Super Smash Bros./Debug Menus

As a fighting game, it's unsurprising that Super Smash Bros. has a lot of debugging stuff. For the European codes, those codes have to be on (even on an emulator):

System Debug


This menu lets you listen to all music and sounds (including unused ones), view the game transitions, apply different MIDI filters on the music played, as well as listing a number of options which appear to have been used in testing but have no current function. It also has a goofy rotating blue "angry Kirby" box in the background.


 * Continue - Removes the menu from sight, although it can be reenabled by pressing Start.
 * rumble - Was presumably used for testing differing rumble intensities, although it doesn't actually trigger anything and appears to be just for show. Can be toggled from 0 to 10.
 * frame - Has no in-game effect, and it is unknown what function it would've been used for. Can be toggled from 0 all the way to 8000.
 * STOP RUMBLE - Self-explanatory.
 * call - Contains all the 12 crowd cheers in the game:


 * fgm - Contains all sounds in the game — both those used and those unused. There are a lot of duplicates interspliced in here, and all of the crowd chants from the "call" option above are also present. The maximum it can be toggled to differ depending on the version of the game:
 * STOP FGM - Removes any lingering sound effects.
 * bgm - Contains all 46 music tracks in the game:


 * effect - Applies 6 different MIDI filters which emphasizes certain instruments depending on what option you select. 0 plays the music without any filters applied.
 * STOP BGM - Stops the music.
 * Aeroplane - Lets you view the game's transitions from the end of a match to the results screen. It's on Aeroplane by default, but you can switch it to any of the game's transitions: Check, Gakubuthi (translates to "frame"), Kannon, Star, Sudare1, Sudare2, Camera, Block, RotScale and Curtain. It also acts as a "Reset" function, booting up the menu again and changing the background color in the process.
 * cic - Can be toggled from 0 to 255, but does nothing when pressed. It is unknown what "cic" stands for, and what it may have activated during testing.
 * boot - Again has no function. It can also be toggled from 0 to 255.
 * TvType - Apparently doesn't have a function, but could have served to test the game's performance on different types of televisions. Similarly to "boot", can be toggled from 0 to 255. For some weird reason, it is only present in international versions.
 * Exit - Brings the title screen.

Battle Debug


The battle debug lets you set up a timed battle on any stage, with any character. Pressing B hides the menu and pressing Start while the menu is hidden brings it back.

Pressing C-Up or C-Down on the other hand reveals a hidden feature of this menu: It also serves as an animation viewer! Each press of the buttons causes the second character (which defaults to Donkey Kong when the menu is booted up) to cycle through a rather comprehensive selection of animations, covering not only their attacks and "hurt" animations, but also their character intros, taunts, T-poses, various walking/dashing speeds, latching on to an edge, animations associated with items (complete with a few visual effects), recovering from being knocked down, "dazed" animations and even a few still frames of certain actions! There are a large amount of duplicates spliced in with these animations, and a few cause the proportions of the character model to mess up. Clapping poses, victory poses and the continue animations are strangely missing from this collection. C-Up brings the next animation, and C-Down brings the previous animation.


 * The first row lets you change the mode.


 * BattleTime - Changes the time limit of the match, going from 1 minute to 60 minutes.
 * S: - Selects a stage for 1P Game, and cycles in the respective order. It is also possible to fight the four hidden characters with the "Challenger Approaching" intro with this feature.

The remaining rows are for player settings, and each contains two sub-rows. The fourth, seventh, tenth and thirteen row changes the type of player for the first, second, third and fourth player respectively:

The first sub-row changes what character the player is using. Mario, Donkey Kong, Samus, and Fox will be selected by default as Player 1, Player 2, Player 3, and Player 4 respectively. The character chosen as Player 1 will appear in the left of the debug menu screen's background, and the characters chosen as Player 2, Player 3 and Player 4 to the right side of the previous player. Additionally, some characters that are not normally playable can be selected. These characters' names are written in italics and ones that freezes the game when the option "Congra" is used when it is Player 1 are written in bold in the chart below.

Note: Every Fighting Polygon is a clone of their respective character, except that they can't use special attacks, and trying to grab (R) will result in them using their first standard attack (also known as "first jab") and shielding afterwards if the button is pressed (or simply shielding without using the first standard attack sometimes), or their full or infinite standard attack if the button is quickly pressed repeatedly. All of them freezes the game in the results screen in VS Mode if present in the match and also freezes the game if selected in 1P Game, except those mentioned above who have a portrait screen.

