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Filed under: Super Bros. Smash For 3DS, Super Smash Bros. (N64), Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. Series

An overview of ALL Nintendo IP in Super Smash Bros

UPDATE1: Made Cooking Navi its own series

Everyone likes the Super Smash Bros series for different reasons whether it is the party aspect, the competitive aspect, the single player content or the love it shows for Nintendo’s IP. For me the latter is probably my favourite thing about the franchise and that is why I adored features like the Trophies and Stickers as well as seeing which characters, stages, items and songs get chosen for each game. With all this in mind I began to to develop some thoughts like, ‘How does a series get chosen for Smash?’ and ‘How many of Nintendo’s IP are in Smash already?’. Well to answer these questions (particularly the last one) I needed to answer a different question first: How many IPs does Nintendo have? With that as my goal I searched across the Internet, reached out to developers and took various facts into consideration before finally deciding on a number. I hope you brace yourself, the number is a lot bigger than I am sure most of you expected.

So are you ready? From the Arcades to Mobile, Nintendo has managed to amass a grand total of…

…193!

Yep, Nintendo is nearly hitting that 200 mark with their IPs. That means there is a lot of franchises for Nintendo to draw from for Smash, but how many does it use? Let’s work this out together but before that I should probably explain what guidelines I used to get to this number.

First of all I should stress that I am following the laws set out by Super Smash Bros. for what constitutes as its own IP. What this means is that while games like Mario Kart, Mario Sports, Mario Party, etc, all fall under the Mario IP label, the Yoshi, Wario, Wrecking Crew and Donkey Kong series are all their own separate entities. This is not just limited to Mario though as Wii Fit and Wii Sports are also considered separate IP and so by extension Wii Music, Party, Play and Chess (yes even Chess) are all also considered their own individual franchises as well.

On the flip-side of that there are some series that have been combined together when you might consider them as separate. In the file for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U & 3DS there is evidence that a Touch! Generations trophy category was going to be added. Now, Touch! Generations encompases a lot of different games and actually varies from region to region so I made a rule: games that began as Touch! Generation, but got sequels after the brand was dropped are classified as their own series. Games that only existed with this brand have been put under it. This means that the likes of Nintendogs, Brain Academy and Brain Age are all their own series whereas Master of Illusion, English Trainer and Magnetica are all examples of Touch! Generation games. I have also applied this to the generic sports games that Nintendo use to make before Mario took over them. This means Tennis, Soccer, Baseball, Ice Hockey, Golf and American Football have all been put under the ‘Nintendo Sports’ franchise.

Next, I want to bring up the franchises that Nintendo have worked on but do not own. These include games both designed and/or published by Nintendo, but they do not hold the rights for in any way. Games like this include:Mickey Mouse and Popeye to Tetris and SimCity to Baten Kaitos, Culdcept and Fatal Frame. Some of these, you may be saying to me in the comments, are in Smash already so why not include them. The reason being that the aim here is to look at the franchises Nintendo does own rights to, either 100% or even just a bit, and not the individual games they own. They don’t own all of SimCity for example just the SNES ones as they published and helped develop. That is why we can have Mr. Wright in Smash despite SimCity not being with Nintendo anymore.

Lastly, I have not limited myself to just game IPs. Although this only applies to three series so far being Hardware, Ultrahand and Nester, all of which were not originally thought of as game IP but are all brands owned by Nintendo so I have counted them. I will say it here but as of the time of this articles publication Captain N: the Game Master has not been confirmed to me by Nintendo as one of their IP. I do not know if it is owned by Nintendo, who produced the series, or if it is owned by DIC Entertainment (who made the series). Unlike the Super Mario Bros show and the Sonic cartoons that DIC also made, Captain N was a brand new IP so ownership of the series is not 100% confirmed.

