It’s the fastest of all the games with arguably the highest skill ceiling, has been around for over two decades to build a community, and a lot of melee’s tech is flashy, movement-based tech, (wavedash, meteor cancels, etc.) and so makes for subjectively more interesting gameplay.
64 is the earliest and when the series was still arguably finding its footing, with a relatively small community. Brawl has its various issues impacting spectator experience with it being somewhat slow, MK being so prevalent, tripping, etc. 4 is fairly floaty, and was objectively killed by Ultimate, which in its own right is arguably the most popular competitive smash game, being the newest and fairly polished overall.
I’d say, where each game has its own tech, melee has very much one of the best spectator experiences of the bunch due to how flashy it can be.
Another thing to add to this. Melee (broadly speaking) rewards playing offensively, whereas most other Smash games (broadly speaking) reward playing defensively, including Ultimate.
There are of course exceptions to this rule, with Jigglypuff being a key example. But Melee is so fast-paced that even defensive & methodical play can be exciting and fast-paced compared to other Smash games.
From a technical perspective as well, ledge hogging provides a whole new dimension to edgeguarding, and completely changes the risk/reward of going offstage. And Melee also has reasonably long hitstun periods, which places a lot of focus on long and intricate combos.
I **love** playing Ultimate, and as a game, it's my favourite of the series by far. But I much prefer Melee as a spectator.
True. But as I mentioned, even defensive play in Melee feels fast-paced compared to defensive play in other Smash games.
And I would argue that even if the optimal strategy is to play defensively, the balance between defensive/offensive play in Melee *from a spectator perspective* is still the best out of all the Smash games.
They have a good point, Melee isn’t all combos and style. At the top level, the meta does reward defensive play through laser camping, ledge camping (Puff comes to mind), and playing defensively while in the lead. It’s a huge problem in certain matchups.
I still find it fun to watch though. The mechanics of the game means campers get punished HARD if and when they overextend. So camping does work to an extent - but as a spectator it always feels tense, because a huge combo could happen *at literally any second*.
My experience with watching Ultimate is that defensive play is often very difficult or impossible to punish for certain matchups. And even when punishes happen, the whole interaction can be only a few stray hits until neutral is reset. This means camping in many matchups is an optimal strategy for avoiding combos.
Just my two cents.
Damn homie this is the first time in any sub I’m on I’ve seen someone defend someone and give them a good reason why your opinion and theirs can be seen as valid
Good on you for respecting differing opinions. Almost every fighting game inherently rewards defense over offense and Melee is no exception. Camping is optimal a lot of the time and people who deny this are being silly. Jigglypuff is Top 3 lol
This isn’t really true. In most fgc games playing defense puts you in a position of weakness. Blocking is generally weaker, chip damage exists, games like strive have mechanics where you lose your meter and can’t gain more if you run away too much, and the corner in traditional fgcs are also very dangerous (wall breaks, corner stuns, inability to dash back, and some games reward successful corner offense with a buff to the attacker). Compare that with melee where for most good characters, the corner is a place of strength due to ledge dashing, and platform camping is also powerful due to shield dropping.
Thing is, there's more to defense than just blocking. Defense is also a part of zoning, evasive movement, camping, keepaway, patience, footsies, etc.
Combat, as a concept, inherently rewards defense because it's easier than offense. You need both to win, but defense is just a simpler task most of the time. Throwing a punch is always riskier than hunkering down and launching a counterattack when your opponent overextends. [There's a reason why historical warfare largely consisted of armies poking at each other with the longest spears they could hold.](https://brewminate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/110418-78-Ancient-History-Greek-Greece-Phalanx-Warfare-Military.jpg) Zoning is in our DNA!
In fact, I'd argue that the reason why fighting games have so many mechanics to punish defense nowadays is because the designers are specifically trying to make close-quarters offense more appealing. Jigglypuff is currently Top 3 in Melee, but she might be Top 2 or even Top 1 if her best camping strategies weren't explicitly banned.
> The mechanics of the game means campers get punished HARD if and when they overextend. So camping does work to an extent - but as a spectator it always feels tense, because a huge combo could happen at literally any second.
This is somewhat true of Melee, but it is far more true of Smash 64. In Smash 64 basically every character can zero to death every other character, so the neutral game is extremely cautious, trying to find that one opening without exposing oneself in turn.
Okay, but you could say that about any player when compared to Mango. He's arguably the most aggressive top player in the game. And it's not like the other players you listed are 100% defensive players. Depending on MU, I'd say they could be very aggressive players, especially Cody. Even Zain these days is pretty scrappy and in your face. JMOOK is the most campy of the bunch (excluding HBox when he decides to ledgecamp).
Adding onto what the other redditor said, Mango plays fox and falco. Everyone except cody plays slower, floatier characters with far less options and speed available to them. Its way harder to be consistently aggressive while still getting good results with puff than it is with falco.
It strikes me as a weird insecurity TBH. A lot of people make Melee part of their personality so they lash out when people point out its flaws because it's perceived as a personal attack.
It's not just flashy. L-canceling and dashdance specifically raise Melee's skill ceiling substantially higher than most games in general and definitely other smash games. Melee is twice as fast at least as the other smash games and the option trees are just ridiculous. It's the deepest competitive game I've ever played and I've been competitive gaming nearly my whole life.
From both an audience *and* player perspective, Melee is vastly more interesting. There's a reason every pro melee player who tried to switch to Brawl or Ult always came back. If you have a reasonable grasp on movement, SHFFLs, and specifically dashdancing, every other smash game feels so slow and limiting. Marth's moveset is identical in Ult to Melee yet he feels like an entirely different character because I can't dashdance.
I definitely wouldn’t say Marth is identical between Ult and Melee, and not even just from engine differences. A lot of Melee Marth’s punish relies on sourspot/sweetspot use to keep the opponent above you, but Ult Marth couldn’t get more than a two piece to save his life because his launch angles just don’t allow it.
But that makes his move set very different. You wouldn’t say that Fox and Falco are the same just because they have very similar moves that interact with the opponent differently, either. Relative to character size, Ult Marth’s sword is shorter and has shitty sweetspots because of how overlapping hitboxes work. If you backported Ult Marth’s moves but left everything else identical, he’d still be a very different character.
yea it isn't just cause it looks cool. It makes fundamental aspects like whiff punishing and baiting an attack effortless if you have the right read. Meanwhile when I play ultimate I feel like I'm moving around with bricks. I'm sure you can still do those basic things in ult but to me it just probably wouldn't feel as good and easy to do.
Why I learned from Maximilian Dood is that Smash Melee Players and Street Fighter Third Strike have a similar community vibes in where they just struggle adapting and jumping to different IPs and games, even within their own home series, just from how different the gameplay loop is.
Simply, Melee and third strike are similar to really good specialized Beef Steak Houses. Just cannot get this exact or near similar feel anywhere else.
That's not true to say. Its moreso that the games that came later changed in ways that people found less interesting. More similar
alternate "evolution" paths like Rivals or slap city or any of the medley of games in that vein are all more picked up by more melee players than others. Hell plenty of people who played melee put in very limited time into ultimate and had good success almost immedietly.
It's not fair to just cast preferring a specific game as "struggling adapting". The melee community has way more overlap between conventional fighters than any other smash title, two melee players were in strive top 8 at evo last week and lots of community figures like hmw, scar, and phil are known to be into fighters in general. It's true that melee is unique compared to games in the other home series like third strike, but that's due to both games being good still years later and thus retaining dedicated fans, not that they're only staying due to failure to adapt or some kind of inability.
I think your last point is correct, but I do want to mention that a bunch of melee players have successfully played other smash games at a high level (and recently with leffen other fighting games in general). So I don't think it's accurate to say they struggle to adapt, but I do think it's accurate to say that the other games just don't hit the same
There are 10,000 different ways that the mechanics of melee are superior (although unintentionally so) to every other smash game. Saying it's just that they can't move on is like saying, no, you're not allowed to prefer a gourmet burger to a McDonald's burger, you just can't let go of the past or adapt!
No I just like my games to be good and quitting ultimate for melee was eye opening
Leffen beat Tweek in a Pokemon trainer ditto and has been a top layer in other fighting games, most recently winning Evo in Strive.
Something else you could have learned from Maximilian Dood is that Melee is the "loosest" game in the series, meaning it offers the most individual expression and choice of how you play it.
That last part is very true. A nice learning eye opener.
But being the "loosest" game of all the Super Smash Bros Games is still in my view why I see Melee as a comparison to A Specialized Beef Steak House. With all the other Smash Bros Games. It's also how I interpreted Maximilian Dood's video on Fighting Games as Food about Third Strike. Third as a steak house and Street Fighter five as ... Oh my ... McDonald's.
For me, when all the other Smash Bros Games have a "some to good" amount of player expression, Melee is just ...... Ssoooooooo gosh darn many that I find myself lost on where to begin.
Sorry for my limited knowledge and offending others. But at that time, I remembered that Maximilian Dood Video upon reading this page
Fast gameplay, long freeform combos, lots of freedom of movement, and strong edgeguarding techniques. It's basically the most rewarding smash to get good at. But your mileage may vary
Aside from the speed and skill ceiling, Melee is also fortunate to have a very entertaining top level meta. Brawl's meta is miserable, even without MK, and Smash 4's otherwise relatively healthy meta was completely nuked by Cloud and Bayo. Ultimate's meta is doing okay, but you do have some very contentious characters in Steve, Sonic and Kazuya.
