Super Smash Bros. Brawl

[Broken]

Haha, yeah Melee does ruin controllers. I used to make fun of my friend years ago b/c all of his controllers were messed up, but of course when I borrowed his Melee disc and started playing often, My controllers started messing up too.

On a less humorus note, my friend finally laid down the law and made me give him back his copy of SSBM. Had he taken it back when I offered it to him and was about to buy my own copy, things would have been fine, but he didn't and I don't have the time nor money to go buy Melee right now, so that'll have to wait.

[Katsurugi]

Sure it messes up controllers. But, if you think about it, it was well worth it. I've been playing for such a long time already (ever since it was released). It's fun to play every once in a while just to mess around.

[Jam Stunna]

I went to a tournament last Saturday where they recorded just about everything. Hopefully I'll get the videos soon, and I'll post them here with a more detailed explanation of the tournament.

[Global-Trance]

I went to a tournament last Saturday where they recorded just about everything. Hopefully I'll get the videos soon, and I'll post them here with a more detailed explanation of the tournament.

Any big name players show up?

[Jam Stunna]

I went to a tournament last Saturday where they recorded just about everything. Hopefully I'll get the videos soon, and I'll post them here with a more detailed explanation of the tournament.

Any big name players show up?

Korean DJ was there, and he proceeded to rape me thoroughly. Zoso's a more local celebrity, but he was there and I actually beat him in a few friendlies. Other than that, it was just local guys, some of whom might go to MLG.

[TheCatPhysician]

Yeah, Korean DJ is really good. I met him at OC2, he is really nice and energetic. He seems to have a really positive attitude. I didn't get to play him though, except in rock-paper-scissors to see who rides in the front seat of Ken's car from the airport. Nice job taking on Zoso, I hope they get those videos uploaded soon.

[Jam Stunna]

Yeah, Korean DJ is really good. I met him at OC2, he is really nice and energetic. He seems to have a really positive attitude. I didn't get to play him though, except in rock-paper-scissors to see who rides in the front seat of Ken's car from the airport. Nice job taking on Zoso, I hope they get those videos uploaded soon.

Yeah, Korean is really cool. I don't know if they taped the Zoso matches since those were just friendlies, and we kept getting crappy stages from random. Anyway, it was fun.

[Jam Stunna]

Okay, got the vids! Both matches are myself versus Chopping Board.

Match 1: Jam Stunna (IC) vs. Chopping Board (Peach)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuy6Nqb9980

Match 2: Jam Stunna (IC) vs. Chopping Board (IC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCez5rMHFFw

One thing that Chop did better than me was de-synch his Ice Climbers. I'm still trying to work on that.

[Garde]

The OCR SSBM community has come a long way to be talking about de-syncing the Ice Climbers... I've missed out on so much development here...

As for breaking controllers, I've broken at least 3 through SSBM, and I never throw them or anything. It's always the control stick that craps out on me... I guess I was a little too enthusiastic when I used to play.

Anyway, I'm really glad to see that SWF has spread its influence over here a bit more heavily than it had when I was somewhat a part of the scene.

Great_Deku, is it invitation only or is it open for anyone on Facebook to join?

Noodle, the L does not stand for Lag. In SSB64 it is called Z-Cancelling because you use the Z-button. I figure they called it L-Cancel because the L-Button (on GCN) uses the same finger the Z-Button does (on N64). So most people who played SSB64 competitively switched over still using their left pointer finger, and hence the L-Button.

EDIT: Clarified 2 things.

[Garde]

Has anyone ever used Z-Cancelling has opposed to L-Cancelling? Same principle, but instead of doing aerials with either the C-Stick or A button, you use the Z button to attack and then immediately press Z again upon hitting the ground. Since you don't really have to move different fingers, like with L-Cancelling, it makes it alot easier and faster. I've been working at it lately and it really works. I'm just having a hard time unlearning years of L-cancelling.

The thing is that what you guys call Z-Cancelling (I didn't know they used the term in SSBM now) doesn't work with 3 characters. Link, YLink and Samus can't Z-Cancel the way you use it. If you just use the Z-button to cancel an aerial move, then sure, it works for everyone. You can't use neutral-Z in the air with those 3, and neutral-Z just so happens to be one of their most viable aerial moves (sex kick for the win). Fortunately, using A for combos involving these characters isn't difficult.

I watched those match vids, and I'm somewhat impressed. My friend who plays IC is somewhat better at de-syncing (Influenza on SWF, Neal irl, if any of you have met him, he's hosted a tourney or two in the Long Beach area), but he's probably had a bit more experience (he's gone to at least 8 big ones and trained with DBR during a few smashfests). You'll pick it up in no time!

