the transformation only lasts ten seconds.

Outside of this appearance, as well as his related trophy, Giga Bowser does not make any other appearances in Brawl, and SSB4.

As a Final Smash
In Ultimate, due to full-moveset transformation Final Smashes being removed, Giga Bowser forgoes having a full moveset, instead acting akin to the Dragoon, where he teleports to the background and allows the player to aim a punch. The punch deals 40% damage, and causes an instant Screen KO for opponent(s) at 60% damage or greater.

As a boss
Giga Bowser appears as a boss in for,  and. For the first two, initially appears instead of a boss on the final stage; once he is KO'd, a cutscene plays where he transforms into Giga Bowser, similarly to the final stage of Melee's Adventure Mode at high difficulties. A Maxim Tomato appears for recovery as the battle begins. This does not happen in Sephiroth's route, as he fights Giga Bowser straight away, and in the second to last round. Unlike Melee, Giga Bowser almost never flinches from attacks, and the player must deplete his HP to defeat him, as opposed to being launched off the screen, just like every other boss. Despite this, he can still be KO'd by the blast zone if he accidentally leaves the stage; though rare, this can happen due to improper use of Flying Slam or Bowser Bomb. Following Smash 4, he utilizes Bowser's moveset from Brawl. Additionally, he moves slower as his attacks now have much more startup lag.

In World of Light, Giga Bowser is first fought in the Molten Fortress sub-area of the Light Realm map, and then fought again during the Final Battle like every other boss. The player faces him on the stage, while the  theme is playing. Unlike other boss battles, defeating him will release the regular Bowser as a playable character from Galeem's control, instead of both appearing separately on the map (as is the case with and Ganon). He's fought for a second time during the true final battle with Galeem and Dharkon. During the battle's second phase, Giga Bowser is the second Light Realm boss to appear on screen, which might indicate him being the second boss in the game.

While difficult, because his armor is no longer unlimited and instead has a threshold of 95 knockback units, it is possible to make Giga Bowser flinch or even launch. 's Limit Break and 's Hatchet Man are a couple moves that can launch him, as well as countering many of his single-hit attacks (some slow or multi-hit counters like 's, 's, and 's are unable launch Giga Bowser); 's Blade Counter will cause Giga Bowser to flinch and cancel his attack, even if the retaliating hit doesn't launch him. Since his attacks do less damage on lower difficulties, the player will need to use stronger counters (e.g. 's Tetrakarn) or to counter his stronger attacks like forward smash. This allows the player to see his knockback animations, double jump, aerial up special, and ledge options. 's Fire Hydrant and (to a lesser extent) 's blocks cause Giga Bowser's AI to act strangely, such as jumping after Flying Slam or performing a dash turnaround and landing Flying Slam off-center or potentially Bowserciding. If Giga Bowser is hacked to have a regular increasing damage percentage (see below), standard attacks at high damage can also break the knockback threshold.

All move names are sourced from the Japanese Dairantō Smash Brothers SPECIAL Official Guide. As there are no official English localized listings for the non-special moves, many of the names used here reflect the Japanese names for certain subjects.

As a playable character

 * ''Main article: Giga Bowser (SSBU)

Much like in Melee, Giga Bowser can only be played as through hacking or modding the game. However, his moveset is significantly restricted, including the removal of dashing, dash attack, down tilt, neutral aerial, and down aerial. Despite these changes, Giga Bowser retains much of his primeval moveset from Brawl, such as the Melee back aerial, making him an imposing character to defeat regardless.

Differences between Bowser and Giga Bowser
Undoubtedly the most dramatic transformation between Bowser and Giga Bowser is the clear difference between their sizes; Giga Bowser is almost twice as large as Bowser, and even if Bowser is under the influence of a Super Mushroom, Giga Bowser is still slightly larger than him. Visually, Giga Bowser has more pronounced physical features than the normal Bowser; aside from the aforementioned size, Giga Bowser has longer and less-bulky limbs with more toned muscular regions, sharper fangs, claws and shell spikes, a less rounded snout, larger horns, spikier hair, a more realistic shell, larger feet, bloodshot eyes, and a darker overall skin tone.

As Giga Bowser's larger frame implies, he is considerably heavier than Bowser; when fought in Adventure Mode, he is also given knockback-based armor to make him even more difficult to KO; a subtractive threshold of 20 KB in Melee, and a non-subtractive threshold of 95 KB in Ultimate. Adding to this, Giga Bowser also takes minimal hitstun from attacks, making him effectively unable to flinch from some attacks due to making them unsafe on hit. Just like Master Hand and Crazy Hand, Giga Bowser cannot be grabbed, inhaled by, or egg laid by , severely limiting combo options outside of those started from attacks. In order to compensate for Bowser's ordinary sub-par recovery, Giga Bowser's Whirling Fortress grants significantly more height, and it also has 26 invincibility frames; its large hitboxes also give multiple pseudo-invincibility frames after this, making it a very safe move and arguably one of the safest in the series. It is faster than his Frame 7 Jab, sitting at Frame 5, making it one of the best out of shield options in the game, on top of his already formidable shield game padded by the grab immunity. If Giga Bowser captures an opponent with Koopa Klaw, he can bite his opponent, but the pummel will whiff on, and if mashed too fast. It can also whiff on the first hit with a few specific characters, although these circumstances can be rare. In addition to this error, Giga Bowser's fastfalling speed is identical to his ordinary falling speed, making landing difficult.