With all of this cleared up, let’s take a look at the series that are in Smash and how they are represented within the universe of Smash. I want to clarify that I am only going to talk about Nintendo series here and so no 3rd Party franchises like Sonic or Mega Man will be mentioned. I am also not including Brawl’s chronicle as it is not really a proper representative of the IP, it is just a name in a long list. I won’t be going into a lot of detail here as we will be anymore but I will give at least one example where this series can be found.

 

The Fighters!

fighters

Let’s start with an easy one, the fighters. The latest Super Smash Bros. has 58 characters but there were more cut in the previous games. I am also going to include Mii Fighter costumes here as they are involved with the fighters. Let us take a look at which franchises are represented here:

Spoiler title
Series Example
Animal Crossing Villager
Balloon Fight Villager’s Up-Special
Donkey Kong DK
Duck Hunt Duck Hunt Duo
Earthbound Ness
F-Zero Captain Falcon
Fire Emblem Marth
Game & Watch Mr. Game & Watch
Hogan’s Alley Duck Hunt Duo
Ice Climber Ice Climbers
Kid Icarus Pit
Kirby Kirby
Metroid Samus
Nintendo Sports (Golf) One of Mario’s alts
Pikmin Olimar
Pokémon Pikachu
Punch-Out! Little Mac
Robot R.O.B.
Star Fox Fox
Super Mario Mario
Super Smash Bros (and honestly various but Smash labels them as this) Mii Fighters
The Legend of Zelda Link
Wario Wario
Wii Fit Wii Fit Trainer
Wild Gunman Duck Hunt Duo
Wrecking Crew One of Mario’s alts
Xenoblade Chronicles Shulk
Yoshi Yoshi

Exclusively Mii Fighter Costumes

Series Example
Murasame Mii Sword Fighter
Splatoon Mii Gunner

So in total for the characters in Super Smash Bros we have 30 series represented with 2 of these being from Mii Fighter costumes.

 

The Stages!

battlefield

The next big part of the Super Smash Bros. series is the stages so now I will move onto them. This includes obviously what series these stages are based on but also includes all the individual hazards in these stages. Again I will make sure to include at least one example of where you might find this representation in the Smash series.

Spoiler title
Series Example
Animal Crossing Smashville
Balloon Fight Balloon Fight
Donkey Kong Kongo Jungle (64)
Duck Hunt Duck Hunt
Earthbound Onett
Electroplankton Hanenbow
F-Zero Big Blue
Fire Emblem Arena Ferox
Game & Watch Flat Zone
Ice Climber Summit
Kid Icarus Palutena’s Temple
Kirby Green Greens
Metroid Brinstar Depths
Miiverse Miiverse
Nintendogs Living Room
PictoChat PictoChat
Pikmin Garden of Hope
Pilotwings Pilotwings
Pokémon Pokémon Stadium
Punch-Out! Boxing Ring
Star Fox Corneria
Streetpass Find Mii
Super Mario Peach’s Castle
Super Smash Bros Battlefield
The Legend of Zelda Temple
Tomodachi Tomodachi Life
Wario Gamer
Wii Fit Wii Fit Studio
Wii Sports Wuhu Island
Wrecking Crew Wrecking Crew
Xenoblade Gaur Plain
Yoshi Yoshi’s Island

So in total for the stages we have 32 represented with only 1 of these being just a hazard. A fun fact about this is that Robot is the only series with a unique playable fighter but no level based on it. Poor R.O.B!

 

The Items!

items

Next we have items, the final major element that makes up the Super Smash Bros. experience. I am also going to include the Assist Trophies here as they are connected to the game through the use of items and just like before I will include one example of where you might find this series represented in Super Smash Bros. This will NOT include items that come from fighters like Peach’s vegetables or R.O.B.’s gyros or stages like the apples in Green Greens as they are technically just an extension of that fighter/stage.

