Josh's CAS Blog

My idea for the persuasive essay is to have the claim be something like the following: Additional gun restrictions won’t lead to a significant drop in violent crime rates.

While this may seem counter intuitive at first, there’s quite a bit of evidence to support the notion that violent crime rates are not greatly related to gun restrictions. For instance, despite California being the state with the strictest gun laws, it holds two of the top ten big cities with the highest violent crime rates, being Oakland at third place and Stockton at eighth. On top of this, Baltimore holds the sixth spot on this list despite Maryland being the seventh strictest state when it comes to gun laws.

If violent crimes seem to broad a classification, FBI data from 2011 tells much of the same story. By ranking states by gun homicide rates and comparing them to the ten strictest states with gun regulation, only two of the top ten strictest states appear on the bottom ten states by homicide rate. Only four of the ten strictest states appear in the top twenty-five states, meaning the majority of them aren’t even below average for the United States.

There are also many misconceptions about the ease of legally obtaining a gun, that is, it is much harder than most initially think. There is a long, arduous process of legal papers and background checks one must go through to legally obtain a firearm. Illegal ways to obtain firearms wouldn’t be affected by more strict gun laws, making them effectively useless in this regard.

Another interesting point is that the US and Canada have comparable gun laws, and yet their gun violence rates are drastically different. In the year of 2012 there were 8,813 murders involving a firearm in the United States, while in Canada that number was only 172. This means this problem is a mainly US problem, or something about the United States is causing this amount of violence.

There is evidence linking socioeconomics to gun violence, which would create a possible cause of these ineffective gun restrictions. To be more specific, many of the cities with the highest rates of violence are also the cities with the highest poverty rates.  However, I am unsure as to  whether this should be included in my persuasive essay or if I should focus solely on the gun law side of things.

I believe the argument can be made that more gun laws won’t significantly reduce violent crime rates, and I would like feedback on how to better target or reform my topic to make it more clear. Thank you

For as long as I can remember my brother has been the closest thing to a lifelong friend for me. Growing up in a military family, we moved every few years so friends almost never lasted very long. He was the only other kid who went with me when we would travel across the globe to another Air Force base. That being said, I also know my brother better than anyone, the good qualities as well as the bad. Being exposed to such bad qualities for so many years has led me to alter my own behavior. It is because of this that I believe that sometimes the worst role model can be the best role model.

I was back home in Arizona for winter break with my family. We had just finished helping out at the thrift shop on base and we were all ready to eat and go home. In our two vehicles, we stopped at one of our favorite nearby pizza places and had just finished eating. My mother had had some alcohol with her meal; it wasn’t enough to affect her cognition, and she was well below the legal limit to drive. Even so, she had voiced her preference to not drive home, and my Father turned to my brother and asked him to drive her home. He quickly responded by saying I should do it because he didn’t want to. While I have my driver’s license, I don’t have my own car and thus not a lot of experience driving. With it being a rainy night, my father wanted my brother, the more experienced driver of us, to drive my mother home. I wasn’t really paying attention after this, so I’m unsure of the exact words exchanged between the two, but I saw my brother leave with my mother so I assumed he gave in. I soon realized that I should’ve asked, as when I left with my father, it was my mother at the wheel and my brother in the passenger seat. I am very thankful to be able to say that the drive home went perfectly fine, and that sour attitudes were the worst to come out of the event.

A couple of weeks passed and we both went back to our respective colleges: me at university park and my brother at the Altoona campus. It hadn’t been too long before he invited my girlfriend and me to spend the weekend at his apartment. We drove up that weekend and spent the first day playing video games and hanging out, and before we knew it we were all ready to crash for the night. I asked my brother where we’d be sleeping, he responded by pointing to the small couch in the main room. I couldn’t fit on it alone and he wanted both of us to share it while he had two twin beds he slept on in his room. It wouldn’t have bothered me as much if I didn’t have my girlfriend there with me, but there would be two people sleeping on a couch that wasn’t even big enough for one, and yet my brother saw no problem with this. After some convincing, he finally brought an air mattress out into the main room for us to sleep on.

