Cruel mode

Cruel Melee and Cruel Brawl are Multi-Man modes in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, respectively. They challenge the player to defeat as many opponents, with high handicaps and increased aggressiveness, as possible (Fighting Wire Frames in Melee, and Fighting Alloys in Brawl) before falling from the stage or self-destructing themselves. In Cruel Brawl, the Fighting Alloy opponents mimic the characters Mario, Kirby, Zelda, and Captain Falcon, though they cannot make use of the corresponding characters' special attacks, making them slightly easier to knock-out as they have little ability to recover using their own moves. These are unarguably the most challenging of all Multi-Man Melees and Brawls, as the opponents faced are immensely harder than those who appear in the other modes.

The high scores of Cruel Melee and Brawl are recorded by the amount of opponents knocked out.

Pikachu
!MELEE ONLY! A very simple way to gain 5 kills in Cruel Melee with Pikachu is to gather all five Wire Frames in one corner and use Pikachu's Down Smash. The Wire Frames should fly out of the attack early with just enough Knockback to keep them from returning to the stage.

Ike
In the Cruel Brawl, just hang on the edge of the stage. When all the alloy's are grouped together quickly drop and use Aether. The alloy's should jump after you. Some will hop to safety off of others heads. Some will fall to their doom.

Pit
Use your B-up to fly under the stage from one ledge to the other. Like Ike's strategy, the alloy's will jump after you. You can KO ten alloy's this way in under three minutes.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee

 * Defeating five opponents in Cruel Melee will result in unlocking the Mr. Resetti trophy.

In Super Smash Bros. Brawl

 * Defeating five opponents in Cruel Brawl will result in unlocking a trophy depicting the Red Alloy.
 * Defeating ten opponents in Cruel Brawl will result in unlocking a sticker depicting Liquid Snake.

Trivia

 * The Super Smash Bros. Melee incarnation of this mode is famous for its involvement in the Sonic and Tails Rumor spread by Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine. The rumor suggested that after defeating 20 Fighting Wire Frames in a single round would challenge the player to defeat Sonic and Tails of the Sonic series, where victory would result in unlocking the characters. This rumor was proven false both in premise and in practice. Not only would it be highly unlikely that Sega (which, at the time of Melee ' s release, was not yet a third party company) would sell its characters for use in a Nintendo title, but Cruel Melee strategies proved very quickly that Sonic and Tails did not actually appear after knocking out 20 opponents.