
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U now has online Tourneys. Ever since the feature was announced during the '50 things' Nintendo Direct prior to the game's release, it's had some fans dreaming of competitive online battles. Now that the feature is here we can see whether it delivers on that promise; as with so many things, it's a mixed bag - overall it seems like a lot of fun, but some omissions have frustrated more serious players.
So, below are details on how to use and get the most out of Tourneys in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U.
Keeping it simple to start with, where do you find Tourneys? It's easy-peasy, head to the Online section, Select Online Events and then Tourney. Job done.
Now, there are multiple options and tournament types, so let's break it down.

Regular
These are the only tournaments that incorporate the knockout formula shown when Tourneys were first revealed; they're setup and run by Nintendo. Some key details are below.
- At the time of writing there are four tournaments every five minutes, with sign-ups filling up rapidly.
- Nintendo has plenty of freedom, clearly, as tournaments come with various rules and numbers of participants, from 16 up to 64. There are 'For Fun' variants, others that are 1v1 For Glory with no items, and various others.
- If you find an open tournament to enter, you have to get in prior to its start, so select the line of your choice, check the details and jump in with the Start button.
A common complaint with the current setup is that when you sign up you need to wait in the holding warm-up area, beating up on the sandbag until it kicks off. This makes sense in terms of ensuring participants are present when the matches kick off, but with For Glory (no items) rooms often filling up a few slots ahead of time you may be in the holding area waiting to play for 15 minutes+. You can quit out of the Tourney before it kicks off if you change your mind, but quitting within one minute of the start will earn you a temp ban.
- Once in a tournament it's a straight knockout based on the rules of that particular Tourney.
- Only the full winner progresses to the next round, with the 'final' always being 1v1, even in For Fun tournaments with four player rounds.
- If you get knocked out you can exit right away (with no punishment) or hang around to watch replays of other matches in the Tourney.
- Even if you progress to the Final, these regular Tourneys don't need much time as you'll only need to compete in a handful of matches, with 1v1 64 player tournaments being the longest.
- Quitting during a Tourney match will earn you a ban.

Create Tourneys
Each user is allowed to run two custom Tourneys at any one time. Unlike the official 'Regular' events, these resemble the equivalent options in Mario Kart 8, for example, so it's more of a league contest as opposed to a knockout event.
First of all, below are the categories you can customise and their options:
- Tourney Name
- Start Date - Adjustable in months, days and ten minute intervals
- End Date - Adjustable in months, days and ten minute intervals
- Restrictions - None, Same Country, Friends Only, Password
- Participants - from 2 to 100
- Tourney Format - Winners chosen by Number of Points or Number of Wins
- End Condition - Optional, set a number of points or wins that declares a winner once reached
- Match Restrictions - None, Daily or Total limit on number of matches allowed per player
- Max Matches - None, from 1-50 per day or a big number for a total across the whole Tourney
- Time Limit - Matches from 1 minute to 10 minutes
- Match Rules - Time, Stock or Coin
- Stock - Can be set from 1 to 10 with Stock or Coin match rules
- Sudden Death - A 300% face-off for a tie, can be turned on or off
- Launch Rate - Set from 0.5x to 2.0x
- Stage Choice - Choose (all players pick), Random or Random Ω
- SD Penalty - Set the cost for a suicide or accidental fall to -1 or -2
- Stage Switch - This allows you to select which stages are available in the Random cycle, from as little as just one stage.
- Item Switch - This allows you to select which items will appear and how frequently, including the option to turn off all items (see FAQ at the end for more detail on turning items off).
- Special Smash: Stamina - Off, start all players at 300% or select Stamina matches.
- Mii Fighters - On or off
- Customisations - On of off
There are plenty of options, though some players are rather frustrated - rightly - that 1v1 isn't supported. If a Tourney is claiming to be 1v1 in its name don't be fooled, such an option simply does not exist unless you limit a tournament to 2 players; that's pointless when you can just play For Glory instead. Some are reporting items appearing when they shouldn't, too, but we haven't seen this yet.
Overall, there's plenty of freedom for this points accumulation format, even if the knockout structure enjoyed in the Regular tournaments would have been welcome.

Joining User Created Tournaments
The game auto-generates Recommended Tourneys on the right, while you can join and compete in up to 4 at a time. Unlike Regular knockout tourneys you can naturally jump in and out within the set time period for the contest.
If you change your mind about a Tourney you're in you can select it and withdraw with the Y button. If you jump out before it starts you can rejoin later, though quitting a Tourney after it's started will stop you from rejoining.
The Search option gives you various options for finding events, too.
- Search - Here you can look at the 'Recommended' list, 'Free Rules' (no limitations) or 'Glorious Rules' (no items, Ω stages). In addition you can filter search results with the Y button (based on Rule types, Duration or Match limits). You can select a Tourney from the list and join from this area.
