Top 20 Final Smashes

Hello, everyone. Gokuzard here and welcome to the finale of Smash Month!

Aside from maybe the original and sometimes Smash 4, Brawl is considered the black sheep of the franchise, and for pretty good reasons. The slower pace, tripping, the terrible balance, um, TRIPPING, yeah, I can see why it’s not too many people’s favorite game.

Of course, it does have merit to it, like being the only one with an actual story mode, introducing third party characters into the roster, and introducing the topic of this list: Final Smashes.

While you’re gonna see them in tournaments even less than BlazBlue’s Astral Heats (by which, I mean, not at all,) they’re among the best supers in fighting games, and I wanna talk about my favorites.

Fun fact: Final Smashes were supposed to be in Smash 64, but I’m guessing the N64 wasn’t ready for them. Don’t know why Melee didn’t have them.

Anyway, it’s time to break some balls (wait, that came out wrong.) These are my Top 20 Final Smashes!

Number 20

We haven’t had anything Xenoblade related this month. Let’s fix that.

One of my favorite things about Xenoblade 2’s underappreciated gameplay was combining elements for massive damage and added effects using Blade Specials. While we didn’t get to combine elements in Smash, we do have Rex showing up for the Bae Blades’ respective Final Smashes. And yes, both are on here.

Starting off with a wide slash, they then use their respective level 4s from Xenoblade 2 upon hit, with the giant pillar of flame, Burning Sword, for Pyra, and the rays of light from the sky, Sacred Arrow, for Mythra.

These are the first 2 of many on the list ripped mostly from the game of origin, which makes sense, because their specials were also ripped straight from Xenoblade 2. And like most other things, I think Pyra does it better. But since they’re so similar, I’m putting them both on here.

But like I said in my Smash character list, I’m just glad they didn’t spoil chapter 7 for their Final Smash.

Number 19

All right. Time for old man ramblings from someone who has his N64 nostalgia goggles!

For those who haven’t played the original Banjo-Kazooie, Grunty just refused to go down! You had to use nearly all the moves in the game, and she refused to lose! And even after, she cast a shield around herself so you can’t hit her!

At this point, some Jinjo statues appear out of the ground, activating them with your eggs has them fly into her and knock her off her broom, but not her tower. In comes the Jinjonator, because it wouldn’t be a late ’90s final attack without -ator being the suffix. It’s like everyone was Doofenshmirtz.

So having the Jinjonator as the Final Smash makes a lot of sense, complete with statue, Jinjos surrounding it, and even standing on top of Grunty’s tower.

Not gonna lie, though, when I thought of Banjo in Smash, I was thinking of Dragon Kazooie roasting people for their Final Smash. This is probably better, though.

Number 18

This next one may not be as big on the references as the last 2, but it makes up for it in the visuals.

Oh, hi, Valkenhayn. Odd seeing you here instead of Ragna.

While I don’t like how Greninja plays overall, its Final Smash, Secret Ninja Attack, is one of my favorites simply for how sick it is!

Starting off with its former signature move, Mat Block, Greninja sends its opponent flying into the air, slashing them several times while silhouetted by the moon, ending with one last hit that spikes whoever’s hit by it. There are several Final Smashes like this, and don’t worry. This isn’t the last.

But the reason it’s the first is it doesn’t do much in terms of references. There’s Mat Block, Ash-Greninja, and that’s about it.

Maybe Ash should’ve had his Greninja do this. Maybe then, he’d win the Kalos League.

Number 17

From one knock-into-the-air-and-beat-the-$h!t-out-of-them Final Smash to another.

While the other Mii type’s Final Smashes are kinda basic, the Brawler’s, Omega Blitz, is MUCH better.

While there’s obviously no references involved (still kinda imagining the timeline where the Miis’ moveset was based on Wii Sports, though,) I put it above Greninja because it lasts, like forever.

And I was gonna make a thread on Twitter where my Tifa and/or Shantae Miis use this on everyone in the game, but Ultimate doesn’t allow direct uploads to Twitter, for some reason. Even before Elon ruined it.

