Banned Characters in Fighting Games 

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In smash melee, you can play as master hand by doing a glitch with the name select. He is obviously banned in competitive play. He also can't be knocked out nor can be killed.

A fun fact about the Uranus ban is that we now have a mod that removes her from character select! Which might be an even harder ban than a "hard ban"

Evil Ryu was banned in Alpha 2, not for being console exclusive, but for being region exclusive, only being available in the US arcade release

4:05 "I'm gonna just say VSav bro" LK immediately: In Vampire Savior...

I’d highly recommend Big Yellow’s video on 3S Gill, because he is crazy good, but not for the reasons you might expect. His resurrection super is awful and seraphic wing is super impractical, but he has CRAZY touch of stun/death combos that make him super over the top.

Actually, SoulCalibur II had (up to) NINE console exclusive characters: - The 4 guests you mentioned - Seong Mi-na and Sophitia, who were not in the arcade version (Sophitia was supposed to be replaced by her sister Cassandra but was brought back due to her popularity, and I guess Mi-na was considered redundant because of Kilik but was too popular as well?) - Assassin, Berserker and Lizardman, who were modified versions of Hwang, Rock and Lizardman from SoulCalibur I and were ONLY IN THE AMERICAN AND EUROPEAN VERSIONS for some reason

One thing about Archetype Earth that was actually broken in AA is she had a legit infinite just looping her bunker into 2A and repeating it forever. The damage was trash so it was a timeout infinite, but it was something friends and I would do sometimes just to mess with her. We'd get drunk sometimes and just 1 touch into infinite constantly for shits and giggles.

Another example of a temporary banned character was Michaelangelo in Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 1. Michaelangelo had an incredibly easy 0-to-death in the game's release version: the first hit of his light back-air gave the opponent floaty physics in addition to having unscaled knock back, and it was trivial to string this together into a 0-to-death combo. It was patched fairly quickly, but a few launch weekend tournaments had to ban Mikey as a result.

This is just a nitpick but Steve wasn't the "final" dlc of Smash Ultimate, there were 4 characters after added after him over the course of a year. This includes Kazuya Mishima, who also sparked a lot of ban discourse and was subject to a few attempts at regional or sub-regional bans AFAIK

Mortal Kombat 9 also had a banned console exclusive character for the PS3 as it was Kratos. He could fr just do quick time events mid string. P&D ketchup and mustard made a pretty good video about it I’m pretty sure.

there are a few other things about Uranus in Sailor Moon that are worth noting- in part, on the system level. I think the things mentioned in the video are kind of the glue that makes her kit so ridiculous, but her power level is made even higher by a few other specials she has and things she can do. Blockstun in SMS works differently to most other games, as you can guard cancel with any of your specials at any time, and backdashes (or a forward dash in Uranus' case) are considered special moves. Uranus has a frame 1 SPD. It has fantastic range, gives her amazing oki anywhere due to her dash and fireball, and since it's a janky old fighting game, it can hit people IN THE AIR. it's a fantastic guard cancel option that makes going for a crossup jumpin very difficult and can make going for throws or certain options somewhat risky. Also, this is a more minor thing but since you can guard cancel specials, her SPD effectively has guard point while you input the back part of the 360 input, so it's especially ignorant. Think about her dash for a moment, though. It has 15 total frames and travels fullscreen. And she has a frame 1 SPD. Playing against uranus is like getting strike thrown 24/7 because she can literally just pull up. There are some options that consistently beat SPDs like backdashing, but she has a fireball that she can trail with her dash and more or less any hit will lead to an infinite combo, so if you guess wrong once you WILL die. If your opponent even had a chance of consistently reacting and escaping the 15 frame dash, she can also cancel the last 2 frames into a normal throw. Throws are teched in this game by pressing any normal, and universally if P1 techs a throw, there's a short period of time where they're vulnerable on wakeup. If you try to abare with some heavy option (this isn't super common but it can happen), you tech on reaction, or think that she's going to SPD and try to throw her first, you will literally eat an infinite. While she does have the only universal infinite off of more or less any random hit and the forward dash is ridiculous on its own, the way that her tools are laid out is genuinely crushing.

