Alternate costume (SSBM)

Super Smash Bros. Melee added additional alternate costume options to characters by using the X and Y buttons to cycle through the available list instead of using four C buttons to pick a specific color; this removes the limit as to how many are selectable, so there are no longer any costumes exclusive to Team Battles or computer opponents. As a result, many characters now have five different color schemes, with some having as many as six, though some still only have four, leading to a total of 123 alternate costumes in the game.

When selecting characters in, instead of displaying the character's colored image of the chosen costume, the character's name is given a tint and a colored bar is displayed in the player list. This color is usually an intuitive indicator of which costume has been chosen (with no color denoting default), but there are some that are slightly unusual (such as Luigi and Peach's white costumes that are denoted by a grey).

In Team Battle, if members of the same team use the same character, the second player would have a lighter tint applied to their character. A third player uses a darker tint. If a fourth player is forcibly added to a team with the Name Entry glitch, then the fourth character will be completely black; the game's data suggests that a fifth player, if possible, would be completely grey. A sixth player would be completely pink. A seventh player and afterward, would crash the game, additionally it is not possible to view the completely pink character unless additional Action Replay codes are used.

Strangely enough, alternate costumes can affect gameplay, such as Captain Falcon's model changing sizes depending on the costume.

Trivia

 * Betas for the game indicate that the back of Captain Falcon's Blood Falcon-inspired costume was originally going to read "Hell Hawk", the Japanese name of Blood Falcon's F-Zero machine.