I personally think you WD too much (this coming from a Link player, take it with a grain of salt ), but it's the IC's best form of mobility, so I don't blame you for using it a lot. It just seemed like a few times you got yourself into a bit of trouble by misjudging how safe you were while trying to bait Chopping Board. Again, nothing more experience won't fix.

As some of you might know or remember, I use Link... I'm pretty much using a bastardized and outdated version of Germ's play style when I do play. I'm nothing special. Most of the stuff I ended up learning through my own experimenting, and when I saw vids of Germ and played with him a few times, I picked up some other things. He personally recommends cancelling with Z so you don't get stuck in your shield (so you don't have to worry about pulling your finger all the way off the L/R button). My right index finger is sort of screwed up though, not sure from what, but using the Z-button really aggravates it after a few hours (to the point where it swells and won't bend at any of the knuckles). I must've jammed it too many times while playing sports as a kid, or something.

Oh yeah, I read somewhere about bad matchups in tourneys... My very first tourney, I was faced up against Eddie (the #1 Ganondorf in the US at the time, I honestly have no idea if he still plays). Well, I went to the losers' bracket, and unfortunately the controller I brought crapped out on me after I lent it to a friend. :/

If any of you are wondering, I can still pound unskilled players into the ground, but anyone that has been to several tourneys will probably give me a run for my money, or just destroy me outright. Whenever I have gone to smaller tourneys though, people think my Link is godly fast. I just find it funny that they think I'm good and insanely fast, I feel sluggish and clumsy in comparison to Germ and a few other Links that were around while I still played somewhat competitively... Man, talking makes me want to pull out the cube and start practicing... As well as making it to that SJ tourney... Too bad I definitely am not in a financial situation to make it up there. If any of you going see Germ or Trevyn up there, tell them Garde says hi.

[Global-Trance]

How the hell did that Peach foul up so bad at the end rofl

Edit: I saw like no mindgames at all in there. They were okay matches, Jam, but nothing to go wow about. Learn desynching so you don't have to use the jump to get a double ice breath in one direction. Who won the tournament, btw?

Edit 2: I'm about to go to a small tournament here on campus held by a guy on Smashboards. Apparently lot of guys from the boards that are realllllly good are comin too. I just picked up Captain Falcon to try to put in my top 5... good thing Romeo (DSF's partner) is coming showing up. His Captain is great!

[Garde]

Say hi to Alex for me if he's there (DSF). Good luck in that tourney, that's not gonna be an easy one if people like Romeo are going.

[Jam Stunna]

How the hell did that Peach foul up so bad at the end rofl

Edit: I saw like no mindgames at all in there. They were okay matches, Jam, but nothing to go wow about. Learn desynching so you don't have to use the jump to get a double ice breath in one direction. Who won the tournament, btw?

Edit 2: I'm about to go to a small tournament here on campus held by a guy on Smashboards. Apparently lot of guys from the boards that are realllllly good are comin too. I just picked up Captain Falcon to try to put in my top 5... good thing Romeo (DSF's partner) is coming showing up. His Captain is great!

Results from the tournament:

1. Korean DJ

2. Yoyo

3. Spic Tom

4. Soup

5. JV Smooth

5. Zoso

7. Jam Stunna

There were more, but I don't remember the results below myself.

Thanks for the tips, hopefully I'll have more vids soon.

[Garde]

Global-Trance, that Peach wasn't too impressive, imho. My friend Jeromy plays a much scarier Peach. This Peach didn't really try to bait, and she tossed her Turnips as soon as she got them (didn't save them to keep the opponent wary), and never bothered to catch them. Sure, when you're far away, you want to throw them left and right, but once you start your approach to get into close range, hanging onto them isn't such a bad idea. When someone comes in, you can SH back and drop the turnip then float in with an aerial or two. I also didn't see the Peach using the instant float (down+jump on the ground), which is a pretty nice ability to get her high priority air moves flying around at a moment's instance. The Peach didn't throw Turnips up once to get them at a later time... That sort of disappointed me.

Okay Jam, I'm taking a more analytical approach to tell you some do's and don't's for you match vs. Peach.

One thing I noticed is that you dash attacked a few times while she was in a neutral state. You don't even want to use a dash attack while the opponent can react, they are some of the slowest recovering moves in the game, so you should use them to extend combos, that's about it. Unless you're 100% sure that your dash attack is going to hit them. Even if your dash attack crosses the opponent up, they can still SH from their shield and start a air to ground combo. So try and keep your dash attacks to a minimum. I think that if you had jump cancelled your dashes to grab (or just grab), you would've been in a lot better shape. That Peach shields a lot more than he dodges, and he shielded almost every time you dashed in.