Number 16

I completely forgot to mention this in the last countdown, but I find it kinda funny how Chrom said “I guess I’ll get my chance another day” and then it was like “You can be in Robin’s Final Smash. Isn’t that great?”

Well, I wouldn’t say that’s great for his fans, but I will say it’s a great Final Smash.

With Lucina being a slightly different clone of Marth, someone had to use the Pair Up mechanic that Awakening is known for as their Final Smash. Kinda funny how Chrom is Robin’s Final Smash and does nothing for his daughter in this game.

Starting off by summoning Chrom out of nowhere, he and Robin once again knock the opponent into the air and start ravaging them with lightning, fire and sword strikes. I put this one above Greninja and the Brawler because I think it looks better. Fire is my favorite element, for those who don’t remember.

Also hilarious how they didn’t change it in Ultimate, despite Chrom getting in the game. That’s gotta be an interesting conversation.

Number 15

Now it’s time for the character everyone complains about.

No, it’s not Kazuya. Why did my main have to get such a comparatively boring Final Smash?

While I only played a bit of Minecraft in middle school and even less multiplayer, I have seen some Minecraft videos in high school and seen a few people get trapped in a house full of explosives. So Steve’s Final Smash, House of Boom, does just that.

Starting off with an oversized piston, Steve (or whatever Minecraft character) sends someone hit by it into a house full of TNT blocks and Creepers. Needless to say, it blows up in their face, while Steve just eats steak while looking at the camera.

And since I didn’t get to say this earlier this month, remember when Steve was revealed and Twitter broke down? Guess it was the calm before the Smash community literally sending death threats just for someone picking Steve. Don’t send death threats over who you pick in Smash. That’s not nice.

Number 14

If I had played more Castlevania or watched the anime, I probably would’ve put the series on all 4 lists this month. Oh, well.

I’m gonna be honest, while I had very little faith that anything from Castlevania would get in Smash, I was thinking they’d put in Simon’s Hyper Attack from Judgment if he got in. Then again, Grand Cross makes a bit more sense, since it’s actually in the main series.

After trapping his opponent in a coffin, the respective Belmont uses his holy energy to summon many crosses made of aura. This is pretty much ripped off of the Item Crash system introduced in Rondo of Blood, specifically Holy Cross.

Now if only Konami would stop doing nearly everything in their power to make us hate them and give us the Julius game already! Let me see how Dracula was taken down once and for all!

Number 13

Another thing I’m gonna bring up now: after playing Arms, my most wanted rep was Ninjara. The only ninja we have in Smash are Sheik and Greninja. Behind him was Max Brass and Twintelle, but Min-Min was my 4th-most wanted.

So anyway, Arms Rush.

If you’re like me and didn’t get who you wanted, there’s a 3 in 7 chance whoever you wanted is in this Final Smash, at least, with about half the roster pummeling whoever’s hit by it before Min-Min finishes it with a dragon laser at them, hitting the gong at the edge of the Ramen Bowl stage.

And now to hope for Arms 2 at some point.

Number 12

Next up, we have the final Final Smash.

Just because I haven’t played Kingdom Hearts doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate Sora’s Final Smash, Sealing the Keyhole.

This starts off by summoning a keyhole portal, and if anyone’s trapped in it, a door closes in front of them, then Sora fires a laser out of his Keyblade, turning it before it explodes!

Is that supposed to be the door to Kingdom Hearts, and if it is, I just wanna ask about the ramifications of blowing it up. I don’t know too much about the series, but it seems like a bad thing. Actually, don’t tell me. I’d probably go cross-eyed.

Number 11

We’re going from the last Final Smash, to the first on a Fighters Pass.

I remember how we went 5 months without any info on Joker’s moveset, and a lot of Persona 5 fans were speculating that it’d be an All-Out Attack. And they were right, with it being mostly ripped straight out of Persona 5.

Joker starts this with a dash forward, which is reversible if it misses, for some reason, and upon hit, he summons a random group of 3 party members to beat up whoever’s trapped by it, complete with Morgana or Futaba saying a thing, and the splash screen at the end, but since this game is E10, the blood is replaced with sparkles. I swear, there’s some joke I can make here.