Spoiler title
Series Example
Animal Crossing Beehive
Balloon Fight Flipper
Clu Clu Land Unira
Donkey Kong Hammer
Earthbound Mr. Saturn
Kid Icarus Ore Club
Kirby Warp Star
Metroid Screw Attack
Nintendo Sports (Soccer) Soccer Ball
Pikmin Hocotate Ship
Pilotwings Rocket Belt
Pokémon Poké Ball
Puzzle League Lip’s Stick
Star Fox Smart Bomb
Steel Diver Steel Diver
Super Mario Fire Flower
Super Scope Super Scope
Super Smash Bros Beam Sword
The Legend of Zelda Bombchu
Wrecking Crew Golden Hammer
Yoshi* Yoshi Egg*

*The Yoshi egg only appears in one mission in Super Smash Bros. Melee however it acts like an item unlike the Yoshi eggs Yoshi uses and is not caused by any particular stage so I personally counted it.

Exclusively Assist Trophies

Series Example
Brain Age Dr. Kawashima
Color TV-Game Color TV-Game 15
Custom Robo Ray MK III
Devil World Devil
Dillon Dillon
Drill Dozer Jill
Excite Excitebike
F-Zero Samurai Goroh
Fire Emblem Lyn
Golden Sun Isaac
Jam with the Band Barbara
Kaeru no Tame Sable Prince
Kururin Helirin
Murasame Takamaru
Nintendogs Nintendog
Punch-Out! Little Mac (in Brawl)
Sheriff Sheriff
Sin & Punishment Saki Amamiya
Starfy Starfy
Wario Ashley
Wars Infantry and Tanks
Xenoblade Riki

These numbers keep getting bigger. From the items there are 43 different series shown through items with 29 being from Assist trophies.

 

The Enemies!

enemies

All things considered this should be a short one. Ever since the first Smash game there have been NPC enemies and bosses for the player to fight whether it be Master Hand or enemies in Smash Run. Once again I will give one example of where to find the representation so let’s-a-go:

Spoiler title
Series Example
Donkey Kong Kritter
Earthbound Devil Car
Ice Climbers Polar Bear
Kid Icarus Souflee
Kirby Tac
Metroid Metroid
Pikmin Bulborb
Pokémon Gastly
Rhythm Heaven Sneaky Spirit
Robot R.O.B. Sentry
Streetpass Ghost
Super Mario Goomba
Super Smash Bros Primid
Yoshi Fly Guy
Zelda Like Like

This time around we have ended with 15 series represented. All of these are from series that have playable characters except for one and that is Rhythm Heaven. Maybe this is a sign that it was once planned to have playable character…

 

The Music!

Music

Super Smash Bros Brawl introduced the My Music section of the game where stages could now have more than one or two songs. This came back in Super Smash Bros for Wii U and 3DS and thanks to this there are many series that now got some representation in Smash, even if this is there only one. Once again I will give one example of a song that has some representation in Super Smash Bros.

