Banned stages are stages that are banned from most main-stream tournaments. These stages can be banned for several reasons, including:
- Providing an unfair advantage for certain characters (such as excessive camping)
- Allowing players to abuse glitches in the game
- Completely re-vamping the strategies needed to win (such as Temple and Icicle Mountain)
- Having a significant amount of slow-down during a match
Banned stages in SSB
| Banned in both singles and doubles | |
|---|---|
| Stage | Reason for Banning |
| Mushroom Kingdom | Pipe camping; stalling |
| Planet Zebes | Acid |
| Sector Z | Overly large; Arwing lasers |
| Yoshi's Island | Not all characters are able to recover from the clouds |
Banned stages in SSBM
| Stage | Banned in | Reason for Banning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singles | Doubles | ||
| Big Blue | X | X | Randomly moving stage |
| Brinstar Depths | X | X | No ledges to grab; stalling |
| Flat Zone | X | X | Randomness of falling materials; too small |
| Fountain of Dreams | X | Significant slowdown during doubles play | |
| Fourside | X | Uneven recovery potential; no large platforms for fighting | |
| Great Bay | X | X | Over reliance on camping |
| Icicle Mountain | X | X | Randomly moving stage |
| Mushroom Kingdom I | X | X | Completely irregular design |
| Mushroom Kingdom II | X | All fighting centers on small middle platform in singles | |
| Mute City | X | Too small to accommodate doubles play. | |
| Temple | X | X | Too large; Over reliance on teching; see here for more |
| Venom | X | X | Slow-down; Game-breaking stalling and camping potential. |
| Yoshi's Island N64 | X | X | Not all characters are able to recover from the clouds |
| Yoshi's Island (Pipes) | X | X | Camping |
Varies
- Princess Peach's Castle - Banzai Bill; stalling
- Onett - Cars
- Kongo Jungle - Klap-trap
Banned Stages in SSBB
In the current Smash Back Room rule set, certain stages are left up to the tournament organizer to decide on banning versus counter-pick. Stages marked with a single X are left up to the tournament organizer, whereas those marked with XX are always banned.
| Stage | Banned in | Reason for Banning | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Singles | Doubles | ||
| 75m | XX | XX | Highly irregular design; all fighting centers around top-right corner |
| Big Blue | XX | XX | Randomly moving stage |
| Bridge of Eldin | XX | XX | Potential for game-breaking camping/stalling |
| Flat Zone 2 | XX | XX | Randomness of falling materials; too small |
| Green Greens | X | X | Bomb blocks are excessively powerful |
| Hanenbow | XX | X | Highly irregular design |
| Hyrule Temple | XX | XX | Too large; Over reliance on teching; see here for more |
| Mario Bros. | XX | XX | Gameplay is vastly altered by stage enemies |
| Mario Circuit | X | X | Potential for game-breaking camping |
| Mushroomy Kingdom (1-1 and 1-2) | XX | XX | |
| New Pork City | XX | XX | Overly large; camera angle makes the game hard to view on smaller TVs |
| Onett | X | X | Cars |
| Port Town Aero Dive | X | X | Randomly moving stage; cars are hard to see coming due to the colors |
| Rumble Falls | XX | XX | Overly disadvantages character's with better jumps |
| Shadow Moses Island | XX | XX | Removes three of the four blast lines |
| Skyworld | X | X | No fall through platforms; over-reliance on stage spikes |
| Spear Pillar | XX | XX | Randomness of Pokémon attacks; tunnel under stage similar to Temple's underground |
| The Summit | XX | XX | Irregular design; no normal ground; The Fish |
| WarioWare, Inc. | XX | XX | Over-reliance on bonuses from Microgames |