And while the splash screen runs regardless of whether not it kills, it guaranteed kills at 100, and the best part, if it ends the game, it goes straight to the results screen! You can tell that Sakurai loves Persona 5. And I need to get on it.

Number 10

So far, we haven’t had any Final Smashes from Brawl. But I’m gonna be honest, most of the OG Final Smashes don’t hold up compared to the ones from Smash 4 and Ultimate imo. Aside from Link’s Triforce Slash and the Pokémon Trainer’s Triple Finish, I wasn’t considering anything else from Brawl for this list.

With one exception, and MAN, what an exception!

Behold the original version of “knock someone into the air, beat the $h!t out of them and go back down with them!” Ike’s Great Aether isn’t my favorite of this archetype (more on that later,) but it’s still the best in Brawl!

Dude holds a 2-handed flaming sword with one hand while flying, slashing and beating the $h!t out of you, and when he comes back down, he makes a giant f**king explosion!

Apparently, Great Aether doesn’t exist in Fire Emblem, but they did give the same name to a different move in Engage. Or so I read on the Wiki.

Number 9

Ridley is probably the most savage recurring villain in Nintendo’s flagship franchises, even compared to the guy who tried to starve DK, and has probably the strongest grudge against the protag, still haunting Samus no matter what excuses the writers use to bring him back, be it cyborgification, Phazon infusion, robot clones, literal clones or… whatever Proteus Ridley from Samus Returns is.

Both of these are shown very well in his Final Smash, Plasma Scream.

Practically, it’s far from the best, insta-killing at 100, but spiking from center stage otherwise. Visually, though, it’s a whole ‘nother story!

Anyone hit by this gets thrown onto Samus’ conveniently placed Gunship, which passes by Ridley eerily lurking before he FIRES HIS LASER! This causes the Gunship to explode and hurts everyone on it.

Jeez, even in his Final Smash, Ridley can’t help tormenting Samus. Still wish he was in Dread, though. Raven Beak should’ve had some form of Ridley fight Samus before he took matters into his own hands.

Number 8

On the other end of the villain spectrum (if you can even call him that anymore,) Dedede hasn’t had the best luck in Brawl or Smash 4 when it comes to Final Smashes.

In Brawl, he had the Waddle Dee Army, or as anyone who knows their late 2000s/early 2010s meme culture knows it by…

It was funny for a while, but that’s about it.

Smash 4 gave him Dedede Burst, which was better, practically speaking, but not great to look at. Just a few swings of his hammer and then a bomb out of it. He doesn’t even put the mask on! It was so boring, I couldn’t find a gif of the full version.

Thankfully, Ultimate would fix that.

Being the only Dedede Final Smash that actually originates from a Kirby Game, Dede-Rush goes all in on referencing the fight with Masked Dedede in Super Star Ultra! Starting off with a swing of his hammer, this takes one person hit by it to the wall of a caged wrestling ring! Dedede then launches a bunch of missiles at the opponent, and then spins right round with his Jet Hammer, complete with mask, straight into the other person!

I’m just glad we FINALLY got a Final Smash with Masked Dedede. I can understand Brawl not having it, since Super Star Ultra came out later in 2008, but why the f**k did Smash 4 skip it?!

Number 7

When Ryu joined Smash 4 as DLC, Sakurai decided to give him 2 Final Smashes depending on if he’s up in someone’s face or not, just like how you could have 1 or 2 Ultras in Street Fighter 4. While Shinku Hadoken is kinda eh in this game, Shin Shoryuken nearly made the list.

Likewise, they also pulled a “Gee, Billy” with Ken, and while I do wish he got Shoryu Reppa instead of Shinryuken, Sakurai at least gave us the most based Final Smash possible: Shippu Jinraikyaku, known by the fighting game community as Evo Moment 37!

Ok, so for those who don’t speak FGC, let me explain the background of why this move was picked. So it’s the penultimate round of the biggest fighting game tournament in the world. The Ken player, Daigo Umehara, has just a pixel of health left. The Chun player, Justin Wong, has enough meter to use her 15 hit super. So Justin uses the super only for Daigo to parry the whole thing and punish with this super! And that’s why this Final Smash starts with a parry animation.