There is a problem with your WDing. When you go to bait a move from Peach, you should use a shorter WD. I'm sure you know of the 2 different lengths of WDes you can do, try and get them down, so you can mix them up when approaching. I noticed you ate down smashes a lot while WDing back and forth close to Peach. The reason you ate them is because on your approach in, you WD too far, and since you're holding down for part of it, you're CCing into her down smash, taking more damage. That hurts. If you short WD in, you can bait her down smash and then smack her while she's spinning around. Something else you can do is dash in and WD back. It's a pretty simple technique, but for the paragraph above this one, you were running in and did things at pretty inopportune times. If you feel like you're running into a bad situation, you can WD backwards out of it (if it's not too late), so keep that in mind. Also, it will make your opponents a little bit more wary because they won't know for sure that you're going to be trying to attack when you run in (at this point, you always go in for an attack when you dash in).

After you got rid of Peach's first stock, you started playing a bit more carefully when he took a Turnip out. Another thing that you need practice on is catching them, though. If you're going to catch them, you want to catch it every time you mean to. I have an easy enough time since I play Link and used to practice catching all sorts of things, but it definitely looks like you need some practice catching them. It looked like you anticipated catching them a few times and threw out A moves randomly. If you were anticipating them, you have to unlearn that habit. Catching them off of reaction alone is what's going to help you, anticipating stuff and reacting before the situation occurs leaves you open for combos.

If you have a friend who will help practice with you, go into training mode or something and have them throw turnips at you. Not just repeatedly, they'll have to mix it up a little bit. Make your friend carry a Turnip around at all times during this so they can attempt to catch you by surprise. I guess it won't be so easy to teach you how to fight against Peach tactics without a real Peach player, but you can at least learn how to catch her Turnips at a moment's notice.

You really need to learn how to use the IC throw, also. It's pretty much essential to getting big damage fast. Each time you get a throw, you need to begin desyncing. While you're pressing A to keep them locked, you need to hit B so Nana (or whoever your 2nd is if you use Nana as main) will use her ice spray. You can get 2-3 reps of that for like 20-40 damage easy. My friend, Jeromy, does it all the time (and he's learned a few of his IC stuff from Neal, but Neal is much better). And you can finish the throw with a forward smash, which will send the opponent a lot further than a forward throw. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go to SWF and post under the IC specific forums or read around and see if they have any advice there. Once you get that down, people will fear getting grabbed by you, and will play much more carefully.

In your match against the ICs... You dash attack wayyy too much. Also, your desyncing is too unnatural at this point. If you have match vids of some good IC players, I suggest you watch them and see how and when they desync so it's a natural part of their game. You pretty much stop what you're doing right now to desync, and it doesn't give you any good results.

I'm surprised neither of you jump out of your shields (shield cancelling is the correct term, I believe, or it's jump cancelling a shield, but there's already JCing for dash throws) when you get attacked from behind, you just sit there... Learn to short hop or jump (depends on what you want to do) when you've been hit from behind while shielding, it's definitely worth your time.

EDIT: Fixed a few things and added some stuff to the WD bait part.

And I forgot to say one last thing. I hope all of this constructive criticism helps you out a little. I'm not attacking your play style at all, I'm just trying to give you advice in areas where it looks like you could improve. If you've been getting advice from good IC players that contradicts anything I say, you'll probably want to listen to them (since I don't really play IC).

2ND EDIT: I forgot to mention another thing about shield cancelling. It's probably pretty obvious, but if you jump from your shield, you can also WD from your shield. I didn't notice you doing that either, but it's definitely a useful ability paired with light shielding to slide you away and then sliding back in to attack.

[Global-Trance]

Pretty long winded tips you got there Garde.

Anyways, here is the results from the small Smashboards tournament we had at UCSB.

http://lbpolymusic.com/tio/Event.aspx?EventID=133971077

Placed 5th on teams out of 11 teams. S2 and I (Wu) made up Team SexyBack. (UGH. MY STUPID TEAMMATE PICKED THAT NAME!) I didn't like how we did in teams mainly, because of how bad my teammate was. Not only would I get Sheik slapped a lot by my teammate, but he would also jump into my Falco pillaring combos. ARGH.

I made up for how bad I did in teams with doing fairly well in singles. I ranked 7th out of the 21 entries... tied with Araknaphobic. Yea, 7th wasn't placing, but all the guys ranked higher than me, were for sure better than me. So I'm glad that I didn't choke up and lose to the guys that I shouldn't have lost to. I won when I should have won and lost when I should have lost. That's what I think of when I think I succeeded at a tournament.

