Spam

Spam refers to the use of a certain move by any character that is repetitively being used, be it a ground attack or a projectile, the latter being most commonly spammed. Spamming is more effective for moves with a combination of low lag and decent to long range (such as a fair amount of forward tilts), as well as those with fast repeating hit rate (such as Fox's Blaster from Melee onward). This action is usually considered cheap when players have difficulty countering it and may be difficult to punish. Juggling an opponent involves spamming the up tilt, up aerial, or up smash of a character (in most cases, the former two). While the game discourages spamming with stale-move negation, the point of spam is to throw out many attacks to the point where the reduced damage can be made up simply by using the move twice as much, and in Brawl, some moves like Sheik's forward tilt are even easier to spam due to stale-move negation drastically reducing their knockback. These types of moves have been viewed by some members of the Smash community as cheap and easy to exploit.

While the term "spam" usually refers to attacks, it can refer to any repeated action at all, such as dodging, edge grabbing, or taunting.

Most forms of spamming tend to be the consequence of a player's inexperience with their character or the game's mechanics, and often end up making a player's attack pattern very predictable and easier to counter. Examples of theses moves include Kirby's Stone and Pikachu's Thunder. Characters that possess counterattacks, reflectors, or powerful punish options can often deal with this type of playstyle. However, some techniques used in high-level play, such as chaingrabbing and planking, are also occasionally considered a form of spam, some of which have been banned in tournaments in certain situations, such as wobbling. Using spam as an excuse for losing is usually considered a John.