- Tourney ID - Manually enter a Tourney ID to find it
- Tourney Community - This is a neat option. When in a Tourney information page (either between rounds or just checking it out) there's an option to promote it with a post on Miiverse. This search option brings up those Miiverse posts, with the option to leave a Yeah and to enter the Tourney itself.
- Friend List - Check Tourney participation of those on your friend list.

FAQs
We'll update this with any user questions:
Can I set up local Tourneys?
Nope, unfortunately not. This would have been meaningless (arguably) without the knockout tree structure in the custom Tourneys, in any case, but you'll have to stick with a pen and paper (along with friends in the same room, of course).
Wait, how can I get rid of items, they were in my Tourney when they shouldn't have been?
As mentioned above, some have complained of items appearing when they shouldn't, but this is probably due to the wrong option being selected. When creating a Tourney leaving the 'Item Switch' category 'Off' WILL bring items into the game. You need to choose Edit and then select 'All OFF' in the grid. If you want to be double sure set the frequency at the top to 'None'.
So there you have it, that's the breakdown of Tourneys in Super Smash Bros. for Wii U. If you have any questions fire them at us in the comments and we'll add an FAQ section soon; in addition we'll be running Nintendo Life Tourneys this weekend, so keep your eyes peeled.
Comments 48
@ThomasBW84 The items setup seems to be just a misunderstanding. People are thinking that "Item Switch" set to off means no items but infact it means default items.
I'm not a SSB player, but I drive my kids to tournaments, and they've always been the same, 1 on 1 pool play followed by 1 on 1 elimation. I can't ever remember any tournament not following that pattern. So if there is no option got 1 on 1, this isn't even tournsments, it's let's all get together and have some fun. Not that there's anything wrong w/ that, but they left the tournament out of tournament mode.
Oh well, have had any caffeine yet today so I'm probably just reading it wrong.
@rjejr That's pretty much the consensus - it's not 'real' Tournaments, unless you get in one of the Regular 1v1 no items ones, which as we've said above often necessitates sitting around a bit. The custom Tourneys are ultimately for a bit of a laugh, but hopefully 1v1 will be added as an option in an update.
@Grumblevolcano Indeed, that seems likely.
Seems like a clean and simple way to run public tourney's. Nicely done Nintendo. More flexibility would be nice though.
Where's the offline tourneys?
Why can't I do this stuff locally?!
Added a couple of FAQs, one for the lack of local Tourneys and the potential confusion turning items off.
Silly me. For all this time I just assumed that the tourneys would have been available offline a la Brawl. This is a tremendous disappointment as I've been put off from playing anything competitive online (at least in terms of anything that involves fighting and/or killing) and this is a feature that i will probably never use as I have next to no interest in online Smash.
This would have been a great feature to have offline for large gatherings where even 8 players may not quite be enough (or to even the odds after the novelty of 8 player Smash wears out).
I say it would have been nice to create local tourneys. Maybe not the knockout formula which would be pretty useless because most of the time you just don't have 8 people in the room who want to play it.
But I would love to have a "Create a championship" mode, similar to the good old wrestling games like WWF No Mercy (N64). A mode where you can create a belt or a trophy or something and fight it out with three friends, for example. The winner is allowed to enter his name and there you go - a history of title winning is created. Next time you can invite your friends to put this title on the line, again. Can the champion still come out as number one or does the title history is getting a new entry?
I'm still not actually sure how to engage in the tournament. I set one up for friends only, lasting a month, with the winner being whoever gets the most wins, but...
How do we then play matches considered part of the tourney?
@bro2dragons You have to all go into the Tourney, and it'll auto-match you.
No local tourneys seems crazy to me. What stopped them from making a bracket local tourney like they did in Melee and Brawl? I play way more local than online anyway. Kind of feel like with online being so big one local fun is taking a hit. Seems like an easy addition. I'm not in the business though.
...Well. There goes my excitement.
Wait, this tournament mode is just for Wii U?... Why?
I tried a few tourneys and well... they weren't so great. First one said I got timed out even though I won while I get utterly destroyed for the other two tourneys I joined since there never seems to be any open tourneys where customs are disabled. I guess I'll just stick with the offline and Splatoon.
I had this message in another thread but it's worth repeating:
The tournament mode truly does leave much to be desired. Basically tourney mode should be "Regular Tourneys" created by users. It's not that the other modes are horrible but without the ability to create Regular bracket based elimination tournaments this update is always going to be remembered for what you can't do. I don't know what goes on in those dev meetings. "Nah, people don't want to create regular tourneys. They'd rather wait 30 minutes for a Nintendo made tourney to start"
I guess people are never satisfied are they
@ThomasBW84 Not just 1v1. Tourney mode should be exactly like "Regular Tourneys". Period. Why in the world would they think people wouldn't want to create their own regular tournaments? Nintendo is always defining their features by what they can't do. In a week from now we'll be talking about some obvious feature they left out of private Splatoon battles. I love Nintendo but far too often I'm wishing their games had the features of the other system with the gameplay and other benefits of being a Nintendo game.
