Cruel Melee and Cruel Brawl are Multi-Man modes in Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, respectively. To summarize Cruel Melee/Brawl in one sentence, the tables are turned and you are the Alloys (and they are you only in higher numbers). The game challenges 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 the player is KO'd. A random character will spawn after every 100 KOs. 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 and can't grab ledges. This mode is 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.
Rewards
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, the player would be challenged 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. Cruel Melee strategies proved very quickly that Sonic and Tails did not actually appear after knocking out 20 opponents. Apparently, it was an April Fools joke.
- In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, if the player trips at the start of a Cruel Brawl, it is very unlikely that they will survive the following few seconds. This is because every way of recovering from the trip takes a long time, and the player cannot move very far to either side until they have fully recovered. This gives the Alloys enough time to drop from their spawning points and KO the player. If the trip was to the right, it will be the Blue Alloy that attacks, and if the trip was to the left, it will be the Red Alloy.
- In Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the song Cruel Brawl that plays while in Cruel Brawl is the only song missing from the Sound Test.