3DS:
- Balloon Fight: Balloon Fight is one of those stages. It's not bad, just confusing. The ability to walk across the edge of the stage is mindbending enough, but if someone were to just jab you at the screen edge, you're dead, my friend. It's really more annoying than it sounds. Whenever I pick up my 3DS, I make sure to turn this stage on Omega Mode.
- Magicant: Some of the best visuals in the game. I love how the background looks, and the color of the platforms, and... Beautiful. The only issue is... that damn Flying Man. If you touch him, he joins your side and fights your enemy. This kills any competitive value and makes the battle a battle of luck as to who gets to him first, whether he spawns close to you or not. A brilliant idea, ruined by unbloackable gimmicks.
Wii U:
- 75m: We all know why we hate this stage. Why couldn't we get Frigate Orpheon instead? Moving on.
- Jungle Hijinxs: Constantly switching from background to foreground and back again isn't fun. It's more annoying, as most of the time, you'll be chasing the guy who did it in the first place. Again, it's okay, but just very tedious.
- Pac-Land: Words canot describe this stage. The autoscrolling constantly creates this pressure that even a slight messup can end your run. And with the fire hydrants, tight jumps, and logs, this is not the best of moods. Pac-Maze was a million miles better than this death run, so why not bring it here like Wily Castly (I'll get to that later)?
- Palutena's Temple: "Wanna play on a temple?" "Yeah! Wait, this isn't Temple..." This stage is too big for its own merit. While I like the general look with the bridge, traversing it is so time consuming and annoying, espescially with Ganondorf or other clunky characters. God help you if you're fighting a Sonic, you'll never win.
- Pyrosphere: The issue isn't the idea of the stage, Ridley fighting is fine, as long as it is toggable. The issue is, for some reason, it's not. And when that's the case and you find it on Classic or God forbid, Smash Tour, you'll be praying to Sakurai that all your body parts will still be attached by the end of the fight.
- The Great Cave Offensive: Jesus, what a bore. In an attempt to make more "8 player stages", the developers decided to put in The Great Cave Offensive. All of it. You go down through tunnels, can ride minecarts, jump across pits, avoid spikes, and more. The issue is... This stage, like Palutena's Temple, is WAY TOO BIG. Even with 8 players, it takes forever to actually get the fight going! I'm not even sure if 10 players would make a difference! I'd much rather have the Fountain of Dreams than this train wreck.
- Wrecking Crew: Again, a case of "meh" than frustration. Here, you knock down a building in Smash Bros., wait, why is this bad? Because it's done in a slow and requires you to get out of your way. It's fine, but... It could have been better.
- Wily Castle: Yet another victim of untoggable bosses. The Yellow Devil kills this stage for reasons everyone on this board all know. Not much else to say.
Balloon Fight: This stage actually is bad, and here's why: The layout is less like solid ground on the edges with water and platforms in the middle, and more like having a main platform with a blast line straight down the middle, along with water and platforms at the edges. The platforms are too small to really fight on and the pseudo-random placement certainly doesn't help that, so all the fighting takes place on the ground either side of the "central" blast line.
Magicant: Flying Man always spawns in the exact same location, so you know exactly where you have to play King of the Hill with. I certainly think Flying Man could use a nerf so that he can't easily kill your foe all by himself, though. With Flying Man nerfed (not nonexistent, just nerfed) I think it could be a viable competitive stage.
Jungle Hijinx: Really not designed for a 1v1 environment. What makes the stage even less fun though is the cannons frequently leaving just as you try to get in them, or the massive stone murals that show up out of nowhere just in time to block you when you use a cannon. If they gave more warning before appearing, they might be able to be incorporated into a coherent gameplan, but instead they just show up out of nowhere to block you.
Pyrosphere: Ridley's attacks are relatively easy to avoid if you're smart about it, at least until he turns into Meta Ridley. Plus, there's plenty of stage around him to fight on even as you avoid his attacks.
Wily Castle: Far worse than Pyrosphere, simply because the Yellow Devil takes up the entire freakin' stage, and you can't keep fighting your foe while fighting him.
