Hey guys, I've lurked here awhile, read through the first 1000 posts in this thread before I gave up due to all the circular logic that wasn't getting anybody forward. I thought, if I could bring anything to the table, it would at least be my own experiences with Melee and Brawl, and if all else were to fail at least I got this out there.
I first found out about ATs in 2006, when I was having a party at my house and I was going to hold a melee tournament there. Nothing serious, nobody notable was going to show up (it didn't help that I didn't know the pros at that time either

), just me and my friends smashing it out. I thought that if I could utilize the ATs it would be easier to beat my friends. At that time I mained Fox, but I couldn't even shorthop with him in time for the tournament.
Needless to say, I got my *** handed to me because I had no clue what the hell I was doing with any of the techs. I'd **** up wavedashing left and right and SHFFL'ing when you can't shorthop isn't usually the best of plans.
Fast forward a couple years later: I'm about to graduate out of high school, and consequently enter college. I played Melee off and on, but I never had the same drive to play or learn the game during that span of time. I remembered about Smashboards around that time though. I figured I wouldn't have many things better to do (I'm a hardcore gaming addict you see...), and that there would most likely be a smash community up there to play with.
I went to Shippensburg University, not realizing that TheCape and UmbreonMow lived there, nor that Reik was transfering in, and when I first played with the group they had up here I got my *** handed back to me. I hadn't played in awhile, so I didn't care too much about which character I used. Reik recommended Falco due to combos, and since I used to play Fox and I liked the StarFox franchise, I said what the hell.
This was followed by a massive period of learning the basics. I'm still learning how to pretty much do every tech in the game, as I find them interesting and fun to perform. But compared to almost every other game I've played, Melee affected me the most as a game. I had a ton of fun trying to constantly learn new ****, and every time I didn't know how to get better, I'd crest another plateau and the game would continually open up for me. It was an incredible feeling.
That being said, I still lost most of my matches (who am I kidding, I lost all of them

), I just didn't have enough raw experience. It seems that I was a victim to bad timing, because Brawl was scheduled to come out soon and most people here got tired of playing Melee. As you'd expect it has became really hard for me to get games in with Melee, but I still enjoy practicing moving around and tech. It always feels like the more proficient I become with a skill such as wavedashing, wavelanding, or shrl, the more freedom I had to move about and express myself. It's an incredible experience unlike any other game I have ever played.
When I play Brawl, I main Fox. The people here enjoy Brawl more due to there being more mindgames, but I never seem to see them. I just avoid hits that are broadcasted from a mile away and hit them back. There isn't much forethought, or mindgames in the way I play Brawl and as a result, a game that is supposedly nothing but mindgames has boiled down to nothing for me.
I tried to model my Brawl Fox after the way I had seen Mow play Melee Fox. It doesn't carry over terribly well with the reduced mobility, but even then I dont see many mindgames (something he's notorious for) that are available. The other thing I had a problem with was how I would play people who would normally take 10 stock off of me before I could kill them once, and suddenly I could take off 1-2 stock off of them in a 3 stock game.
Every time I'd bring this up, people would say 'You're good at Brawl', 'It's a different game than Melee', 'You're being too hard on yourself', etc. But I never really feel like I earned what I was doing. It felt like the old jokes about the Gamecube controller from way back, when it had 1 green button on it that said 'win', and that was it. Call me crazy, call me a masochist, but I couldn't stand doing that well in Brawl.
I know my story probably didn't bring anything new to the table, or anything really interesting, but I was wondering if there was anybody out there that shared similar experiences with Melee/Brawl, and if I could get their opinion on the whole thing.
Are there any non-pro players out there that actually prefer Melee to Brawl?