Spoiler title
Series Example
1080 Snowboarding Golden Forest
Animal Crossing Go K.K. Rider!
AR Games Dragon Battle
Art Academy Swan Lesson
Balloon Fight Balloon Trip
Brain Academy Title (Big Brain Academy)
Brain Age Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day
Captain Rainbow Tomorrow’s Passion
Chōsōjū Mecha Marionation Gear
Clu Clu Land Clu Clu Land
Cooking Navi Shaberu! DS Cooking Navi
Detective Club Famicom Medley
Devil World Famicom Medley
Dillon Dillon’s Rolling Western: The Last Ranger
Donkey Kong Donkey Kong
Duck Hunt Duck Hunt Medley
Earthbound Snowman
Excite Excite Truck
F-Zero Mute City
Famicom Grand Prix Title (3D Hot Rally)
Famicom Mukashi Banashi Shin Onigashima Medley
Fire Emblem Fire Emblem
Freakyforms Freakyforms: Your Creations, Alive! Medley
Game & Watch Flat Zone
Golden Sun Battle Scene / Final Boss (Golden Sun)
Heracles Glory of Heracles
Ice Climber Ice Climber
Jam with the Band PERFORMANCE
Joy Mech Fight Famicom Medley
Kid Icarus Overworld
Kirby Ice Cream Island
Mach Rider Mach Rider
Metroid Escape
Murasame The Mysterious Murasame Castle Medley
NES Remix Title Theme (NES Remix 2)
Nintendo Land Nintendo Land Medley
Nintendo Sports (Soccer) Famicom Medley
Nintendog Bath Time Theme
PictoChat PictoChat
Pikmin Garden of Hope
Pilotwings Light Plane
Pokémon Route 10 (Pokémon Black / White)
Punch-Out! Minor Circuit
Puzzle League Lip’s Theme (Panel de Pon)
Rhythm Heaven Blue Birds
Robot Stack-Up/Gyromite
Sakura Samurai Boss 1 (Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword)
Soma Bringer Attack (Soma Bringer)
Star Fox Venom
Streetpass Dark Lord
Style Boutique Pop Fashion Show
Super Mario Ground Theme (Super Mario Bros.)
Super Smash Bros Menu
The Legend of Zelda Temple Theme
Urban Champion Famicom Medley
Wario WarioWare, Inc.
Wii Channels Mii Plaza
Wii Fit Core Lunge
Wii Party Final Results (Wii Party U)
Wii Play Charge! (Wii Play)
Wii Sports Wii Sports Resort
Wonderful 101 ST01 Roll Out, Wonderful 100!
Wrecking Crew Wrecking Crew Medley
X Tunnel Scene (X)
Xenoblade Engage the Enemy
Yoshi Flower Field

That’s a lot of minutes you can listen too! For the music in Smash there are 67 different series represented. 64 of these series can be found in Super Smash Bros for Wii U & 3DS but two can be found only in Brawl being Cooking Navi and Wii Play.

 

The Trophies!

trophy case

Welcome to the longest part of this article. There are a ton of series who have been represented via the trophies from the GameCube to the Wii U. There is a ton of series there but I will do my best to give an example of one. I really hope you appreciate all this hard work.

Spoiler title
Series Example Series Example
1080 Snowboarding Kensuke Kimachi Another Code Ashley Robbins
Animal Crossing Isabelle Balloon Fight Balloon Fighter
Art Academy Vince Brain Age Dr. Kawashima
Card Hero Maruo Maruhige Captain Rainbow Captain Rainbow
Chibi-Robo Chibi-Robo & Chibi Tot Chōsōjū Mecha HM Mech Rosa
Cubivore Alpha Clu Clu Land Bubbles
Custom Robo Ray Mk III Colour TV-Game Colour TV-Game 15
Donkey Kong Donkey Kong Detective Club Ayumi Tachibana
Doshin Love Giant Devil World Devil
Drill Dozer Jill Dillon Dillon
Duck Hunt Ducks Excite Excitebikes
Earthbound Jeff Famicom Grand Prix Monster
F-Zero Captain Falcon Famicom Mukashi Banashi Donbe & Hikari
Fire Emblem Ike Fluidity Eddy
Fossil Fighters Fossil Fighters (Heroes) HarmoKnight Tempo
Freakyforms King Roy Hogan’s Alley Can
Game & Watch Mr. Game & Watch Hotel Dusk Kyle Hyde
Golden Sun Isaac Jam with the Band Barbara
Hardware Nintendo GameCube Kaeru no Tame Prince of Sable
Ice Climber Ice Climbers Last Story Zael
Kid Icarus Dark Pit Mach Rider Mach Rider
Kirby King Dedede Magical Mokka
Kururin Helirin Murasame Takamaru
Metroid Samus Aran Nintendo Land Monita
Nintendo Pocket Football Club Football Players Nintendo Sports (Soccer) Soccer Ball
Pokémon Pikachu Nintendog Nintendog
Punch-Out! Little Mac Ouendan/Elite Beat Ouendan
Puzzle League Lip’s Stick Pandora’s Tower Elena and Aeron
Rhythm Heaven Wrestler & Reporter Pikmin Alph
Robot R.O.B. Pilotwings Light Plane
Sin & Punishment Saki Amamiya ThruSpace Guardians
Smash Bros Smash Ball Pushmo Mallo
Star Fox Falco Lombardi Rusty Rusty Slugger
Starfy Starfy Sakura Samurai Sakura Samurai
Steel Diver Steel Diver Sheriff Sheriff
Streetpass Gold Bone Splatoon Inkling
Style Boutique Evie Wario Wario
Super Mario Mario Wii Fit Wii Fit Trainer
Super Scope Super Scope Wii Sports Disc Dog
The Legend of Zelda Zelda Wild Gunman Wild Gunmen
Tomodachi Golden Wonderful 101 Wonder Red
Wars Infantry and Tanks Wrecking Crew Eggplant Man
Wave Race Ryota Hayami Xenoblade Reyn
Yoshi Yoshi Zangeki Frey

