Unused content (SSB4)

The following features are beta elements from Super Smash Bros. 4.

Gameplay differences

When comparing the final game with earlier builds, some differences have been found:

Stale-move negation was not present in earlier demo versions of the game showcased during E3 2013.
In the E3 2014 demo build of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS, the character select screen displayed the names of the characters under their icons. In the final version, only the icons are displayed.
- Fox and Greninja's icons have different background colors in the final version.
In the first trailer of the game, Link can be seen with his old dash attack, which has since been changed.
In an early picture Link can be seen on the Spirit Train stage with the Spirit Tracks Link as the conductor, but in the final game, when Link is on the stage, Alfonzo would conduct the train.
Ike's Eruption originally had red flames. In the final game, however, it has blue flames.
In the E3 demo build, Luigi could wall-jump, but in the final game, he cannot.
Prior to Little Mac's reveal, screenshots and footage of the Boxing Ring stage featured brighter overall lighting compared with the final version of the stage.
As seen in Mega Man's reveal trailer and in the Developer Direct video, his Leaf Shield originally had much faster start-up.^[1]
In Sonic's reveal trailer, his Spin Dash is shown to behave exactly like in Brawl, whereas in the final version, the short hop performed on release is much quicker.^[2]
Windy Hill originally didn't feature the animal friends in the background.
In the Super Smash Bros. Direct, the Power Star Rosalina summons during her Final Smash stays at a constant size, whereas in the final game it grows gradually.
Also in the Super Smash Bros. Direct, Mega Man's Final Smash has a different animation, and it is slower. ^[3]
In the Super Smash Bros. Direct, Diddy Kong and Lucario's portraits alongside their damage meters use their Brawl artwork, presumably as a placeholder. The final game appropriately uses their SSB4 artwork.
In an early screenshot of Reset Bomb Forest, the image of Viridi that appears before the Reset Bomb is dropped is smaller and she has a pair of roses on her hairband.
On challenge panel 3 in column 6, row 5, an image of Meta Knight is seen in the All-Star rest area with "1980-1983" being the current challenge. However, this challenge automatically starts when All-Star Mode is initiated, making this a beta element.
Trophy Rush originally had a longer maximum time.
Ridley originally had a thinner neck and thinner limbs, as seen in the Smash Direct.
Fox Illusion had a more detailed "illusion" image.
The pose that Zero Suit Samus performs for Paralyzer was from Brawl in early shots. It has changed since then.

Note that the names under the character selection slots are not present in the final versions of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS. Also note Greninja and Fox's different background colors on the screen.
Ike's red flamed Eruption.
Link on Spirit Train with the Spirit Tracks Link as the conductor. Alfonzo would instead be the conductor in the final version if Link and/or Toon Link are present.
An early screenshot of the Boxing Ring, showing off brighter overall lighting.
A more finalized screenshot of the stage, with darker lighting.
Windy Hill without the animal friends in the background.
Viridi with roses on her headband
Beta All-Star
A screenshot of Trophy Rush with 3 minutes, 21 seconds left. This is impossible in the final version, as the maximum time possible is 2 minutes, 30 seconds.
Ridley's old model
The more detailed Fox Illusion
Her pose for Paralyzer before it was altered.

Aesthetic Differences

In the Super Smash Bros. Developer Direct, the designs of the Revival platforms and Capsules appeared unchanged from their appearance in Brawl, but they were changed in the final game.
In the Super Smash Bros. Developer Direct, Kirby used his voice clips from Brawl, but had new ones in the final game.
During the results screen, when the winning character's name is displayed, a sound is played; the E3 demo build of Super Smash Bros. for Wii U used the splash arts sound used for newcomers. The final build uses the same sound effect as Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS.
In an early trailer, both the Smash and Team Smash selections in For Fun mode had the additional heading "For Fun" upon each of them. These headings are absent in the final version.
In the Smash Direct, songs in My Music are labeled with "Arrangement". In the final game, however, they are labeled with "Remix".
On the same image, the stage location for Skyloft is stated to be Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, while in the final it is The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword.
In the E3 2014 Smash 3DS trailer, character names originally had lowercase letters in Classic mode. In the final game, however, all letters are uppercase.
In the E3 2014 Smash 3DS trailer, Samus was listed in the Sound Test, however, in the final game she is not listed.
The trophy for Rayman originally had an eye partly open in a Director's Room post. Both eyes were wide open in the final game.
Kirby was originally less expressive when using moves such as Hammer Flip and Final Cutter. In the final game, he has "angry eyes", but he did not in pre-release screenshots.
During the E3 2014 Round Table, in which Pac-Man was first revealed, he had a placeholder victory theme, which differs from the final version.
In the E3 2014 demo, Pit's victory pose was taken at a different angle than in the final game.
- His clapping animation was also different.
Little Mac's trailer showed him using his down taunt with a more fierce expression on his face. In the final build, his mouth is slightly misplaced and his expression is less fierce.

Beta Classic Mode screen.
Rayman's trophy when it initially appeared.
RaymanTrophy.png

Rayman's trophy in the final version.
Pre-release screenshots of Kirby showed him as less expressive when using some moves
Samus listed in the Sound Test.

Custom Moves

Some custom moves were awarded in the E3 demo build of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS. Only neutral and side specials were awarded, but they were presented as up and down special moves respectively.

Hacking has revealed that characters were intended to have three custom move options for each special, instead of two in the final game^[4]. Through hacking these scrapped custom moves can be accessed, though they're significantly incomplete, lacking sounds, visual effects, animations, some of them even freezing the character or crashing the game, and all except Mario's lacking any sort of hitboxes: a Fireball variant with ice properties, a Cape variant that deals very little damage but very much shield damage, and a F.L.U.D.D. variant that deals electric damage.