I still reflexively hate anyone using the word "overcentralizing" as a result of the endless MK ban discussions.

11:00 unfortunately that is not old Sagat on screen, that is regular Sagat. Old characters in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo can only be the original default color (and a minor variation for mirror) cannot tech throws and have no access to supers. This Sagat is in his Hyper fighting color (HP) and has super.

In Idol Showdown, for less than a day after the Ollie patch, you could play as one of the boss characters, a "glitched" version of Sora. You basically just had to get lucky in random select, but if you got her, you could pretty easily confirm it due to some shenanigans with color selection. She was very clearly incomplete, with most of her moves not functioning, but a few had some absurd properties. A few days ago, they officially released her as well as some other boss characters, but they aren't pickable in online matches.

Here are some different types of band characters: What about the ones in a band? I don't know what bands they are in, but I-No and Eddy Gordo must have been in a band. Probably many more. Or what about Skullgirls' Big Band. He's an entire band! What about wearing bands? There are so many characters wearing headbands, like Ryu, or wristbands, like Jin Kazama. Or there's Anakaris with bandages. Rugal sometimes wears necklaces, what you might called "bands". He usually wears them in Mexico.

Whem you said soft bans I was expecting mentions of characters that you can still play, but only if your opponent agrees to let you, like Dr. Eggman in Sonic the Fighters, but I suppose in his case that's because he also falls under the boss character umbrella since his soft ban is more so because only 1 person can select and play him at a time because he's a boss character and doesnt have a monochrome mirror match version of himself.

Kokonoe being banned in CP was the funniest shit ever. The drama that cat dragged in was some of the best comedy in the FGC.

Loved the video! Very interesting topic and I liked the angle on it; just to correct a small bit of misinfo though, 12:16 Steve wasn't the last DLC character added (that honor goes to Sora), he was the 8th character added out of 12.

"back dash out of hitstun" Oh. Oh no.

Cool. Love to see these big picture look at fighting games

Haven't even properly started the video and I gotta say: Chu Chu Rocket music? hell *yeah*

Is there an interesting story behind HOW they just gave almost every character in the game Bardock's main special move? Like they made a new system mechanic that does the same basic idea or what?

I’m not sure how to access him but there was a point where the Soul Calibur community gained access to Lizardman in SC6. He has unique moves and is terribly unfinished and would probably suck if usable. He also weirdly shares the same Super animation as Sophitia and has pre-nerf Azwel Backdash (super broken) 🦎 🐍

Great vid as always

Shoutouts to Saikyo mode Karin in SFA3, who's banned both because she's incredibly impractical to select, and because she's... well, her basic throw deals 90%+ damage for some weird reason (though the throw can't kill). She's pretty broken even for the game where half the cast has invincible custom combo activation to infinites on hit or guard breaks into infinites on block.

This is a fun one for sure. Crazy/ridiculous banned characters are always interesting

4:12 More like "Soultaker". Win a match, and you keep the champion's character until you defeat your next challenger. If you clear Vampire Savior with Shadow mode in the Vampire Darkstalkers Collection, you can unlock a more "complete" version of the game with Huitzil (Phobos), Pyron and Donovan available.

For an example of banned glitched characters, N’dool/Geb from JJBA HFTF is one (death 13 too because you have to debug him in on fightcade)

If you want some fighting games with unlockable bosses, Duels of Fortune is a free fighting game that's very fun (unfortunately no online because it was in development for 7 years) but there's a ton of single player content including 10 bosses that can be unlocked and boss modes of existing characters Same thing with Idol Showdown which got 3 new bosses can the bought and played with in game unlocks

From my understanding, the character that's soft banned in Japan is Akuma/Gouki, not O. Sagat. I remember there were clips of someone who got clowned on in Japan cause they picked Akuma in tournament and still lost.