To be clear, I don’t harbor any resentment towards my brother; he is still one of my closest friends and he likely always will be. He has his flaws just as we all do: he just doesn’t often think about others or how his actions may affect them. This is the way he plays a sort of role model: seeing him act like this all my life has enabled me to become the opposite. I always try to think others before myself, and I wouldn’t be this way if I hadn’t grown up with my brother. Instead of despising others for their flaws I reflect on my own actions and how I can ensure I’m not making the same mistakes. So in this way my brother is the best worst role model I could ask for.

Welcome Back! In this post I will be going over ledge-canceling; a tech present in all smash games in one form or another. So let’s get started.

What is it?

a ledge-cancel is the act of sliding off a platform or the stage to cancel the ending lag of a certain move. This, while it looks amazing, is many functionalities and is widely used in high-level play. Let me show some examples.

This Gif shows what an edge-cancel looks like. As soon as Falco leaves the platform, he can preform another side-b due to the lack of end-lag. The use of Fox’s and Falco’s side b’s is one of the most popular uses of ledge-cancels, as they can help a player move across the sage quickly and relatively unexpectedly and, if preformed correctly, they will immediately begin to act out of their side b. This will allow for easy follow-ups or a quick punish if your opponent isn’t expecting it. Also with Falco’s and Fox’s side b is the recovery aspect. If you can successfully recover with this move and ledge-cancel it, you will be on stage without any end-lag, one of the best possible ways to recover.

This gif shows some potential uses for Pikachu. With Pikachu’s up b move you can move vertically, horizontally, or diagonally, allowing for more movement than Falco and Fox’s side b. This can allow for set-ups for more combo potential or a quick hit to serve two purposes: to add on some extra percent and to mindgame your opponent. Melee is often credited to be a mental game more than anything: that is, being good at the game isn’t enough. I won’t go too in depth, as that would be a great topic for a future post!

This last example shows Jigglypuff ledge-canceling a bair into a rest. This shows that ledge-canceling can be used offensively as well as defensively or passively. This all around tech is a must have for any aspiring player.

Thank you all so much for reading, until next time!

With how much of the labor force has already been delegated to automation over the past few decades many fear that their job will be next. There are entire websites dedicated to trying to pinpoint exactly how possible it is that an automated machine will take over a specific job, and with the already fickle job market one must wonder how bright the future looks for the future generations to come. It is up to us to decide how far we will take automation, but first all of the facts should be at the forefront.

25% of all jobs could be made redundant within the next 15 years, and these are considered conservative estimates. This could put a huge amount of people out of a job, potentially damaging millions of families. These estimates range anywhere between 25% and 50% of all jobs in the united states, putting many of us at risk. However there is another side to this statistic; with the implementation of newer and improving technology, this will also create higher-skilled jobs to build and maintain these machines, as well as to program and design new ones. On top of this, there will also be a need for workers alongside robots for jobs like quality control. While this might not make up the huge deficit, it has the potential to help as well as hurt.

So the job market could benefit or be reduced by quite a large margin, however the economy will almost certainly benefit. With the lowered cost and increased production, countries that buy into automation will experience GDP growth of an annual average of .37%, and by 2030 the worldwide GDP is projected to increase by 15.7 Trillion dollars.

We must be careful with how far we take automation, as it has the potential to completely change our entire world. If entire countries are built around automation, what will become of it if it becomes the target of cyber attacks? These are the risks we must calculate before putting all our eggs in this mechanical basket.

How at risk is YOUR job to being automated?: https://willrobotstakemyjob.com/

Thank you for reading and tell me what you think in the comments!

Welcome! To those of you who are new, on this blog I talk about techniques and strategies that are popular in the competitive level of the game Super Smash Bros. Melee. If you are completely unfamiliar with this topic, please refer to my first ever post in which i explain the basic principles of the game. The knowledge on my blog builds off of prior knowledge,  so some terms used in this post are explained in past ones! All of the super smash bros. specific terms are highlighted in red.

So last time I talked about many of the applications of the shine in Super Smash Bros Melee, but there are many more that I have yet to talk about! To start off this post I’ll talk about waveshining.

