On June 16 2009 10:15 EchOne wrote: Melee is a good game. I get annoyed at people who disrespect it, though not as much as at people who disrespect Starcraft. More pictures/videos would've really helped keep readers' attention, but it's good that posters have provided some.
I agree, I wanted to have a much more visual guide with pictures and videos, but unfortunately I ran out of time to submit for the contest. If I have time I might re-do this part of the guide.
On June 16 2009 10:15 EchOne wrote: I think you could've emphasized dash-dance's role in not only having an unpredictable location, but generally dodging incoming moves. I used to have a basically pointless dash-dance since I'd just dash-dance at my character's max length in place for a while and hope for the best, until my teacher told me to apply what I learned about controlled dash-dancing (varying dash-dance length, using multiple dashes in the same direction) to dodge moves aimed at different locations.
Also you could've mentioned some of the auxiliary roles of wavedashing, since with a solid dash-dance and pivot game, many characters can still maintain space control without wavedashing. For characters like Fox and Falcon, their ability to wavedash out of shield or waveshine or waveland is more important than their ability to just wavedash around randomly.
Finally, queueing with C stick is something beginners can learn easily and could be good to mention. Basically, while holding L on the ground, holding C stick laterally causes a roll to occur. What this means is that if you predict a situation where you need to roll, holding L and C left for instance will cause you to roll as soon as would've been possible, without your shield ever coming up. Holding C stick down will queue spot dodge, and holding C stick up will queue jump out of shield, which is awesome for perfectly timing aerials out of shield.
Also you didn't mention Marth's ridiculous gimping ability.
All good points! I'll update the guide with this after the contest is over! Thanks!
Nice guide. I spent a good amount of time a while ago watching all the smash 64 videos i could find on youtube, except the ones of a camcorder in front of a tv, those sucked. I mostly found ssbm elusive, didn't understand too many elements of it to really enjoy it. Thanks for fixing that. Edit: btw, your description of the characters' strengths and weaknesses was nice, too bad it only described the top tier.
Ahh SSBM was such good times, used to play it all the time. Ya, that guide is definitely really basic, mostly just teaching someone enough so that they could watch and slightly appreciate a good match, not really enough to play.
y, staggering.. to actually play you need to play the game ... ... ...
Nice guide.
I now know what makes it great/interesting/challenging and still think it's retarded :p. I liked to play it for fun tho... But i and a close friend suddenly stopped playing it after we got kinda "good" (nowhere near pro level) and went back to Tekken :p.
Nice guide, I've played one of the games like once at Target or something and never understood the appeal or even how the game worked/played. Even after seeing videos I didn't understand.
I appreciated the basics you layed out and now understand all the complexity created by each character having so many moves and glitches/exploits that create even more meta game strategies.
Hi, I'm Tbird's brother who helped him compile the guide. Just wanted to thank you guys for the positive feedback.
As for the "missing" things in the guide, we would have liked to do more... one thing that comes to mind is to take a professional match and dissect it sort of bit-by-bit. But we ran out of time to really do this, and the guide may have already been too long as it is. Also, this is a bit of a dangerous slope, because we'd have to oversimplify things in the context of the "beginner's guide", but then we open ourselves up to "oh, but you didn't mention this aspect of the match!", which I think would hurt the quality of the guide. It'd make it look like we didn't know what we were talking about, when we really just wanted to keep things somewhat simple. You can't teach people everything about the game on one page. Coupled with time constraints, we just left that stuff out.
I also would have liked to list sort of the pros and cons of all the characters in the game, but I think the game has changed a bit since I last played competitively (I'm about a year removed from the scene), so I wanted to limit the chance I would be giving outdated information, heh. If I had all the characters there, there'd probably be a few people saying "this is wrong about so and so". I just wanted to give three or four sentences which explain why they're so good. I even prefaced it with "extremely oversimplified" so people wouldn't think that's all there is to their games.
Melee is fairly unique in that there is a TON of general terms you need to know, and even more character-specific strategies/terms to know. There's no way we can cover them all here. I hope we picked a pretty good subset.
The main thing I wanted to contribute through the guide is that in all 2D fighters, the primary goal is competing for space, and Smash is no exception. If you're looking to play competitively, sure, you need to understand all the terms and such, but most of their applications are ways for characters to optimally put themselves in the best position relative to their character. Too many people just blindly look for one combo, or have no regard for trying to limit the opponent's space, or whatnot. This is advice that goes for all 2D fighters!
Ok, after beating the shit out of my friends for years using advanced techniques covered in this guide and the video, I recently went to a smashfest and got my ass-completely kicked. Hell, I got 4 stocked by a mewtwo...do you know how humiliating that is?
