Smash Ball

Destroy it and unleash a Final Smash with B. The Smash Ball is a mysterious sphere that floats around the stage. It will break once it takes enough damage. The player who delivers the last hit will be able to use a powerful move called a Final Smash, but only once. The Smash Ball (, Smash Ball) is an item in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. 4, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It allows the user to activate a powerful Final Smash attack when it breaks. It appears in Training Mode, certain Events, standard and Special Smash. It does not appear in The Subspace Emissary, and other certain single player modes.

Overview
When a Smash Ball appears, the screen blinks and the crowd gasps, at which point the Smash Ball will begin to roam around the stage freely. To use the Smash Ball, one must first break it by attacking it; any assistants such as Poké Ball Pokémon and Assist Trophies can help break the Smash Ball for the character who summoned them. A 'fresh' Smash Ball can take around 43% damage. When a player successfully breaks one, the screen darkens, and the player whose attack broke the Smash Ball goes into 'standby mode', in which the character's eyes turn yellow and their body begins to glow a rainbow color. In SSB4 and Ultimate, an additional aesthetic occurs where the entire screen fades into a deep grey color and causes everything to look dark except the player with the Final Smash, who glows with the Smash Ball's colors. The Final Smash can then be unleashed at any time by pressing the input for a neutral special move. Players can attack a fighter in standby mode to make them "drop" the Smash Ball, at which point it will begin roaming the stage again. After using a Final Smash, the character is no longer in standby mode and must break another Smash Ball to use a Final Smash again. When the attack ends, the terrain will also go back to its standard colors.

If no one breaks the Smash Ball after a long enough period of time, it flies away and is lost until another spawns in. However, the longer it is flying around, the easier it is to break. It can also be lost if broken by something not attributed to a fighter, including stage hazards (for example, Norfair's lava) and certain items (such as the later parts of a Smart Bomb explosion). Smash Balls are also affected by glancing blows; the Smash Ball will not take damage but will be pushed away. While a character is in standby mode, no Smash Balls will appear until the Final Smash is used (or the Smash Ball is dropped), meaning that only one Final Smash can be used at a time.

The apparent physics of the Smash Ball tends to vary. While it will often bounce off of walls and hard platforms, it will occasionally pass through them. The amount of knockback it takes also varies; sometimes, it will take an attack without even changing its trajectory, and other times an attack will send it halfway across a stage or even outside of the visible boundaries. Like with characters, the camera will be pulled out so the Smash Ball stays visible, so a Smash Ball sent off the screen can pull the camera away from the characters. Smash Balls do not vanish by being forced off the stage; however, it may take a while before it roams back to the stage, and it may wander across the boundary for an extended period of time without returning to the stage and then vanish.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, in addition to the above, there is a 50% chance that a Smash Ball will spawn with physics akin to the Soccer Ball: it will lie flat on the ground unless on a slope, where it will roll down. In this state, if it is not broken in time, the Smash Ball will, instead of floating away from the stage, vanish as a normal item would. If it falls off the stage into the bottom blast zone, it will respawn on the stage. Smash Balls, in general, are a lot more durable than their appearances in the past two games.

In matches with a Final Smash Meter, Smash Balls can still appear if they are switched on. Breaking one under these circumstances will instantly fill a fighter's meter. However, there is a downside: the Smash Ball can still be knocked out of the player by opponents, and if this happens the meter will empty completely, rather than returning to its previous charge.

Appearance
The Smash Ball takes the form of a floating Super Smash Bros. logo that cycles through different colors of the rainbow and is surrounded by an aura of colorful light. In Super Smash Bros. 4, the Smash Ball also leaves a trail of color behind it, and the aura of light is much more intense.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl
This item is also available as a trophy, with random availability. It is a fairly common trophy to collect.

Spirit
The Smash Ball also appears as an Ace-class support spirit. It can first be obtained by completing all challenges on the Spirits board.

The Spirit Battle for Smash Ball uses the, , and puppet fighters wearing SSBU T-Shirts and is fought on the  stage's Battlefield form. During the battle, the player's fighter must survive until the time runs out while all fighters will occasionally receive a Sudden Final Smash.

Trivia

 * When is using its deflating (down) taunt when it has the Smash Ball, a glowing ball of energy will appear. This is the Smash Ball's form inside the character that broke it.
 * This can also be slightly seen in 's up taunt.
 * In the Iwata Asks interview for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Masahiro Sakurai stated that he had intended to add Final Smashes since the first game in the series; in the debug menu of the first game, unused sound bites of characters can be found that were likely meant for these attacks, such as Ness shouting PK Starstorm.
 * In the Smash Bros. DOJO!!, the Smash Ball does not appear as an item, instead, it is as a "how-to-play" tutorial segment. However, the Smash Ball is included within the Item Encyclopedia sub-section.
 * If all three Dragoon or Daybreak parts are in play, a Smash Ball will not appear until the Dragoon has been summoned or the Daybreak has been created. If a Smash Ball is in play, a third part will also not appear (one or two parts may appear, but a third part will not). This is to prevent the Dragoon or Daybreak and a Final Smash from appearing on the screen at the same time (doing so could cause a Dragoon and 's Grenade Launcher to have targeting sights on the screen at the same time). The same applies to Mr. Resetti.
 * Similarly, in Training Mode, if a Dragoon or Daybreak part is spawned while a Smash Ball is on the field, the Smash Ball will disappear. If a Smash Ball is spawned, any Dragoon or Daybreak parts on the field that are not currently being held will disappear.
 * Some Final Smashes take longer to load from the disc than others. If a character's Final Smash is not yet loaded and the player tries to activate it, they will instead perform their neutral special move as usual.
 * On, as it moves about, the Smash Ball can "hit" the yellow blocks and cause them to spin just as a jump from below or an attack would.
 * The Smash Ball, along with the Poké Ball, cannot be swallowed or eaten by Munchlax.
 * In a Stamina Match, if a character is defeated in standby mode, the rainbow effect stays on the body and the screen remains dark until the body is knocked off of the stage.
 * This was changed in Ultimate so that characters are instantly KO'd when they run out of HP.
 * In SSB4s and Ultimates Training mode, the Smash Ball is much weaker, taking around one hit before breaking. In Brawl, it acts as it would normally in a match.
 * In SSB4, the Smash Ball's lines are pure black both in-game for SSB3DS and SSB Wii U and on SSB3DSs trophy, but are rainbow on SSB Wii Us trophy.
 * If a Smash Taunt is happening, and a Pokémon, Assist Trophy, foe, or stage effect destroys the Smash Ball, the Smash Taunt will stop automatically.
 * In Smash 4, can latch onto a Smash Ball.
 * When viewing its trophy in the gallery or camera mode, the cross will never move; only the color and trophy base can be rotated.