Waveshining (Fox)

Waveshining is a tech in which you preform a wavedash after a jump-cancelled shine. Below is a gif showing fox preforming a waveshine out of shield into a down tilt. While also showcasing a waveshine, this gif also shows two properties of the shine: it’s ability to be used directly out of shield, and how it’s lag free if you jump out of it. 

Waveshining is mainly used to start and extend combos as it is a relatively safe option and the knockback isn’t too far meaning easy follow-ups. It also has a set knockback, meaning that no matter what percent the opponent is at the attack will always have the same knockback. This property, while also making it easy to learn quick follow-ups, allow for waveshines to be chained together, as shown below.

Due to this set knockback, waveshines can be chained together infinitely if preformed correctly.

Shine spike

A shine spike is preformed when Fox hits an off-stage enemy with his shine, and while this isn’t technically a spike, it certainly acts like one and is one of the strongest edge-guarding tools in fox’s arsenal. Below is Fox shine spiking another fox. You can really see the  potential this move has; It can kill extremely early percent-wise. 

This is used mainly as an edge-guarding tool, but can also be used to punish any mistake an opponent makes that sends them off-stage, and can be used to end combos that send opponents off-stage.

Why Not Falco?

Above I mentioned that shine spiking is a “Fox-only” tech, but if Falco also has the shine, as mentioned in the last post, why wouldn’t he also be able to preform this tech?

This leads into the main difference between Fox’s and Falco’s shine. Fox’s shine sends opponents directly away from him, which allows him to waveshine. Falco’s sends opponents upwards, which allows him to follow up with his aerials. While I may not cover any Falco-specific shine techs in this post, that could very well be a theme in a future post!

Finally I will leave you with a very interesting gif:

Here Westballz ( the red Falco player) seems to shine spike MikeHaze (the Fox player).  From what I’ve told you so far, however, Falco’s shine sends opponents exclusively upward, so how did Westballz pull it off? Honestly I have no clue, most other “Falco shine spike” clips are right next to a ledge where fox could’ve easily bounced off of, but here there is no such ledge. So what do you think happened? Feel free to send any theories my way and thank you for reading!

Widely considered the best move in all of Melee as well as being an icon for the game, the shine is the down special of both Fox and Falco in Super Smash Bros. Not only is this move one of the best tools for combo starters and kills, it also has quite a few related techs. So let’s get right into it!

Overview

Formally known as the reflector, the shine was originally meant as a way to reflect projectiles. This property also multiplies both the speed and damage of the projectile by 50%; this might seem very useful but in high level play of melee this is probably the least popular use of the shine. So what makes this move so good?

First of all, this move comes out in one frame. This means as soon as the game registers the input, the hitbox comes out immediately. Second, it grants the user a frame of invincibility while the hitbox is out. In the GIF above the red is the hitbox, the yellow on a character means they can be hit, and the blue on a character means they are invincible. This can be more clearly shown in the picture below:

Third is the fact that you can jump out of shine, meaning you can cancel all ending lag by jumping while the shine is still out.

Techs

Jumping out of shine leads to a lot of different techs, including shinegrabbing. To understand shinegrabbing you first have to understand a jump-canceled grab. When a jump is inputted, there is a few frames of delay (usually from 3-8) in which the character starts the jump animation but doesn’t actually leave the ground. In Melee you can input a grab in these frames, meaning if you jump out of shine then input a jump-cancelled grab, you can effectively grab out of shine, executing a shinegrab.

Fourth is something called a multishine. One of the most notorious techniques in all of melee, this is the act of chaining multiple shines together by jump-cancelling a shine into another shine, and can (theoretically) be done indefinitely. I say theoretically as it is incredibly precise and demanding to execute, with fox’s multishine having a 7 frame cycle for the first shine to the second shine, then an 8 frame cycle from then on (roughly 1/12th of a second)) and Falco’s having a 9 frame cycle for the first shine to the second shine, then an 11 frame cycle from then on (roughly 1/17th of a second).

Frame by frame of fox preforming a doubleshine with inputs

Westballz preforming multishines in a handwarmer before a tournament set

Multishining is generally used for shield pressure, which is the act of attacking an opponents shield to make them act with the intention of following up with a punish. It is also widely used to show off, usually after a stylish kill, due to its notoriously precise input timing.

