Super Flat Zone (SSS)

:This article is strictly about how Super Flat Zone appeared in Super Smash Stadium. For information about it in general, see w:c:supersmashbros:Flat Zone.
Super Flat Zone is a retired stage on Super Smash Stadium. Debuting halfway through Season 7, it was the 43rd stage to debut overall. It was active for a little over 23 years and saw 308 appearances in the time it was active.
==Stage overview==
This stage used the Game and Watch game Helmet as its base; as a result, it was flat and had walk-off side kill zones. The apartment decks above the door on the left acted as soft platforms, as did the roof of the house on the right. Similarly to Midair Stadium, up to ten randomly generated soft platforms appeared in the gap in-between; if all 10 were active, two whole lines' worth of soft platform would be formed. Sometimes, the character from Manhole would fill in any gaps.
As in Helmet, various tools would occasionally rain down from the sky, doing 10% and moderate knockback to anyone hit. Occasionally, the guy from Oil Panic would walk out of the house and spill oil, making that section of the floor slippery unless you were playing as the Ice Climbers.
A few unusual "quirks" about this stage included the fact that all characters appeared flat on it (which caused some graphics to fail in hilarious ways) and that if you paused, you'd see the entire stage, revealing that it was actually taking place inside a Game and Watch unit (labeled "Super Smash Stadium", natch). The characters made beeping noises as they walked. The stage also had some unusually close kill zones, perhaps owing to it being inside a G&W unit. The kill zones were at the unit's edges.
Also, the Assist Trophy was a pirate game character, and the Poké-Ball Pokémon was an infamous glitch. Make of that what you will...
==Changes==
The stage had a MUCH different layout on its first five playings: it used the famous "Battlefield Layout" while Ball was going on in the background. The juggling balls were a stage hazard, but they ultimately proved to be too chaotic to deal with. Prior to about December 1984, the stage had a murkier appearance and took place in a "silver" G&W unit that bore a stronger resemblance to what Helmet originally looked like.
==Why it was retired (and the ensuing controversy)==
The super hot jank was already problematic enough, but starting in the 1990's, the stage began to have "mechanical issues" such as tools being stuck in one place yet still able to damage fighters and the oil covering the entire floor and not going away. By 2002, these problems had gotten so bad (with a few No Contests even happening in Season 30) that SSS's staff felt it wasn't worth it to keep the stage around any longer; the "last straw" happened when they attempted to play the stage for October 9, 2002's episode (3103-3) and it broke down so hard that they couldn't fix it in a timely way; Coin Heaven was brought in as a substitution.
However, with both the stage and Mr. Game and Watch being very popular on SSS at the time, the staff, fearing a fandom backlash, decided to reverse its decision to retire the stage two weeks later, and play it on Episode 3108-2 (November 12, 2002)...only to discover that their Game and Watch unit had been so badly destroyed by heavy rain that it was now unusable. So, the staff declared that the stage was "on hiatus" while they attempted to build a new Game and Watch unit; Mr. Game and Watch himself disappeared by December 2002.
Thus begins the controversy: The staff essentially lied to the fandom about whether this stage was retired or not. For the next five years, people who were mostly on Suburban Sprawl Entertainment's end of production kept promising the fandom that they were making "great progress" on building a new Super Flat Zone, with an "optimistic prediction" at one point putting its return late in Season 35. But in April 2007, the stage was finally declared retired: as it turns out, the process of constructing a new Super Flat Zone had never even gotten off the ground! While it's unclear if this "big lie" influenced Suburban Sprawl's decision to leave SSS (they'd declared their retirement in October 2006), it couldn't have helped.
==In its own universe==
Helmet, Manhole, and Oil Panic were all Game and Watch games.