Game crash

A player attempts to access the AKANEIA stage in Melee via an Action Replay, causing a game crash.

A game crash, also known as a game freeze, is when a video game freezes and ceases to respond to any input. Crashes typically occur when the game console's connection with the game is interrupted, when its CPU is overwhelmed by how much it has to process, or when the game attempts to access data that cannot be read, either due to corruption or missing files. Most crashes are unlikely to cause permanent damage to the game or console, and simply require the player to turn the console's power off to play the game again; that said, players can lose any data that was not saved prior to the game crash.

In the Super Smash Bros. series

As with any other game, crashes can occur in the Super Smash Bros. games, through a variety of different means. Glitches and hacks can cause them, though some rarer crashes can occur from normal gameplay.

In Super Smash Bros.

Since the Nintendo 64 was a cartridge-based system that could have difficulty securing a connection between it and its game, this connection was far easier to disrupt, with a touch of the console being potentially enough to disrupt the connection and crash the game. As such, Smash 64 was far more prone to freezing without the aid of hacks than its successors. Aside from hacks and physical disruption, the game is rather stable, with few methods existing for crashing the game.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

Unlike the Nintendo 64, the Nintendo GameCube was a disc-based system that was notoriously durable and could effectively keep inserted games in place. As such, freezes in Melee from a connection disruption were rare. When crashes do occur in Melee, the game will completely freeze and cease all response to any input, though any in-game music will continue to play.

While Melee can occasionally lag the GameCube in certain circumstances, such as playing with multiple Ice Climbers on Fountain of Dreams, it is never CPU-intensive enough in normal play to crash the system. However, "black holes" created from the black hole glitch can strain the system to an exorbitant amount, heavily lagging the game when they are in play. If players create more than one black hole, or create a more intensive black hole (such as putting more Turnips in it or using multiple PK Fires on it), they heavily risk crashing the game, and will inevitably do so if they keep on making more black holes or keep putting more projectiles into one.

Crashes can also occur from attempting to improperly access incomplete data via the Debug Menu. Attempting to start a match with AKANEIA as a stage or NONE as a character, for instance, will cause the game to immediately crash, as can multiple other stages without proper hacks. Furthermore, using NPCs can crash the game; Sandbag, for instance, can cause crashes if the player attempts to attack with it, as it has no such attacks programmed for it, while winning a game with Master Hand, such as via the Name Entry glitch, can crash the game due to him lacking any programmed victory poses.

As several different revisions of Melee exist, it is possible for some glitches that cause crashes to be patched out in later revisions. For example, the shadow glitch, which caused the game to crash if players grabbed one of Mewtwo's Shadow Balls from its forward throw, is only present in version 1.0 of Melee.

Starting with Melee, a new method of crashing the game also became present: the game's disc becoming damaged. If the game disc has extensive abrasions on the data side of the disc, it can potentially prevent the console from properly reading data off the disc, leading to potential crashes. In Melee, the use of hacks, either via hardware hacks involving unofficial memory card add-ons or software hacks involving hacking the console, can potentially allow for data to be read off an alternate source from the disc.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl

Like Melee, console hardware-related crashes are rare in Brawl, as the Nintendo Wii is easily capable of keeping a connection with its inserted game in place, and can handle anything that can occur normally in Brawl. When crashes do occur in Brawl, the game will freeze and cease all response to any input like in Melee, but all in-game sound and music will also be frozen, resulting in a loud, sharp buzzing noise that will play until the game is turned off. Additionally, when crashes occur, the Wii must be hard reset by holding down the power button until the Wii turns completely off, or unplugging the console; just pressing the power or reset button will have no effect.

Crashes that overload the CPU in Brawl are rare. The only known method to overload the CPU in Brawl involves the "Lucario Black Hole", where two Lucarios on the same team with maximum Aura stand back-to-back and charge their Aura Spheres, while another player on the same team throws fully-charged Hotheads into the space between the Aura Spheres. After several Hotheads are tossed between the Lucarios, the game will begin to violently shake and can lag; if too many Hotheads are added, or a fourth, opposing player gets trapped within the Black Hole, then the game can hard crash, as the CPU can no longer properly perform calculations due to being overworked.

