Smasher:Mew2King
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Mew2King, commonly known as M2K, is an American smasher from Cinnaminson, New Jersey, who currently resides in Orlando, Florida. He started playing competitively and attending tournaments in 2005. Mew2King has earned the reputation of being both one of the greatest Melee and Brawl players in the world and of all time due to his extraordinarily acute chaingrabbing, camping, punishing, and comboing skills, as well as his extremely optimal, technical, and intelligent play style, earning him the nickname The Robot. He is also widely considered to be the greatest overall Smash player of all time, due to his proficiency at nearly every Smash title, while playing multiple Smash games for almost all of his tournament career. Mew2King is considered to be one of the greatest Marth players of all time (alongside Ken) based off his results with the character, having won multiple national tournaments and consistently placing within Top 8 at the highest ranking events for over 12 years. Prior to his hiatus from the game, he was considered to be one of the two best Marth players in the world (along with Zain), one of the two best Sheik players in the world (along with Plup), and one of best Melee Fox players in the world, leading him to be ranked 10th on the 2019 MPGR. He is also considered one of the best Brawl Meta Knight players of all time, and one of the best Smash 4 Cloud players in North America, being ranked 69th on the Smash 4 Panda Global Rankings 100. In Ultimate, he is currently a Pyra and Mythra player. Mew2King was a major threat in Melee's tournament scene in the years before Brawl's release, consistently placing in the money at nationals. In 2007, Mew2King was indisputably the best player in the world and was widely considered to be one of the two best Melee players in the world in 2008 along with Mango. In the first few years of Brawl's lifespan, Mew2King dominated the national scene, rarely losing sets in tournaments, and remains one of the best players in both Melee and Brawl to date. In Smash 4, Mew2King was considered to be one of the best players in the world throughout 2016, defeating players such as ZeRo, Larry Lurr, and Ally. Mew2King has made many important discoveries about Melee on his own by testing several aspects of the game such as character weight, falling speed, attack knockback, priority, game physics, and so on. He stores this information here as a repository for Melee statistics, which many casual and professional Smashers alike have referred to for more information about their character's data and inner workings. Because of this, Mew2King is able to play the majority of the cast at a high level, exemplifying this by beating Mango in two 26-character battles at Smash the Record, having only had to use five characters the first time, and 15 characters the second time. He is also known for revolutionizing the Marth metagame to its modern state, as well first discovering and implementing many facets of the modern Sheik and Fox metagames. ContentsPlaystyle[edit]Melee[edit]Mew2King is arguably the best defensive player in the world. He has one of the best powershielding abilities among all Smash players, and can effectively bait bad decisions from other players. Mew2King is a very punish-heavy player, and focuses on getting one crucial hit, then converting that hit into a position where he is primed to begin a combo and the opponent has limited options. Once he lands an opening move, he will usually land harsh punishes which tend to lead to a KO, due to his knowledge of character weights and KO percents. These punishes also usually encompass all of the opponent's tech and DI options, making them nearly impossible to escape. He also has arguably the best edgeguarding game, due to his aforementioned superb option coverage, as well as some of the best recovery mix-up tactics. Mew2King is considered one of the top players on Final Destination; as Marth against fastfallers, he is extremely consistent in chaingrabbing and comboing them from 0% to a KO off of a single conversion, and as Sheik, he can lock down other characters, mostly mid-tiered characters, longer than he could than on stages with platforms. His character choices seem to be stage specific, particularly on the opponent's counterpick; he will usually pick Marth on Final Destination and Fountain of Dreams, Sheik on Dream Land, and Fox or Marth on Pokémon Stadium; he is more flexible on the remaining two stages. Mew2King, however, has a weaker neutral game compared to other players of his caliber. His neutral game focuses on unorthodox approaches, which he employs to force his opponents into positions where they have limited options, usually reduced down to a 50/50 situation where he can exploit his superior knowledge of character hitboxes. While this strategy works well against Fox and Falco as he only needs one exchange win to convert into a KO, it is not as strong against floaty characters that are more difficult to combo, and can be exploited by clever baits from players of his caliber.[1] Mew2King is also known for heavily counterpicking in specific matchups, sometimes with disappointing results. For example, he will only play Fox against Jigglypuff, as Fox is technically superior in that matchup, though he has seen mixed results against Hungrybox. He was the first top player to recognize the potential of Snowy, even teaming with him at Dreamhack Denver - a Puff player that Armada and Leffen train with for the Jigglypuff matchup. He will usually play Peach against Ice Climbers at high-level play just because she has a greater advantage against the Climbers than any of his mains, instead of learning the matchup with Marth or Fox, who are considered to also have winning matchups. Because his Peach is not practiced to the same level as his mains, he has lost at least once to almost every notable Ice Climbers player, and has even lost games to Nintendude's Peach and ChuDat's Jigglypuff. Occasionally, Mew2King has counterpicked Jigglypuff in certain games against other Jigglypuff players, such as Mango and Hungrybox, which generally lead to his defeat. He is also known for his use of several low tier characters, and has been considered one of the four best Melee Mewtwo players (alongside Taj, Leffen, and Zoma) and arguably the best Pichu player in the world. He is also easily unnerved while in a losing position, particularly when the crowd is cheering for the other player or when he starts making tech skill errors, as seen against aMSa at Kings of Cali 4 and against Armada at EVO 2013. During late 2013, after