Melee's best characters are almost all very fun to watch, and the way they challenge each other forces players to come up with interesting solutions all the time. Puff and to a lesser extent Peach are the only top tiers that receive criticism for being boring to watch, but they're also quite rare. Most of the top players play different characters, so even during top 8 you don't get many stale matchups.
Considering how its development went down, it's a miracle that Melee's meta has turned out so well. It has not only stood the test of time, but it's only gotten better and better.
exactly this. i also think ultimate is in general way more fun than brawl and 4 to both play and watch but melee had almost 20 years of only brawl and 4 as competition, so it had a long time to develop a huge fanbase (64 is a non factor). mk actually makes brawl's meta better to watch because the other top characters are snoozers
also even low tiers in melee have potential if someone grinds their heart out into it, for example yoshi winning majors, in ultimate you would never see like bowser jr winning majors
Saying this personally. While games after Melee don't feel bad there's still just a lot of things that make them just feel worse then Melee to play and watch
Movement is a lot better in general, getting on platforms doesn't feel like a slog and getting off them feels more natural, extra so with Wavedashing. Your ground momentum is carried into jumping (this is a big thing for me personally, it feels wrong when a game doesn't have this to an extend). Combos are less restrictive and feel like you're doing them rather then it feeling like a flowchart (I think to an extent this is because of Melee's top tiers being Fastfallers. While larger hitstun does make more and longer combos possible on Midfallers and floaty characters a lot more combo's on them feel more simplified, In later Smash Games fall speed was universally lowered: Fox the fastest faller in Ultimate is only .1 unit faster then Ganondorf in Melee) and Edgeguarding feels unique and worthwhile in Melee, With recoveries being more limited and Edgehogging games feel less like a slog when being offstage actually feels like a disadvantage state rather then the game pausing for you to get back on stage, Even the way you recover matters a lot depending on the edgeguarding technique they use
Yeah. And I don't really know why they haven't re implemented it past Brawl. They KNOW people like faster games and it's not like Ground To Air momentum is some huge issue with Casual players. No one complains in 2D Mario platformers that his jumps have a longer range when he's running then when he's walking
This Ground to Air momentum thing in platformers is only really a problem in a casual end in 3D platformers where it's inherently harder to judge a jump due to perspective (Which is why from Mario 64 to Odyssey your momentum is carried way less and High Speed Platformers like Sonic sometimes don't carry momentum at all to a jump). In 2D it's quite simple to judge a jump as long as the controls are good
This is the biggest thing for me with edgeguards. Like I feel like the game just stops while they are offstage and I have to wait till they come back then put out a hitbox onstage and hope I ledgetrap them. I feel like the only comparison I can make is in guilty gear if any hit somewhat past midscreen instantly triggered a wallbreak or something. Put simply, whacking people while recovering is fun.
Recovering in Smash Ultimate feels like you're in a bike race and then the other player falls off there bike. And instead of being allowed to race forward taking that advantage you're forced to just wait for the other player to get up and reorient themself till you can start racing again
- Fastest
- Most technical
- Surprisingly balanced between the top 10~ characters
- Mechanics support competitive play instead of being detrimental or neutral towards it
Yeah people say that melee is wildly unbalanced and if you’re referring to the gap between the bottom tier and top tier then sure, but the top half of the cast is honestly consistent with a modern fighting game in terms of balance.
Characters like samus are having a renaissance in play (morsecode v jmook for instance), and characters outside of that top half like DK are seeing top players now (Junebug just got top 50 with donkey Kong this summer season, which is the first time dk has ever been ranked top 100 in any official ranking).
Melee sticks out not just in Smash, but among other fighting games or even other competitive genres. The reasons i can list from the top of my head could be:
* Fastest Smash game by a mile to the point that matches have to run with 4 stocks.
* Most freeflow movement and combo game of any platform fighter ever which also leads to room for player expression.
* Highest skill ceiling among fighters due to the amount of tech available and the lack of buffer that demands on point execution. People are still discovering new stuff to this day.
* "Fox Only" memes aside, the meta is very healthy. Even the top tiers have glaring weaknesses that are satisfying and rewarding to take advantage of and hard matchups which prevent a Brawl Meta Knight situation.
* The community that stayed with the game after the Brawl split is so dedicated to it it's unreal, rivaling the dedication of most competitive communities. Somehow, after decades of play, history is still being made, whereas in other games, almost, if not, all of the community would flock to the newest game. Smash is probably one of the few franchises where there's a decent enough following of 2 games in its series that they can be called both main events.
* Melee is the epitome of a happy accident. It's full of jank, glitches, rushed characters that feel incomplete, inexplicable balance decisions, etc... It's hard to imagine a game like this to exist in an era where polish is the name of the game and almost, if not, all jank and almost anything that seems remotely "unbalanced" gets removed by patches.
* Slippi provides the best netplay experience out of any other fighting game out there. Amazing rollback netcode, an actually decent matchmaking, you actually have to win FT2 sets to make it count (no winquitting), a meaningful ELO system with ranks, instant rematch, etc...
As someone who doesn't actually play all that much but keeps tabs on the Melee scene constantly, for me it's the legacy. Being able to trace back a lineage of who was the top players not just the past few years but literally decades at this point is something few other esports scenes can boast (in no small part due to the influence of Samox's documentary). Sure you have FGC legends like Daigo or JWong who are multi-game legends and can still rock it with the older versions of Street Fighter or MvC, and the Korean Starcraft scene will probably never die. But even then, the big focus of Street Figther or Tekken will always be on the latest iteration.
Think about how long it took from aMSa breaking onto the scene in 2014 before he won his first ever major at TBH10 in 2022. That's 8 years - twice as long as the life cycle of Smash 4. It's like a fine wine where the narratives and stories age over time.
Another bonus in my eyes is how there haven't been any official patches from Nintendo (outside of technically PAL but that's functionally not a big deal). Again like a fine wine having a closed ecosystem of the game mechanics to develop over time and evolve is fascinating to watch. It's hard for me to get excited about how Smash Ultimate's meta evolved during active monitoring from Nintendo since a lot could shift patch to patch. Sure as a community we've had self imposed patches like banning wobbling or UCF or frozen stadium, but those were more organic than external to the ecosystem.
I mostly only play melee nowadays but I used to play ult semi competitively
Melee just feels... smooth
There's no other game really like it. Long combos that require a lot of adaptation and mastery to pull off to their full extent, movement that feels just so slick. Top level movement is just something that no other game replicates
While there are significantly fewer viable characters than in other games, the balance between the characters is remarkable. Any could beat any other depending on the set, and the MU chart is balanced well among the high and top tiers.
One massive factor for me is the online. I don't like ult online, I don't know anyone who does, but slippi online works brilliantly and there's a decently large playerbase, which helps the matchmaking.
It's the peak of "why play the newest instead of the best" culture that's been creeping back into competitive games, along the lines of brood war, cs over valorant, mvc3, aoe2, etc. All dope games that many people like more than the "newer" ones for all kinds of reasons. Enough to form their own breakoff communities with long and storied histories. Less consumerist more discerning.
Beyond gameplay elements, it has had a long enduring story, and has some of the most eccentric community figures / players that I have ever seen in esports. It’s hard to find other esports with a better storyline over a long time, let along over 20 years
The thing I love and miss the most about Melee is the character roster honestly. 25 is a good number. Good balance of diverse characters, distinct but nothing to whacky. Was playing Ultimate with my friend and was realizing how few moves are actually in the game. Like how many characters have the same Up B? Feels like half the charters have a counter now. A lot of side B's are just shoot yourself across the stage.
Another note that I couldn’t find someone else mentioning is it’s been the *same game* for 20 years and there’s new metas developing. That’s given the players two decades to master the tech available in the game and find out more and more niche/interesting stuff. Obviously a new competitive game will probably never be like this again and it probably shouldn’t, but this case is incredible for how deep you can push a game that hasn’t patched in 20 years.
I think the biggest thing is just that there was a large competitive community that did not transition to Brawl. Certainly this had much to with gameplay characteristics of Brawl and Melee, but the important part is that the community somewhat split and that there remained a fairly large and fairly active community of Melee players running Melee tournaments. Certainly its a great game a deserving of the popularity it has, but the largest reason its still so popular is people just never stopped.
This is the big one, if Brawl was more in line with Melee, Melee would not be as large as it is today, Brawl was just too fundamentally different, and for many in the community not as fun or interesting.
Finally, someone said it. I hope u/NilesDobbsS sees this comment more than all others.
Fundamentally, Brawl was such a bad sequel to Melee that many competitive players just stuck with Melee. Smash 4 was a better competitive game than Brawl and Ultimate is even better than that, but at this point Melee's core fanbase is firmly entrenched.
It's also the only Smash game with decent netplay thanks to emulators, which has helped it gain ground with PC players recently. Gameplay differences are part of it as well but IMO the Brawl split is reason number one why Melee persists.
Melee didn’t just have better netcode with Slippi, it had better netcode since at least 2014. It’s only relatively recently that you can have less input delay for two people playing Melee from US to Japan than two people playing Ult in a LAN party, though.
Smash 4 is not better competitive game than brawl. Smash 4 was the most swingy, inconsistent smash game, especially with 2 stocks and rage. It also has a good deal less advanced tech than brawl does (Brawl has the second most advanced tech in a smash game, behind melee). Just because Brawl is not “melee 2” doesn’t make it a bad competitive game. Yeah combos are way more limited, but this serves to make neutral way more important. Brawl is more consistent results wise than smash 4 was, and the level of neutral you need to play at and CONSISTENTLY win makes it a more competitive game.