Anyways, my point is there is almost no limit to how skilled you can become at this game. Some of the kids I played are just insanely skilled, and that is definite motivation to get better.
But yeah, my trouble is I have difficulty moving my fingers quickly (especially trying do advanced stuff like short hop double lasers, hell I don't think I'll ever be able to do that ever). Does anybody have any tips on finger speed? (as well as working on L-Canceling and shffling) Basically, to beat better players with my low speed I play jigglypuff (who is a cheap abusive character). So yeah, there's a lot to work on in this game.
how different is melee from 64? I played ALOT of ssb64 at college this year and got pretty good but never really got the chance to play melee. is it a lot more of a competetive game or what?
On June 17 2009 08:14 Infil wrote: As for the "missing" things in the guide, we would have liked to do more... one thing that comes to mind is to take a professional match and dissect it sort of bit-by-bit. But we ran out of time to really do this, and the guide may have already been too long as it is. Also, this is a bit of a dangerous slope, because we'd have to oversimplify things in the context of the "beginner's guide", but then we open ourselves up to "oh, but you didn't mention this aspect of the match!", which I think would hurt the quality of the guide. It'd make it look like we didn't know what we were talking about, when we really just wanted to keep things somewhat simple. You can't teach people everything about the game on one page. Coupled with time constraints, we just left that stuff out.
On June 18 2009 01:53 decafchicken wrote: how different is melee from 64? I played ALOT of ssb64 at college this year and got pretty good but never really got the chance to play melee. is it a lot more of a competetive game or what?
Once you become technically proficient, Smash 64 is a game about who can rape the other person for a single mistake first, because of features like longer hit/shield stun, etc. Comebacks are generally much harder because of the existence of several zero-to-death combos and better edgeguarding options for all characters. Characters are generally more balanced in 64 - there's no matchup that's absurdly unfavorable for one character like in Melee (Sheik vs. Bowser?).
In Melee there's less hitstun and DI, which makes combos easier to escape and opens up a new dimension of prediction as well as better chances to come back. Melee also has (overall) faster speed over 64, and it's physics engine lets you do some things which were impossible in 64, which broadens its technical game. What draws you more into Melee is just the beautiful fluidity of the game - I remember when I first started I watched some matches online and thought, "wow, how can they move so fast?"
In short, though, they're both awesome games. I played both regularly on a semi-competitive level, and in writing this section I realized that there's a lot that both games have in common, but it's just that in execution it plays out slightly differently.
If you shieldgrab well you can beat ~80% of all the people who play smash.
Those who call wavedashing a glitch are uneducated to either high-level Melee play, the definition of "glitch", or both.
Yes let's argue semantics! I'd rather do that than just posit that it is impossible to ban wavedashing anyway, that it does not hurt the game, and thus we must let it stand.
Debating whether it's a glitch is meaningless when it doesn't change the fact the ban is unenforceable without banning airdodges entirely, and I don't think very many people want to go that route.
If you predict you will be hit with a launching move and have no way to avoid it, holding down will "crouch-cancel" the move.
ASDI into the ground gives a "pseudo-CC" effect in that it also reduces your knockback (actually being crouched when you get hit reduces it slightly more) and is more useful since you can ASDI down after getting punished by something. Since putting up your shield only takes 1 frame and if you can crouch you can shield it is often not very useful to just crouch cancel, especially against someone spacing properly.
Best forward-air move in the game, which sends players at a downward-horizontal angle with heavy stun; KOs very effectively at all percentages.
I'm not sure I'd say it's the best fair in the game. Best finisher, yes, but I can certainly see an argument that Marth's in particular is better.
(Also like others said your DI section is quite misleading if not just wrong. If you want to stay simple then just deal with regular DI, which is unaffected by the c-stick entirely; if you want to get in-depth then you failed since I don't see smash DI or ASDI mentioned).
For what you seem to be trying to do this guide is pretty decent and my comments are mainly "nitpick"-type stuff.
I only really watch 2v2 videos any more. Last set I watched was M2K + Ka-Master vs Kage + Hitsugaya
(M2K's Sheik is amazing)
Also all the M2K + Vidjo vs Azen + Chillin matches from FC6 were awesome, though a bit old now.
Wish I had more time and transportation and still had my roommate around to do some more teams money matches. 2v2 Melee is easily the most fun I've ever had with a video game.
EDIT: Crate, you wouldn't happen to go to college at Oberlin, would you?
2v2 Smash is easily the most fun I've had (as long as team attack is off!). It even makes Brawl good. I'm really sad that 2v2's in Starcraft are as unfun as they are.
EPT
![[image loading]](http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a399/Elliswithagun/1228164643689.jpg)
I can't believe hes at the bottom tier although thats understandable
