Nybb

And just to say, most people in the topic would have just said that barlw takes 0 hand speed....so the best characters are a complete wall as people using lower tiers can't learn additional skills to win.

Smash 64 comes down to: gimping and disjointed hitboxes (See how Fox, Kirby, and Falcon are top tier). Since everyone can combo, it comes down to who can combo best and who can start combos best. If it just came down to combos, Falcon would be top tier as Falcon has even easier 0 to deaths than Pikachu but just doesn't have the disjointed hitboxes.

Sry. I am guessing Surri closed the thread since most higher level smash 64 players (unlike me and Near mostly) hate brawl with a passion. You would have been trolled....heavily.

Also, yes, Dreamland is a bad stage for some matchups (as you say DK vs link, which is 65-35 on that stage and 55-45 on Hyrule for DK). However, most tournaments have an interesting form of stage striking. People rather decide the stage first, and then characters (which usually boils down to someone not wanting dreamland or hyrule being played first). This prevents some broken matchups such as DK vs Link.

There are a few reasons why smash 64 is not popular offline, at least here in the states.

1: Most people simply don't have an n64...and of those people, most of them just play melee or brawl
2. To a majority of people...the controller sucks (to me as well).
3. if there was any major tournament, Isai/Boomfan would win....so people don't really bother playing large ones ()
4. Most smash 64 tournaments are paired with melee or brawl tournaments, which keeps their size kinda small.
5. Most tournaments don't have multiple adapters to use a non-n64 controller like a keyboard. For example, many smash 64 players (like me) can only play well on a keyboard.
6. The community of melee and brawl don't pay attention to us: For example, getting rid of the Genesis Smash 64 tournament, even though Boom, Isai, and other top people were confirmed.

Pikachu and MK are both good at what their games are about: comboing/gimping for Pika, and camping/spacing for Metaknight. I do mostly agree that Pika is not as broken as MK though; the fact that he can actually get punished by basically everyone (except maybe Samus lol) is a big factor. It is one of the reasons the top tier Melee space animals were good but not broken...almost the entire cast has ridiculous combos / chaingrabs on Fox/Falco in Melee, and obviously their recoveries were less than stellar.

So I guess you and others in the thread have sort of helped persuade me a bit.

Not sure why it warranted a lock though, lol. God forbid there be intelligent discussion in there

You bring up some interesting points. The issue of hand speed / tech skill is one I am aware of and it does factor into this discussion...there is no question that playing a good Pikachu takes way more skill than playing a good MK. Considering that all MK has to do in most matches is ledgecamp, tornado, and downsmash to punish any move the opponent throws out, even a mediocre Pika who can combo sometimes and fairly consistently z-cancel is more technical.

This also in a more general sense does help to balance 64, which you were getting at.

Calling stages more balanced in 64 is, well, interesting. I'm not sure if balanced is the word I would use. Stages break some matchups in favour of some characters, and some in favour of others, so I guess you could say it all balances out on a larger scale. The problem is though that the game lacks a truly neutral stage like Brawl's BF or Smashville as a starting point; basically every 64 stage should really be a counterpick. '

One example off of the top of my head is DK vs. Link in 64. A match on Dreamland is pretty silly for Link, as a grab from DK from basically anywhere on the stage is a stock. Hyrule is a totally different story, with DK having a really hard time getting through Link's spam with his big hurtbox and slow speed. Although each match is unbalanced, as a whole it evens out. I guess the stage thing just depends on how you look at it.

I agree that 64 does seem like a more balanced game as a whole, but there is a big lack of tourney data to back that up. If there were actually large 64 tourneys for substantial amounts of money, would we still see people picking any character they were in the mood for? It's mostly just something to muse on, since obviously nobody can know what would happen.

Also, that Up b invincibility does not work all the time and it can be punished unlike the air dodge system in brawl.

Finally, Pikachu doesn't have a nado, and only has one move to recover, which is punishable regardless of having huge range. Pikachu's recovery is only considered to broken since most characters in smash 64 have horrible recoveries.

For hand speed: Brawl has a very low hand speed outside of mashing for DI and some Diddy/Falco/Pikachu/IC techniques. In smash 64, if the opponent is quicker at playing and knows how to approach, a better character won't always win, just because the other player is playing smarter.

There are some matchups in smash 64 (I.E. Yoshi vs Kirby and Falcon vs Samus) which are as broken, but the difference is that there aren't as many.

Most bad matchups in smash 64 at most are 65-35 where almost all of them depend on stage and are 55-45.

2. Hand speed and priority.

You mentioned that pikachu has incredible priority like Metaknight. This is true, but unlike in brawl, there are other characters in smash 64 with almost the same priority (for example, Kirby's up tilt and virtually every Aerial in the game). As long as the opponent can space, Pikachu can easily lose matches just because the opponent gets the grab or aerial before (except for Samus...who has almost brawl level combo ability)

1. Stage selection

unlike in brawl, or melee, stages are a bit more balanced in smash 64. Pikachu is good enough to beat most characters, and the main reason why pikachu is seen as broken is due to Isai maining pikachu. In many matchups, pikachu is quite even on Hyrule or Dreamland. For example, Falcon vs Pikachu on either stage is quite even, while Fox can stay even on FD. Even bottom tiers such as link and Samus have slight chances on Hyrule or some other stage. It is not 70-30 matchups. The worst matchups pikachu vs other character is probably pikachu vs Samus on Dreamland which is most likely 70-30 while the worst matchup in brawl for metaknight I believe is 90-10.

I do play both brawl, melee, and smash 64 competiitvely as well so don't take this as a smash 64 troll trolling brawl.

For your pikachu metaknight post, ill give an answer since the topic was locked...lulz

for your quote

While that is true, it is somewhat mitigated by the fact that it goes both ways: Pikachu can also combo-**** other characters back. Most of his moves can turn into uairs off the screen, or a fsmash edgeguard. Plus, Pika tends to be able to take more combos than other characters. For example, if you get in on a character like DK, Falcon, Link, or Ness, they are likely dead. If you can get in on Pikachu, he can sometimes use up-B invincibility to get out, and can often make it back to the stage with his epic recovery (or at least more often than others).

Basically, I'm saying that yes, Pikachu can be comboed, and that does help to balance him somewhat, but he is still arguably the character (or at least one of the characters) who is least damaged by being comboed. And don't forget to add to that the fact that he can combo viciously himself.

Pikachu is like all other characters...outside of Jigglypuff/Luigi due to incredible floatines) in smash 64 to be easy to 0 to death, or get an opponent to kill range.

There are a few other things to discuss, but I don't want thi spost to be too big