A majority of crashes in Brawl generally occur as the result of improperly modifying or hacking the game, owing to the relative simplicity of hacking Brawl. A common novice mistake is neglecting to include hacks that disable the loading of custom stages while using the Smash Stack exploit, as the game will try to load the exploit file as an actual stage; another common novice mistake involves improperly named or placed files on an SD card that can crash the game, such as by placing a hacked stage based on Smashville over Lylat Cruise instead of Smashville, and then going to Lylat Cruise in-game trying to play on the stage. Crashes can also commonly occur when a specific hack or code itself is unstable or simply not properly made, particularly in hacks involving the Pokémon Trainer's Pokémon and other transforming characters.

Crashes also commonly occur from playing in some modes where the hack is unstable or simply unable to be used in such modes; the Subspace Emissary and Tournament modes are notably unstable with hacks in play, and many mods generally block off access to the mode as a result of this.

Like in Melee, however, a few glitches are still capable of causing crashes. The most infamous such glitch in Brawl is the grab-break glitch with Yoshi, where if a player grabbed by Yoshi manages to break out of the grab before entering Yoshi's mouth, the game will instantly crash. While causing some debate in the professional Brawl community over how significant this glitch (to the point where some players wanted to ban Yoshi from tournament play), the crash is unlikely to occur in the middle of a tournament match, as the time between Yoshi's grab connecting and a character entering Yoshi's mouth is so small, it can only occur at extremely low damages and only with exorbitant mashing skills. Another glitch capable of causing a crash is the Chain Jacket glitch; the game will invariably crash if Sheik performs the glitch without having used a prior move. While this can occur in any match involving Sheik, a Sheik player would have to be intentionally invoking it to crash the game through it, thus the only tournament consequence of it would be the forced forfeit of the Sheik player causing it.

Like Melee, Brawl can also crash if the disc becomes damaged, though hacks exist that can allow for data to be loaded via an SD card or USB flash drive. In many cases, the use of such hacks can actually decrease load times, due to flash memory being considerably faster compared to reading data off Brawl's double-layered DVD. That said, disruption of these connections can still cause crashes, as the game can no longer properly read data from its original source. Gameplay mods of Brawl, such as Project M, can also crash if the connection between the SD card and the Wii is disrupted.

In Super Smash Bros. 4

As Super Smash Bros. 4 features two different versions for different consoles, the specifics in game crashes for the game varies between consoles. That said, crashes related to the games are rarer than in previous installments, with no specific, repeatable method being available to cause a guaranteed crash. As both games can be patched and updated via the Nintendo Network, surefire methods to crash the game can also theoretically be patched out. A model-meshing glitch involving Nabbit on Mushroom Kingdom U that could cause crashing, for instance, was fixed in version 1.0.6.

Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, similar to Smash 64, can crash if the connection between the game card and the Nintendo 3DS is disrupted, as well as if the connection between the 3DS and its SD card is disrupted; compared to the Nintendo 64, however, these connections are more resilient, and under most circumstances, the 3DS will reboot into its Home Menu if this connection is lost, though any unsaved data will be lost.

If Super Smash Bros. for Wii U crashes, the game freezes, and a loud buzzing sound is emitted from the console. Like the Wii, the player will need to reset the console.

Smash 4 on Wii U can also crash if the disc becomes damaged, like in Melee and Brawl. No circumvention method for this is currently available, with the Wii U hacking scene still developing.

For digital copies of the game, crashes can occur if the data saved onto the either the 3DS's SD card or the Wii U's internal memory is corrupted; in this case, an online service offered by Nintendo allows the player to verify the integrity of the game's data and redownload the appropriate files to replace corrupted data. The 3DS version has also been reported to occasionally crash in Smash Run; some 3DS consoles also have problems running the game, with the fix focusing on replacing the console itself.

In tournament play

While rare, game crashes can occur in tournaments, and some rulings exist as to what the appropriate course of action is. If a game crash was caused by a player, whether intentionally or unintentionally, the offending player is generally considered to have lost either the match or the set, as it can be considered an extreme form of stalling. Furthermore, some tournaments may even disqualify such players for disruption or even bracket manipulation. No official ruling exists in the rarer case of "act of God" crashes where neither player may be considered responsible for the crash. In most tournaments, the match is often restarted with the same characters on the same stage, with players self-destructing to get stocks back to what they were when the game crashed.