Super Smash Flash Controls: Every Key, Attack and How Knockouts Work

Super Smash Flash looks simple: two attack buttons, a jump and the arrow keys. But the game hides three kinds of attack behind those keys, and it plays by Smash rules, not health-bar rules. This guide covers every key, what each attack does, and how knockouts actually happen, all checked in the game itself.

The keys

The View Controls button on the start screen lists them, and they are the same in every mode:

• Player 1: arrow keys to move, O to jump, P to attack.
• Player 2: W A S D to move, G to jump, F to attack.
• Backspace pauses the match.

Menus use the mouse. Click once inside the game before a match starts, so the keyboard goes to the game and not to the page around it.

Three attacks on one button

The in-game How to Play tutorial explains the attack button like this:

• Attack alone (no arrow held): a normal attack. Quick, short, low damage.
• Attack with Left or Right: a smash attack. It does more damage than a normal hit and launches further.
• Down + attack on the ground: your special attack. Each fighter's special is different, so try it once with every character you pick.

The tutorial's own advice is to rack up damage by combining the special with normal and smash attacks. In practice that means using quick normals to push the percentage up, then a smash to finish.

How damage and knockouts work

Nobody in Super Smash Flash has a health bar. At the bottom of the screen each fighter has a portrait, a number of lives (x3 by default) and a percentage. Every hit you take raises that percentage. It never kills you directly, but the higher it is, the further the next hit throws you.

You lose a life when you leave the screen, whether you were launched or simply walked off the edge. That second one matters on stages like Dream Land, where the island ends in open sky and a careless run to the side costs a stock. In our first test match on Dream Land, player 1 lost two of three stocks that way.

Two more tricks from the tutorial screens:

• Drop through platforms. On stages with thin platforms, hold Down to fall through them. It is the fastest way to escape a fighter above you, or to chase one below.
• Meteor smashes. Hitting an airborne opponent downward sends them straight down. Over a gap, that is a knockout at almost any percentage.

Items

Items drop onto the stage during matches. In one short game on Dream Land we saw a Bob-omb, a beam sword, a heart container and a mushroom. They follow Smash tradition: a heart container is worth reaching when your percentage is high, and a Bob-omb is something to get away from when it lands next to you.

Setting up a match

From the Main Menu choose VS. Mode, then Melee. On the select screen, drag the round P1 token onto a portrait. Clicking the portrait alone does nothing. Do the same with the P2 token for a second fighter. Click the small HMN tag on a player card to turn that seat into a CPU; a Lvl slider appears under the card, where 1 is the easiest. Press GO!, then pick a stage.

When the match ends, the results screen gives out bonuses with point values, such as Smash King, Smash-less, Statue, Cement Shoes, Airhog and Heavy Damage, depending on how you played. They are worth reading: they tell you what the game noticed about your style.

Next: every mode and what you can unlock.