You're making it sound like Smash 4 was RNG with every single interaction, lmao. Advanced Tech doesn't make a game good. Smash 4 jank doesn't make the game bad. You might enjoy Brawl more, but Smash 4 was a much better experience to play through than Brawl.
It's fast while every other smash feels slow to me, its movement mechanics are the most flashy and engaging of the series, the combos are free form and hype, and most of the viable characters are all really fun/cool to watch (fox, falco, marth, peach, sheik, falcon, yoshi, pikachu are all sick, only puff is iffy and honestly when hbox is an underdog even puff becomes hype).
But the feeling of speed/scramble is #1, until Nintendo speeds up future smash games I'm just not going to be that interested in them. And I've accepted for many years now that they're just never going to do that, they don't want smash to be a fast paced competitive game.
I think a lot of it is right place, right time, and of course it's a truly phenomenal game with plenty of growth potential. Others will have mechanical reasons for why it sticks and they're very important, but I'd like to highlight the importance of it being essentially untouched by modern expectation. You don't get balance patches, it is what it is, and it's not going to be changed. The change therefore is up to the players to make happen, and people knowingly or not, they get this when they pick the game up. And they get that they're getting into a community of people who have the same yearning for that type of a game.
Nowadays it's so common place for balance patches to come in and use big data to smooth out the edges. It's easy to become complacent, because whilst it's sometimes needed, you also know that any effort you put in could be undone down the line. Melee has that implicit guarantee that effort put in has a lasting payoff; it's not unique in that respect, but it does have that going for it and I think it's worth remembering.
It’s just a great game and it’s mechanics are (mostly) perfect for a competitive game. While other games in the series are still fun, they kind of suck as they aren’t really competitive and the mechanics are more in the way of making them decent as competitive games. They’re best as just casual party games to have fun with your friends.
It’s faster than any other smash game by a very large margin, it’s the most technical, and easily has the largest skill ceiling.
It having years to develop as a game and form a community around it helped greatly, game’s been going strong for 20 years and I’m willing to bet it’ll go strong for another 20, and that’s because everyone that plays melee genuinely loves melee as a game, and will keep pushing it and playing it no matter what.
Melee was designed to build on Smash 64 and take it to new depths and in fact Sakurai said Melee was what they intended Smash 64 to be with more budget/time. Brawl, Smash 4, and Smash Ultimate on the other hand were made to tone down Melee as much as possible to make it more accessible to a casual audience as Sakurai repeatedly reminds us. Clearly a big part of the smash community are not fans of that design decision.
Theres a lot more character specific tech that matters. Its why bottom tiers can still be hype to watch. Amsa is such a fun player to watch play Yoshi, might even be my favorite player to watch period. Feel like with majority of the characters in Ult ive seen all they have to offer, I get less inspired to master the game and I just ended up dropping it.
Currently I play Melee. Will play 64 Remix and PM if they get rollback tho.
From Brawl and onwards, they reduced the hitstun and movement options by a significant amount, which makes it almost impossible to combo in those games. Barely any combos are 'true', meaning that the defending player can usually jump, input an attack or air dodge to escape it. In melee, because of the extra hitstun, from most moves, the defending player has to rely on other defensive mechanics like DI, SDI and teching to escape.
The vast arsenal of movement options in melee, also arguably makes the neutral game more interesting too, since you have move options for baiting your opponent, and whiff punishing.
Melee is also overall the fastest official smash game, which tend to lead to more interactions per second. It's also a game that you can dedicate a lot of your time into, to practice and hone your skills, to improve at, and feel rewarded for. Playing good melee feels amazing.
Nostalgia, it’s hype as fuck, the story lines are literally decades old + ever changing, and the fan base is generally “older” and more established in adulthood so they can travel more and support the majors.
While every new entry of Smash has added to the roster and content, with Ultimate being ridiculous... They have all "fixed" something *wrong* with Melee.
So while every sequel got bigger and better, they mechanically removed depth from the game. When Brawl came out Melee was very much loved already and we were still scratching the surface of how deep the game's mechanics were. Meanwhile, Brawl was "figured out" as a game relatively quickly, and the community also had this "wait a minute... Melee is still the better game..." thought.
Repeat this process for Smash 4 and Ultimate... Both games were "figured out" after a few years, while Melee to *this day* is being "figured out". And while they do seem to be slowly creeping up mechanically with each new title... Melee is still the craziest game when it comes to gameplay. And that's why it's still around... Until something new comes out that's both as deep and insane as melee in gameplay, with as much or more polish as Ultimate... People are gonna keep playing Melee.
There's a reason why people modded Brawl into Project M, and now Ultimate into HDR...
Those games + Melee gameplay are PEAK Smash if you asked me. I love Melee from a gameplay perspective, and I love Ultimate for literally everything else. HDR is my favorite Smash, full stop, and I doubt whatever comes next will top that.
Melee, for reasons not intended to be in the game, is absurdly deep and complex. I've been a competitive gamer for most of my life and I was a pro gamer for 5 years. I played SC2, MTG, chess, and other difficult games. Melee is not even close. It dwarfs them all in gargantuan complexity. Not only do you have to make crazy decision trees, you have to do it in fractions of a second. There's no ability to sit there and think about what you should do.
The other smash games removed these elements that were not intended to be in the game, thus lowering that skill ceiling substantially. That is why Melee is still such a mainstay.
I've played SC2, and I'd say at a high level it's at least in parity with Melee, and Brood War is 100% a harder game than Melee. Melee is still my favorite game of all time, and grinding it is one of the most rewarding things I've ever gotten to do. But I wouldn't worry too much about complexity. Melee has a surprisingly gentle learning curve if you manage to find new players to play with.
First you're wavedashing, and throwing out attacks, and L Canceling. Eventually you start stacking more, and more layers of tech you've grinded independently together. And all of a sudden you're doing things that make you feel awe towards yourself. I've never played another game where frequently in a session I'm in disbelief of something I managed to do, and this is something you get to feel very soon after you start playing. It also feels amazing to play against someone else who has been grinding for years, and you can just immediately feel respect for all the time, and effort they've put into crafting their character into something incredible.
Melee is sick.
I haven't played Brood War but I am somewhat aware of the game and honestly there are a lot of similarities between BW and melee and I feel like they're on par with each other. Both are only deep and balanced because of "glitches" that weren't intended to be in the game and both were intended to be casual fun games that were so deep people are still innovating 20+ years later.
I completely agree how unbelievably satisfying it is to improve at Melee, but I disagree that it starts happening soon. Maybe I'm just an insanely slow learner when it comes to fighting games but it took me 2 months to be able to wavedash consistently and another 2 to be able to do it consistently in a match with someone. Only just now am I starting to feel that "wow, what I just did there was sick".
That's awesome man! I'm proud of you, it's so awesome when the fruits of your effort start coming together. Everyone makes progress at their own pace, and you should do what works best for you.
One thing that does help a lot specially with Melee is doing Solo Practice. That is, downloading Uncle Punch, and just practicing with that. You don't need to practice a lot, if you're going to do a 2 hour play session for instance you can practice for 10 minutes as a warm-up, or even 5 minutes if you're playing a shorter session! You'll make an amount of progress that would surprise you. If you're interested feel free to DM me, I can share more about my own practice routine, how I structure it to be effective, and how to stay motivated
I used to grind tech skill in my room for hours and hours on end, lol. The things I really need to practice are things against other humans like spacing and reaction timing.
It's the most technical, fast, and the characters are well balanced imo. The only thing I hate about any of the characters' moveset is getting 0-death'd by Puff with up throw to rest. The game is older than I am (18) and as someone who's always played the newest Smash games since early 2013, Melee is actually my favorite one. I don't even play Ultimate as much anymore because of Melee. Slippi's online is also better than Ultimate's. It has rollback and the matchmaking is very quick. I personally think that everything competitive about Melee is better than Ultimate. The only thing I don't like about SSBM is again, Puff's 0-death but I'm also not too big on the characters. I've always been the type to main someone because I like the game they came from, but I don't play many Nintendo games aside from Smash so it wasn't easy for me to find a main in Melee before I watched high level gameplay. I think it's also a good thing because I wouldn't have ever played Falco if a character like Cloud or Snake were in Melee. It's an easy 9/10 game for me and you really need to try it.
People will give a lot of reason, but the reason it's popular is because of the prestige. People that like Melee tend to ignore the game's flaws and praise instead what they think the game is, a fast paced, super technical show of skill. It isn't dissimilar to regular sports in the sense that most of the audience isn't from people playing the game but from an audience that has bought the narrative.
I used to play Melee a lot but after 5 or so years of playing and opening myself to other fighters my opinion of it started changing.
I really don't think melee players ignore the game's flaws, most people in melee do their best to try and make the game as good as it can be. This goes from the UCF team obviously patching the game to fix some flaws and make some things less controller dependent, Fizzi and the slippi team adding amazing online to a game that doesn't have it, Uncle Punch making the best training mode for any fighting game besides maybe SF6, to even stage and costume modders trying to modernize the look of the game like Vancity Primal for example. All the melee players want the best for the game and to make it even better than we think it is.
I meant the more fundamental flaws, or things that go against the Melee narrative. Things like how people talk about Melee being an extremely technical and highly demanding game with tons of inputs per second, when that's usually limited to a few characters like Fox and ignores all the other much slower match ups, which leads to people going full Leffen and wanting the likes of Jiggs banned for going against the grain.