The second sub-row lets you change a fighter's costume. Two normally un-selectable costumes for Yoshi used only in 1P Game can be selected, including Team Mode exclusives. Master Hand, Metal Mario, and Fighting Polygon Team members do not have any alternate costume.

Stage Selector
Pressing Start while the menu is set on VS mode leads to a menu with two options: the first one being "Exit", and the second being a stage selector. This menu can also be accessed with these codes, but a match selected with this menu will lack any character:

Use Left and Right on the Control Stick to select a stage, and press Start to begin the match. Stages with names in italics are unique to 1P Game and can't be selected on the VS Mode stage selection screen. Bolded stages are ones which can't be accessed in-game without either using this menu or other miscellaneous codes. The stages are:

Master Hand
Master Hand can be selected using this menu, as mentioned above, and is so complex that he deserves a part of the article dedicated only to him (after all, he wasn't meant to be playable or used anywhere other than the final stage in 1P Game).

During the start of a match, his intro from 1P Game plays, and he can't move or receive damage during it. He can move through anything, including other players, as well as stage elements/hazards, such as the acid from Brinstar and the Bumper in Peach's Castle. Using the Control Stick makes him fly in a way that is never seen in normal gameplay. Instead of having damage represented by percentage like every other character in the game, Master Hand's damage is represented by H.P, just like in 1P Game; his H.P starts with 300. He can't get KO'ed by being knocked out of the arena; instead, his H.P has to be depleted, although causing Master Hand to lose all of his H.P in any scenario that isn't the final stage of the 1P Game (known as Final Destination) will trigger a freeze.

Master Hand can interact with items, but can only use the Starman; he can receive damage from every other item, including when they are thrown at him, but won't take knockback. The same applies to stage elements/hazards, except for Whispy Woods in Dream Land and POW Block in Mushroom Kingdom, and being launched by a tornado on Hyrule Castle or by the Barrel Cannon on Congo Jungle causes him to be controlled like a normal playable character, and gives him the ability to do some things that he normally wouldn't! He will not be able to fly and will actually interact with the collision of the level; while on the ground, using the Control Stick can make him "walk" or "dash" forward and jump, and while in the air, he can be controlled to the left and to the right, fall faster (known as fast falling) and double jump. Pressing the opposing direction that he is facing will sometimes cause him to do a weird teleport backward. He can push other players, but can't attack. If the player press Z (shield) the game crashes; pressing R (grab) may also cause the game to crash, but not always.

Moveset
Master Hand can use up, down, and side "dash attacks" (up and down dash attacks being unique to him), smashes and special attacks, all of which have a large amount of start-up lag. All of the attacks in the chart below are performed by him on 1P Game.

Falls Debug


A deceptively simple menu laid out in almost the same fashion as the stage select debug documented above. There are 2 commands labelled as "Finish" and "Dead", although the former of these is actually labelled twice per player slot and corresponds to two different commands. The listings suggest the menu was used to assign KO and Self-Destruct counts to each character, or perhaps to test the point system itself. This menu in particular is also incredibly unstable, and more often than not tends to crash the game simply by being loaded up.

Strangely, the menu cannot be exited from via pressing Start unlike other menus, though pressing A will take you to the Battle Debug. Even more curiously, when you are warped to the Battle Debug, none of the changes made on this menu appear to apply.

Unknown Debug


This debug menu differs considerably from the previous 3 in that it has no obvious purpose and offers far less interaction. It contains two large rectangular columns (or a weird line of arrows in the Japanese version) which can be shifted either to the right off-screen (which reveals a considerably bugged font in which only Pikachu's name is decipherable in international versions and Samus' in the Japanese version) or to the left in an infinite loop, but what is perhaps more interesting is the fact that the menu recognizes button commands!

Pressing any of the D-Pad directions or any of the buttons (except for Z which forces a purple line to appear on-screen) causes small yellow squares to appear on screen, in differing positions dependent on which button you press. This is the extent of this debug's interactivity, and just like the Falls Debug, what you do appears to have no bearing whatsoever on any of the gameplay functions.

It may have been utilized very early on in development to test basic controller functions, but it is difficult to deduce any sort of purpose for the menu given its lack of interactivity.