With all of these advantages it’s no wonder that it’s considered the best move in the game, but it gets better. There are a lot more Fox and Falco specific techs that show what this move is truly made of, and why it has such a huge reputation. Although this post is shorter than my usual posts, if i tried to cover all of these techs at once it would be my longest one by far, so look forward to the specifics next week! Thank you for reading! I’ll leave you with one of my favorite combos of all time from my favorite smash player of all time: Westballz with one of his many crazy long combos against Leffen at Beast 6. You can truly see how Falco’s shine can extend combos as well as end them, more on how that works next week!

In melee, one of the worst places you can find yourself in is being off stage, so your immediate goal when being knocked off stage is to get back to the ledge while avoiding attacks from your opponent. But then what? There are a multitude of options you have while holding onto the ledge, but your opponent will undoubtedly try to cover most of them. Today I’ll be talking about the options and mindgames involved when you grab ledge.

A basic mechanic when grabbing the ledge is invincibility frames. These are the frames directly following a multitude of actions, including grabbing ledge, in which your character cannot be hit.

Standard Ledge Recoveries

Standard ledge recoveries are the simple six actions you can do while on the ledge. Nothing too complex, however there is an interesting mechanic in which they act slightly different when you are above 100%.

1. Climb: executed by simply inputting the control stick toward the stage, you character simply pulls them self up onto the stage. Above 100% the animation takes significantly longer, making it generally a bad option as it is easily punishable. Below Is an example of a climb
2. Attack: executed by any attack button, your character puts out an attack before getting back on the stage. Above 100% the animation takes longer, however most of the characters do more damage with the attack and the invincibility frames extend to cover the get-up animation.
3. Roll: by pressing either L or R your character rolls onto the stage. Above 100% this animation takes much more time, but the roll is slightly longer.
4. Jump: by inputting a jump, your character jumps from the ledge and you can DI either direction. Above 100% the animation is longer, but much less than that of other get-up animations. Jumping from the ledge is often called the tournament winner in the melee community, as it’s usually such a bad option it wins the tournament for the other player.
5. Let go: executed by inputting the control stick away from the ledge, you character simply drops from the ledge. This works the same at all percents. Often can be paired with an aerial to try to attack players standing above the ledge onstage.
6. Let go + fastfall: executed by inputting down on the control stick, your character lets go of the ledge then immediately begins to fastfall. This also works the same at all percents.

These are the six basic options from the ledge. However, after letting go of the ledge you have more options to try to get back on stage.

Ledgedash

By letting go of the ledge, imeediately jumping, then wavedashing onto the stage you can preform a ledgedash. If you’re unfamiliar with what a wavedash is, I cover it at the end of my second post.

Here Leffen (the Fox player) first jumps from the ledge and DI’s away to bait Mew2king (the Marth player) into trying to attack, then uses this window to ledgedash onstage.

If executed perfectly and immediately, a ledgedash can be done while still in invincibility frames with 15 frames of invincibility left to spare. This means it is possible to get back onstage and input an attack if you’re quick enough.

This is mainly used to recover from the ledge, but can be risky as if you miss the wavedash your character goes into freefall and you loose your stock.

Ledge Stalling or Planking

Ledge Stalling, or planking, is the act of regrabbing the ledge to maintain constant invincibility. There are many ways to do this, such as a let go fastfall into a jump to regrab, as well as the use of special moves like fox’s up special. Here are some examples:

Here Captain Falcon first drops from the ledge, jumps to the stage, then immediately inputs a wavedash back to get back to the ledge. This is an effective stall as he keeps his invincibility frames.

Here Falco uses his up special out of a let go from the ledge to stall, as he regrabs ledge soon after the up special animation starts.

This is a simple let-go jump regrab slowed down. This is the simplest edge stall.

Edge stalls are mainly used for mind games; with a quick ledge stall (as seen in the GIF with Leffen and Mew2king above) you can bait actions out of your opponent, giving you windows of opportunity to recover.

With that ends my fourth post. I hope you enjoyed it! If you have any questions, corrections, or additions feel free to leave a comment. Thank you for reading!

