Super Smash Bros. Brawl/Boss Battles

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The Boss Battles mode is a secret, unlockable, mode available in the stadium section of the game. In the Boss Battles Mode, you select a character and difficulty level, and start fighting against all the bosses from The Subspace Emissary separately in a row:

They all appear in random order, except for Tabuu, who is always last. As in All-Star, between battles, you visit the Rest Station, where you can see who's up next. You get a limited number of recovery items (like in All-Star). You get three Heart Containers in solo (or six in co-op; with the 3 extra Heart Containers being underneath the platforms that the normal 3 hold). These Heart Containers (unlike the normal ones in both Super Smash Bros. Melee and Super Smash Bros. Brawl which recover 100% damage), they recover your damage completely (as they did from the original Super Smash Bros.). You need them because you only get one stock and there are no continues. There are no continues, so you start over again if you are KO'd.

Note that if you need more information about any of the bosses, just go to their respective pages for in-depth info.

General Aspect

This mode can be played with two players. It's called "Co-Op Mode" (a mode where a player can get a second player to help them in 1 player modes). This means the Rest Station has six Heart Containers instead of three (unlike in solo). There are more Heart Containers and the extra three Heart Containers are under the platforms which the normal three (from solo) hold. Both players must remain alive and the worst thing that you must know about is that if either player gets KO'd (P1 or P2), then the mode ends.

To have the whole mode balanced, the bosses will have about half their regular amount of health and power than they would in The Subspace Emissary. This may not seem like much on the lower difficulties, but if you're playing on Hard or higher, be thankful of that.

Some of the bosses will do their attacks faster/longer depending on their attacks as the difficulty increases. For example, regular Ridley's ram attack in the sky (a single ram that has a powerful knockback ability) is usually slow on Easy (can take around 3-5 seconds to go from left to right or vice versa), but on Intense, he goes extremely fast (less than 1 second to travel same distance).

No matter what difficulty you play, the bosses get harder and harder as you defeat more bosses. So try to be more careful when playing (unless you are a professional, in which professionals don't need cheats).

Boss Strategies

The shield and dodges does wonders in this mode, so shield and dodge often. The two best are the downward dodge and the aerial dodge. Do an aerial dodge for aerial attacks, and downward dodge for those near-misses.

Each boss gets harder to defeat as you defeat one and progress to the next. There is a slight increase in both defense and offense in the bosses as you progress up until Tabuu, who is just hard. Again, this will not seem like much in easier difficulties, but play in Hard or higher and this will become much more noticeable. This will allow for strong bosses like to be defeated faster.

If you do play in Intense or want to have the Challenge based around this mode the hard way, aim to have the above list. The Hands have weak attacks if dodged correctly, both Duon and Porky have dangerous moves if not dodged correctly, with some of them being very hard to dodge, and Petey Piranha has powerful but slow attacks. Again, look at the respective pages for each of the bosses.

Unlockables

How to unlock this mode
  • Complete both Classic and The Subspace Emissary at least once each.
What this mode unlocks
  • Complete Boss Battles as Fox or Falco to unlock Wolf O' Donnell.
  • Complete this mode on Easy to unlock the Subspace Bomb trophy.
  • Complete this mode on Normal to unlock the Shadow Bugs trophy.
  • Complete this mode on Hard to unlock the Dark Cannon trophy.
  • Complete this mode on Very Hard to unlock the Porky Statue trophy.
  • Complete this mode on Intense to unlock the Galleom (Tank Form) trophy.
  • Complete this mode with 10 characters to unlock the Subspace Gunship trophy.
  • Complete this mode with 20 characters to unlock the Jyk trophy.
  • Complete this mode with all 35 characters to unlock the Tabuu (Wings) trophy.