Terry in the magnifying glass inUltimate, onTemple.

Magnifying-Glass Damage,^[1] known ashoop damage inSuper Smash Bros. Brawl,^[2] is thedamage that afighter receives when they are out of the camera's boundaries but not past theblast line. It is present in all games except the originalSuper Smash Bros., though the magnifying glass does appear, except against team opponents in 1P mode.

When a fighter is off-screen but not past the blast line, they are still shown inside a small hoop known as themagnifying glass^[3] at the edge of the camera boundary. This hoop is accompanied by an arrow that signals the player to get back on-screen. Magnifying-Glass Damage is damage applied while the fighter is displayed this way, at a rate of 1% per second, but stops occurring when the fighter has accumulated 150% damage. This damage is affected by the1v1 multiplier, dealing 1.2% per tick under these circumstances. InUltimate, the size of the magnifying glass is determined by how close a player is to a blast line: the closer to a blast line, the smaller the glass gets. The edges of the glass flash yellow when the player is dangerously close to the blast line.

Magnifying-Glass Damage does not occur inTraining Mode nor in theAll-Star Rest Area inMelee andBrawl. InThe Subspace Emissary, if Player 2 is in a situation that would usually trigger the effect, they instead usuallySpace Jump.Charizard,Meta Knight,Kirby, and to a lesser extent,King K. Rool, all haveup throws that send them above the upper blast line with the accompanying magnifying glass, but they do not take damage as a result, as the time spent isn't enough for them to sustain damage.Joker'sRebellion Gauge does not fill when taking Magnifying-Glass Damage.

The damage sustained by Magnifying-Glass Damage is often inconsequential, having little impact on most games. Its main purpose is to serve as a minor deterrent tocamping close to the blast zone with the aim of throwing an opponent for an earlyKO. It does have situational uses for a player, though, such asTerry using the damage to get access toSuper Special Moves if he's extremely close to the threshold without having to get hit, but this is niche and extremely punishable.

Gallery[edit]

• 

  Mario in the magnifying glass inSmash 64 onMushroom Kingdom.

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  Donkey Kong in the magnifying glass inMelee onOnett.

• 

  Sonic in the magnifying glass inBrawl onBridge of Eldin.

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  Bayonetta in the magnifying glass inSmash 4 onYoshi's Island.

Trivia[edit]

• Status effects such as beingburied orfrozen are not rendered in the magnifying glass.
• InMelee, fighters in the magnifying glass have a blockier, lower-resolution model compared to ordinary gameplay. These models cannot properly emulate some animations, such as blinking, and the use of some moves or attacks can result in unusual visual behaviour. These models are also used to simulate the reflections seen onFountain of Dreams.
• The English name of "hoop damage" that comes from theBrawl website is believed to be a mistranslation ofthe originalルーペダメージ, or "loupe damage". All other games (except forSSB64, which provides none) use the translation "magnifying glass".
• InBrawl, CPUs on either the blue or green team use the less saturated red team color. This was fixed in the PAL release of the game.
• InUltimate, the "side arrows" of the magnifying glass for whenever a fighter is on the side of the screen reuse port colors of human players fromSuper Smash Bros. for Wii U. As a result, ports such as Players 2 and 4 will have their arrows a darker color, while Players 7 and 8 will have purple and slate colors instead of pink and purple, respectively.
  • Additionally, CPU players in Team Battles will have their arrows the same as their team colors, but with less saturation.
• InUltimate, when the 1v1 multiplier is active, if one lingers in the magnifying glass and allows damage to rack up, some unexpected damage percentages will start to appear; the percent should in theory increase in increments of 1.2%, but thedamage meter will show odd-numbered decimal damages. This is caused byfloating point error. The damage meter inUltimate normally rounds up small errors in the damage percent stored in-game if it determines them to be floating point errors, but after enough increments of 1.2%, these errors start to fall outside the range the damage meter will round up.

References[edit]

• Damage
• Game mechanics