All the guys ahead of me were so good... several which are top 20 over here in Southern California... so I'm not bummed at all at where I placed.

[Jam Stunna]

Global-Trance, that Peach wasn't too impressive, imho. My friend Jeromy plays a much scarier Peach. This Peach didn't really try to bait, and she tossed her Turnips as soon as she got them (didn't save them to keep the opponent wary), and never bothered to catch them. Sure, when you're far away, you want to throw them left and right, but once you start your approach to get into close range, hanging onto them isn't such a bad idea. When someone comes in, you can SH back and drop the turnip then float in with an aerial or two. I also didn't see the Peach using the instant float (down+jump on the ground), which is a pretty nice ability to get her high priority air moves flying around at a moment's instance. The Peach didn't throw Turnips up once to get them at a later time... That sort of disappointed me.

Okay Jam, I'm taking a more analytical approach to tell you some do's and don't's for you match vs. Peach.

One thing I noticed is that you dash attacked a few times while she was in a neutral state. You don't even want to use a dash attack while the opponent can react, they are some of the slowest recovering moves in the game, so you should use them to extend combos, that's about it. Unless you're 100% sure that your dash attack is going to hit them. Even if your dash attack crosses the opponent up, they can still SH from their shield and start a air to ground combo. So try and keep your dash attacks to a minimum. I think that if you had jump cancelled your dashes to grab (or just grab), you would've been in a lot better shape. That Peach shields a lot more than he dodges, and he shielded almost every time you dashed in.

There is a problem with your WDing. When you go to bait a move from Peach, you should use a shorter WD. I'm sure you know of the 2 different lengths of WDes you can do, try and get them down, so you can mix them up when approaching. I noticed you ate down smashes a lot while WDing back and forth close to Peach. The reason you ate them is because on your approach in, you WD too far, and since you're holding down for part of it, you're CCing into her down smash, taking more damage. That hurts. If you short WD in, you can bait her down smash and then smack her while she's spinning around. Something else you can do is dash in and WD back. It's a pretty simple technique, but for the paragraph above this one, you were running in and did things at pretty inopportune times. If you feel like you're running into a bad situation, you can WD backwards out of it (if it's not too late), so keep that in mind. Also, it will make your opponents a little bit more wary because they won't know for sure that you're going to be trying to attack when you run in (at this point, you always go in for an attack when you dash in).

After you got rid of Peach's first stock, you started playing a bit more carefully when he took a Turnip out. Another thing that you need practice on is catching them, though. If you're going to catch them, you want to catch it every time you mean to. I have an easy enough time since I play Link and used to practice catching all sorts of things, but it definitely looks like you need some practice catching them. It looked like you anticipated catching them a few times and threw out A moves randomly. If you were anticipating them, you have to unlearn that habit. Catching them off of reaction alone is what's going to help you, anticipating stuff and reacting before the situation occurs leaves you open for combos.

If you have a friend who will help practice with you, go into training mode or something and have them throw turnips at you. Not just repeatedly, they'll have to mix it up a little bit. Make your friend carry a Turnip around at all times during this so they can attempt to catch you by surprise. I guess it won't be so easy to teach you how to fight against Peach tactics without a real Peach player, but you can at least learn how to catch her Turnips at a moment's notice.

You really need to learn how to use the IC throw, also. It's pretty much essential to getting big damage fast. Each time you get a throw, you need to begin desyncing. While you're pressing A to keep them locked, you need to hit B so Nana (or whoever your 2nd is if you use Nana as main) will use her ice spray. You can get 2-3 reps of that for like 20-40 damage easy. My friend, Jeromy, does it all the time (and he's learned a few of his IC stuff from Neal, but Neal is much better). And you can finish the throw with a forward smash, which will send the opponent a lot further than a forward throw. If you're not sure what I'm talking about, go to SWF and post under the IC specific forums or read around and see if they have any advice there. Once you get that down, people will fear getting grabbed by you, and will play much more carefully.

In your match against the ICs... You dash attack wayyy too much. Also, your desyncing is too unnatural at this point. If you have match vids of some good IC players, I suggest you watch them and see how and when they desync so it's a natural part of their game. You pretty much stop what you're doing right now to desync, and it doesn't give you any good results.

I'm surprised neither of you jump out of your shields (shield cancelling is the correct term, I believe, or it's jump cancelling a shield, but there's already JCing for dash throws) when you get attacked from behind, you just sit there... Learn to short hop or jump (depends on what you want to do) when you've been hit from behind while shielding, it's definitely worth your time.

EDIT: Fixed a few things and added some stuff to the WD bait part.

