As a video game franchise evolves over time, so do the bonus games or minigames that are created to supplement the primary gameplay modes. These smaller game modes are sometimes included as gimmicky throw-ins to experience a game apart from the main story, like that one game mode that you play just to mess around for a little bit. Whatever the case may be, they are not always essential to the success of a video game, and may be scrapped from later entries as a result.
To me, one of these minigames is the Race to the Finish bonus game from the Super Smash Bros. series, a game mode that has made an appearance in almost every Smash Bros. title in some form or another. It feels like it does not necessarily need to be there, but it is still an intriguing game mode that is worthy of discussion.
Race to the Finish began as a bonus game in the 1P Game mode in the original Super Smash Bros. (1999), the third such bonus game after Break the Targets and Board the Platforms. Like with the other two bonus games, Race to the Finish is very straightforward in telling you how to get the job done. You have to get to the bottom of the stage within the time limit, traversing a multi-story cave-like area while dodging obstacles like explosives along the way.
However, there is an added challenge within Race to the Finish—unlike with Break the Targets and Board the Platforms, players are only given one minute to complete the stage instead of two. This amplifies the urgency from the prior bonus games, creating a greater challenge for the player to complete. Not only does the player have to get from point A to point B, but they must do so with half as much time as they were given for the Break the Targets and Board the Platforms minigames.
Race to the Finish returned in the sequel, Super Smash Bros. Melee (2001), featuring an even more complicated labyrinth for the player to clear as part of the game’s Classic Mode. This stage is far less linear than that of its predecessor, containing several branching paths to take to try and get to the end.
In the original game, the player was allotted one minute to clear the stage no matter which character they chose; in Melee, though, the amount of time the player has to reach the end depends on their character. Mario, for instance, is given 49 seconds to solve the labyrinth, while Pikachu only gets 44 seconds. As noted by the fan-made SmashWiki, these times are entirely arbitrary and have nothing to do with the characters’ individual stats or properties.
As of 2025, Melee is the last official Super Smash Bros. game to have a bonus game using the Race to the Finish name, despite later entries including similar minigames into their respective side modes. Nevertheless, this is not the end of the story behind the Race to the Finish minigame.
Although Race to the Finish did not make a return in Super Smash Bros. Brawl (2008), it was brought to a few fan-made titles. Ordinarily, I would not talk about fan games in an article like this, but the games that I am about to discuss were how I first learned about Smash Bros. as a whole, so I think I can make an exception here.
In 2006, video game developer Gregory McLeod (also known as Cleod9) released Super Smash Flash, a game inspired by Melee that was developed for the Adobe Flash Player. Race to the Finish is featured as the sixth level in SSF’s Classic Mode, where the player races to reach the other end of Emerald Hill Zone from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992).
This iteration of Race to the Finish is more linear than that of the first two official Super Smash Bros. games, incorporating floating platforms into the level in place of complex alternate paths. In spite of its limitations as a Flash game, I would say that this is a faithful recreation of what Race to the Finish was like in the series’ first two entries.
In the years since the release of the first Super Smash Flash, Cleod9 and his team at McLeodGaming have been hard at work on Super Smash Flash 2, which is probably one of the best fan projects ever made. SSF2 brought back Race to the Finish, fleshing out the stage into something of a mix between what the labyrinth looked like in Melee and the Subspace Emissary stages from Brawl. The juxtaposition of the environments within the stage is very reminiscent of an official Smash Bros. game, akin to something like The Great Cave Offensive.
Switching back from fan games, a spiritual successor to Race to the Finish appears in the form of one of the Final Battles in the Smash Run mode of Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS (2014). This challenge, simply titled “Run!”, is exactly what you would expect at this point, having the player get their character from start to finish as fast as possible.
That being said, there is a twist this time around—not only are you racing against the clock, but against other players as well. Depending on how many human players joined your Smash Run game, you may be racing against as many as three other human (or computer-controlled) players. One of the goals of Smash Run is improving your stats within the time limit, so you may be able to cruise to the finish line with a maxed out speed stat.
The last mode I am going to discuss in this piece is the Bonus Game from Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (2018). No, it is not called Race to the Finish, but the objective is the same; this time, however, the stage is slowly destroyed by a void of darkness that the player must outrun to complete the challenge. Along the way, the player can pick up golden orbs to increase their score before hopping into a cannon to escape the void. This apocalyptic take on the original Race to the Finish bonus game is fascinating to play through, especially knowing what I know now about the history behind this fun little game.
To most people, Race to the Finish is simply one of the many different minigames that Nintendo has added to keep things fresh in the Super Smash Bros. series. To me, though, it serves as a metaphor for trying to make the most out of life before it’s all gone. As bleak as it sounds, we only have a finite amount of time here on Earth before we die, and it is up to us to set out and achieve our goals while we still can. We may encounter obstacles along the way, but our willingness to overcome them is what makes us human. We must continue to race to the finish day after day, doing as much as we can to do good for the world before it is too late.
Featured image by Aperture Vintage on Unsplash.