Phew. This is definitely the category that represents the most Nintendo series with 88. It’s not surprising that this area references Nintendo’s IP the most but it does not reference all of them. If only it were that easier.

 

The Stickers!

stickers

And now we are on to our final category for the series represented in the Super Smash Bros series. Stickers acted very much like trophies but got to represent those games that do not have 3D models. They only appeared in Super Smash Bros Brawl and while not representing as many series as the trophies they do represent a few different franchises. So let us stick to the same plan as before as I give at least one example of where the series are represented.

Spoiler title
Series Example Series Example
1080 Snowboarding Akari Hayami Another Code Ashley
Animal Crossing Brewster Brain Academy Dr. Lobe
Artstyle Boundish Card Hero Hiroshi
Balloon Fight Balloon Fighter Chōsōjū Mecha Musketeer Daltania
Chibi-Robo Chibi-Robo Custom Robo Annie
Cooking Navi Chef Duck Hunt Duck
Devil World Tamagon Electroplankton Electroplankton
Donkey Kong Cranky Kong Famicom Grand Prix Monster
Drill Dozer Grutch Famicom Mukashi Banashi Donbe
Earthbound Flint Hotel Dusk Dunning Smith
Excite Boulder Joy Mech Fight Sukapon
F-Zero Black Shadow Kaeru no Tame Sabure Prince
Fire Emblem Eirika Kid Icarus Pit
Game & Watch Chef Mach Rider Mach Rider
Ice Climber Nana MAGKID Magkid
Kirby Boxy Metroid Energy Tank
Kururin Heliobokaan Murasame Takamaru
Magical Boy Nintendo Sports (Ice Hockey) Fat Hockey Player
Pikmin Louie Nintendog Chihuahua
Pokémon Celebi Ouenden/Elite Beat Derek
Robot R.O.B. Pilotwings Instructor
Sennen Kazoku Akuma Puzzle League Flower Fairy Lip
Star Fox Falco Stunt Race FX F-Type
Starfy Kyorosuke The Legend of Zelda Gleeok
Super Mario Boo Touch! Generations (English Training) Dzuke-chan
Wario 9-Volt Wave Race Ryota Hayami
Wars Andy X Training Academy Coach
Wild Gunman Wild Gunman Yakuman Yakuman Player
Yoshi Blargg

So through Brawl’s stickers there are 57 series represented. With that we have covered every Nintendo IP ever represented in the Super Smash Bros series (excluding the Chronicle). So what is the final tally? Well before that I just wanted to briefly mention the franchises that were considered for a different category at some point. This means series with considered characters, stages and music. This does not necessarily mean they were ever worked on. The reason I want to do this is because it will help us in evaluating why certain series have never been chosen for representation in Super Smash Bros. I can’t give any examples for this but I will say what the series was planned for instead.

So there was only 11 series that were planned to have certain features appear in the Super Smash Bros series but never did. All of these series eventually appeared elsewhere in the Smash Bros franchise except for one: Swapnote/Diary. We do not know why this series got removed entirely but I will cover it in the next part. Yep there is going to be a second part to this article where I go over all the Nintendo IP that have NOT appeared in the Super Smash Bros. franchise. For now though let’s get to the figure you have all been waiting for. Out of Nintendo’s 193 franchises the grand total of Nintendo IP that are represented in Super Smash Bros is

‘drum roll’…

…109!

