Sandbag (SSF2)

Sandbag is a newcomer starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. He was first revealed in SSF2 Dev Blog #5 on April 1st, 2016, and initially thought to be an April Fools' Day joke. However, a special blog, SSF2 Dev Blog #5.1, was released two days later confirming Sandbag's inclusion as the game's "joke" character. Sandbag was a pet-project by developer, James Hadden, and its development was completed in a week's time; thanks to the character using only three sprites in all of its animations; which were then rotated, stretched, and distorted in Super Smash Flash to create over 70 unique animations. Unlike its traditional availability as an unlockable character from Beta 1.1, he is available as a starter instead in Beta 1.2.

Sandbag is currently ranked at 45 of F tier in the current tier list, ranking it as the absolute worst character in the game, ten times lower than his previous placement, 45 of C tier, and a noticeable small drop from 38th of D tier from the second-previous tier list, where he was residing at lower-tier. He utilizes a highly unorthodox playstyle that breaks many conventions of character design in the game to great effect, making him one of the most unpredictable characters in the game. He possesses a high number of moves that are deceptively strong, capable of racking up big damage or scoring some very cheesy KOs. He also has a strong air game, with fast aerials and quick burst-movement options like Sanddash and Sandgrab. His grab possesses long reach; while his throws are ridiculously powerful, giving him an amazing grab and throw game as well. His unorthodox recovery contain a lot of flexibility and, when mastered, allow Sandbag to recover from a surprisingly high number of situations off the stage. Sandbag also contains powerful KO moves in his smash attacks, aerials, forward throw and back throw, as well as for his potentially powerful special moves, Bomb-omb Toss and Capsule. Sandbag possesses an extreme high damage-output, a great aerial game, and the most powerful spike with down aerial in the game. He also provides an oppressive spacing and edgeguarding game, a solid grab and throw game, as well as for long range in most of his attacks (thanks to its large-sized body possessing unique and great properties). His special moves also possess powerful properties, and his infinite recovery is among the best in the game (as long as Sandbag is not KO'd), and most of his moves are fast enough to contain little-to-no startup to easily rack up enough damage to KO opponents afterward.

However, as one would expect from a joke character, Sandbag is plagued by an abundance of weaknesses. He contains some of the worst grounded-movement in the game; due to his unique walking and dashing animations causing him to slowly "hop" forwards with long pauses in between. Many of Sandbag's strong attacks have medium-to-heavy endlag, making them highly punishable on whiff. His neutral getup is by far the longest in the game, making him extremely vulnerable to jab-resetting. Sandbag's biggest flaw is his inability to grab ledges at all, removing his ability to edgehog opponents while giving him a very poor disadvantaged state off-stage; despite his unique recovery. Speaking of which, his primary recovery tool causes him to literally blow himself up, which deals a lot of self-inflicted damage and will cause him to KO himself if his damage gets too high. Sandbag contains severe difficultes within the neutral game; due to most of its aerials (such as down aerial) being hard to land. Many of his other attacks, especially ones that contain powerful knockback, are slow and laggy or may contain awkward properties that make them difficult in the neutral game, and they possess medium-to-heavy endlag, causing Sandbag to be vulnerable to attacks that easily overwhelm him. While Sandbag does have a great aerial game, he is notrious for possessing one of the worst grounded games. As an anthropomorphic bag, he possesses attributes highly based on a typical bag; the second-slowest running speed, relatively slow walking speeds, and overall laggy and short-reaching attacks (with the expection of his tilt attacks) also compounds this flaw, as well as for ranking his approach the second-weakest. Sandbag's defensive game is also very punishable; possessing slow and short-reaching rolls that gain less intangibilities, causing Sandbag to be vulnerable to attacks with lingering hitboxes. His sidestep possesses less amount of intangibilities, making it extremely punishable. Sandbag also suffers a high falling speed and an outlarged hurtbox, giving him disadvantageous struggles against characters with large, disjointed and long-lasting hitboxes like and, and (due to lacking a real projectile itself) zoners with projectile-heavy playstyles, like ,  and. His special moves are also overall situational, with Capsule Spawn containing a rare occurence of exploding (with the expection of if all items are turned off), Sandgrab covering short horizontal distance and high endlag if landed (making Sandbag vulnerable), and Bomb-omb Toss being somewhat linear for a recovery and causing Sandbag to SD and get stage-spiked. His high falling speed makes him suspectible to juggles or combos. Despite being a middleweight, it also possesses high hitstun; which (coupled with Bomb-omb Toss, high falling speeds, an outlarged hurtbox, below-average speed and a mediocre defense) makes him extremely suspectible to early KOs, especially off the top of the screen.

Sandbag appears to have a little playerbase and a somewhat-lackluster representation in online tournaments. The only notable competitive players of Sandbag are Mew2ube and MedK, who are currently inactive and do not use Sandbag for recent online tournaments. Though his strengths are not be be underestimated, the multipility of weaknesses drastically overshadow the aformentioned positive traits, ranking Sandbag as the absolute worst character in the game.