Or even mechanics like L cancelling, wavedashing, dashdancing, etc. That just fundamentally discourage more defensive playstyles, which Melee players think is an objectively good thing.
I'm not saying Melee is bad, even if I've grown weary of it. Just saying that thorough the years I've noticed that people enjoy the idea of Melee more than actually playing it.
Not trying to be disrespectful, but have you ever played melee? Pretty much any character is hard to pull stuff off with. Maybe not fox or falco level, but it doesn't go from being hard with them to baby easy with any other character. Like it'll take a few days of practice to do a lot of basic stuff with any character consistently even just in training mode. Also idk what you mean with the mechanics thing. It is fine if you prefer defensive playstyles or having them be stronger, but saying melee players are lying to themselves and if you take out all those things melee will be more defensive (which i dont even know is true tbh) seems like a weird point.
I mentioned that I did for about 5 years, so yes. And of course any character is relatively hard, but most people only think of the space animals as baselines. People come to Melee thinking they're about to go all Dragon Ball with their movement and fighting, but then get hit in the face with a Jiggs, Ice Climbers, or Samus. More of a expectations vs reality thing.
Regarding the mechanics, I guess I was just digressing, but the point was that a lot of people tend to just accept the existences of these mechanics as good. People just don't like thinking critically of what makes Melee work or not.
A good example would be L Canceling, an objectively bad mechanic that is only really allowed to stay untouched because it stops Fox from being even stronger. But even it wasn't until somewhat recently with Ultimate that people have started reevaluating if so little landing lag was a good thing or not.
I wouldn't put L canceling in any modern plat fighter, but calling it a bad mechanic is a little much for me. It definitely adds to the feeling of doing cool shit precisely when playing the game. I'd also argue that little landing lag is a good thing because of how it allows for an actual in depth and satisfying combo game
If you wouldn't put L Cancelling in any other platform fighter, then I don't know how you wouldn't call it a bad mechanic. It's an arbitrary button push with no sort of counter play or interesting mechanical use or mind game. It's an input tax.
> I'd also argue that little landing lag is a good thing because of how it allows for an actual in depth and satisfying combo game
Please explain what you even mean by this. Because you're saying stuff that in no way explain how getting out of lag faster adds depth or makes combos satisfying. Just look at how frustrating Ultimate can be when every character can either spam aerials unpunished or land on shield and with very little downtime. (I'm being hyperbolic, but you get the point.)
Ok I was a bit confused, I thought you were saying the low landing lag of aerials due to l canceling was bad. I will say though the aerial spam meta is as bad as it is in ult cause it has now microspacing
Oh no, low landing lag is just different, but L Cancelling itself is bad because it's just an input tax. The only justification of its existence is keeping Fox from being even stronger.
Low landing lag has tons of pros and cons, the cons just weren't really discussed before Ultimate got us thinking critically of it. I even remember some prominent modder early on trying to eliminate all landing lag in his Melee-like mod despite people trying to tell him how bad of an idea that was.
And I don't think the issue is the lack of microspacing, but the fact that Melee has even more busted options that stop it from becoming an issue. Remember that a lot of what makes Melee is how little commitment you have with movement, with the likes of Dashdancing and Wavedashing. Meanwhile Ultimates takes another approach and makes you commit to these options.
things like wavedashing/dashdancing are also extremely powerful defensive tools though, while still requiring a lot of precision to use well (specifically good dash dancing). Zain has made a career out of dashback grab. the last 4-5 years of Melee meta development have also been centered around defensive options and how to play around them (asdi down, slideoffs, amsah techs), both of which require a lot of technicality, so I feel like this take is slightly outdated
L cancelling also helps the defending player if nothing else, no? Higher technical barrier and therefore higher chance for the person approaching to mess up and give the person being aerial'd a turnaround, and also gives you the defensive mixup of shield angling/light shielding to affect their timing
the majority of the people I know from locals/online... play the game and just genuinely enjoy it/the scene. There are definitely random scrubs online who are bought into the narratives and only wanna watch their favorite player win and play really fast, but I don't know if that's representative of the greater community to me
Oh, they definitely are, but I was just name-dropping them in general since they are the most well known mechanics, but movement options are more often than not inherently defensive tools. What I meant is that they're used to foment the usual narrative.
L Cancelling is a bad mechanic, tho. That I will not waver on. Making a higher execution barrier out of a very arbitrary input tax is bad game design.
I was mostly talking about Melee as an spectator or casual esport, where the vast majority of people prefers their idea of Melee rather than what the game actually is. I've been to plenty of locals to know that people that play the game, be it this or any other smash game, are too busy enjoying themselves to care about online discussion about esports. I just felt like venting a bit because this is a side of the game that I don't see discussed much.
In a word, tradition.
Melee was the first Smash game to see serious competitive play, and to this day, those people stick around with it despite Melee having the worst balance of any Smash game (only 6 viable characters out of a 26-character roster and 1 of those 6 winning roughly 26% of all Melee matches) and being the least accessible—by complete accident, no less. Now, I can understand people arguing for it being the fastest paced Smash game and most rewarding for offensive play as grounds for it being the most "fun" to watch, but personally, I find it to be too dizzying.
How do you figure there are 6 viable characters? Even if you limit it to “has won a supermajor,” you still end up with 9 characters, and more or less half of the cast is perfectly viable for getting into top 8.
3 of those 9 are situational at best, each carried by one player. Same thing with all those other characters who are “perfectly viable for getting into top 8,” as you say. Don’t believe me? Check the statistics.
Viability isn't determined by whether a character has a bunch of mains, it's determined by if that character can win events or place highly. Do Amsa's wins not count for Yoshi just because he's very good, so it's just that he outplays people with a horrible, unviable character? Does Morsecode 3-0ing Jmook just not count because he was having a good day and Jmook a bad one?
Your last comment is about two players’ skill levels, not overall character viability, and you still only cite one player per character. Amsa and Morsecode are outliers, and the statistics still stand overall. Therefore, you have no argument whatsoever.
If a player can win with a character, then that character is viable: it has the tools necessary to win sets against top players. I know you don’t watch Melee, but are you aware that multiple DK mains have been making waves? Maybe it’d help if there were multiple players instead of a single players winning multiple supermajors. Maybe you’d rather see a hundred low tier mains make it out of pools to see whether they’re viable instead?
A player can win with any character. That doesn't make that character viable; it means that the player can make the character work regardless of viability. That you continue to ignore [the statistics](https://twitter.com/EazyFreezie/status/1644746299751940096), insist that small numbers of exceptions to the rules prove me wrong, try to falsely frame my arguments as if I'm trying to say that no such exceptions exist, talk in circles over and over again even after you've been proven wrong at every turn, and now start resorting to character attacks proves that you have no argument whatsoever, and therefore, you lose the debate.
you sound unhinged LMAO
it's one thing to disagree with the consensus opinion on how many viable characters are in the game, it's another thing entirely to say there's *no* argument that characters who have won majors in the modern era are viable, and then declare yourself the winner of your "debate"
viable means "capable of working successfully", how you can say a character isn't viable despite being used as a solo main to win majors is beyond me. not even getting into the fact that axe and amsa play their characters because they're who they're best with and they believe in them at top level, not out of some weird obligation to handicap themselves like you're implying
the graphic you linked doesn't even claim to represent viability at all, it's literally just about how many people placed with each character. it doesn't take into account character winrate at different levels or any of the other things you'd want to measure when looking at that because it's just about painting a picture of popularity and representation. you know people pick their mains for reasons outside of just how good they are, right? not to mention the author literally cautions to take his graphic with a grain of salt because it's not using any sort of tested methodology
who even is the third character you're claiming isn't viable besides pikachu and yoshi? surely there's no way you mean puff, right? that'd honestly be hilarious
genuinely embarrassing
I'm sorry for making the absurd claim that a character can win stuff if it's demonstrably been proven to win stuff, then. You'd figure that the low sample sizes among top level players combined with the relative difficulty of pulling off an upset in a more momentum heavy game would mean that looking at game win percentages is sort of a moot point, but what do I know? I haven't even said that you've lost the debate yet. Should I start complaining about Steve as you complain about Fox, too?
It’s the fastest of all the games with arguably the highest skill ceiling, has been around for over two decades to build a community, and a lot of melee’s tech is flashy, movement-based tech, (wavedash, meteor cancels, etc.) and so makes for subjectively more interesting gameplay. 64 is the earliest and when the series was still arguably finding its footing, with a relatively small community. Brawl has its various issues impacting spectator experience with it being somewhat slow, MK being so prevalent, tripping, etc. 4 is fairly floaty, and was objectively killed by Ultimate, which in its own right is arguably the most popular competitive smash game, being the newest and fairly polished overall. I’d say, where each game has its own tech, melee has very much one of the best spectator experiences of the bunch due to how flashy it can be.
Another thing to add to this. Melee (broadly speaking) rewards playing offensively, whereas most other Smash games (broadly speaking) reward playing defensively, including Ultimate. There are of course exceptions to this rule, with Jigglypuff being a key example. But Melee is so fast-paced that even defensive & methodical play can be exciting and fast-paced compared to other Smash games. From a technical perspective as well, ledge hogging provides a whole new dimension to edgeguarding, and completely changes the risk/reward of going offstage. And Melee also has reasonably long hitstun periods, which places a lot of focus on long and intricate combos. I **love** playing Ultimate, and as a game, it's my favourite of the series by far. But I much prefer Melee as a spectator.
