Super Smash Brothers is one of the most unfortunate fighting games of all time. One of the most meticulously crafted and unique experiences that has numbers and data to melt the brains of anybody who dares try and understand it on a metaphysical level is also occupied by cute cuddly nintendo characters fighting on a rainbow ship with umbrellas.
The differences between Smash and traditional fighting games could be listed all day and are pretty obvious from the most basic, casual level - Instead of depleting a health bar, you have to knock your opponent off of the stage into the blast zones that surround the screen, each game is comprised of multiple lives, or stocks, as opposed to a first to 2 or 3 wins in individual fights, there are platforms to aid and abet movement, stage hazards, items, some characters move completely differently than others, this is all obvious, everybody knows this. However, one thing that is not obvious to the naked eye, but can be felt by playing hte game, are the numbers behind the scenes that create the characters and who they are - things like Weight and Fall Speed are integral to how a character lives and dies in the crazy world of Smash. Now, these numbers have long been calculated and quantified, but I was interested - how did these decisions made by the designers at HAL Laboratories factor into the development of the modern competitive meta? Is there any correlation with weight or fall speed and the tier list? How do these things change the core fundamentals of Smash? Let’s find out.
DISCLAIMER: this piece is going to be related to Super Smash Brothers Melee, so unless specifically notated, assume i’m speaking about Melee.
If you don’t know how these concepts are reflected in the game, here is a brief explanation: Weight and Fall Speed are background information that determine very different things, which is to say that weight and fall speed are not correlated even a little bit despite the implication. Fall Speed is, obviously, how quickly a character falls vertically; a character with higher fall speed (Falco, Captain Falcon, Fox are dubbed “fastfallers”) will return from the air much faster than characters with lower fall speed (Jigglypuff, Peach, Luigi are dubbed “Floaties). Characters with higher fall speeds are traditionally much faster as their aerials can be ended by landing and started again quickly, but also leads to more risk in being offstage as their high fall speed will put them into an unrecoverable position faster. Weight pertains to knockback and knockdown - a move that sends an opponent flying at a certain percent (for example, Fox upsmash at 60%) will give a universal amount of damage (13% uncharged), but the distance it sends a character depends on their weight; lighter characters (Jigglypuff, Game n Watch, Pichu) will likely be killed while heavier characters (Bowser, DK, Samus) might not even be sent offscreen. Weight is also important for moves like Fox’s Shine - Shine does the same amount of knockback no matter the percent, called “Set Knockback”, and depending on a character’s weight, a standing character hit with Shine will either be knocked down and be subject to the choices you make in said state (tech roll, basic roll, get up attack, etc), or perform an inactionable slide where they are still standing and tangible (Able to be hit/grabbed), but sliding across the stage until hit stun is over. These hidden attributes are quantified by unknown ingame units, and have been documented in the following images:
There are a lot of numbers, units, and data here, but what’s interesting is how these units correlate to one of Smash’s most unique features - Chaingrabs.
A Chaingrab is the act of throwing an opponent and re-grabbing them while they are still in hitstun - the idea is similar to more traditional fighting games where, if a move’s duration ends before its delivered hitstun ends, you can begin and connect with another move - this is more commonly known as a combo, you know, for the layman. Chaingrabs in Melee have a similar principle, if a throw keeps an opponent in your space and keeps them inactionable while the throw ends, you can regrab them, but this is impacted by a character’s weight and fall speed and how they influence their direction after being thrown (known as DI). For example - Marth has a very well known chaingrab on Fox and Falco, to which percent though depends on DI; vs Fox, the chaingrab is true from 0-16% on no DI, you can just regrab him after the upthrow, and from 16-46%, Fox will be knocked back slightly behind Marth’s grab, so you have to turn around to regrab. After 46% with no DI, Fox will be actionable before in Marth’s grab range and be able to jump out. With different DI mix ups though, the options change drastically - if a Fox DI’s behind Marth at 0%, Marth has to turnaround from 0-24%, and then from 24-55%, he has to turnaround, dash and jump cancel into a grab to shorten the amount of frames in the grab. The same general principle is applicable to Falco, but at different percents and options because of the different weight and fall speed values - for example, Marth can always regrab Fox at 0%, but Marth regrabbing Falco at 0% is not always true - if Falco DI’s behind Marth, he can jump out of the chaingrab , but only at 0%, as the turnaround regrab once again becomes true at 1. However, while Fall Speed is typically the most important quality of a chaingrab, you’ll notice that between Falco and Fox lies another character for Fall Speed - Captain Falcon. Marth does have a chaingrab on Captain Falcon, but it’s fake - Marth can regrab Falcon at specific percents with specific options, but if Falcon DI’s away, Marth can not regrab Captain Falcon as part of a true combo, something I believe can only be explained by Falcon’s weight being much higher than Fox and Falco’s. This rule generally holds true across the cast - Sheik’s downthrow chaingrab can be applied on about half the cast (DK, Roy, Link, Sheik, Young Link, Ganondorf, Yoshi, Pikachu, Bowser, Pichu, Ness, Mr Game n Watch), all of them occupying a similar spot ont he fall speed chart (Between 2.4 and 1.7), but misses notable characters such as Mario, Doctor Mario and Marth (Sheik CAN regrab Marth on most DI’s from 0-20%, but Marth can always escape with slight behind DI). Sheik’s chaingrabs all vary in effective lethality based on Weight, as the reduced knockback on the heavier characters like Bowser and Donkey Kong, despite having widely varying Fall Speeds, leaves them in the chaingrab loop for much longer - this is why Sheik’s chaingrab on Bowser is to death on any DI while her Chaingrab on Pikachu is only from 0-60 with Pikachu having mixup options to get out (Slight DI in Nair will knock Sheik out of Chaingrab position and is hard to read and cover in the tight frame advantage window).
