What's inside
- Quick comparison: the five Smash rosters ranked
- Best overall roster: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Best balance and fan-favorite staying power: Melee
- Best mid-priced roster: Smash for 3DS / Wii U
- Best single-player content, weakest balance: Brawl
- Best pick-up-and-play roster: the Nintendo 64 original
- How to choose, with the numbers that matter
- Ownership realities: what actually wears out
- Quick comparison: the five Smash rosters ranked
- Best overall roster: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Best balance and fan-favorite staying power: Melee
- Best mid-priced roster: Smash for 3DS / Wii U
- Best single-player content, weakest balance: Brawl
- Best pick-up-and-play roster: the Nintendo 64 original
- How to choose, with the numbers that matter
- Ownership realities: what actually wears out
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Super Smash Bros. Ultimate has the best roster in the series — 86 playable fighters spanning roughly 40 game franchises, including 18 third-party characters and every veteran from every previous entry once all paid DLC is counted. Melee ranks second because 26 fighters produced two decades of stable, watchable competitive play, while Smash 64 and Brawl trail badly on variety even though Brawl still owns the best single-player content. The ranking below weighs three things: how many characters you actually get, how balanced they are against each other, and how many fan-favorite picks survived the cut.
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.
What we cover
- Quick comparison: the five Smash rosters ranked
- Best overall roster: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
- Best balance and fan-favorite staying power: Melee
- Best mid-priced roster: Smash for 3DS / Wii U
- Best single-player content, weakest balance: Brawl
- Best pick-up-and-play roster: the Nintendo 64 original
- How to choose, with the numbers that matter
- Ownership realities: what actually wears out
Quick comparison: the five Smash rosters ranked
| Rank & game | Roster size (with DLC) | Franchises represented | Third-party fighters | Standout strength | Typical used price (game only) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch, 2018) | 86 | ~40 | 18 | “Everyone Is Here” — no veteran cut, 23 newcomers | $40–60 |
| 2. Super Smash Bros. Melee (GameCube, 2001) | 26 | 13 | 0 | Most stable competitive meta in the series | $50–90 |
| 3. Super Smash Bros. for 3DS / Wii U (2014) | 58 | ~30 | 6 | 21 newcomers across base game and DLC | $15–45 |
| 4. Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii, 2008) | 39 | 19 | 2 | Subspace Emissary campaign, first third-party fighters | $15–30 |
| 5. Super Smash Bros. (N64, 1999) | 12 | 10 | 0 | Lowest learning curve, four-player party chaos | $35–70 |
Counting conventions vary by a few characters depending on whether transformation characters and Mii variants get their own rows, so treat the totals above as the widely used community tallies rather than exact official figures.
Best overall roster: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate
Ultimate wins on every axis except “cheapest to buy.” Per Nintendo’s official roster page, the base game shipped with 74 fighters, and the 12 DLC additions (Piranha Plant plus the eleven Fighters Pass characters) push the total to 86. That includes 7 Echo Fighters — Daisy, Dark Samus, Chrom, Lucina, Ken, Richter and Dark Pit — which are functionally near-clones with small frame-data differences, and 18 third-party fighters, from Sonic and Snake to Sora, who closed out the roster after winning the official fan ballot.
Variety is the real story: roughly 40 distinct game franchises are represented, so a Mario fan, a Final Fantasy fan and a Banjo-Kazooie fan can all main someone from their own shelf. Balance is better than any previous entry because Nintendo shipped balance updates for three years, ending with version 13.0.1 in December 2021, according to the game’s final patch notes. That finality is actually useful for buyers — the tier list has been frozen since then, so you know what you’re getting.
Who it suits: anyone who owns a Switch or Switch 2 and wants the largest possible lineup, eight-player local matches, and an active tournament scene. Main trade-off: the sticker price is the highest in the series once you add both Fighters Passes (roughly $25–30 each) and a Nintendo Switch Online membership at about $20 a year for online play.
Best balance and fan-favorite staying power: Melee
Melee’s 26 fighters — 25 character slots plus Sheik — came from only 13 franchises and zero third-party licenses, which sounds thin next to Ultimate’s 86. What it lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth: roughly eight to ten characters have won major tournaments over the past two decades, and the top tier (Fox, Falco, Marth, Sheik, Jigglypuff, Peach, Captain Falcon and the Ice Climbers) has barely shifted. No other Smash game has held a competitive meta that steady for that long.
Who it suits: players who want a scene with long-running majors, a documented 20-year matchup history, and a game where execution matters more than roster size. The community’s Slippi rollback project also makes online Melee playable without Nintendo’s servers. Main trade-off: entry cost. A clean GameCube disc runs $50–90, and you’ll want a GameCube controller and adapter (another $30–60), plus a Wii or a modded GameCube to run it. Casual players also get fewer “fan favorite” picks — no Sonic, no Cloud, no Ridley.