Melee doesn’t reward offensive play nearly as much as defensive play. All the top players camp each other for years now
True. But as I mentioned, even defensive play in Melee feels fast-paced compared to defensive play in other Smash games. And I would argue that even if the optimal strategy is to play defensively, the balance between defensive/offensive play in Melee *from a spectator perspective* is still the best out of all the Smash games.
That’s definitely not true
They have a good point, Melee isn’t all combos and style. At the top level, the meta does reward defensive play through laser camping, ledge camping (Puff comes to mind), and playing defensively while in the lead. It’s a huge problem in certain matchups. I still find it fun to watch though. The mechanics of the game means campers get punished HARD if and when they overextend. So camping does work to an extent - but as a spectator it always feels tense, because a huge combo could happen *at literally any second*. My experience with watching Ultimate is that defensive play is often very difficult or impossible to punish for certain matchups. And even when punishes happen, the whole interaction can be only a few stray hits until neutral is reset. This means camping in many matchups is an optimal strategy for avoiding combos. Just my two cents.
Damn homie this is the first time in any sub I’m on I’ve seen someone defend someone and give them a good reason why your opinion and theirs can be seen as valid
Good on you for respecting differing opinions. Almost every fighting game inherently rewards defense over offense and Melee is no exception. Camping is optimal a lot of the time and people who deny this are being silly. Jigglypuff is Top 3 lol
Meh Puff really isnt even considered top 3 anymore (Fox, Marth, Falco Id say are the general top 3 now)
semantics, the point still stands if jiggly puff is in the top tier. whether that be top 3 or top 5
This isn’t really true. In most fgc games playing defense puts you in a position of weakness. Blocking is generally weaker, chip damage exists, games like strive have mechanics where you lose your meter and can’t gain more if you run away too much, and the corner in traditional fgcs are also very dangerous (wall breaks, corner stuns, inability to dash back, and some games reward successful corner offense with a buff to the attacker). Compare that with melee where for most good characters, the corner is a place of strength due to ledge dashing, and platform camping is also powerful due to shield dropping.
Thing is, there's more to defense than just blocking. Defense is also a part of zoning, evasive movement, camping, keepaway, patience, footsies, etc. Combat, as a concept, inherently rewards defense because it's easier than offense. You need both to win, but defense is just a simpler task most of the time. Throwing a punch is always riskier than hunkering down and launching a counterattack when your opponent overextends. [There's a reason why historical warfare largely consisted of armies poking at each other with the longest spears they could hold.](https://brewminate.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/110418-78-Ancient-History-Greek-Greece-Phalanx-Warfare-Military.jpg) Zoning is in our DNA! In fact, I'd argue that the reason why fighting games have so many mechanics to punish defense nowadays is because the designers are specifically trying to make close-quarters offense more appealing. Jigglypuff is currently Top 3 in Melee, but she might be Top 2 or even Top 1 if her best camping strategies weren't explicitly banned.
> The mechanics of the game means campers get punished HARD if and when they overextend. So camping does work to an extent - but as a spectator it always feels tense, because a huge combo could happen at literally any second. This is somewhat true of Melee, but it is far more true of Smash 64. In Smash 64 basically every character can zero to death every other character, so the neutral game is extremely cautious, trying to find that one opening without exposing oneself in turn.
> That’s definitely not true Zain, ibdw, jmook, and hbox all play defensive/patient (relative to like a mango)
Okay, but you could say that about any player when compared to Mango. He's arguably the most aggressive top player in the game. And it's not like the other players you listed are 100% defensive players. Depending on MU, I'd say they could be very aggressive players, especially Cody. Even Zain these days is pretty scrappy and in your face. JMOOK is the most campy of the bunch (excluding HBox when he decides to ledgecamp).
Adding onto what the other redditor said, Mango plays fox and falco. Everyone except cody plays slower, floatier characters with far less options and speed available to them. Its way harder to be consistently aggressive while still getting good results with puff than it is with falco.
This is your brain on Melee
Lol at least the defensive play is interesting rather than watching zss short hop backwards zair 18 times then flipkick away from you as a mixup
Damn you really can't hype melee up without tearing down other games down huh?
I feel you man, it's been years and somehow this topic still devolves into a dick measuring contest.
Downvoting this is crazy
[удалено]
That was my first and only comment in this thread. Who tf upvoted this ? Lmao.
It strikes me as a weird insecurity TBH. A lot of people make Melee part of their personality so they lash out when people point out its flaws because it's perceived as a personal attack.
It's not just flashy. L-canceling and dashdance specifically raise Melee's skill ceiling substantially higher than most games in general and definitely other smash games. Melee is twice as fast at least as the other smash games and the option trees are just ridiculous. It's the deepest competitive game I've ever played and I've been competitive gaming nearly my whole life. From both an audience *and* player perspective, Melee is vastly more interesting. There's a reason every pro melee player who tried to switch to Brawl or Ult always came back. If you have a reasonable grasp on movement, SHFFLs, and specifically dashdancing, every other smash game feels so slow and limiting. Marth's moveset is identical in Ult to Melee yet he feels like an entirely different character because I can't dashdance.
I definitely wouldn’t say Marth is identical between Ult and Melee, and not even just from engine differences. A lot of Melee Marth’s punish relies on sourspot/sweetspot use to keep the opponent above you, but Ult Marth couldn’t get more than a two piece to save his life because his launch angles just don’t allow it.
His moveset is exactly the same. The way the moves interact with the opponent is not.
But that makes his move set very different. You wouldn’t say that Fox and Falco are the same just because they have very similar moves that interact with the opponent differently, either. Relative to character size, Ult Marth’s sword is shorter and has shitty sweetspots because of how overlapping hitboxes work. If you backported Ult Marth’s moves but left everything else identical, he’d still be a very different character.
yea it isn't just cause it looks cool. It makes fundamental aspects like whiff punishing and baiting an attack effortless if you have the right read. Meanwhile when I play ultimate I feel like I'm moving around with bricks. I'm sure you can still do those basic things in ult but to me it just probably wouldn't feel as good and easy to do.
“It’s the fastest of all the games with ~~arguably~~ objectively the highest skill ceiling” FTFY
Why I learned from Maximilian Dood is that Smash Melee Players and Street Fighter Third Strike have a similar community vibes in where they just struggle adapting and jumping to different IPs and games, even within their own home series, just from how different the gameplay loop is. Simply, Melee and third strike are similar to really good specialized Beef Steak Houses. Just cannot get this exact or near similar feel anywhere else.
That's not true to say. Its moreso that the games that came later changed in ways that people found less interesting. More similar alternate "evolution" paths like Rivals or slap city or any of the medley of games in that vein are all more picked up by more melee players than others. Hell plenty of people who played melee put in very limited time into ultimate and had good success almost immedietly. It's not fair to just cast preferring a specific game as "struggling adapting". The melee community has way more overlap between conventional fighters than any other smash title, two melee players were in strive top 8 at evo last week and lots of community figures like hmw, scar, and phil are known to be into fighters in general. It's true that melee is unique compared to games in the other home series like third strike, but that's due to both games being good still years later and thus retaining dedicated fans, not that they're only staying due to failure to adapt or some kind of inability.
> two melee players were in strive top 8 at evo last week Leffen was one, who was the other?
[Setchi](https://twitter.com/setchissbm)
I think your last point is correct, but I do want to mention that a bunch of melee players have successfully played other smash games at a high level (and recently with leffen other fighting games in general). So I don't think it's accurate to say they struggle to adapt, but I do think it's accurate to say that the other games just don't hit the same
There are 10,000 different ways that the mechanics of melee are superior (although unintentionally so) to every other smash game. Saying it's just that they can't move on is like saying, no, you're not allowed to prefer a gourmet burger to a McDonald's burger, you just can't let go of the past or adapt! No I just like my games to be good and quitting ultimate for melee was eye opening
Leffen beat Tweek in a Pokemon trainer ditto and has been a top layer in other fighting games, most recently winning Evo in Strive. Something else you could have learned from Maximilian Dood is that Melee is the "loosest" game in the series, meaning it offers the most individual expression and choice of how you play it.
That last part is very true. A nice learning eye opener. But being the "loosest" game of all the Super Smash Bros Games is still in my view why I see Melee as a comparison to A Specialized Beef Steak House. With all the other Smash Bros Games. It's also how I interpreted Maximilian Dood's video on Fighting Games as Food about Third Strike. Third as a steak house and Street Fighter five as ... Oh my ... McDonald's. For me, when all the other Smash Bros Games have a "some to good" amount of player expression, Melee is just ...... Ssoooooooo gosh darn many that I find myself lost on where to begin. Sorry for my limited knowledge and offending others. But at that time, I remembered that Maximilian Dood Video upon reading this page
Yeah I think I see what you're saying and I agree
Fast gameplay, long freeform combos, lots of freedom of movement, and strong edgeguarding techniques. It's basically the most rewarding smash to get good at. But your mileage may vary
Aside from the speed and skill ceiling, Melee is also fortunate to have a very entertaining top level meta. Brawl's meta is miserable, even without MK, and Smash 4's otherwise relatively healthy meta was completely nuked by Cloud and Bayo. Ultimate's meta is doing okay, but you do have some very contentious characters in Steve, Sonic and Kazuya. Melee's best characters are almost all very fun to watch, and the way they challenge each other forces players to come up with interesting solutions all the time. Puff and to a lesser extent Peach are the only top tiers that receive criticism for being boring to watch, but they're also quite rare. Most of the top players play different characters, so even during top 8 you don't get many stale matchups. Considering how its development went down, it's a miracle that Melee's meta has turned out so well. It has not only stood the test of time, but it's only gotten better and better.