NOW, we have to get to the overall thesis - is there any correlation with Weight and Fall Speed and the Tier List; independent of moves, application and other intangibles, is there a sweet spot combination that the top tiers of the game occupy, or are these numbers completely incidental? Well, first, let’s determine our parameters.
Without looking at the tier list, we have to look at our extremes and determine where you would prefer to land on these respective charts given our knowledge of weights and fall speeds. We’ll start with Weight: the extreme ends are Bowser at 117 and Pichu at 55, and right off the bat, we see why these are the extremes - Pichu will die if you sneeze on him and Bowser is combo food despite him having hte potential survivability of a bomb shelter. On the actual list of all 26 characters, the characters tied for Weight are Peach, Sheik and Zelda with 90; these are the platonic ideal of survivability and comboability in a vacuum; however, the median between the values of 117 and 55, 86, falls between 4 characters - Marth, Roy, Young Link and Mewtwo. These are separated by very little space on the list, so we will say our ideal weight falls between 85 and 90 Weight Units.
Fall Speed is a little harder to quantify because this does depend on the character - someone like Falco’s fall speed is helped greatly by his aerials and the properties of his laser projectile while Fox’s ability to survive from an unrecoverable position offstage is buffed massively by his broken recovery options. However, looking at the extreme once again, Falco and Captain Falcon have a hard time surviving offstage and are much more easily gimped than Fox while Samus and Jigglypuff are balloons who just refuse to die. Here, I think you want a character who’s fall speed is conducive to faster execution onstage, and while this is obviously beholden to individual frame data of characters, it’s inarguable that someone like Doctor Mario is generally faster with his aerials than a character like Mewtwo. For this, the median is found in the 6th fastest falling character Marth while the true middle is found in 12-14 Pikachu/Bowser/Pichu. For this, since so much of the cast falls slower than the median, and since we want some speed onstage while still being able to make it back TO the stage, we are going to err closer to the true middle - the ideal fall speed being somewhere between 1.9 and 2.
With our ideal weight and fall speed, let’s plot our control - Fox. Fox is the #1 character on the tier list, considered by most to be the best character in the game (People who don’t consider him the best are Fox players and they don’t count, in this census or as people). Where does Fox fall on the ideal combination of weight and fallspeed?
Ideal Weight: 85-90
Ideal Fall Speed: 1.9-2.0
Fox Weight: 75 (-10)
Fox Fall Speed: 2.8 (+0.8)
So, he’s off by a solid amount - this is… fine, he’s just the control. Here are the rest of the High Tier Characters (B+ or higher on the most recent official tier list)
Marth Weight: 87 (IN RANGE)
Marth Fall Speed: 2.2 (+0.2.)
Jigglypuff Weight: 60 (-25)
Jigglypuff Fall Speed: 1.3 (0.6)
Falco Weight: 80 (-5)
Falco Fall Speed: 3.1 (+1.1)
Sheik Weight: 90 (IN RANGE)
Sheik Fall Speed: 2.13 (+0.13)
Falcon Weight: 104 (+14)
Falcon Fall Speed: 2.9 (+1)
Peach Weight: 90 (IN RANGE)
Peach Fall Speed: 1.5 (-0.4)
Ice Climbers Weight: 88 (IN RANGE)
Ice Climbers Fall Speed: 1.6 (-0.3)
Pikachu Weight: 80 (-5)
Pikachu Fall Speed: 1.9 (IN RANGE)
Yoshi Weight: 108 (+18)
Yoshi Fall Speed: 1.93 (IN RANGE)
Samus Weight: 110 (+20)
Samus Fall Speed: 1.4 (-5)
Obviously these fall all over the place, but I think that the findings are actually pretty interesting. Regardless of moveset, just based on attributes that are baked into a character to say nothing of execution, characters like Marth and Sheik are almost bang on the ideal ranges; these are commonly used characters that, at any level, are pretty accessible and easy to pick up and use. You don’t explode like Jigglypuff and you don’t plummet like Falco - in a way, these ideals don’t correlate to placement on a tier list, but ease of access for new players. You can take a look at these and surmise pretty simple truths about a character - Samus will live a long time but spend a lot of time floating back in recover, Yoshi and Pikachu are hard to kill, Peach is a demon to combo, kill AND prevent from recovering,Captain Falcon is combo food who will struggle to recover, but Marth and Sheik don’t die instantly and have solid recovery potential… yeah, those all sound about right to me.
Melee’s relationship with traditional fighters is a tenuous one - there are so many more elements at play than them, so it’s easy to keep them separate, but while Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat are not beholden to the same weight dependent knockback and falling speed that Smash is, it’s not these differences that create Melee’s tier list, those are found in the same foundations as traditional fighters; frame data, combo confirms and execution… but weight and fall speed are what define Melee’s identity as separate. It’s not as simple as determining which character has the best grounded normals and frame data, there is so much more than meets the eye when you load up a game, and all of that starts with the design from day one.
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