Editor’s Note: The following is part four of a series of articles on various playable characters from the fourth installment of the popular video game “Super Smash Bros.,” available on the Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It is intended for competitive and semi-competitive players of the game.
I’ve spent some time writing articles about lower-tiered characters to this point. Now, I’d like to take a moment to hop more towards the top: with today’s subject being the lovable red hatted plumber, the icon of Nintendo himself, Mario. Now, Mario has historically been a bad choice in competitive Smash, as he has consistently been a mediocre at best pick. In the original “Super Smash Bros.” for the Nintendo 64, he was outshone horribly despite the cast being so small. In Melee, Mario had no chance in such an oppressive, top heavy metagame that saw a circle of about seven characters dominate everyone else. In Brawl, much the same, Mario just could not emerge into prominence with a handful of characters, Meta Knight in particular, running the show. Smash 4 is a lot better balanced than the aforementioned games, though, and the differing structure and core mechanics compared to them have allowed Mario to rise to prominence. Mario has seen lots of representation at all levels of play. Players such as Ally and AnTi are within the same sentence as “best player in the world” title, and they’ve relied on the plumber to get that far.
Is it fair to say Mario is really good?
Of course.
Is it fair to say Mario is among the game’s best?
No, no, no it is not. Mario is a lot better than previous iterations of the game, but he still has some underrated flaws that prevent him from truly shining with the game’s best characters. Right now, Mario is considered to be fringe Top 10. I want to tell you why Mario does not warrant consideration within the game’s ten best characters.
For starters, Mario’s identity within the game is well-known, from a competitive standpoint. Mario is all about getting grabs, abusing his super fast attacks and great air mobility. Mario loves platforms; Battlefield in particular is an extremely risky place to agree to fight him on, because Mario can very easy use his up air to create a massive ladder of pain with the support these platforms provide, especially on heavies. Unfortunately, Mario’s fairly easygoing play style and user-friendly platform serve as a fault on the higher levels of play; we all know exactly what to expect from Mario. There is ultimately very little room for variation. Because Mario is considered to be one of the easiest characters in the game to learn, everyone knows what his arsenal of tricks can do. With characters like Duck Hunt or Bowser Jr, that level of familiarity isn’t there. Characters such as those two can create problems for mid or lower levelled players who don’t know the matchup. On the other hand, because Mario is so beginner friendly, you have likely faced many Mario players outside of tournaments before you even attend one. That being said, this flaw should not be overrated; Mario is still very capable of overcoming this lack of variation in this move set, but it is not a flaw top characters in the game suffer from, distancing Mario from that status.
Despite having great air mobility and a cape to combat projectiles with, Mario has a difficult time dealing with defensive play. In particular, weapon based spacers, such as most sword characters or characters who possess a Z-air, can give Mario lots of trouble. Mario has very fast attacks and good air mobility, but he lacks a move with range. Characters such as Cloud and Marth can create many problems for Mario because they do a great job of consistently keeping him from getting too close. Even characters who are not very good in this game, such as Link, Samus or even Roy can create problems for Mario because of his lack of a good ranged attack.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sORBXy1B6j0
This was a set back at the Civil War between Esam (world’s best Samus) and Ally (One of the two contenders for best Mario in the world). In Games three and four, Esam does an amazing job exploiting Mario’s susceptibility to weapon based spacing.
Another big issue Mario has is a difficult time closing stock. Now, this flaw in itself is overrated: we are not talking about Mario’s struggles to close stock in the same vein as we would be characters like King Dedede or Duck Hunt, but compared to the game’s best characters, Mario can struggle closing stock. Mario has a lot of quick moves in his arsenal, but a lot of them have pathetic kill power. What Mario has going for him is a meteor f-air and an up smash with intangibility (when used, Mario’s head becomes akin to a weapon and cannot be interrupted by non-weapon based attacks) in addition to a back throw that can kill, but as previously mentioned, Mario can struggle with defensive play. All of these kill options either require Mario to create a 50-50 scenario, far from a reliable kill sequence, or force Mario to close in and break the opponent’s defenses to do so. In particular, Mario’s f-air isn’t as useful in practice as on paper; Mario should avoid going too deep in the drop zone to try spiking someone, given how slow the f-air is, and knowing this allows opponents to attempt to recover in this way. The killing back throw can be mitigated by a player who has a good understanding of stage positioning; if you camp center stage, Mario’s back throw immediately becomes a non issue, as you won’t be dying to it until about 140 percent.
Finally, the dagger in Mario’s Top 10 hopes lies in his comparatively horrible matchup spread, juxtaposed to those characters in Top 10. Characters that top tiers beat with no issue, such as Roy, Dr Mario and Zelda are ones Mario can struggle with. Mario outright is at disadvantage against characters such as Samus, Meta Knight, and Mr Game and Watch, characters who never see usage in high levels of play due to how inferior most of them are compared to the top tiers.
All of this put together means that Mario is simply not Top ten in the game. He is easily better than he ever has been in past iterations of the game, and he is definitely viable at the game’s highest level of play, but he isn’t good enough to be a member of the aforementioned distinguished club. Currently, Bayonetta, Diddy Kong, Cloud, Sheik, Rosalina, Sonic, Fox and Zero Suit Samus are eight characters who are by far and away members of the Top Ten echelon of the game. For the final two slots, people will typically debate between Ryu, Mewtwo, Marth/Lucina and of course, Mario. Simply put, Mario does not have what it takes to stand out from the aforementioned four characters.