2:15 there's actually WAY more than just those 4 characters that were console exclusive. Sophitia, Seong-Mina, and the bonus characters (Lizardman, Assassin, and Berserker) were console only as well, and for quite some time they were all banned in tournament play. All of them except the guest characters were eventually legalized though.

Two instances in Battle for the Grid, Eric Meyes during one patch could full screen grab someone during his install for no reason. And later on, Poisandra could set up incoming solo unblockables that were basically 300% inescapable. Both these were patched out fast but they were both banned from tournament play as a result for a bit

This was awesome.

As we learned in the LK Invitational, Sombrero LK is banned because his power level is too high for the meta to handle

i paused the video to read the comments to see if anyone else caught that the tekken 7 leeroy top 8 had 7 and not 6 leeroys, and saw a lot of people mentioning the part at the end about uranus being banned, and i thought, 'oh!! heck yeah! bloody roar mentioned!' and got to the end of the video and it was sailor moon s. well, let it be added to the pile: in bloody roar extreme, the boss character 'uranus' is banned. so uranus is banned in two completely different and unrelated fighting games!

Hey LK are you planning on making that item throw character video?

That gray hair is killing me! I’ve been watching you for a hot minute and seeing you go from no gray hair to gray hair makes me feel so old

No one is banned in Hnk. Rei’s infinite dp glitch is banned in arcade since it can’t be cancelled out of without 2 or more boost gages, as well as some other glitches.

6:20 Is Neco-Arc banned from any of the Melty Blood games? I know she is a boss-only character in ReACT and Act Cadenza Ver.A, then she became normally selectable by Actress Again Ver.B only to be locked behind a test mode password and button combination in the Naomi arcade version of Actress Again. I believe the password is CKFY and pressing Start on Arcueid selects Neco-Arc if password is entered correctly.

Yo Lord, rocking that salt n pepper look!

Best Soul Calibur 6 tourney was the one where a dude entered using Inferno

3:27 But what if I want to play as Huitzil (Phobos)? Play Vampire Savior 2? I had the same problem back when I used to main Donovan. To be honest, I became a Huitzil main because of the Hi Score Girl cartoon, since Koharu Hidaka plays this character very often in Night Warriors.

Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 on SNES and Genesis has a team battle mode that can let you play as a glitchy version of sheeva, a character that’s not supposed to be in that particular version of the game to make room for the new characters

You're making me feel old by assuming 50 cents is the least amount of money you'd put into an arcade game.

I vaguely remember Neko-Arc (and maybe Neko Chaos) being banned around MBAC, but not really sure why, as I didn't play it competitively. I assume their small size just makes things awkward for everyone, even if they weren't broken?

LK, we know you played Gotenks/Broly/Roshi in tourney. What evil influence did you use to aid creation of LC21?

Another lesser known timed/soft banned character was garfield in NASB 2, since a patch made him able to have a perma install to make him insanely fast and hard to catch

1:18 The console exclusive character 4:48 Glitched characters 6:50 Boss characters 10:37 Soft banned characters 17:26 Hard banned characters

Ok enlighten me how did you get lab coat 21 into fighterz?

did he change his mic, or why does it sound so different

⑴ What's funny about the Uranus ban is that I remember that before the pandemic, she was actually considered by some to be low tier. My, how things change. ⑵ You're right about Uranus standing heads and shoulders over the other Sailor Soldiers. According to the site Tuxedo Unmasked, she's 186 cm, which is roughly 6'1 ¼". This makes her the second tallest of the main characters next to Tuxedo Mask (191 cm, or roughly 6'3 3/16"), with the second tallest Sailor Soldier being Pluto (181 cm, or 5'11 ¼"). ⑶ Most of the SNES games (not just the fighters) tended to combine elements from both the anime and manga, resulting in this weird mish-mash in terms of continuity. I believe Uranus' dash is one of these things, most likely being a reference to the fact that her manga counterpart could just up and vanish in a literal breeze while in civilian form. I'm a big fan of the franchise. Sue me. -(Please don't I am poor as shit.)-