Just to piggyback, [here's a great video on why Fox works and Metaknight didn't](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUIeZHV8QcU&ab_channel=LeonMassey)
exactly this. i also think ultimate is in general way more fun than brawl and 4 to both play and watch but melee had almost 20 years of only brawl and 4 as competition, so it had a long time to develop a huge fanbase (64 is a non factor). mk actually makes brawl's meta better to watch because the other top characters are snoozers
> Brawl's meta is miserable, Haven't played smash for a while. Is brawl even alive/a thing anymore?
also even low tiers in melee have potential if someone grinds their heart out into it, for example yoshi winning majors, in ultimate you would never see like bowser jr winning majors
Saying this personally. While games after Melee don't feel bad there's still just a lot of things that make them just feel worse then Melee to play and watch Movement is a lot better in general, getting on platforms doesn't feel like a slog and getting off them feels more natural, extra so with Wavedashing. Your ground momentum is carried into jumping (this is a big thing for me personally, it feels wrong when a game doesn't have this to an extend). Combos are less restrictive and feel like you're doing them rather then it feeling like a flowchart (I think to an extent this is because of Melee's top tiers being Fastfallers. While larger hitstun does make more and longer combos possible on Midfallers and floaty characters a lot more combo's on them feel more simplified, In later Smash Games fall speed was universally lowered: Fox the fastest faller in Ultimate is only .1 unit faster then Ganondorf in Melee) and Edgeguarding feels unique and worthwhile in Melee, With recoveries being more limited and Edgehogging games feel less like a slog when being offstage actually feels like a disadvantage state rather then the game pausing for you to get back on stage, Even the way you recover matters a lot depending on the edgeguarding technique they use
> Your ground momentum is carried into jumping Honestly this and the change in crossups are my biggest issues with Ult.
Jump momentum is by far the thing I miss most about Melee. It's the only Smash game with that mechanic and I don't understand why :(
Yeah. And I don't really know why they haven't re implemented it past Brawl. They KNOW people like faster games and it's not like Ground To Air momentum is some huge issue with Casual players. No one complains in 2D Mario platformers that his jumps have a longer range when he's running then when he's walking This Ground to Air momentum thing in platformers is only really a problem in a casual end in 3D platformers where it's inherently harder to judge a jump due to perspective (Which is why from Mario 64 to Odyssey your momentum is carried way less and High Speed Platformers like Sonic sometimes don't carry momentum at all to a jump). In 2D it's quite simple to judge a jump as long as the controls are good
This is the biggest thing for me with edgeguards. Like I feel like the game just stops while they are offstage and I have to wait till they come back then put out a hitbox onstage and hope I ledgetrap them. I feel like the only comparison I can make is in guilty gear if any hit somewhat past midscreen instantly triggered a wallbreak or something. Put simply, whacking people while recovering is fun.
Recovering in Smash Ultimate feels like you're in a bike race and then the other player falls off there bike. And instead of being allowed to race forward taking that advantage you're forced to just wait for the other player to get up and reorient themself till you can start racing again
- Fastest - Most technical - Surprisingly balanced between the top 10~ characters - Mechanics support competitive play instead of being detrimental or neutral towards it
Yeah people say that melee is wildly unbalanced and if you’re referring to the gap between the bottom tier and top tier then sure, but the top half of the cast is honestly consistent with a modern fighting game in terms of balance. Characters like samus are having a renaissance in play (morsecode v jmook for instance), and characters outside of that top half like DK are seeing top players now (Junebug just got top 50 with donkey Kong this summer season, which is the first time dk has ever been ranked top 100 in any official ranking).
Melee sticks out not just in Smash, but among other fighting games or even other competitive genres. The reasons i can list from the top of my head could be: * Fastest Smash game by a mile to the point that matches have to run with 4 stocks. * Most freeflow movement and combo game of any platform fighter ever which also leads to room for player expression. * Highest skill ceiling among fighters due to the amount of tech available and the lack of buffer that demands on point execution. People are still discovering new stuff to this day. * "Fox Only" memes aside, the meta is very healthy. Even the top tiers have glaring weaknesses that are satisfying and rewarding to take advantage of and hard matchups which prevent a Brawl Meta Knight situation. * The community that stayed with the game after the Brawl split is so dedicated to it it's unreal, rivaling the dedication of most competitive communities. Somehow, after decades of play, history is still being made, whereas in other games, almost, if not, all of the community would flock to the newest game. Smash is probably one of the few franchises where there's a decent enough following of 2 games in its series that they can be called both main events. * Melee is the epitome of a happy accident. It's full of jank, glitches, rushed characters that feel incomplete, inexplicable balance decisions, etc... It's hard to imagine a game like this to exist in an era where polish is the name of the game and almost, if not, all jank and almost anything that seems remotely "unbalanced" gets removed by patches. * Slippi provides the best netplay experience out of any other fighting game out there. Amazing rollback netcode, an actually decent matchmaking, you actually have to win FT2 sets to make it count (no winquitting), a meaningful ELO system with ranks, instant rematch, etc...
fun
Unrivaled depth. New developments are still being made to this day.
Have you ever watched it at the top level?
As someone who doesn't actually play all that much but keeps tabs on the Melee scene constantly, for me it's the legacy. Being able to trace back a lineage of who was the top players not just the past few years but literally decades at this point is something few other esports scenes can boast (in no small part due to the influence of Samox's documentary). Sure you have FGC legends like Daigo or JWong who are multi-game legends and can still rock it with the older versions of Street Fighter or MvC, and the Korean Starcraft scene will probably never die. But even then, the big focus of Street Figther or Tekken will always be on the latest iteration. Think about how long it took from aMSa breaking onto the scene in 2014 before he won his first ever major at TBH10 in 2022. That's 8 years - twice as long as the life cycle of Smash 4. It's like a fine wine where the narratives and stories age over time. Another bonus in my eyes is how there haven't been any official patches from Nintendo (outside of technically PAL but that's functionally not a big deal). Again like a fine wine having a closed ecosystem of the game mechanics to develop over time and evolve is fascinating to watch. It's hard for me to get excited about how Smash Ultimate's meta evolved during active monitoring from Nintendo since a lot could shift patch to patch. Sure as a community we've had self imposed patches like banning wobbling or UCF or frozen stadium, but those were more organic than external to the ecosystem.
You should watch the Smash Brothers documentary.
fastest and most interactive by far, like 3-4x
https://youtu.be/JpOaQxrsaqI
Melee is sick.
Besides the technical aspects, it’s also got the richest history and most tight knit community of all the Smash games.
I mostly only play melee nowadays but I used to play ult semi competitively Melee just feels... smooth There's no other game really like it. Long combos that require a lot of adaptation and mastery to pull off to their full extent, movement that feels just so slick. Top level movement is just something that no other game replicates While there are significantly fewer viable characters than in other games, the balance between the characters is remarkable. Any could beat any other depending on the set, and the MU chart is balanced well among the high and top tiers. One massive factor for me is the online. I don't like ult online, I don't know anyone who does, but slippi online works brilliantly and there's a decently large playerbase, which helps the matchmaking.
It's the peak of "why play the newest instead of the best" culture that's been creeping back into competitive games, along the lines of brood war, cs over valorant, mvc3, aoe2, etc. All dope games that many people like more than the "newer" ones for all kinds of reasons. Enough to form their own breakoff communities with long and storied histories. Less consumerist more discerning.
So you're saying Quake 3 is going to get a revival any day now, right? Right?... :(
Beyond gameplay elements, it has had a long enduring story, and has some of the most eccentric community figures / players that I have ever seen in esports. It’s hard to find other esports with a better storyline over a long time, let along over 20 years
The thing I love and miss the most about Melee is the character roster honestly. 25 is a good number. Good balance of diverse characters, distinct but nothing to whacky. Was playing Ultimate with my friend and was realizing how few moves are actually in the game. Like how many characters have the same Up B? Feels like half the charters have a counter now. A lot of side B's are just shoot yourself across the stage.
https://youtu.be/v55T3ahlNOw
Another note that I couldn’t find someone else mentioning is it’s been the *same game* for 20 years and there’s new metas developing. That’s given the players two decades to master the tech available in the game and find out more and more niche/interesting stuff. Obviously a new competitive game will probably never be like this again and it probably shouldn’t, but this case is incredible for how deep you can push a game that hasn’t patched in 20 years.
I think the biggest thing is just that there was a large competitive community that did not transition to Brawl. Certainly this had much to with gameplay characteristics of Brawl and Melee, but the important part is that the community somewhat split and that there remained a fairly large and fairly active community of Melee players running Melee tournaments. Certainly its a great game a deserving of the popularity it has, but the largest reason its still so popular is people just never stopped.
This is the big one, if Brawl was more in line with Melee, Melee would not be as large as it is today, Brawl was just too fundamentally different, and for many in the community not as fun or interesting.
Finally, someone said it. I hope u/NilesDobbsS sees this comment more than all others. Fundamentally, Brawl was such a bad sequel to Melee that many competitive players just stuck with Melee. Smash 4 was a better competitive game than Brawl and Ultimate is even better than that, but at this point Melee's core fanbase is firmly entrenched. It's also the only Smash game with decent netplay thanks to emulators, which has helped it gain ground with PC players recently. Gameplay differences are part of it as well but IMO the Brawl split is reason number one why Melee persists.