And I forgot to say one last thing. I hope all of this constructive criticism helps you out a little. I'm not attacking your play style at all, I'm just trying to give you advice in areas where it looks like you could improve. If you've been getting advice from good IC players that contradicts anything I say, you'll probably want to listen to them (since I don't really play IC).

2ND EDIT: I forgot to mention another thing about shield cancelling. It's probably pretty obvious, but if you jump from your shield, you can also WD from your shield. I didn't notice you doing that either, but it's definitely a useful ability paired with light shielding to slide you away and then sliding back in to attack.

Thanks for the tips, definitely. I have a friend who playus a much better Peach than the one I faced, so I do practice against him. One thing that I've been told as well is that I play too aggressively, and I'm really trying to work on that. As for the shield-cancelling, WD, and lack of grab combos, you're right about all those things. I'm really going to work hard to improve on those.

I'm still really torn between IC and Roy though. I play better with the IC I think, but Roy was my first tourney character, and I spent most of my Smash career playing with him. I don't know, it's just a little nostalgia, I guess. I found an old vid of me playing with Roy from a tourney held July 1st, but I need the creator of the vid to send me a new link. Then I'll post it here.

[Zeklan]

List of the mains I have used over the years:

Link

Marth

Falco

Shiek

Mario

Bowser

Samus

Mewtwo

In that order.

My current is Link again.

[Jam Stunna]

I found the video of me as Roy. The quality is not as great as the other videos though.

Match 1: Shminkledorf(Falco) vs. Jam Stunna (Roy)

Peach and Falco are definitely the characters I have the most trouble against.

[Zeklan]

I saw a lot of mistakes in that one.

The other guy was playing Falco totally wrong.

Maybe it's just me, but you guys both seemed a little slow.

[Jam Stunna]

I saw a lot of mistakes in that one.

The other guy was playing Falco totally wrong.

Maybe it's just me, but you guys both seemed a little slow.

Yes, definitely. I also missed way to many grabs, and the obvious SD at the end.

[Garde]

Global, finishing 7th is by no means terrible.

Finishing in the top 1/3 of a tournament means you did pretty well (unless you consistently place in the top 3 or something). So congratulations a tournament well played!

Jam, in my humble opinion, you should play whoever you want to play. One thing that really concerns me about Roy is that he has a lot of counter matches (Falco, Sheik, and Peach to name a few), and will cause a lot of headache when you have to go against them. Actually, almost everyone in the high/top tiers give Roy a significant amount of trouble, unless you're Neo (he was undoubtedly the best Roy in the US when I was still playing). But even he doesn't choose Roy for all of his matches.

Here's a Roy ditto with Ken:

Here's a Roy v. Marth match against Husband:

Roy v. Marth (Ken) in the finals of a tourney: http://youtube.com/watch?v=8-rI1I47olU

Roy v. Fox (Ken): http://youtube.com/watch?v=E2DrHWRvRQc

That should be enough matches for now... Jam, if you really want to learn Roy, I highly recommend studying these videos to see how he plays. I think his style of Roy is probably the most effective around.

[Garde]

Oh shit! My friend Neal went to that tournament! Haha, he was the IC player from Cal Poly Power. Wow, that sucks that he had to go up against his friend in the 1v1 tournament when he got sent to losers... Oh well, luck of the draw I guess.

If you got any casuals with him or anything, tell me how he's been doing. I haven't really played him in like a year or something, but he's seemed to keep on top of the smash scene.

[ILLiterate]

I found the video of me as Roy. The quality is not as great as the other videos though.

Match 1: Shminkledorf(Falco) vs. Jam Stunna (Roy)

That was bad on both parts D: Your biggest problem is your recoveries. He easily kept you off the stage once he got you off. Try tapping away on the stick when you're grabbed on a ledge and then jump toward it with an attack or a waveland. Everything else is real easy to counter

[Global-Trance]

The Falco wasn't that bad in all honesty since it was freaking Battlefield but I'd easily beat him in a ditto match due to the lack of precision.

Oh Jam. How'd you blow the end?

Garde, Neal didn't do so hot at the tournament. My ICs are better than his and I hardly even play IC. I didn't get a chance to play with him so I can't say much else... though he did tie with my friends that I think are terrible. *shrug*

[Garde]

Maybe he's out of practice. He's won several tournaments in the past... :-/

I haven't talked to him since sometime in the middle of last year, I think, so I'm not really sure how he's been keeping up with the scene and whatnot.

As for me, I have never been what I would consider good, and you are undoubtedly better than I have ever been. I am pretty much a thoery fighter and sit in training mode when I actually do turn my cube on.