Best mid-priced roster: Smash for 3DS / Wii U
This is the value pick nobody talks about. The base game launched with 51 fighters, and seven DLC additions — Mewtwo, Lucas, Roy, Ryu, Cloud, Corrin and Bayonetta — brought it to 58 across roughly 30 franchises, including six third-party characters. That’s more roster variety than Brawl and Melee combined for $15–45 on the used market.
The catch is balance history. Bayonetta arrived in early 2016 and dominated so thoroughly that she was toned down in a later patch, but she remained a top-tier gatekeeper through the game’s final balance update. The Wii U and 3DS versions also share a roster but not identical modes, so check which one you’re buying. Main trade-off: Nintendo shut down online services for both versions in April 2024, so it’s a local-play purchase now.
Best single-player content, weakest balance: Brawl
Brawl’s 39 fighters (counting transformation characters such as Zero Suit Samus and the Pokémon Trainer’s three Pokémon) pulled from 19 franchises and introduced the series’ first third-party guests, Snake and Sonic. It also shipped the Subspace Emissary, a full side-scrolling campaign that no later entry has matched — Ultimate’s World of Light is a different, more grindy beast.
Balance is where Brawl collapses. Meta Knight was so dominant that several major tournaments banned him outright, and the game’s random tripping mechanic punished movement. If you’re buying for competitive play, skip it. Who it suits: solo players, collectors, and anyone who wants a cheap Wii-era library — the disc is $15–30. Main trade-off: the slowest, least balanced competitive game in the series, and its online service ended back in 2014.
Best pick-up-and-play roster: the Nintendo 64 original
Twelve fighters, ten franchises, four of them unlockable: Luigi, Captain Falcon, Jigglypuff and Ness. That’s it. The small roster is a feature for parties — everyone learns the whole cast in an evening, and there’s no matchup homework. The trade-off is that competitive balance was rough even by 1999 standards, with Pikachu and Kirby sitting clearly above the rest, and cartridge prices have climbed to $35–70 for a loose copy.
How to choose, with the numbers that matter
| Your situation | Pick | Why the numbers say so | Typical spend |
|---|---|---|---|
| You own a Switch or Switch 2 and want maximum variety | Ultimate | 86 fighters, 18 third-party, ~40 franchises, 8-player local | ~$115 for game plus both passes |
| You want the deepest competitive scene | Melee | ~8–10 characters win majors; 20+ years of stable tier lists | $80–150 with controller and adapter |
| Kids or non-gamers, couch play only | Smash 64 or Ultimate with items on | 12 fighters vs. 86 — fewer picks means faster matches | $35–70 (cart only) or $40–60 |
| Tight budget, mostly solo play | Brawl or Smash 4 (Wii U) | 39 fighters for ~$20; 58 fighters for ~$25 | $55–110 with a used console |
| You want a real single-player campaign | Brawl | Subspace Emissary runs roughly 8–10 hours | $15–30 |
A worked comparison — cost per fighter. Ultimate: $60 game + about $25 for Fighters Pass Vol. 1 + about $30 for Vol. 2 = roughly $115 ÷ 86 fighters ≈ $1.34 per fighter. Brawl: $20 ÷ 39 ≈ $0.51. Smash 4 on Wii U: $25 ÷ 58 ≈ $0.43. Melee: $60 ÷ 26 ≈ $2.30. Smash 64: $45 ÷ 12 ≈ $3.75.
That math flips depending on how you play. Melee’s $2.30 per fighter looks terrible until you realize the average Melee player logs hundreds of hours on two or three characters, while most Ultimate owners touch maybe 15 of the 86. If you play 200 hours, Ultimate works out to about 58 cents an hour; Melee at $150 all-in over 500 hours is about 30 cents an hour. Roster size is the worst possible way to value a fighting game — pick by hours played, not character count.
Ownership realities: what actually wears out
- Controllers die first. GameCube analog sticks and triggers develop drift and dead zones after a few hundred hours of competitive play, and Joy-Con drift remains a known issue. Budget one replacement controller every year or two of heavy use.
- Online services expire. Brawl’s Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection ended in 2014, and Wii U and 3DS online shut down in April 2024. Only Ultimate still has official online play, and it requires a Nintendo Switch Online subscription at about $20 a year.
- Discs scratch, cartridges don’t. GameCube and Wii discs are the fragile part of those libraries and resurfacing only buys so much time. N64 cartridges and Switch cards are far more durable.
- Balance patches stop. Ultimate’s last balance update was December 2021, so its tier list is settled. That’s good for buyers — you can look up a matchup chart and know it will still be accurate a year from now.
- Community mods extend life. Slippi keeps Me
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