Finally after all of that background knowledge we get into the good stuff: techs. Posts from here on out will be much shorter, but much more in depth. Those first two posts were as long as they were so I could move on to the topics I like to talk about. I’ll only cover one to three techs per post, and in this one I’ll be talking about my favorite movement tech, moonwalking, and it’s variations.

Moonwalking

Captain Falcon moonwalking into a jump then a bair

So moonwalking is achieved by inputting a dash in one direction, then immediately moving the control stick in the opposite direction without letting the control stick return to neutral position. However, you also want to avoid inputting straight down as you will lose momentum with a crouch. The most practiced way of doing this is by inputting the dash, then immediately moving the control stick in a semi-elliptical motion around to the other side. You can also string multiple moonwalks together, as shown below.

Captain Falcon preforms an extended moonwalk to grab the ledge

Technically it is also possible to preform a moonwalk by simply moving the control stick very quickly in the other direction after the initial dash, but it would need to be done so quickly that the game doesn’t register the control stick in neutral position, which is nearly impossible without some tool-assisted play.

All 25 characters can moonwalk, but most require an extra step in the execution. That is, 14 of the characters must be walking in the opposite direction in which the initial dash is inputted. Captain Falcon gains the most from this tech due to him having the longest dash distance in the game, so I’ll be focusing mainly on applications for Falcon players, however they can still be used by all characters.

The first application is mix-ups and mind games. It can be used to catch your opponent off guard. For example, you can bait out attacks and reactions from your opponent with a moonwalk, and quickly follow up with a punish. Another example is with a grab. Moonwalking allows a character to effectively grab enemies form the direction opposite to which they are facing. This can lead to more mix-ups and is showcased perfectly below.

Here link punishes fox’s get-up roll with a moonwalk grab

The second application is mainly Falcon specific, and it applies to edge guarding, which as it sounds is the action of preventing your opponent from grabbing onto the ledge. In melee, only one character can hold onto a ledge at a time; if another character tries to grab an occupied ledge they will simply fall past it, presumably to their demise. This action is called a ledge-hog for obvious reasons. Anyway, if Captain falcon moonwalks moving toward the ledge, then jumps off stage to intercept a recovering opponent, he gets extra backwards momentum than he would with a turnaround jump. This means he can utilize his bair to intercept aerial enemies way better than before.

The last application is arguably the most widely used: to stunt on you opponent. That is, to preform techskill to taunt your opponent, or simply gloat over a kill.

Sticky walking

Now that you know the controls, it’s important to discuss their uses. So you know how to input a smash attack versus a special attack, so now what? What’s the difference and why does it matter?

In top level play of super smash bros melee every single input counts, as it could mean the difference between taking a stock and losing one. So here I’ll describe the basic uses of each input, not including the ones that are obvious like running and jumping.

A button + C stick attacks

So as I mentioned before, the more percent you have, the more Knock-back you take. Now you have many options for attacking, each with their own uses, usually changing based on your opponents percentage. I won’t be getting too in depth about combos and follow ups to attacks as these vary greatly from character to character, but rather I’ll be talking about blanket statements that apply to most, if not all, characters. First I’ll start with jabs and tilts.

Jabs and tilts are usually low knock-back attacks that come out quickly (or have a low delay from the input to the actual attack). Their uses range from quick punishes of opponents mistakes, which can often lead to follow up attacks, to something called spacing. Spacing is basically the utilization of hitboxes (which is the area an attack will cover and hit your opponent) and the threat of attacking to make your opponent either move out of an undesirable space or into a desirable one. This may sound complicated, but think of it as threatening to hit someone (God forbid). Usually that person will most likely move away so as to not get hit. It works the exact same way in game: if you threaten your opponent with an attack, they will move away. If they don’t respect the space then you can punish them with an attack. The last utilization of jabs and tilts is in approaches. Approaches are exactly what they sound like: ways you can close the space between you and your opponent relatively safely. While jabs and tilts aren’t quite as popular as some other approach methods, they still exist making a mention worth it.

The next attack on our list is smash attacks. Smash attacks are much stronger than jabs or tilts, but they take more time to come out. These will normally be used in combos where they are much more likely to hit, but can also be used in the neutral (where neither opponent is actively attacking or comboing the other). They’re generally used when an opponent is at a higher percent as they can kill way earlier than some other attacking methods, this is why they are also popular to end longer combos.

