Beta Elements

Beta Elements are components of the Super Smash Bros. series that, for whatever reason, are removed or altered before that game is released. Known info about beta elements usually comes from one of two sources. The first is information released about a game, by its creators, before the game is complete. The second is data found within the coding of a game that serves no purpose, but could have been implemented into the game at one point.

Super Smash Bros.
Super Smash Bros. was initially developed by Masahiro Sakurai and Satoru Iwata in their downtime, in a form titled 格闘ゲーム竜王 (Kakuto-Gēmu Ryūō, or Dragon King: The Fighting Game), which lacked Nintendo characters. Sakurai, however, felt that the game could not provide the proper atmosphere on a home console without Nintendo characters, and they were soon added and the game was renamed.

In the final game, two beta Kirby stages are only playable with a GameShark. The stages have strange elements, such as invisible barriers. A working Dream Land stage can be viewed in the "How to Play" tutorial, which itself can be seen by waiting on the title screen. Also, in the character select, the question mark boxes were supposed to be colored and Saffron City also had pink with purple on the rooftop. Also Princess Peach, Bowser, Mewtwo, Meowth, Pit and King Dedede were supposed to be playable in this game. Also Final Smashes were planned to be in this game.

Super Smash Bros. Melee
Through an Action Replay, a large, gray stage with the background appearing to be some kind of pub, is accessible. The music is the same as used on Fox and Falco's stage Corneria. This is assumed to be a test stage because of its name, which on the debug menu is TEST. There are also four stages, named AKANEIA (a possible predecessor to Castle Siege from Super Smash Bros. Brawl, a homeworld for Fire Emblem), 10-2, IceTop (a possible precursor to the Summit stage from the sequel, which belongs to the Ice Climbers), and Dummy, a test stage that freezes the game when opened. In addition to this, the entire Debug Menu, which was used in pre-release testing, can be used when the game is hacked, allowing for complete editing of anything in the game. Giga Bowser, both male and female Fighting Wire Frames, Master Hand, Crazy Hand, and even Sandbag are all playable (to a limited extent) via the Debug Menu.

Early screenshots showed the Motion-Sensor Bomb to be much different; these screenshots actually showed it to be a Proximity Mine from Perfect Dark rather than the Motion-Sensor Bomb from "TOP SECRET" (actually GoldenEye 007) that appeared in the final game. A screenshot of this Proximity Mine's trophy has also been released, and this screenshot shows that (in an almost cheap manner) the text in the Proximity Mine trophy was only tampered minorly (with only a few removals of references to Perfect Dark) for the final Motion-Sensor Bomb trophy. Why the Perfect Dark Proximity Mine was changed to a GoldenEye 007 Motion-Sensor Bomb remains unknown to this day and is rather ridiculous, especially considering that the games from which the items originated were even made by the same company, although the fact that Nintendo hides the Motion-Sensor Bomb's trophy's debuting game entry with the words "TOP SECRET" in the final game suggest that the item change may very well have had to do with copyright infringement. The "Temple" stage originally had an elevator that led to the bottom of the stage, and had a fixed appearance. Players could also could walk through the laboratory in Great Bay. Stages Yoshi's Story and Kingdom I had different designs altogether. Onett's music also sounded different.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Some of the game universe icons were initially the same as in the previous two games, but they were revised as time went on (Mario's Mushroom icon was refined and given spots, the Poké Ball icon has the top half colored in to properly represent how it is usually red, etc.). Also, the description for the My Music options originally said, "Adjust how often a song will appear on this stage." It has since been revised in a general tone to say, "Adjust how often songs appear on stages." Solid Snake was also meant to be more muscular, and was to have a gray suit rather than blue. The original Snake was less modernized and his down smash was going to be a more realistic bomb. Wario Bike, Drill Rush, Trophy Base, Summit, Halberd, Rainbow Cruise, and "The Flowers That Bloom in the Echoes" were originally called Wario Chopper, Triple Dash, Trophy Stand, The Summit, Battle Ship Halberd, Rainbow Ride, and, "Flowers Bloom on the notes" respectively. It's unknown why they changed these names, however, they likely changed Rainbow Ride because it was a Melee stage, in which it was misnamed Rainbow Cruise (although it remains Rainbow Ride in the PAL regeions, mostly because it was called Rainbow Ride on the PAL version of Melee). Lastly, there were scenes taking place before the events of the Subspace Emissary where the Subspace Army takes over the Halberd and King Dedede unintentionally stalls Meta Knight from preventing it from happening. Masahiro Sakurai confirmed that he decided to cut this out and an update was made to confirm this together with how various events and characters in the Subspace Emissary comes together. Also Mario instead of Kirby was the one seen fighting Petey Piranha in one of the Super Smash Bros. Brawl TV spots, also Sonic was meant to be on the game earlier since the Sonic Joins the Brawl trailer shows sonic teaming up with mario battling monsters but he did not appear in the game until the very end.

Also, unused files for Dixie Kong, Toon Zelda, Toon Sheik, and "Pra_Mai" (speculated to be Plusle & Minun of Pokémon fame) were found as scrapped newcomers. There were also files for Dr. Mario, Mewtwo, and Roy, possibly meaning that they were planned to be brought back at one time, or that their data was imported for some reason. A scrapped Assist Trophy for Ridley was also found. It was most likely scrapped in favor of a Boss version of Ridley, also scrapped Assist Trophy data for Duster from Mother 3, Rosalina and Tails was found in the games programming Source. The full list of files can be seen here: Source Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong had a early trophy before they had the one in the game. Source