Afterwards, he attacks the opponent with a series of roundhouses, then rising into the air and likely past the edge of the stage with an advanced Tatsumaki, ending it with one last kick which rips the background from Street Fighter 4 if it kills (despite it not being in SF4.)

And with Ultimate changing parries to the frame you let go of shield instead of the frame you put up your shield, plus the added parry animations, it made recreating Evo Moment 37 in Smash more hype than it would be in previous games imo. Granted, you won’t be able to in tournaments, since Final Smashes are banned, not to mention Chun isn’t in this game, but I guess you can make it work with Fox or Kazuya or someone like that.

Number 6

Going from an Esports reference to a reference to one of my most nostalgic games, number 6 is K. Rool’s Blast-O-Matic.

Upon activation, K. Rool stomps and charges forward, and if anyone’s hit by it, he gets on his throne, hits a button while laughing, and then a giant laser fires out of the the island in the shape of himself, blowing up DK Island, with everyone hit by it taking a lot of damage!

It’s similar in concept to Ridley’s Final Smash: shoot a giant laser and destroy their respective nemesis’ home or mode of transportation out of spite. However, K. Rool wins out for me because DK64 nostalgia.

Yeah, anyone who grew up with N64 Rare games remembers their game over screens. More Banjo-Kazooie than DK64, for… obvious reasons, but K. Rool’s evil laugh, cutting himself off to make sure the button was pressed, then resuming his laughter as a giant laser cannon is being charged directly at DK Isles with that dramatic version of his theme playing, it sticks out in your memory.

So seeing that cutscene in HD, but sped up and the laser actually fires was a perfect Final Smash for K. Rool, especially with the only other DK64 reference in his moveset being the boxing glove in his forward smash.

Number 5

From one villain Final Smash to another.

Have I mentioned how much I love Final Fantasy 7 yet? Well, it’s my favorite 3rd-party game of all time. The final battle is one of my favorite moments, and speaking of the final battle, what better Final Smash for Seph, than the iconic (and VERY long) Supernova.

Initiating this move with a swing of his sword, Seph then turns into his famous Safer form upon hit, literally ripping the angle off of FF7, before summoning a meteor that blows up the moon and the sun! The sun’s explosion blows up the earth, accompanied by overly complex math like in the original FF7.

And just like in FF7, this Final Smash gives people status effects, but unlike in FF7, ribbons won’t save you here. Health drain, slowed down, higher knockback, put to sleep, shield broken (which, yes, does still insta-kill Puff,) and the most annoying, reversed controls! The latter is why I don’t hold a direction when hit by this, because a lot of times when I do, I hold the wrong way and end up dying a lot earlier than I should.

Fun fact: this is the longest Final Smash in Ultimate, at 8 seconds, mirroring the infamously long attack from the international version of FF7. Seriously, it’s 2 minutes long! Thank f**k the PS4 port gave you the option to speed up the game.

Number 4

Well, after that last one, how much more fitting can this one get?

As soon as Cloud as revealed for Smash 4’s DLC, everyone knew what his Final Smash would be (unless you didn’t know enough about FF at the time.) I mean, if it wasn’t Omnislash, what else would it be? Summoning Bahamut or Knights of the Round? Well, not with them being stage hazards on Midgar.

Like in FF7, he uses a flurry of slashes, complete with text box, but unlike in FF7, he takes a cue from Ike and flies with it, complete with explosion at the end! Maybe it’s FF7 fanboy bias, but I think it’s the best of this archetype, especially playing around with camera angles.

Or at least it was, but then when Seph got in (it should’ve been Tifa instead,) Cloud got Omnislash Version 5 from Advent Children if he’s in his AC alts, making him the only character with costume-dependent Final Smashes. Gameplay-wise, it’s basically the same, but as stupid as a sword splitting into 6 is, I can’t help but love that. They even have the swords surround him at the end like in AC!

I also loved how they made him glow blue like he had Limit when he got the Smash Ball in Smash 4. Probably changed that so it wasn’t confusing.