The last for these attacks are aerials. Aerials are one of the most popular attacks in Melee, as they have a wide variety of uses (depending on the character of course). They are very popular for approaching, often used to extend and end combos, and can be used for something called tech-chasing (which I can’t explain now, but definitely will in a future post). One aerial I want to go over in specific is the down air, or the dair. Many dairs hit your opponent straight down, which is either called a spike or a meteor. The main difference between a spike and a meteor smash is that you can preform a tech to cancel the downward momentum gained after being hit by a meteor. This tech is called a meteor cancel and is preformed by either jumping or using an up-special (up and B). 

Here Bowser, after being meteor smashed by Link’s dair, meteor cancels with his up special (the spinning you see shortly after the first hit).

Some dairs are spikes, some are meteor smashes, and some aren’t either of the two. There are also some other moves that are spikes and meteors that aren’t dairs.

That wraps up the attacks with the A button and C stick

Special attacks

There isn’t much to be said as far as special attacks go, as they are drastically different for each character. They are purely situational and can range from incredibly useful to rarely used. the only general blanket statement that goes for most characters is the recovery move being up special. There is one specific special attack that I want to go over for future reference: the shine.

Officially known as the reflector for the characters Fox and Falco, the shine is indisputably the best move in the game. It comes out on frame one, meaning as soon as the input is registered a hitbox comes out; can be jumped out of, meaning if you input jump while in a shine you immediately jump out of it with no end lag; has decent knock-back for Fox and knocks upward for Falco, benefiting both characters in individual ways; and is utilized in many techs. This is what it looks like in slow motion:

(the yellow indicated Falco’s hurtbox, or where he can be hit; and the green indicated invincibility)

This is all I can say in terms of special attacks, now let’s move on to the shoulder buttons.

Shields, dodges, and grabs

So with these defensive options, which should you use and when?

Shields are exactly what they sound like, they block attacks. They are represented with a bubble surrounding the character and shrink over time as well as with each absorbed hit. If the shield becomes too small, a shield break results, leaving the character in a dazed state of immobility for an easy punish. As the shield shrinks, it can leave parts of you character exposed. If these parts are hit, you take normal damage and knock-back; this is called a shield stab. You can also be grabbed out of shield, meaning a grab usually can counter a shield. Dodges, however, cannot be grabbed and thus can be used to counter grabs as well as attacks, however they require precise timing. I like to think of it as a kind of rock paper scissors, where a correct prediction (called a read) can result in a punish, while a bad read can result in you getting punished.

One last thing about the shoulder buttons is with the airdodge. In melee, when you airdodge you can input a direction to move slightly in that direction while also being invincible. You can’t attack of course, and if used midair, it puts you into a freefall in which you can’t do anything but DI left or right. No recovery moves, no jumps, nothing.

Wave Dashing

This about wraps up the basic utilization of attacks, but there’s one more thing I want to cover in this post. We’ve already talked about one tech, meteor cancels, but this next one is the most widely used and recognized tech in the melee community. It’s called wave dashing.

Melee in a fundamentally broken game. It has many exploitable mechanics, but to many this is what makes the game so fun to play and watch. Wave dashing is the epitome of this concept. Wave dashing is a tech used to quickly change momentum, alter spacing, dodge around opponents, and is used in many other techs. It is preformed by inputting a jump then immediately airdodging down and at an angle, putting your character back on the ground. This cancels any lag and you can act immediately out of a wave dash, leading to it’s incredible usefulness in Melee.

This guide shows both the inputs and actions of the character during a wavedash. (just a note the game pictured actually isn’t Super Smash Bros Melee, but a fan made game with improved graphics, more characters, and more stages all while keeping the mechanics of melee. It’s called Project M, and while it may not be Melee, the input and general effect is the exact same)

Another note with this GIF is that the wave dash is preformed by Luigi, who has the longest standard wave dash out of any character, as shown here:

Most characters have a wave dash similar to the length of that of Peach.