Steve wasn’t the final dlc for smash ultimate pyra/mythra, sephiroth, kazuya, and sora all came out after him

thumbnail game on point

How did you get Lab coat 21 in the game lmao

No mention of Rugal in a fighting game banned character list is wild

Gundam Battle Assault 2 was missing 4 characters from the first game. But you could use Gameshark codes to add them back into the roster since the data for them was still in the game. Don’t know what category this would fall under.

12:12 - Licensing nightmare aside, how awesome would a fighting game be in which the characters are famous pro players? Sakonoko would have insane combos, Daigo would have some sort of comeback mechanic, and LK would be all about the shmix (and maybe mommy waifu summoning supers). I swear I'm _not_ high right now...

In jojoban (or hftf, or jojos heritage for the future), there were other characters intended to be in the game, such as grey fly and n'doul. through fuckery on the character select screen, you can pick them but they wont really do anything aside from potentially crash the game. you aren't even supposed to access these characters, hence they're banned. grey fly is more known since if you pick him, you literally can't be hit and the game has to be restarted by the host. N'doul is the most finished out of these, however it's clear that he's not really meant to be played. There's also a glitch jotaro but like.... ?????

Ac justice had 3 air dashes and man is it fun

Kratos in MK9! Its a shame he was banned because he could have solved the Kabal problem in top level play as he was an effective counter against Kabal while not being an over egregious top tier character himself. Would have made a cool topic in this video

11:38 Connecticut mentioned, AYO. Hit up ECT (East Coast Throwdown) this October if you are up in the North East.

8:59 Faust mentioned 🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🗣️🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Lk why did lab coat get added

He knew his options were to go out in the cold and freeze all night, or try to negotiate his way back in the hospital, or finally force them to take him to jail. Why he’s being difficult once he knows jail is where he’s definitely going, I have no idea other than he’s mentally ill or he’s always difficult when he doesn’t get his way.

Remember, kids... ¡Prohibido jugar con Rugal!

Dont forget Bai-Hu in breaker revenge. He is beteable. The problem is for combo mens that he is a very good zoner.

Weird... i remember MissingPerson(one of the pillars of NA SailorMoon S scene) saying "Uranus is low tier". How did she ended up this nuts? I heard her main strength was her biggest flaw, cause you couldnt block during the forward dash and with Guard Cancelling being a thing esp with Supers, she should be prone upon approach... How did it reach to this consensus when Jupiter, Neptune and Mars(esp her dumbass super doing mega chip on block) are still nuttier than Uranus? 😮

