Lylat Cruise

This stage rests on top of the battlefield shaped spacecraft Pleiades. Since the craft tilts from side to side, it can affect the trajectory of ranged attacks, as well your recovery distance. Lylat Cruise (, Lylat Cruise) is a stage in Super Smash Bros. Brawl,, and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. It is situated on an original battlefield shaped spacecraft called the Pleiades as it flies around various areas of the Lylat System. The original Great Fox, Arwings, and Wolfens can be seen at various points in the stage.

In Brawl and Ultimate, Wolf is fought here when being unlocked, while is fought here in his unlocking battle in the former.

Stage overview
The stage itself has few hazards — the ship tilts to-and-fro as it makes turns and avoids shots from other ships, and the ledge is quite thin, so recovering characters may be caught under the ledge (as can happen in Melee's ). The tilting can affect the way some items (such as Barrels) move around the stage or how effective some attacks (such as Blaster and Green Missile) are due to the slope.

The Pleiades flies through many events:
 * An epic space skirmish between the Cornerian army and Andross' army.
 * A hazardous Star Fox flight through Meteo the asteroid belt.
 * A dogfight between and.
 * A peaceful flight through the atmosphere of Corneria.
 * A cruise through space where the dogfight happens.

Similar to the Corneria and Venom stages in Super Smash Bros. Melee, the Star Fox characters can perform a Star Fox Smash Taunt that allows them to contact their teammates. The conversation that ensues, as well as the characters involved, depends on who initiates the call and where the Pleiades is currently flying. The talk box is slightly updated in graphics compared to the Melee version.

In Super Smash Bros. 4, the game is more focused on showing all five backgrounds in the shortest amount of time as possible; backgrounds yet to appear in a match have a greater chance of appearing than the ones that already did. In addition, it's possible for the first background to be the Star Fox/Star Wolf dogfight or starry space, unlike in Brawl.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Corneria background features a planet while the stage is above the atmosphere.

Ω forms and Battlefield form
In Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, the ship in the Ω form is redesigned that the base platform no longer bends and the smaller platforms are removed. The ship no longer tilts. The background will only feature a dogfight between Star Fox and Star Wolf except in 8-Player Smash which uses a starry space background instead. The space warp no longer exists.

In Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, the Ω form is identical to SSB4's but the portion battles take place is resized and reshaped to match. The Battlefield form has the addition of the soft platforms retained from the normal form but rearranged to match.

Hazards Off
With stage hazards turned off in Ultimate, the stage does not tilt. It also does not leave the starry background, making it impossible to use Smash Taunts.

Origin
The stage is based on different events in Star Fox games, most of which are from Star Fox: Assault.

At the beginning of Star Fox: Assault, remnants of Andross' army of Ape Soldiers, led by Andrew Oikonny, attacked the Lylat System. This started a war between Andross' army and the Cornerian Defense Force. In order to win, the Star Fox team is called to help assist the Cornerian army. The first level of Star Fox: Assault takes place during this battle. One of the areas that Pleiades flies through in this stage is the battle between the Cornerian army and the remnants of Andross' army. The design of the ships seen in this stage are somewhat different from the ships seen in Star Fox: Assault, but the ships still fire lasers as they did in Star Fox: Assault.

In Star Fox 64 (Lylat Wars), the mercenary group Star Wolf made their first appearance. The Star Wolf team would try to stop Star Fox's plans to defeat Andross, and the two teams would battle each other until either team retreated. Star Wolf also appears in Star Fox: Assault as both an enemy and reluctant ally to the Star Fox team. In Assault, the two teams battle in the Sargasso Space Zone. During this stage, the Pleiades flies through a battle between the Star Fox team and the Star Wolf team. The design of the ships appear as they do in Star Fox 64, but the surrounding area looks similar to the Sargasso Space Zone.