As a transformation of Bowser, Giga Bowser's moveset is identical to his and he usually has passive super armor. His attributes, however, are significantly altered. His attacks are considerably stronger in power and knockback. Some of Giga Bowser's attacks also have different properties as a result of his transformation; Fire Breath, for instance, does not run out or become weaker the longer it is used, as well as having a longer range (in Ultimate, it can carpet the entire surface of Final Destination; however, unlike his past appearances, his fire runs out after a period of time.). In addition, many of Giga Bowser's attacks are given unusual hitbox properties: his claw-based attacks (side tilt, up tilt, down tilt, edge attacks, forward aerial, forward throw, and back throw) all have a darkness hitbox; his shell-based attacks (his up smash, neutral aerial, back aerial, down aerial, and up throw) all have electric hitboxes; his horn-based attacks (his forward smash and pummel) have explosion effects; and his down smash has freezing properties, as does Whirling Fortress when used on the ground.

Trivia

 * In Melee there exists an unused sound clip where the Announcer says Giga Bowser's name. This clip can only normally be heard in the Sound Test.
 * As expected, due to Giga Bowser's different names in English and Japanese, there exist two different sound bites, one where the announcer says "Giga Bowser!" and the other "Giga Koopa!". In the NTSC version, the two clips are oddly swapped in the Sound Test; the announcer says "Giga Koopa!" when the game language is set to English and "Giga Bowser!" when the game language is set to Japanese. The PAL version only has the "Giga Bowser!" clip, as expected. Both are used properly if Giga Bowser is hacked to be available on the character select screen, or if he wins a match without the game crashing.
 * The size difference between Bowser and Giga Bowser is approximately equal to one usage of a Super Mushroom or Poison Mushroom, with Giga Bowser being slightly larger when he is shrunk or Bowser is enlarged. Despite this, the two characters' weights do not share the same ratio as the code for changing characters' sizes does, so Giga Bowser will actually be lighter than Bowser in both cases.
 * Giga Bowser was at one point under consideration to be a transformation of Bowser in the Skylanders game . However, he was replaced by the Skylanders-original Molten Bowser.
 * Giga Bowser in Melee, as well as Super Smash Bros.'s Metal Mario and Giant Donkey Kong, are the only boss characters in the Super Smash Bros. series to have their own character data and still use the standard percentage-based damage meter as opposed to a health bar.
 * Every other boss in Melee to use the standard percentage meter (and every boss that does this from Brawl onward aside from the final form of Master Core) is simply a regular character with a modifier attached, while the aforementioned three bosses are actually coded as separate characters.
 * Giga Bowser's design closely resembles that of Ganon's in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, due to them being hulking, monstrous-looking bipedal creatures that sport a mostly green coloration, and similar horns, hair, and tails. The resemblance between the two is best seen in Ultimate, due to Ganondorf reverting back to his Ocarina of Time design, last seen in Melee, in this game.
 * Giga Bowser was created due to Masahiro Sakurai's interpretation of Bowser's 8-bit sprites as a "frenzied, terrifying monster", compared to his modern appearance, which he described as "steadily becoming cuter". Regarding Giga Bowser's appearance in Melee, Sakurai noted that he is a separate character from normal Bowser (hence the usage of his black alternate costume in Adventure Mode), though this is not the case in later installments.
 * In Ultimate, although Giga Bowser cannot be normally brought to the blast line, he can still self-destruct by using Bowser Bomb toward the edge.
 * Giga Bowser can still come in contact with and obtain a Smash Ball. However, he does not have a programmed Final Smash of his own, as he is not intended to use one (hence his boss battle's lack of Smash Balls). Once used, it will appear as if Bowser is transforming into Giga Bowser, but will then immediately shrink as if reverting back to his regular form, with a green flash accompanying him. However, this Final Smash has no effect whatsoever apart from the green flashes remaining onto Giga Bowser until he is KOed, while he is otherwise unaffected. If Giga Bowser uses another Smash Ball afterwards, another layer of green flashes will appear on him and so on.
 * If Giga Bowser is in a trapping Final Smash, such as Kirby's Ultra Sword, there a few moments where the player can see Giga Bowser revert to a T-pose position, likely because of the lack of animations for Giga Bowser being hit by the attack. Once the Final Smash ends, Giga Bowser will keep spinning in the air, and will stay that way until Training Mode is closed and reopened, or a is used on him.
 * Similarly, if Giga Bowser is hacked as a playable character and then wins a battle in Ultimate, he appears in his T-pose due to lacking victory animations.
 * Despite making his debut in Melee, none of the fighters that debuted in the same game fight him as their final boss.
 * As of patch 10.0.0, Giga Bowser is the least common boss for Ultimate's Classic Mode, being fought by 3 characters.
 * is the only Mario character to face Giga Bowser as his final boss.
 * is the only character who does not face Bowser before his transformation as Giga Bowser.
 * Giga Bowser is the only boss in Ultimate:
 * That can be launched, albeit only under exceptional circumstances
 * That can be KO'd by passing a blast line
 * That can self-destruct