In Smash Bros., the doubles format is a widely played side mode to the far more common singles format, where you and someone else team up to do 2v2 with another team. Throughout Smash history, it has been shown that certain teams are far more susceptible to being dominant/banworthy than singles characters. In Smash 64, even in Smash Remix tournaments, the team of double Pikachu is often banned, and in tournaments such as Battle at the Border, the team of Pikachu + Kirby is also banned. Basic case of dominant top tiers making it difficult to consider any other team. In Brawl, while MK in singles is a far more contentious topic, the team of double Meta Knight is often universally banned, for very obvious reasons. In SSB4, towards the end of the game's life, some tournaments started banning the team of double Cloud. This is a unique case, cause Cloud is not the best character in singles in SSB4, or even remotely close to the most broken character SSB4 has ever seen. However, Cloud's toolkit and easy-to-pick-up nature made him a dominant threat in doubles that had some players curtail him back a bit. Not related to doubles, but another character that was pseudo-banned/restricted was the Mii Fighters in SSB4. The Mii Fighters debuted in SSB4, and were completely built around customization. However, they were a logistical nightmare to deal with in tournaments for quite a few reasons, reasons that would end up having them restricted/soft-banned in tournaments. 1) Custom moves across the cast ended up getting banned in tournaments due to how broken some of them are and how difficult it was to unlock all of them for a given setup. The Miis had theirs unlocked from the start, and so did Palutena, but in order to retain consistency, theirs were banned as well. 2) SSB4 Mii Fighters had size differences. Depending on how you make the Miis on the custom Mii Maker, you can change their size in gameplay and actually change their attributes as a result. This, combined with them being designed around custom moves, means that it took a long time to create a Mii for a given tourney setup, thus grinding tournaments to a halt. 3) You couldn't use Miis online in SSB4, meaning that they had an extra layer of matchup unfamiliarity, especially since a lot of players practice primarily online. 4) Custom Mii Brawler, with the ability to change special moves and their size, was an obnoxiously strong character that no one wanted to deal with. We don't know exactly how strong it is since we do not have enough tournament data, but no one wanted to deal with him. Fun fact: Mii Brawler without customization was actually a hilariously weak character that is a contender for the worst character in the game. The end result is that tournaments oftentimes banned the Mii Fighters, or more often-than-not, restricted them to default special moves and average size, in order to avoid logistical headache. All three of the Miis were among the worst characters in the game without custom moves (Mii Swordfighter was likely bottom tier even with custom moves), thus they see very little tournament play. In the few SSB4 tournaments done after Ultimate's release, the Miis are often allowed with their customization fully legal. This is because: 1) Modern SSB4 tournaments are not played with the same degree of seriousness that they did prior to Ultimate's release. 2) The Mii Fighters in Ultimate are fully allowed their custom moves, since that is their unique gimmick in that game and the only gameplay-related avenue of customization in that game (size differences were removed in Ultimate). As such for consistency, the Miis in SSB4 are allowed their customization as well. Also, people understand the characters better as well cause you can play them online in Ultimate as well. Do note that modern online tournaments in SSB4 does not have Miis legal cause there are literally no way to play them online. lol

For Fighting Game Players, I'll share why we Smash people tried to get rid of em Steve used to have the ability to place blocks wherever he wanted. Which....WAS BROKEEN, that's what made him awful, his recovery and the lack of counterplay against him. He could just place blocks to protect himself while mining away and very few characters can answer this playstyle. Sure we don't mind somewhat cheap playstyles [I mean we allowed Handoffs for Ice Climbers] but this shit was just boring to watch. For your Fighting Games, imagine if a character could just put up a barrier and teleport across the screen with the mechanic that they need to use a special move to build up power but are vulnurable while doing so, however there is no end or beginning to this move it just happens instantly. Of course a mechanic like this would lead to this: They would just teleport, run to the side of the screen put up this near impossible to destroy barrier, build up power and once the barrier breaks they would teleport run to the other side of the screen and repeat. And once they FINALLY come out, you have no choice but to take the L because they're basically a bully/brute with the speed and frame data of a rush em down. Does this fighting style sound fun to you? Well we didn't think so either. For Kazyua it's the same issue he just wasn't fun to fight. It's hard to describe with something else other than analogy For Fighting games, imagine if this was a gappler who had a busted ass throw that you could make a 0-death combo with. Let me say that again, a 0-death off of their normal throw. Oh and said grappler had a pretty decent answer to zoning playstyles, meaning he just gives the big old bird to the intended counter to grapplers. Meaning you have to put in all the work, all the reading and shit. Meanwhile your opponent can just get one throw on you and call it a day. Yeah...it's about as frustrating as it sounds. Oh and Bayonetta's Case Yeeaaaah....she was just so fucking unbalanced only one character had a reliable answer to her since if you make the SMALLEST mistake, it's basically goodbye stock. That character was Diddy Kong, basically you threw a banana, made Bayo trip so she can't do anything, grab, threw her, run away, summon another banana and repeat until they die. Lemmie make an analogy for you fighting game people Imagine if someone had a mechanic or specials that they could chain together that would basically result in an insta-round lost....why did they loose that round? Well they whiffed ONE sweep...yeah they lost a round because you played the game like normal. And how do you counter this character? By playing one specific character and spam their command grab and slowly but surely kill them, and even then if you mess up ONCE well, fuck you the round is theirs. What's that you try to style or form even a basic combo after doing the command grab? Tough luck, you get countered and the round is theirs Yeah that's just not fun for the players and boring for the spectators because any and all potential tension is gone when you know that one wiff/mistake is enough for Bayo to win.