Number 3

I can’t think of a better intro to this spot than rolling one specific clip.

If there’s one Final Smash that goes even further beyond in references, it’s Mega Man’s Mega Legends. So what do you think they did? A screen clearing weapon like the Rain Flush? The Rush Adapters? One of his Hyper Combos from Mahvel? Nah, that’s too simple.

Instead, let’s start with the Black Hole Bomb, the only move in the game from Mega Man 9 or 10, mind you, and to crank the love up to Mega Man 11, let’s have every incarnation of Mega Man (except Zero series and the ones from ZX,) in one Final Smash!

You’ve got OG Mega Man, X, Volnutt from Legends, Battle Network Mega Man, heck, even Geo and Omega-Xis from Star Force, and Ultimate goes 2 steps further by adding Proto Man and Bass! This will live in the memory of every Mega Man fan for years!

It’s been over 5 years since the last new Mega Man game that’s not a mobile game or a gacha-less port of a mobile game, and when this is how Nintendo treats Mega Man (ignoring how much I hate playing as and against him,) I’m convinced Capcom should sell the series to Nintendo at this rate.

Also, while scripting, I realized Mega Man got third on all 4 lists this month. I didn’t mean to, but it is funny.

Number 2

Pokémon is the only franchise to bring in at least one character in each Smash game. 64 had Pikachu and Puff, Melee had Mewtwo and Pichu, Brawl had the Pokémon Trainer and Lucario, and Smash 4 had Greninja and Charizard by itself. And while they kept us waiting until the very end, Ultimate brought in Incineroar, and while many people wanted Decidueye, I wanted Incineroar, as I said last week.

I have a lot more fun with it than I thought I would, with it being my main until Banjo came out, and still to this day, it’s in my top 3. Love me some grapplers, and love me some Incin.

And its Final Smash is a better version of what I thought it’s be.

Back in my favorite Pokémon list, I said Incin’s signature Z-Move, Malicious Moonsault, is my favorite Z-Move. Naturally, this makes for an amazing Final Smash, though Max Malicious Moonsault is a slightly modified version that makes it even better!

Starting with a dash grab forward, if anyone’s grabbed, they’re thrown into a modified version of the Boxing Ring! Afterward, Incin throws them to the ropes, then smacks them into the air a la early side B, hitting them in midair 3 times before diving into them headfirst, creating a giant explosion upon landing!

This comes complete with the flash of the Z-Crystal, but who has the Z-Ring? Where’s your Trainer, Incin? Is Incin Marshadow now?

Number 1

…Remember my love of fighting games?

No, Kazuya, I already said you’re not on the list!

Fun fact: the reason Smash exists in the first place is because Sakurai felt guilty he completely rekt a total scrub and his GF at KoF ’95. So I can guess he was REALLY happy when Nintendo said to put Terry in Smash.

On that note, the writing was almost on the wall for Terry’s potential Final Smash, but Sakurai decided to make the Power Geyser and Buster Wolf Terry’s DLC moves. The Star Dunk Volcano from KoF 14 would’ve worked, but I guess that would’ve been too easy.

So instead, Sakurai decided “¡¿Porqué no los tres?!” Or at least dos.

Fatal Fury 3 introduced a hidden variant of the Power Geyser known as the Triple Geyser, which is exactly what it sounds like, and the start of this move! The first person hit by it then gets Power Dunked in a cutscene, before Terry busts out the Buster Wolf! I like to think it’s also the EX version.

While it doesn’t show as much love as Mega Legends, having both his staple supers in one attack like it’s a KoF 15 1.0 Max Mode combo was absolutely perfect, and it looks flashy af!

I’m not gonna lie and say this list was locked down from second 1; any of the top, like, 6 or 7, could’ve been number 1, but given my love of fighting games and how awesome it looks, plus how easy it is to combo into via cancels, and how much I love playing Terry, I eventually decided to award the Triple Wolf the title of my favorite Final Smash!

This has been Gokuzard, saying here’s to 25 years of Smash!
A’ight, onto other fighting games.