Thank you for reading through my second post! The posts from here on out will be focusing on more specific techs, as we got through the basics of the game. This will hopefully mean smaller posts with more quirky mechanics that make this game so unique. If you have any questions or need any more clarification please ask, as if you are confused I’m sure many others will be too. Thanks again!

Wouldn’t you love to know what just happened in the GIF above? When I first came across the competitive scene of Super Smash Brothers Melee I wanted to absorb as much information as i could, and through observing and some research I’ve become quite familiar with the topic, and I fell in love with it. If you are curios as I once was please read on! On this blog I’ll be going in depth into the workings of this game and why I love it so much.

Now this first post is going to be a longer one, and it might be a little boring, but it’s a necessary evil.  For today’s post I’ll go into the controls and basic movements in the game, as we must start with the basics. In my next post I will explain the uses and differences between each control, but for now I will try to stick to only explaining the controls themselves, not their uses.  I will be highlighting the important terminology that you may not know in red for easy location. So with that, let’s get into it!

How The Game Works

Super Smash Bros is very different from your standard fighting game. While most fighting games are like boxing, where you must wear your opponent down (usually measured by health bars), Super Smash bros is more like sumo wrestling, where you have to push your opponents off a stage to be victorious.

Above is a stage from super smash bros melee. As you can see, it’s limited space is what is key to this fighting game. Instead of health, each attack gives you opponent more percent to their meter. This percent doesn’t cap at 100%, but rather can technically reach 999%.

As you can see, Bowser has 181% while Mario is sitting at 28 %. As your percent gets higher, each attack you’re hit by sends you farther back. With more knock-back and limited jumps more knock-back means it’s harder to get back on the stage. Moreover there are blast zones slightly off screen in every direction, including upwards. Touch one of them and you immediately lose a stock, or one of your lives. This is what you see happening to Princess Peach in the first GIF on this page. 

That’s pretty much how the game works, so now let’s move onto the controls.

The Controller

Above is a standard GameCube controller minus the lighter shaded portion. This part is found in Wavebird controllers and doesn’t affect functionality as far as controls go. This is the universal terminology for all buttons, the only addition I have being that the terms “analog stick”, “control stick”, and “joystick” can be used interchangeably, any of the three may show up in future posts. Now let’s get into the controls.

The Control stick

The control stick is used exactly as you might expect: it controls your character. left/right inputs move your character left or right, as one would expect. Up is jump and down is crouch. This is where it gets a bit more complicated. The input is also affected by how fast, long, and far you tilt the control stick.

For instance, if you tilt you control stick up then immediately release, you get a shorter jump than if you were to tilt it upward for a longer period. The smaller jump is called a short hop, while the higher jump is called a full hop. All characters have at least 1 midair jump, meaning they jump once while on the ground and again midair. This is reset after touching the ground, meaning all characters must land before being able to jump in air again. Kirby and Jigglypuff are the only exceptions, each have 5 midair jumps.

The next job of the control stick is dashing, walking, and sprinting. Like the short and full hops each action is dependent on the nature of the input. Dashing is achieved with a quick input left or right, followed by an immediate return of the control stick to neutral position. Running is achieved by not letting the control stick return to neutral position after a dash, meaning all sprints are started with a dash. Walking is achieved by simply moving the control stick slower, avoiding a dash input.

Crouching is the simplest of these movements, it effectively makes your character crouch, used for avoiding higher attacks and also using down tilts, which we will get to with the A button.

The last function of the control stick is directional input, or DI for short. This is mainly used in aerial DI, which is simply the ability to affect the direction your character is falling by moving them left and right. For instance, if your character is falling directly down and you input left on your control stick, your character will begin falling diagonally downward and to the left. you can also input down on the control stick while midair, which will initiate a fastfall. As one would expect, you character falls faster than they normally do. The only difference between a fastfall and DI is once initiated, a fastfall cannot be canceled unless you jump, use a recovery move (which will be explained when we get to the b button), or are hit before reaching the ground. 

The A and the C stick

The A and B buttons, along with the C stick, are all of your attacking options in Super Smash Bros Melee. Each have their own uses with their own attacks, starting with the basic jab.