For a banned glitch character this one is gonna be so random, so off the walls and so deep into fighting games. Bandit from Dong Dong Never Die. He’s only in the game in story mode and if you mess with the files you can select him but he’s literally not finished/his moveset doesn’t help him at all and has the lowest health in the game. He’s banned because he’s just that bad.

I mean, both SF2 Akuma and Sailor Uranus are bosses in their respective games, how come they don't get grouped in with that category and instead pop up at the very end?

Don’t forget Toto-sai in Inu Yasha, and Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament Genkai

Ibuki has an air projectile and was created for SF3 New Generation, before Akuma.

I don't remember how it was handled in actually tournaments, but SFxT had some console exclusive characters too, right?

10:58 - And Rugal in any game he's in. Enforceable by paulada.

I know you haven't played smash 4 but the only smash ban that went through (outside of wobbling if you count it) is double cloud in smash 4 because it was very easy to do (people considered banning cloud in general in doubles but smash 4 hasn't been around enough for that to happen)

"Wake up babe, a new Lord knight video"

6:20 not a character you can play as anymore, but launch baihe in thems fightin herds is what happens when you fire the entire dev team partway through QA and release whatever they had left lying around, and in my opinion she's a contender for the single most absurdly busted fighting game character in existence, just a couple of the things she has are a frame 1 armored stance that cancels from specials and back into specials allowing for infinite blockstrings, an absurdly fast fireball that's insanely plus on block and leads into an infinite from anywhere on screen, and if she tiger knee'd any special she would get full invul for the whole duration, basically giving her a dp that leads into pressure on block and is safe on whiff. Obviously she was banned instantly, and fortunately they did come back and fix a couple of things so she's more reasonable now but she's still a fun character to look back on

Hey, LK I have a question for you some time! ... You're name is Steve?

Kratos was banned on Mk9 because he was only available on PS3 and what’s crazy he was the perfect counter for kabal

just gonna be that guy It's Kak yo in Kakyoin

20:19 - Yes! Finally someone is talking about that game! She was broke as shit.

SOUL CALIBUR MENTIONED 🙇🏾‍♂️🗣️😤

shoutout to the +R kliff gamer who plays w/the explicit goal of getting him banned. hoping they succeed and move on to justice next

If a character wins 4 matches in a row the smash community makes a motion to ban them

Soul Calibur 4 had some of the most fucked up characters, especially Hilde.

Goat

Console characters/character modes are banned as they're not balanced against the others. Justice, Kliff and Robo-Ky come to mind in GGX and later until Accent Core where they did get balanced. Pre-AC Justice also falls under boss (in AC, she was overhauled to be non-broken)

Your main character, which you played for several years in GG, before she was banned on tournaments Strive and because of which you swapped her. Do you remember who we're talking about?

Rizzknight brought up sailor moon my day has been made

Unlimited litchi felt like a different character and i wasnt always sure she was better... but back dash out of hit stun? Yea get that mess out of here

Huge

Tekken is my favourite console

god imagine being named steve right knight?

Ivan Ooze

13:44 why not just say it here?😭

I still say Guilty Gear AC+R needs to legalize some or all of the ex characters, most of them aren't that good anyway.

Power word BANNED

Steve was not the final DLC character in SSB Ultimate, in fact another very heatedly debated character (Kazuya) came out after him, as well as Sepiroth, Pyra/Mythra and Sora who was the actual final character