Unused content (SSB)

The following is all unused content that is known to have been at least considered during development of Super Smash Bros. before being altered, rejected, cut, or abandoned prior to the final release.

Dragon King: The Fighting Game
Super Smash Bros. was initially developed by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata in their downtime, in a form titled Dragon King: The Fighting Game (, Kakuto-Gēmu Ryūō), which lacked Nintendo characters. Sakurai, however, felt that the game could not provide the proper atmosphere on a home console without a recognizable cast. Nintendo characters were soon added and the game was redesigned and renamed. A few screenshots of Dragon King have been released, and footage of the prototype was shown on Sakurai's YouTube Channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.

Below are the only known images of the game shown prior to Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games.

Below is the video on Masahiro Sakurai's YouTube Channel, Masahiro Sakurai on Creating Games, detailing the development of Super Smash Bros.

Scrapped

 * Bowser was a highly requested character, with Shigeru Miyamoto claiming in an interview that he was cut late in development.
 * King Dedede was playable at one point, but was scrapped due to lack of development time.
 * Mewtwo was originally planned to be playable, but was scrapped due to lack of development time. According to Sakurai, Mewtwo was actually worked on in game.

Considered

 * Marth was considered for inclusion, but he had to be scrapped due a lack of development time.
 * Clefairy was considered for inclusion as a clone of Kirby at the same rate as Jigglypuff.

Bowser, Mewtwo and Marth would later on be playable in Melee, while King Dedede would later on be playable in Brawl.

Stages
The stage Meta Crystal and the stage for "Race to the Finish" both have spawn locations for all four players, implying that they might have been playable outside of the single player game mode. However, it could simply be a form of error handling, in the case someone hacks the game to play these stages in Vs. Mode.

Differences

 * Dream Land had considerably darker shades of green for the foliage, as well as much taller grass in the foreground and background.
 * Peach's Castle lacks the top platform. The brown, soft platforms are on the sides, with the wedge blocks having a different color. The bottom platform is lighter colored.
 * Hyrule Castle had a considerably different color scheme, with the background having higher contrast and the castle itself being a shade of brown.
 * Saffron City's main roofs had a considerably brighter pink texture. The roof on the left building is colored green, while the floating platform above it is brown.

Scrapped
Two stages have leftover data in Smash 64, and they can be accessed through use of the debug menu.
 * Small is assumed to be an early version of Dream Land, as it shares many of the same textures and models as the aforementioned stage, as well as a similar platform layout.
 * New is assumed to be an early prototype stage, even earlier than Small. It features an unusual layout, as well as a number of invisible walls, leading to frequent glitches involving movement.

Items
Initially, Crates lacked the Super Smash Bros. logo seen on the final versions' sides.

Gameplay

 * A talk between Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata states that Sakurai intended to add Final Smashes in the game. While he did record some dialogue for them, limitations of the Nintendo 64 prevented their inclusion; Final Smashes later became a reality nine years later with the release of Brawl. While the sound effects of these Final Smashes are not accessible through normal play, they can be found through Debug Menu. These sounds include yelling, "PK Starstorm!",  charging energy, and  yelling "Come on!" & "Blue Falcon!"(the latter execlusive to Japan). Other characters heard include,  and.
 * There are two unused Announcer voice clips: "Are you ready?" and "Final Stage!" The latter is assumed to have been intended for use in the 1P Game, as the Announcer does not normally announce Master Hand's name until Smash 4.
 * According to an interview with Miyamoto, a time attack mini-game mode was originally planned, but was scrapped later in development. It is not known what sort of gameplay this mode would feature.
 * Luigi's dash attack and Samus' up aerial are both supposed to have final hits that are supposed to deal more damage and knockback, but do not spawn due to a developer oversight. Later installments in the series would fix this issue, however.
 * Every character has an unused animation that will instantly KO them when activated, similar to the instant KO in later installments. It is unsure what the animation was for, but it is speculated it was going to be for an unused stage KO feature, possibly activated if a character was eaten by a Piranha Plant or sank in Planet Zebes' acid.

Aesthetics

 * The placeholder question mark boxes for the unlockable characters on the character select screen were initially colored instead of the ordinary grey silhouettes with fiery backgrounds that appear in the final game; these coloured boxes matched the player number colours of red, blue, yellow, and green.
 * The series symbol for the series was originally not supposed to have spots on the egg, and the symbol for the  series was a single, upside down triangle.

Alternate Costumes

 * Both and  have leftover data of an unused alternate costume for each of them. These would be their fourth alternate costume, although only three are accessible in a free for all battle. 's fourth alternate costume was to be a yellow party hat, and 's fourth alternate costume was to be a yellow bow. These alternate costumes are not accessible through debug mode, but if they are accessed through other means, the skin hues for both  and  will be abnormal, but the hat or bow will remain green. Normally, invalid alternate costumes would yield a corrupted stock icon and the latest occurring costume, but  and  are the only exceptions to this rule.
 * Sakurai mentioned that he considered having 's alternate costumes being based off of other members of the Star Fox team, Falco Lombardi (who became playable starting in Melee), Peppy Hare, and Slippy Toad, but Sakurai decided against it and used the ones that were completely original to the game due to the fact that Slippy didn't have a moveset like the others. Starting from Super Smash Bros. 4, the concept of a fighter with different characters as alternate costumes would be reutilized for various characters, such as Bowser Jr., Olimar, Hero and Steve.