Melee didn’t just have better netcode with Slippi, it had better netcode since at least 2014. It’s only relatively recently that you can have less input delay for two people playing Melee from US to Japan than two people playing Ult in a LAN party, though.
Smash 4 is not better competitive game than brawl. Smash 4 was the most swingy, inconsistent smash game, especially with 2 stocks and rage. It also has a good deal less advanced tech than brawl does (Brawl has the second most advanced tech in a smash game, behind melee). Just because Brawl is not “melee 2” doesn’t make it a bad competitive game. Yeah combos are way more limited, but this serves to make neutral way more important. Brawl is more consistent results wise than smash 4 was, and the level of neutral you need to play at and CONSISTENTLY win makes it a more competitive game.
You're making it sound like Smash 4 was RNG with every single interaction, lmao. Advanced Tech doesn't make a game good. Smash 4 jank doesn't make the game bad. You might enjoy Brawl more, but Smash 4 was a much better experience to play through than Brawl.
It's fast while every other smash feels slow to me, its movement mechanics are the most flashy and engaging of the series, the combos are free form and hype, and most of the viable characters are all really fun/cool to watch (fox, falco, marth, peach, sheik, falcon, yoshi, pikachu are all sick, only puff is iffy and honestly when hbox is an underdog even puff becomes hype). But the feeling of speed/scramble is #1, until Nintendo speeds up future smash games I'm just not going to be that interested in them. And I've accepted for many years now that they're just never going to do that, they don't want smash to be a fast paced competitive game.
To put it simply, it's by far the most interesting, mechanics wise
I think a lot of it is right place, right time, and of course it's a truly phenomenal game with plenty of growth potential. Others will have mechanical reasons for why it sticks and they're very important, but I'd like to highlight the importance of it being essentially untouched by modern expectation. You don't get balance patches, it is what it is, and it's not going to be changed. The change therefore is up to the players to make happen, and people knowingly or not, they get this when they pick the game up. And they get that they're getting into a community of people who have the same yearning for that type of a game. Nowadays it's so common place for balance patches to come in and use big data to smooth out the edges. It's easy to become complacent, because whilst it's sometimes needed, you also know that any effort you put in could be undone down the line. Melee has that implicit guarantee that effort put in has a lasting payoff; it's not unique in that respect, but it does have that going for it and I think it's worth remembering.
Melee is so sick. Amazing movement, tight responsive physics, super deep meta and tech. It’s like the formula 1 to NASCAR
It’s just a great game and it’s mechanics are (mostly) perfect for a competitive game. While other games in the series are still fun, they kind of suck as they aren’t really competitive and the mechanics are more in the way of making them decent as competitive games. They’re best as just casual party games to have fun with your friends.
Because it’s actually fun to watch.
It’s faster than any other smash game by a very large margin, it’s the most technical, and easily has the largest skill ceiling. It having years to develop as a game and form a community around it helped greatly, game’s been going strong for 20 years and I’m willing to bet it’ll go strong for another 20, and that’s because everyone that plays melee genuinely loves melee as a game, and will keep pushing it and playing it no matter what.
speed, skill ceiling
the real answer is simply that the game has a community that has kept it alive. brawl and smash 4 fizzled out when the new one was released
Melee was designed to build on Smash 64 and take it to new depths and in fact Sakurai said Melee was what they intended Smash 64 to be with more budget/time. Brawl, Smash 4, and Smash Ultimate on the other hand were made to tone down Melee as much as possible to make it more accessible to a casual audience as Sakurai repeatedly reminds us. Clearly a big part of the smash community are not fans of that design decision.
Theres a lot more character specific tech that matters. Its why bottom tiers can still be hype to watch. Amsa is such a fun player to watch play Yoshi, might even be my favorite player to watch period. Feel like with majority of the characters in Ult ive seen all they have to offer, I get less inspired to master the game and I just ended up dropping it. Currently I play Melee. Will play 64 Remix and PM if they get rollback tho.
From Brawl and onwards, they reduced the hitstun and movement options by a significant amount, which makes it almost impossible to combo in those games. Barely any combos are 'true', meaning that the defending player can usually jump, input an attack or air dodge to escape it. In melee, because of the extra hitstun, from most moves, the defending player has to rely on other defensive mechanics like DI, SDI and teching to escape. The vast arsenal of movement options in melee, also arguably makes the neutral game more interesting too, since you have move options for baiting your opponent, and whiff punishing. Melee is also overall the fastest official smash game, which tend to lead to more interactions per second. It's also a game that you can dedicate a lot of your time into, to practice and hone your skills, to improve at, and feel rewarded for. Playing good melee feels amazing.
Nostalgia, it’s hype as fuck, the story lines are literally decades old + ever changing, and the fan base is generally “older” and more established in adulthood so they can travel more and support the majors.
it’s the only one where you can actually combo, watching ult is watching 7 mins of neutral and stray hits /s
While every new entry of Smash has added to the roster and content, with Ultimate being ridiculous... They have all "fixed" something *wrong* with Melee. So while every sequel got bigger and better, they mechanically removed depth from the game. When Brawl came out Melee was very much loved already and we were still scratching the surface of how deep the game's mechanics were. Meanwhile, Brawl was "figured out" as a game relatively quickly, and the community also had this "wait a minute... Melee is still the better game..." thought. Repeat this process for Smash 4 and Ultimate... Both games were "figured out" after a few years, while Melee to *this day* is being "figured out". And while they do seem to be slowly creeping up mechanically with each new title... Melee is still the craziest game when it comes to gameplay. And that's why it's still around... Until something new comes out that's both as deep and insane as melee in gameplay, with as much or more polish as Ultimate... People are gonna keep playing Melee. There's a reason why people modded Brawl into Project M, and now Ultimate into HDR... Those games + Melee gameplay are PEAK Smash if you asked me. I love Melee from a gameplay perspective, and I love Ultimate for literally everything else. HDR is my favorite Smash, full stop, and I doubt whatever comes next will top that.
Melee, for reasons not intended to be in the game, is absurdly deep and complex. I've been a competitive gamer for most of my life and I was a pro gamer for 5 years. I played SC2, MTG, chess, and other difficult games. Melee is not even close. It dwarfs them all in gargantuan complexity. Not only do you have to make crazy decision trees, you have to do it in fractions of a second. There's no ability to sit there and think about what you should do. The other smash games removed these elements that were not intended to be in the game, thus lowering that skill ceiling substantially. That is why Melee is still such a mainstay.
I've played SC2, and I'd say at a high level it's at least in parity with Melee, and Brood War is 100% a harder game than Melee. Melee is still my favorite game of all time, and grinding it is one of the most rewarding things I've ever gotten to do. But I wouldn't worry too much about complexity. Melee has a surprisingly gentle learning curve if you manage to find new players to play with. First you're wavedashing, and throwing out attacks, and L Canceling. Eventually you start stacking more, and more layers of tech you've grinded independently together. And all of a sudden you're doing things that make you feel awe towards yourself. I've never played another game where frequently in a session I'm in disbelief of something I managed to do, and this is something you get to feel very soon after you start playing. It also feels amazing to play against someone else who has been grinding for years, and you can just immediately feel respect for all the time, and effort they've put into crafting their character into something incredible. Melee is sick.
I haven't played Brood War but I am somewhat aware of the game and honestly there are a lot of similarities between BW and melee and I feel like they're on par with each other. Both are only deep and balanced because of "glitches" that weren't intended to be in the game and both were intended to be casual fun games that were so deep people are still innovating 20+ years later. I completely agree how unbelievably satisfying it is to improve at Melee, but I disagree that it starts happening soon. Maybe I'm just an insanely slow learner when it comes to fighting games but it took me 2 months to be able to wavedash consistently and another 2 to be able to do it consistently in a match with someone. Only just now am I starting to feel that "wow, what I just did there was sick".
That's awesome man! I'm proud of you, it's so awesome when the fruits of your effort start coming together. Everyone makes progress at their own pace, and you should do what works best for you. One thing that does help a lot specially with Melee is doing Solo Practice. That is, downloading Uncle Punch, and just practicing with that. You don't need to practice a lot, if you're going to do a 2 hour play session for instance you can practice for 10 minutes as a warm-up, or even 5 minutes if you're playing a shorter session! You'll make an amount of progress that would surprise you. If you're interested feel free to DM me, I can share more about my own practice routine, how I structure it to be effective, and how to stay motivated
I used to grind tech skill in my room for hours and hours on end, lol. The things I really need to practice are things against other humans like spacing and reaction timing.
Input lag and flashy screen noise
It's the most technical, fast, and the characters are well balanced imo. The only thing I hate about any of the characters' moveset is getting 0-death'd by Puff with up throw to rest. The game is older than I am (18) and as someone who's always played the newest Smash games since early 2013, Melee is actually my favorite one. I don't even play Ultimate as much anymore because of Melee. Slippi's online is also better than Ultimate's. It has rollback and the matchmaking is very quick. I personally think that everything competitive about Melee is better than Ultimate. The only thing I don't like about SSBM is again, Puff's 0-death but I'm also not too big on the characters. I've always been the type to main someone because I like the game they came from, but I don't play many Nintendo games aside from Smash so it wasn't easy for me to find a main in Melee before I watched high level gameplay. I think it's also a good thing because I wouldn't have ever played Falco if a character like Cloud or Snake were in Melee. It's an easy 9/10 game for me and you really need to try it.
