Metal Mario (SSB)

Metal Mario (, Metal Mario) is an unplayable character in Super Smash Bros. and is only playable via hacking. He is a clone of, keeping all of his moves and animations, though differing significantly in physics and having a unique appearance. Unlike Mario and, he is unvoiced.

When playable, Metal Mario's 1P Game handicap is removed, making his knockback the same as Mario's and reducing his knockback-based armor. While he retains some knockback-based armor, his weight is the same, making him effectively a much slower version of the original. While he doesn't flinch against 's Blaster and doesn't flinch against weaker attacks at low percentages, his unusual physics make him worse in almost all areas. His 8-frame jumpsquat makes any aerial usage a much higher commitment compared to any character in the game, making him easily anti-aired and worse at doing so himself. Due to extremely high fall speed on top of this, Metal Mario's recovery is abysmal, made even worse by his Mario Tornado gaining him no height. As a result of these attributes, Metal Mario is considered to be a much more nerfed version of, and is arguably one of the worst characters in the game.

He can be played as with the Gameshark code 800A4B3B 000D or via accessing debug mode. If Metal Mario wins a game in VS Mode, without additional modifications, the game will crash, due to him lacking a victory animation.

Attributes
Metal Mario is one of the only full clones in Smash 64, the only other being. Much like Luigi, many of his pros and cons are similar to 's, but the changes made to him compared to Luigi are overall worse. Metal Mario is distinguished by his knockback-based armor making him resist weak attacks at lower percentages, making it possible for him to immediately counterattack and start a combo. His survivability on-stage is overall improved. His grounded movement features a slower initial dash speed and max running speed, but better braking force; this gives him some of the highest traction in the game, making his dash dances cover less range and overall making for a clunkier experience. His aerial movement is hampered by an 8-frame jumpsquat - the worst in the game - on top of an unusually low jump height, which makes tacking jump-ins difficult while making it harder to amount an aerial offensive himself. Additionally, he has double the fall speed acceleration compared to Mario which, while helpful for vertical survivability, makes recovery extremely difficult. Compared to Mario and Luigi, Metal Mario's recovery, while conceptually good, fails in practice. His Super Jump Punch travels far, but his fall speed means that he falls like a brick almost immediately, making it less effective than one would expect. His Mario Tornado equivalent also suffers in similar fashion, gaining almost no height when mashing, often leading to an SD rather than helping.

Metal Mario, despite his air mobility, is still capable of performing similar combos to Mario, still possessing his powerful up and down aerials. Thus, Metal Mario can still rack up damage quickly, land deadly platform combo extensions, efficiently break shields, and meteor smash (albeit with more risk). However, with a low short hop, his down aerial will generally deal a bit less damage than Mario's, on account of having less airtime to get all the hits in. His forward and back throws are powerful KO options as well, which coupled with his shield break potential, makes doing so against him risky. Off-stage, Metal Mario is conceptually good on account of having Mario's attacks, but his fall speed makes doing so extremely risky. His forward aerial sends at almost horizontal angles, his down aerial can meteor smash with incredible consistency, and his Fireball can allow him to interrupt recoveries without committing off-stage.

It's notable that having Mario's attributes also means Metal Mario comes with his innate weaknesses. His frame data is only average and his attacks don't have strong range, all compounded by his sluggish movement, which makes it difficult for Metal Mario to approach, with his knockback-based armor only being easily applicable in the matchup. It's very possible to camp Metal Mario and force him to approach as a result of these issues, poking him with disjointed attacks until it's easy to launch him. In general, Metal Mario arguably makes Mario's downsides worse, possibly making his even matchups negative.

Differences from
Metal Mario has slower mobility, less combo ability, a worse approach game, and a far worse recovery compared to Mario.

Moveset
For all intents and purposes, Metal Mario's attacks are the same as Mario's, with all differences being due to his differing physics. For visualization's on Mario's hitboxes, which are the same as Metal Mario's, click here.

Announcer call
Metal Mario's announcer call can be heard in 1P Game.

Crowd cheer
Metal Mario will use the same crowd cheers as.

In competitive play
Despite his reputation for being a poor character and being drastically nerfed from his boss appearance in 1P Game, due to only being playable via hacking, Metal Mario has been banned in tournaments since its inception. However, with the inception of Smash Remix and 19XXTE making him much easier to access - no longer requiring resets and reloading cheats due to game crashes from the results screen - arguments have been made to legalise him in tournaments. These mainly consist of claims that keeping him banned because of accessibility is irrational if the metagame impact is minimal, citing his inept recovery and poor combo game as significant factors. Some tournaments have been played in Smash Remix with boss characters allowed, where Metal Mario, while playable, fares poorly. Despite this, in Smash 64 and Remix, Metal Mario remains banned in standard play, the latter case being due to his status as a boss character, rather than metagame implications.

In 1P Game
In the game's single-player mode, Metal Mario is fought as a boss on Meta Crystal, where he has a handicap that allows him to sustain up to around 200% before being possible to launch, while having buffed knockback himself. His AI is very simple, largely just walking left and right and occasionally attacking.

Trivia

 * Metal Mario is the only character in Smash 64 to have higher fast falling speed than regular falling speed (72 vs 100).
 * When playing 1P Game as Metal Mario, due to lacking a portrait for the player's side, nothing will be visible.