@Wolfgabe Usually I could agree but don't promote it as a tournament when it's clearly not. This is not what anyone means when they think of a tournament. It's pretty much an improved online because now at least you can have custom matches with people but it's certainly not a tournament (other than the Regular ones that only Nintendo can create)
@wisdomprince Why is is not a tournament? Simply because it doesn't fit in with people's pre concieved notions on a what a torunament should be?
Looks like there's a bit of room on that menu!
I wish they'd give Splatoon this many options.
@Wolfgabe Tournaments have always been like that. Yet again Nintendo does it's own thing when people just outrighted wanted simple 1v1 Tournaments. Less people not being satisfied and more Nintendo screwing up yet again when people told them what they wanted straight to their face. How could you screw up when people tell you outright what they want?
W8, no local tourneys? >:[ Dern
@CrazyMetroid Normally I would agree about the whining, but in this case I have to agree with the majority here. If you can't CUSTOMIZE a CUSTOMIZABLE TOURNAMENT then what's the point of going through all this? I appreciate Nintendo for continuing to add new things to the game, but that doesn't mean all of the things they add are perfect and I have to like them the way they are. If we use that mind set then I guess it's okay with Ubisoft or EA adding new updates to their games that constantly break the game or are just awful, but we can't complain because it's free.
The point that you have to wait long for the 1on1 is a negative and a positive aspect at the same time. It makes it exciting because you don't want to get kicked out, but also frustrating if you get kicked out and have to wait ages to participate on a 1on1 again.
Actually like a real tournament. lol ^^
What actually annoys me is that there's no Sudden Death... A lot of players just camp out the remaining time. The one with the lower damage wins. Yeah, great!
Wow. No local tourneys? No proper trees in custom tourneys? Looks like this tourney update was definitely not worth the wait.
Guess we'll be sticking to pen-and-paper for all our tourneys. But hey, that's what we've been doing since Smash 64.
Hopefully some of my buddies will want to do some online tourneys. I haven't turned on SS4 in awhile...
@Wolfgabe Yes, that's why. It's not a per-conceived notion of what a tournament is. It's what a tournament is. Word play will get Nintendo nowhere fast
No local tourneys? Sad face.
@CrazyMetroid How about instead of seeing us as fans you see us as consumers and a major reason why Nintendo is a profitable company. It will not serve Nintendo to ignore their consumers for too long (as noted by the fact that 90million former consumers decided not to support the wii u after owning the wii)
This sounds like great fun, and I'll be sure to play some later. It would have been better if we could create our own knockout tourneys though.
Well I mostly play "For Fun" so I'm used to 4 players but it would be nice to have 1 on 1 in the custom tourney. It also would of been cool if they have local tourney. A group of humans and amiibo fighting to take top spot.
I haven't got a chance to try it yet but do the mode records you statistics like For Glory or is it like For Fun, I know dumb question.
"Stick with pencil and paper"
Things like Challonge are a thing now. Why use paper?
You can access the Challonge bracket from your phone.
@ThomasBW84 - Thanks for getting back to me TW, um 9 hours ago, sorry about that.
My kids seem to be having a fun time w/ your fun tourney today, started at 61 and finished at 19. If they start getting too good you could always add an age requirement.
This tournament mode sucks. No fan made bracket tournaments!?
So no local tourneys....well it's Nintendo, so I should've expected missing features and disappointment. Of course, I'll also expect their faithful fans to come flaming me for not worshipping Nintendo.
Hopefully the ProCube controller comes out someday...
@EngieBengie They do have 1v1 in for glory didn't you even read the article
Had fun earlier!https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMHAAACAAADVHkUo-_Icw
So many self entitled whiners here. Get a freaking grip! its not like they can't patch it in later. Be happy we have tournaments in the first place
1v1 is offered in for glory which makes sense.
Custom tourneys are obviously for fun
I still don't understand why there isn't some kind of version of Tourney mode on the 3DS version. Just inexcusable.
Well, this update is good for one thing: We can finally play stock matches online against random opponents! Yay!
Otherwise, I have to agree that having no local tourneys is disappointing while the online ones are missing some features.
No 1v 1 killed this pretty much for me.
@Jazzer94 There's 1v1 tourneys in the regular tourneys section.
@Wolfgabe There's actually 1v1 For Fun tourneys in the regular tourneys section.
Just use a spreadsheet if you're doing local tourneys. Honestly how many of you get together with 8, 16, or 32 friends for tourneys anyway? I always get together with 4-8 people for fun matches with everyone
Can 2 people compete in a tourney on the same Wii U?
@Aurumonado Well I enjoy setting everyone up with two characters each (tough luck if you have to face yourself, in which case you have to choose which one throws the match), while the extra spots are taken by random level CPUs (which could've also been supplemented by amiibos).
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