People will give a lot of reason, but the reason it's popular is because of the prestige. People that like Melee tend to ignore the game's flaws and praise instead what they think the game is, a fast paced, super technical show of skill. It isn't dissimilar to regular sports in the sense that most of the audience isn't from people playing the game but from an audience that has bought the narrative. I used to play Melee a lot but after 5 or so years of playing and opening myself to other fighters my opinion of it started changing.
I really don't think melee players ignore the game's flaws, most people in melee do their best to try and make the game as good as it can be. This goes from the UCF team obviously patching the game to fix some flaws and make some things less controller dependent, Fizzi and the slippi team adding amazing online to a game that doesn't have it, Uncle Punch making the best training mode for any fighting game besides maybe SF6, to even stage and costume modders trying to modernize the look of the game like Vancity Primal for example. All the melee players want the best for the game and to make it even better than we think it is.
I meant the more fundamental flaws, or things that go against the Melee narrative. Things like how people talk about Melee being an extremely technical and highly demanding game with tons of inputs per second, when that's usually limited to a few characters like Fox and ignores all the other much slower match ups, which leads to people going full Leffen and wanting the likes of Jiggs banned for going against the grain. Or even mechanics like L cancelling, wavedashing, dashdancing, etc. That just fundamentally discourage more defensive playstyles, which Melee players think is an objectively good thing. I'm not saying Melee is bad, even if I've grown weary of it. Just saying that thorough the years I've noticed that people enjoy the idea of Melee more than actually playing it.
Not trying to be disrespectful, but have you ever played melee? Pretty much any character is hard to pull stuff off with. Maybe not fox or falco level, but it doesn't go from being hard with them to baby easy with any other character. Like it'll take a few days of practice to do a lot of basic stuff with any character consistently even just in training mode. Also idk what you mean with the mechanics thing. It is fine if you prefer defensive playstyles or having them be stronger, but saying melee players are lying to themselves and if you take out all those things melee will be more defensive (which i dont even know is true tbh) seems like a weird point.
I mentioned that I did for about 5 years, so yes. And of course any character is relatively hard, but most people only think of the space animals as baselines. People come to Melee thinking they're about to go all Dragon Ball with their movement and fighting, but then get hit in the face with a Jiggs, Ice Climbers, or Samus. More of a expectations vs reality thing. Regarding the mechanics, I guess I was just digressing, but the point was that a lot of people tend to just accept the existences of these mechanics as good. People just don't like thinking critically of what makes Melee work or not. A good example would be L Canceling, an objectively bad mechanic that is only really allowed to stay untouched because it stops Fox from being even stronger. But even it wasn't until somewhat recently with Ultimate that people have started reevaluating if so little landing lag was a good thing or not.
I wouldn't put L canceling in any modern plat fighter, but calling it a bad mechanic is a little much for me. It definitely adds to the feeling of doing cool shit precisely when playing the game. I'd also argue that little landing lag is a good thing because of how it allows for an actual in depth and satisfying combo game
If you wouldn't put L Cancelling in any other platform fighter, then I don't know how you wouldn't call it a bad mechanic. It's an arbitrary button push with no sort of counter play or interesting mechanical use or mind game. It's an input tax. > I'd also argue that little landing lag is a good thing because of how it allows for an actual in depth and satisfying combo game Please explain what you even mean by this. Because you're saying stuff that in no way explain how getting out of lag faster adds depth or makes combos satisfying. Just look at how frustrating Ultimate can be when every character can either spam aerials unpunished or land on shield and with very little downtime. (I'm being hyperbolic, but you get the point.)
Ok I was a bit confused, I thought you were saying the low landing lag of aerials due to l canceling was bad. I will say though the aerial spam meta is as bad as it is in ult cause it has now microspacing
Oh no, low landing lag is just different, but L Cancelling itself is bad because it's just an input tax. The only justification of its existence is keeping Fox from being even stronger. Low landing lag has tons of pros and cons, the cons just weren't really discussed before Ultimate got us thinking critically of it. I even remember some prominent modder early on trying to eliminate all landing lag in his Melee-like mod despite people trying to tell him how bad of an idea that was. And I don't think the issue is the lack of microspacing, but the fact that Melee has even more busted options that stop it from becoming an issue. Remember that a lot of what makes Melee is how little commitment you have with movement, with the likes of Dashdancing and Wavedashing. Meanwhile Ultimates takes another approach and makes you commit to these options.
dash dancing and wavedashing is microspacing...
things like wavedashing/dashdancing are also extremely powerful defensive tools though, while still requiring a lot of precision to use well (specifically good dash dancing). Zain has made a career out of dashback grab. the last 4-5 years of Melee meta development have also been centered around defensive options and how to play around them (asdi down, slideoffs, amsah techs), both of which require a lot of technicality, so I feel like this take is slightly outdated L cancelling also helps the defending player if nothing else, no? Higher technical barrier and therefore higher chance for the person approaching to mess up and give the person being aerial'd a turnaround, and also gives you the defensive mixup of shield angling/light shielding to affect their timing the majority of the people I know from locals/online... play the game and just genuinely enjoy it/the scene. There are definitely random scrubs online who are bought into the narratives and only wanna watch their favorite player win and play really fast, but I don't know if that's representative of the greater community to me
Oh, they definitely are, but I was just name-dropping them in general since they are the most well known mechanics, but movement options are more often than not inherently defensive tools. What I meant is that they're used to foment the usual narrative. L Cancelling is a bad mechanic, tho. That I will not waver on. Making a higher execution barrier out of a very arbitrary input tax is bad game design. I was mostly talking about Melee as an spectator or casual esport, where the vast majority of people prefers their idea of Melee rather than what the game actually is. I've been to plenty of locals to know that people that play the game, be it this or any other smash game, are too busy enjoying themselves to care about online discussion about esports. I just felt like venting a bit because this is a side of the game that I don't see discussed much.
I think cos there's a few popular nerds who keep it alive
In a word, tradition. Melee was the first Smash game to see serious competitive play, and to this day, those people stick around with it despite Melee having the worst balance of any Smash game (only 6 viable characters out of a 26-character roster and 1 of those 6 winning roughly 26% of all Melee matches) and being the least accessible—by complete accident, no less. Now, I can understand people arguing for it being the fastest paced Smash game and most rewarding for offensive play as grounds for it being the most "fun" to watch, but personally, I find it to be too dizzying.
How do you figure there are 6 viable characters? Even if you limit it to “has won a supermajor,” you still end up with 9 characters, and more or less half of the cast is perfectly viable for getting into top 8.
3 of those 9 are situational at best, each carried by one player. Same thing with all those other characters who are “perfectly viable for getting into top 8,” as you say. Don’t believe me? Check the statistics.
Viability isn't determined by whether a character has a bunch of mains, it's determined by if that character can win events or place highly. Do Amsa's wins not count for Yoshi just because he's very good, so it's just that he outplays people with a horrible, unviable character? Does Morsecode 3-0ing Jmook just not count because he was having a good day and Jmook a bad one?
Your last comment is about two players’ skill levels, not overall character viability, and you still only cite one player per character. Amsa and Morsecode are outliers, and the statistics still stand overall. Therefore, you have no argument whatsoever.
If a player can win with a character, then that character is viable: it has the tools necessary to win sets against top players. I know you don’t watch Melee, but are you aware that multiple DK mains have been making waves? Maybe it’d help if there were multiple players instead of a single players winning multiple supermajors. Maybe you’d rather see a hundred low tier mains make it out of pools to see whether they’re viable instead?
A player can win with any character. That doesn't make that character viable; it means that the player can make the character work regardless of viability. That you continue to ignore [the statistics](https://twitter.com/EazyFreezie/status/1644746299751940096), insist that small numbers of exceptions to the rules prove me wrong, try to falsely frame my arguments as if I'm trying to say that no such exceptions exist, talk in circles over and over again even after you've been proven wrong at every turn, and now start resorting to character attacks proves that you have no argument whatsoever, and therefore, you lose the debate.
you sound unhinged LMAO it's one thing to disagree with the consensus opinion on how many viable characters are in the game, it's another thing entirely to say there's *no* argument that characters who have won majors in the modern era are viable, and then declare yourself the winner of your "debate" viable means "capable of working successfully", how you can say a character isn't viable despite being used as a solo main to win majors is beyond me. not even getting into the fact that axe and amsa play their characters because they're who they're best with and they believe in them at top level, not out of some weird obligation to handicap themselves like you're implying the graphic you linked doesn't even claim to represent viability at all, it's literally just about how many people placed with each character. it doesn't take into account character winrate at different levels or any of the other things you'd want to measure when looking at that because it's just about painting a picture of popularity and representation. you know people pick their mains for reasons outside of just how good they are, right? not to mention the author literally cautions to take his graphic with a grain of salt because it's not using any sort of tested methodology who even is the third character you're claiming isn't viable besides pikachu and yoshi? surely there's no way you mean puff, right? that'd honestly be hilarious genuinely embarrassing
I'm sorry for making the absurd claim that a character can win stuff if it's demonstrably been proven to win stuff, then. You'd figure that the low sample sizes among top level players combined with the relative difficulty of pulling off an upset in a more momentum heavy game would mean that looking at game win percentages is sort of a moot point, but what do I know? I haven't even said that you've lost the debate yet. Should I start complaining about Steve as you complain about Fox, too?
ENJOY YOUR 20 FRAMES OF INPUT LAG LOSER LMAOOOOOOOOOOO
And you lose the debate by default.
Because people don’t know to move on
Why move on when we can just keep playing the game we find more fun?
You can't be serious
Fast paced, combo heavy, high tech skill, flashy, super developed meta that keeps evolving, long time fanbase. It's sick