That is not even 2/3rd! In fact, that is barely over half. It just goes to show that there is still plenty of IPs that Sakurai and his team can pull from for future installments of Smash.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article. Part 2 can be found here so I hope you go and check it out. There are 84 Nintendo IP unaccounted for (Swapnote included) and I am going to list them all off with reasons why I think they have missed the cut for so long. Leave a comment below and if you have any questions make sure to hit me up on Twitter. Now good luck trying to play all those Nintendo games, I know I will need it.

Nantendo

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Joshua 'NantenJex' Goldie
6 comments
  1. This article is great, that’s one of my favorite aspects too (I remember being happy as a kid when I saw the Hamtaro games on the cronicle, lol), of course it was written by Nantendo, heh, I’ve been following his “daily obscure character posting” on Twitter. I think a suggestion is that if, following the category order (characters, trophies…) you said the number of franchises added in relation to the previous category (example. Stages added 8 new IPs not represented in the previous category, Nintendogs… etc). Before I’ve tried myself just by curiosity searching obscure Nintendo IPs, but it was more extensive than I expected, but his twitter posts kept surprising me with games I didn’t know about, and I had no idea there was “Wii Chess”, lol. I find very interesting how you reached to some developers, maybe you could write about it sometime. Doesn’t Cooking Navi has multiple games? I also don’t think it’s a good idea to simply put IPs like “Mario Party” “Kart” and “Golf/Tennis” under the “Mario” label… I mean, the “Super Mario Bros.” label, but great post anyway, thanks for making it, must have been a lot of work (is this the longest SG post?), I think this a really important post (also in an archive way). I wish non-game Nintendo stuff could also be represented in this, after all Cloud has a costume from a movie… I do hope that the “yellow” and blue Luigi costume is a ref to the japanese movie but… It’s more lime green than yellow, matching one of his LMansion:Dark Moon alts, so I’m not sure, aside from just cartoons it would be nice to have a item like the Ultra-Hand that could allow grabs with long reach for example. Looking forward for the next part of the article.

    Ar on March 15 |
    • Thank you for the kind words :). Part 2 of the article is out now so you can check it out whenever you want! That is a good suggestion. I could go back and add that in at a later point. Your actually right about Cooking Navi. I did not realize, I must have passed it when researching my mistake. Thank you, I will make sure to update the article.

      As for the Mario series it is done that way because that is how it is done in Smash itself. For example the Mario Kart, Paper Mario and Luigi’s Mansion stage are all listed as just being a part of the Mario series unlike Yoshi’s Island or WarioWare Inc.

      Nantendo on March 15 |
  2. “Now, Touch! Generations encompases a lot of different games and actually varies from region to region so I made a rule: games that began as Touch! Generation, but got sequels after the brand was dropped are classified as their own series. Games that only existed with this brand have been put under it. This means that the likes of Nintendogs, Brain Academy and Brain Age are all their own series whereas Master of Illusion, English Trainer and Cooking Navi are all examples of Touch! Generation games.”

    Uhhh… Cooking Navi has 3-4 games in the series and is actually pretty successful in terms of sales.

    DonkaFjord on March 16 |
    • Yes I realize that now. It completely went over my head in my research.I have updated the article accordingly and thanks for the correction! 🙂

      Nantendo on March 16 |
  3. I too preferred fighting crossover games for their franchise representation a bit more than the actual fighting. It’s knowing that us old fans can really appreciate the little details that make a crossover game feel right. Even games like the Marvel vs. Capcom series and PlayStation All-Stars has a few references that even the most most hardcore would know. Great work!

    Chris.W on March 16 |
  4. Which one was just a stage hazard and not a stage?

    Spengbab on September 28 |