In every game, there is a level that involves going through an asteroid field. In the original Star Fox (Starwing), the player has to try to get through the level without getting hit by asteroids or being shot down by enemies. The player can also shoot the asteroids to destroy them. The asteroid field in Star Fox 64 is called "Meteo". The goal of this level is the same as the asteroid belt in Star Fox. The player can also shoot to destroy the asteroids like in Star Fox, but there are also larger asteroids that can't be destroyed. In order to get around those asteroids, the player has to maneuver around them. In this stage, the Pleiades flies and maneuvers through an asteroid belt. There are also the larger asteroids seen in Star Fox 64. An Arwing can also be seen, shooting the smaller asteroids and going around the larger asteroids.

Star Fox: Assault has a multiplayer mode where players can battle each other. One of the stages in the multiplayer mode takes place alongside the Great Fox above Corneria's clouds. In the Lylat Cruise stage, the Pleiades goes into Corneria's atmosphere. The area looks very similar to the multiplayer stage in Star Fox: Assault, but the Great Fox is absent.

Pleiades
Pleiades ( Pleiades) is the name of the ship players ride on on the Lylat Cruise. It is an original creation, and thus has never appeared in a Star Fox game. Its name likely comes from the real-life star cluster called the.

Tournament legality
In tournaments, this stage is almost always neutral, due to its fair layout and no stage hazards. However, it was banned in the Japanese ruleset since characters can get caught in the thin edges of the stage while recovering, and the tilting can significantly affect the viability of some recoveries, particularly short ones. That being said, however, the tilting of the stage is not random; the event occurring in the background dictates exactly how the stage will tilt. In Smash 4, the stage's edges are rather glitchy, as characters are sometimes able to pass through the ship for no apparent reason.

Notably, the 2017 recommended ruleset for SSB4 initially listed Lylat Cruise as a banned stage in tournaments. This decision was met with mixed reception; one notable example of opposition to this change is from, who made a video addressing his feelings on the subject. The stage was later unretired and returned to being a neutral stage due to the outcome of a community poll. Despite its return, however, the stage's mixed reception continued, and it arguably remained the single most contentious point of SSB4's competitive ruleset until the release of Ultimate.

In Ultimate, its legality varies greatly. Although the stage hazard toggle prevents the stage from tilting when turned off, the stage's small size and unusual sloped geometry (combined with the prior controversy from SSB4) have been points of contention since the game's release. Most notably, recovery moves such as Peach's Peach Parasol and Rosalina's Launch Star do not snap to the ledges as easily as on other stages, and the inconsistently sloped terrain can cause unusual interactions in tech situations. Some regions see these as non-issues and have it as a starter, but others see fit to render it a counterpick, or ban it outright in favor of other, more traditional stage picks.

Update history
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Trivia

 * Lylat Cruise is the only Star Fox stage in the Super Smash Bros. series which does not take place on the Great Fox.
 * It is also the only Star Fox stage that is not based off of a specific location, as it is based on several different locations.
 * Unlike the other Star Fox stages in the series, the Arwings and Wolfens do not shoot the players, making it the only Star Fox stage in the series to not have any damaging hazards.
 * Along these lines, it is also the first and currently only Star Fox stage in the series that is not banned from tournament play.
 * In SSB4, if this stage is played in an Angled Smash, the space warp will have an altered appearance.
 * In Ultimate, the following Assist Trophies can only appear on this stage's Battlefield and Omega forms: Color TV-Game 15, Dr. Kawashima, and the Ghosts. Nikki cannot be summoned at all on this stage due to the dark background obscuring her drawings. Additionally, Marshadow can only be summoned on the Battlefield and Omega versions of the stage. The Timer cannot appear on this stage.
 * Currently, Lylat Cruise is the only tournament-legal stage that gives nothing but iron when mined by.
 * Lylat Cruise was used for an edition of "Find the Enderman," a game Masahiro Sakurai created where he would hide the Enderman somewhere on screen for the development team to find.