Flat Zone

Not to be confused with Flat Zone 2 or Flat Zone X.

Superflat World: Flat Zone
Flat Zone in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
Universe	Game & Watch
Appears in	Melee
Availability	Unlockable
Unlock criteria	Clear Classic Mode with Mr. Game & Watch.
Music Bolded tracks must be unlocked Melee Flat Zone
Tournament legality Melee Singles: Banned Doubles: Banned

Flat Zone (フラットゾーン, Flat Zone) is an unlockable stage in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and the home stage of Mr. Game & Watch. Flat Zone is unlocked when the player completes Classic Mode with Mr. Game & Watch. In All-Star mode, Flat Zone appears as the last stage where the player faces 25 lighter Mr. Game & Watches. Two event matches in Melee involve fighting on this stage. Mr. Game & Watch's Target Test also takes place on a modified version of this stage.

While the stage itself has never been brought back as a standalone stage, it appears as one of the transformations in Flat Zone X, a mixture between Flat Zone and Flat Zone 2 (from Super Smash Bros. Brawl) in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U and Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Stage overview

Flat Zone is a small stage. In the middle of the stage there are numerous lines that characters can jump on. The lines will fade out and reappear while the characters battle. On the far right of the screen, characters can stand on the roof of the house. Characters will appears as 2-D images on the screen, and make a beeping noise whenever they walk. When the game is paused, rather than zoom in on one character, the camera zooms out to show the entire Game & Watch device being played on. The layout is heavily based on the Game & Watch game Helmet.

Origin

The Game & Watch game Helmet.

From 1980 to 1991, Nintendo produced handheld electronic games called Game & Watch, and there would be one game for each model of a Game & Watch. Game & Watch games use an LCD screen, the same type as an ordinary calculator, which means characters and other moving objects can only move to pre-determined locations on the screen and everything appears flat. Whenever objects moved, a beeping sound can be heard. In this stage, the fighters and stage elements on the screen are all flat, and beeping sounds are heard when walking on the stage.

This stage is based on the Game & Watch game Helmet, in which the goal is to try to get from the building on the left to the building on the right without get hit by falling tools. In this stage, falling tools occasionally appear with the only safe spot being under the middle platforms and inside the buildings. The Game & Watch casing surrounding the screen also has the exact same buttons as Helmet.

This stage also contains elements from other Game & Watch games, such as: the character from Manhole filling in spaces between platforms, which is in reference to the goal of the game being to fill in manholes with manhole covers so that pedestrians don't fall in; and the character from Oil Panic spilling oil, which is in reference to him spilling oil on customers at a gas station if he misses the oil bucket below.

Tournament legality

Flat Zone is listed as a banned stage in tournaments in both the singles and doubles sets; this is largely due to the small size, which allows for very simple KOs because of closer blast-lines. Along with this, the falling tools can cause one-hit kills, and are difficult to avoid due to their falling speed.

Trophy

Game & Watch's trophy in Melee

Game & Watch

This stage of Super Smash Bros. Melee takes its motif from the Game & Watch series. It incorporates settings from Oil Panic, Helmet, and Manhole, and it's sure to send a wave of nostalgia crashing over old-school gamers. If you want to truly reproduce the Game & Watch experience, try playing this unique level in Fixed-Camera Mode!

Game & Watch

Trivia

• On this stage all characters are two-dimensional (or rather, their three-dimensional models are flattened, through the same method that makes Mr. Game & Watch appear flattened in all other stages). Strangely enough, certain effects are still three-dimensional.
  • The Super Mario Maker, Hanenbow, Dream Land GB, and Duck Hunt stages also have this trait.
• In Training Mode, when the camera is at normal, it will zoom closely on the character, and on zoom, it will show the whole stage.

Samus hits the screen in her tumbling animation—this Screen KO animation is specific to Flat Zone in Melee.

• Flat Zone is the only stage in the entire series to return in some way that doesn’t involve being a standalone stage, being a part of the Flat Zone X stage.
• When characters are Screen KO'd on Flat Zone, they will hit the screen in their standard tumbling animation instead of their animations for other stages, with the exception of Mr. Game & Watch, who has only one tumble animation.
• When a player moves, the sound that Mr. Game & Watch makes when walking is played. This is in reference to the match occurring inside a Game & Watch.
• The speed on this stage seems to be slightly faster than that of a regular battle; this is due to the lower memory requirements of the stage compared to the others in the game (compare and contrast Fountain of Dreams, which is prone to slowdowns in four-player matches due to its high memory requirements).
• Fighters who get KO'd by the falling tools will always receive a self-destruct, regardless of whether or not they were attacked by any opponents. As a result, players cannot earn KOs by having the tools KO their opponents.

See also

• Flat Zone 2
• Flat Zone X