Scrapped elements

A trophy for the Fire Emblem: Awakening character Tharja was initially planned for the game, and the trophy was visible in leaked ESRB footage. Following the release of the game in Japan, however, Tharja's trophy was not found by players on Twitch, and later hacking showed that there was no data for the trophy in the final game, suggesting that it was removed some time after the ESRB footage. The reason for the removal of Tharja's trophy is considered to be related to the game's rating; her outfit as a Dark Mage was likely considered too suggestive and revealing for Smash 4's intended E10+ rating, compared to Fire Emblem: Awakening's T rating. As the leaked images showed a counter of 686 and there are 685 trophies in the final build, Tharja's trophy was the only such trophy removed.

In the Super Smash Bros. Direct, Waluigi was shown to be a part of the Wario universe, despite having only appeared in one game from the series, WarioWare: Smooth Moves, in a cameo appearance; in the final game, however, Waluigi was moved to the Mario universe.

The Flying Men from Magicant were intended to be given unique three-dimensional models rather than the two-dimensional sprites they were given in the official release. In a weekly issue of Famitsu, Masahiro Sakurai stated that the sprites were used as to lessen the system requirements on the 3DS's hardware. An image of the Flying Man's 3D model also was featured in the column. It seems as though like the Tharja trophy, it was removed completely from the game as hacking reveals no further data of them.

Some sound files were found that had Kirby call out all three of Palutena's neutral special moves. Eventually, his voice clips for Explosive Flame and Heavenly Light would become unused.

The file SSB4\ui\replace\soft\soft_50\soft_50_SuperSmashBros.nut suggests that there was meant to be a Masterpiece made for the original Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64. This would've been the only N64 Masterpiece in SSB4 and the first Masterpiece in both Brawl and SSB4 that was actually a game from the Smash Bros. series.

A sound clip was found in the files of the Wii U version features the Announcer saying "Super Smash Bros. for Wii U" at the end of the opening cinematic, in a similar vein to the announcers for Smash 64 and Melee respectively^[5]. Xander Mobus even stated he was unsure why this was removed from the final version.

Unused text in the Wii U version suggests that the Gamer and Temple stages were once unlockable.

Separate character select icons for each Mii Fighter were found in the 3DS version's files. Oddly, the Mii Brawler icon is present in Prima Games' guide on page 292 in place of the regular Mii Fighter icon.

Tharja's scrapped trophy.
The 3D model of the Flying Man

Planned characters

The Ice Climbers trophy.

Much like Brawl, SSB4 has a reasonable amount of unused character data. The reasons mainly include a combination of time constraints and hardware limitations. This is supported by the fact Sakurai himself stated this during a post-release interview ^[6]. However, he refused to give any sort of information on what other scrapped characters were, other than stating that characters unlikely to appear in new games in the foreseeable future were given lower priority. While the scrapped characters can theoretically be finished and released as DLC, it remains unknown if they will be, with Sakurai giving no direct answer on the matter.

Scrapped Characters:

Ice Climbers - The Ice Climbers were originally planned to return as characters. While functional on the Wii U version, the Nintendo 3DS's technical specifications made it difficult to properly incorporate the two into the game. As Sakurai wished for the two games to have identical rosters, the Ice Climbers were ultimately removed from the game, though they do cameo as a trophy.

Rythm Heaven character - Icons of a Rhythm Heaven character have been found in the game's data. As Rhythm Heaven is, notably, one of few universes to not have a representation other than a Smash Run enemy and collectable trophies, this suggests that a character from Rhythm Heaven was planned to be include before being scrapped.

Alternate Characters - Sakurai has stated that Dark Pit, Dr. Mario, and Lucina were originally going to be alternate costumes for Pit, Mario, and Marth, respectively. They were promoted to full characters due to each character having a feature that made them unique: Dr. Mario with his pills, Dark Pit with his arm and Final Smash, and Lucina with her hitbox placement. In addition, Sakurai felt Dr. Mario's fans would be upset if he was reduced to a palette swap. Regarding the decision to make Lucina a fully fledged character, however, Sakurai stated in a Miiverse post that "whenever there is even a small difference in abilities, that character gets an actual roster slot."

Considered Characters:

Takamaru - A report on GoNintendo states that Takamaru was planned as a playable character, but didn't make the cut due to lack of fan familiarity, resulting in his assist trophy role.

Chrom - In an interview after the reveal trailer for Robin and Lucina, Sakurai has said he considered adding Chrom in the game. However, he instead choose Robin after releasing he would be made redundant by Marth and Ike. Chrom instead appears as part of Robin's final smash.

Planned stages

The file SSB4\param\ui\ui_character_db shows boss characters such as Ridley, Metal Face, but unusually, it also shows an unused boss named Virus. This implies that Dr. Mario was meant to have his own stage with a boss, however, no files have been found for a Dr. Mario stage yet.

Cross-version leftovers

Several unused gameplay elements can be found within the data of the 3DS version of the game, some of which ended up becoming integrated into the final build of the Wii U version. Among these elements include multiple Announcer clips for "Yellow team", "Master Orders", "Crazy Orders", and "Special Smash". The lattermost still exists in the 3DS version's Sound Test, as clip 83 for the Announcer. Also, along the unused clips there is one for "Smash World", which could be a Beta name for Smash Tour as it is the final name for said mode in at least one version (Spanish (NTSC and PAL) as "Mundo Smash"), as well as similar to the final name in Japanese: World Smash.