A jab is the most basic attack of any character. You input a jab by simply tapping the A button once. It’s pretty basic but it has a variety of uses, which I sadly won’t be getting into today. There are also jab combos, achieved by pressing the A button multiple times in a row. Captain Falcon has two of these, once with a rhythmic 3 press of the A button, delivering a strong, quick 3 hit combo, and one with a multi-jab combo, achieved by repeatedly pressing the A button in quick succession. Some characters only have one of the two while others have both. 

The next use of the A button, along with the control stick,  is a tilt. A tilt is achieved by inputting a direction with the control stick then pressing the A button. There are forward tilts, up tilts, and down tilts. Forward tilts can also be angled slightly up or down by angling the control stick slightly up or down. With up tilts you have to be careful with how far you tilt the joystick upward, as you might accidentally input a jump instead. For down tilts you must crouch, as should be expected when tilting the joystick down. 

Next we have smash attacks. These attacks are achieved by tilting the joystick in a direction and pressing the A button simultaneously, differentiating the input of tilts from the inputs of smash attacks. There’s actually another way to input smash attacks, the C stick. The only difference with the A button input and the C stick input is that you can charge smash attacks before releasing them by holding the A button, while you can’t do this with the C stick. the C stick does, however, help to prevent mis-inputting tilts. There are forward smashes, up smashes, and down smashes, each with their expected directional input from both the control stick and the C stick.

The last functions of both the A button and C stick is Aerial attacks, usually referred to as Aerials.  There are up airs, down airs, forward airs, and back airs, each referred to as uairs, dairs, fairs, and bairs respectively. The input is as one should expect, a directional input in the desired direction of attack on the C stick or the same direction on the joystick plus the A button. You can only use aerials while you are in the air. 

The B button

While the A button is for your basic attacks, the B button is for special attacks. These attacks can only be inputted by the B button and are your crazier attacks specific to each character. There are forward specials, up specials, and down specials. The unique one of the group is up specials, as these are normally your character’s recovery move. A recovery move is meant to give you some extra height to get back on stage, but many of them can also be used offensively.

The X and Y buttons

These buttons are just another way to jump. It makes some more precise timing a bit easier, and can make it easier to input left or right while also jumping, but which method of jumping used in each situation is purely personal preference.

The Shoulder buttons

To clarify, this is the L, R, and Z buttons.

The L and R buttons are you defense in super smash bros. There are two pressures you can hold the L and R buttons down. One about half way which is only resisted by a weak spring, and the other pushing all the bay down, which will let out a “click” sound. The partial holding of the L or R button is called a light shield; the harder you hold the button down the more dense the shield becomes, until it makes the “click” sound, when it becomes a power shield. You can also use DI to slightly affect the position of the shield on our character, but be careful, as if you DI too far in any direction, you might input a jump or dodge, which moves me to my next input.

While holding shield if you move the joystick to the left, to the right, or down you will input a dodge. dodging to the left or right is simply referred to as dodging. when you dodge your character moves a precise distance to the left or right (depending on the input) while being temporarily invulnerable. Dodging down is called a spot dodge, where you dodge in place with temporary invulnerability, lasting for a shorter duration than a normal dodge. 

The last kind of dodge is an air dodge. This is when you press the L or R button while airborne, and it gives you a few frames of invulnerability while falling. 

The last shoulder button, the Z button, is used for grabs. while close to your opponent you can grab them, then you have a few options. You can press the A button to pummel them, or input a direction to throw them. There are back throws, forward throws, up throws, and down throws, each doing slightly different things. You can also do a combination of repeated pummels and then a throw, but you have to be quick or your opponent can struggle out by repeatedly pressing buttons.

The Start button

The start button pauses the game.

The D pad

The directional pad, often shortened to D pad, serves one purpose: taunts. In game there’s only one direction, but that direction is all you need. If you press up on the D pad your character enters into an animation where it taunts the enemy player. Often short with unique sound effects, it serves no other purpose than to anger your opponent. It sounds mean, but when you play the game there’s no better feeling than taunting after landing an amazing combo.

And after all that, if you’re still reading, thank you! This post covers all the basic controls, please let me know if I forgot anything! In the next post I will be covering the uses and differences between the controls and attacks, it should be much shorter and more interesting than this one.