Games Like Super Smash Bros: The Best Platform Fighters Worth Your Time

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is the biggest crossover fighting game ever made. 89 characters, guest appearances from basically every major gaming franchise, a roster that includes Mario, Snake, Sonic, Cloud, Joker, and Sephiroth. It's also locked to Nintendo hardware, built around chaotic party rules that most fighting game fans side-eye, and has a learning curve that gets vertical when you try to play competitively.

Which means "games like Super Smash Bros" has to answer a few different questions: do you want the party chaos, the competitive platform fighter mechanics, or the crossover cast? The answer changes the recommendation.

The competitive platform fighter scene

If you want Smash's mechanics — the edge-guarding, the recovery mixups, the neutral game built around stage positioning — without Nintendo's specific game:

Rivals of Aether II is the current king of non-Nintendo platform fighters. It's made by people who played Melee competitively and wanted the genre to keep evolving. 3D graphics but 2D gameplay, a clean roster of original characters, matchmaking that actually works, rollback netcode. If you bounced off Smash because Nintendo's online is painful, Rivals of Aether II solves that problem and then some.

Rivals of Aether (the original) is still active and still great. 2D pixel art instead of 3D models. The workshop is a goldmine of community-made characters, including working versions of Smash characters that are arguably better-designed than their Ultimate counterparts. If you want a Steam version of Melee with a workshop, this is it.

Slap City from Ludosity is a platform fighter where every character comes from other Ludosity games. It plays like a love letter to Smash Bros with its own specific identity. Competitive community is smaller than the above but extremely dedicated.

The party brawlers

Smash isn't really a fighting game in the traditional sense — it's a party game that happens to be competitive at the top. If you're just trying to play with friends and laugh at chaos:

MultiVersus is Warner Bros' answer to Smash, using WB-owned IPs. Batman, Shaggy, LeBron, Steven Universe, Jason Voorhees — the roster is chaos. It launched, died, re-launched, and is currently in its third wind. The 2v2 focus is different from Smash's free-for-alls and the monetization has been rough, but when it's clicking, it's a legitimate Smash-adjacent party game.

Brawlhalla is the free-to-play platform fighter that's been quietly excellent for years. Different character design philosophy (every character uses two weapons rather than unique movesets), huge esports scene, crossovers with basically every franchise under the sun. If you want to play a platform fighter right now for zero dollars, start here.

Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2 improved enormously on the first game. SpongeBob, Ninja Turtles, Avatar characters. It's trying harder to feel like a Smash successor than most competitors and mostly succeeding.

The crossover energy in different shapes

The specific thing Smash does — getting characters from different franchises to fight — lives in a few other places outside the platform fighter genre.

Fall Guys does the crossover energy in a different format. Skins from Sonic, Street Fighter, Halo, Among Us, everyone. The chaotic competitive party game feel translates even without fighting mechanics.

Fortnite is probably the closest modern equivalent to "video game characters from different franchises fighting in the same space." The roster includes Master Chief, Goku, John Wick, and characters from pretty much every major series. The games like Fortnite post gets into the BR side of things, but culturally Fortnite has absorbed a lot of what made Smash feel uniquely chaotic.

Street Fighter 6 isn't a platform fighter but the guest-character tradition in fighting games keeps growing. Terry Bogard in Smash is just Street Fighter's "we put other companies' characters in our game" formula reversed. If you want tight fighting game mechanics with crossover energy, SF6 and Tekken 8 both deliver in different ways.

The classics still worth playing

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale was Sony's answer to Smash and died too fast. The fan community kept it alive through netcode mods. The mechanics were weirder than Smash's, win conditions were different (you need super moves to kill), but it had genuine identity.

PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale 2-style projects — fan games and independent projects keep trying to recreate that specific Sony-vs-everyone-else energy. Some are playable, most aren't. Worth browsing if you're deep in the platform fighter scene.

When you want fighting game depth without the crossover

Guilty Gear Strive is one of the best fighting games ever made and it runs at a different level of mechanical depth than Smash. Not a platform fighter at all — it's a 2D anime fighter — but if what you love about Smash is specifically the competitive mind games and character mastery, Strive will give you that tenfold.

Skullgirls 2nd Encore is 2D tag-team fighting with an art style and character cast that feels like it could share a universe with Smash's weirder choices. Beautifully animated, deep enough for years of play, with a dedicated community.

What we do at Choost

We're not making fighting games — the netcode engineering alone is years of work that our small team can't commit to. But the Granny's Rampage philosophy of "pick your character, watch them become progressively unhinged" shares some DNA with platform fighter character design. Not multiplayer, but same core "build expression through gameplay" energy.

For couch-style competitive energy without Nintendo hardware, check the best co-op games list.

The answer to the actual question

If you have access to a Switch and can run Smash Ultimate, just play Smash Ultimate. It's still the best platform fighter ever made and nothing non-Nintendo is as comprehensive.

If you're on PC and want the mechanical depth: Rivals of Aether II.

If you want free-to-play with friends: Brawlhalla.

If you want the Warner Bros crossover energy: MultiVersus (with caveats about its monetization).

And if you want to play with your friends but they don't take fighting games seriously: Fall Guys or just, honestly, Mario Kart.

The platform fighter genre has never been healthier. Smash might be locked on Nintendo hardware, but the genre it created is thriving across every other platform.