Moon-walking, Sticky-walking, and Charlie-walking

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