years of not winning a major Melee tournament, Mew2King went on a winning streak which saw him win The Big House 3 as well as almost every other singles event he entered, taking sets off of players who he had seldom defeated in that recent time, including Mango, Hungrybox, and PPMD. This is commonly referred to as "The Return of the King". Mew2King further improved his game in 2016, 3-0ing Armada Smash Summit 2 as well as winning Clutch City Clash and Shine 2016, one of the largest Melee events of all time, as well as other smaller regional tournaments such as Endgame and Apex 2016. He also had one of the most legendary losers' runs in the history of the game at UGC Smash Open: after being knocked into the losers' bracket in round 1 of Winners' bracket by n0ne, he defeated Duck, Mango, Ice, SFAT, n0ne, Leffen, Hungrybox, and Armada before losing to Armada in Set 2 of Grand Finals. Other notable performances in 2016 include 2nd at CEO 2016, 3rd at Smash 'N' Splash 2, WTFox 2 (where he notably 3-0d Hungrybox), and Super Smash Con 2016, and 5th at EVO 2016. In 2017, he defeated Armada and Leffen at Canada Cup 2017, taking home the title. He also won CEO Dreamland, defeating Hungrybox in the process, and took 2nd at Super Smash Con 2017 under Mango. In 2018, M2K took home his first supermajor tournament in almost a decade at Smash Summit 6, where he defeated Armada twice. Later in the year, at Super Smash Con 2018, M2K found himself in yet another Grand Finals against Armada, 3-0ing Hungrybox to reach there. M2K would take Armada to Set 2 Game 10 in what is almost unanimously considered one of the greatest Melee sets of all time. Both players were at near peak performance, but Armada would edge it out to take home his final Melee trophy before retirement. After the release of Ultimate, M2K would focus largely on the new game, essentially "soft-retiring" from Melee. He briefly returned to the Melee scene in October at The Big House 9, defeating iBDW and Hungrybox before falling to Zain and Fiction. Over his career, Mew2King has placed highly on numerous Melee power rankings. He is currently 10th on the 2019 MPGR, and was formerly ranked 1st on both the discontinued Tristate Melee Power Rankings and North Atlantic Regional Power Rankings, 3rd on the Central Florida Melee Power Rankings, and 3rd on both the discontinued Smash Panel Power Rankings and SSBPD. Brawl[edit]In Brawl, Mew2King possessed an extremely deadly punish game with his Meta Knight, able to exploit small mistakes into a huge advantage for him. To provoke opponents into making mistakes, he would often shark and drift to open holes, but will ensure he will not be too aggressive, lest he be punished by foes that capitalize on overextensions. He implements Shuttle Loop into his recovery often, mixing them up with multiple jumps and all of his other specials. He was ranked 2nd on the final Tristate Brawl Power Rankings, and 12th on the 2016-2017 SSBBRank. He was also considered to be one of the best King Dedede players shortly after Brawl's release, and was known to still use the character along with Falco in tournaments where Meta Knight was banned. SSB4[edit]In SSB4, with his use of Cloud, Mew2King retains his signature defensive playstyle, using Cloud's impressive reach to zone out his opponents while charging his Limit Break gauge, and punishing the opponent's mistakes should they approach him incorrectly. He is notorious for using Cloud's Limit Break specials very liberally, instead of saving them for more opportune moments or retaining Limit Break for the increase in movement stats, to the point he sometimes even garners an early KO with them. Mew2King is also a proponent of taking to the air rather than staying grounded for the majority of the match, and going for off-stage edgeguards, even in spite of Cloud's sub-par recovery without Limit Break. However, his excessive Limit Charging can leave openings for other characters to either tack on damage, charge their respective special moves, or spawn an item that can completely change the matchup (such as Diddy Kong's Banana Peel). Like in Melee, Mew2King tends to go for risky, yet very rewarding options in certain situations, which may lead to either character or both characters losing a stock, such as in a match at Apex 2016 against Nietono. Mew2King was initially a Diddy Kong main when the game first came out, heavily utilizing the character's powerful air game to net several great placings in tournaments, and he was considered one of the best Diddy Kong players in the world in the early metagame. However, upon the release of update 1.0.6, which heavily nerfed Diddy Kong and removed his notorious "Hoo-Hah" combo, Mew2King was left unable to play Diddy to the same efficacy that he had before, with him stating he went from being the second best Diddy Kong player to being not even a top 10 Diddy. He tested with multiple characters in the game such as Captain Falcon, Mario, Rosalina & Luma, Mii Brawler, and Donkey Kong attempting to get a new main. Donkey Kong notably got him 3rd at PAX Prime 2015 and 5th at SKTAR 4, leading him to be ranked as a top 5 SSB4 Donkey Kong player on the PGR V3. He popularized the "Ding Dong", a combo involving a cargo up throw into up aerial which can kill at low percentages. Despite his efforts, Mew2King did not feel confident in any character and was doubtful that he would achieve the same success from before the update. He would later go on to say because of this that he was not too fond of SSB4 as a competitive game but thought it was great casually, something he has also said about Smash 64. Upon the release of Cloud as DLC however, Mew2King recanted his statement, picking the new character up as his main, and now being allowed to once again adopt his signature playstyle. Mew2King has commented that "Cloud makes [him] actually love Smash 4", reflecting in his newfound desire to practice the game heavily and better tournament placings in 2016, leading him to be considered one of the best SSB4 players in North America throughout the year. With Mew2King's resurgence using Cloud, he has taken sets off many top players, the most notable being the #1 and #2 players in the world at the time, ZeRo and Ally. At Get On My Level 2016, Mew2King became the fifth player to take a set off of ZeRo in Smash 4 (after Mr. ConCon, Vinnie, Seagull Joe, and Nairo), and the first player to ever defeat ZeRo in a best of 5 set without losing a single game. Mew2King played Cloud for the whole set, while ZeRo played Diddy Kong game 1, and switched to Sheik for games 2 and 3. He also placed 5th at Shine 2016, defeating Larry Lurr 3-0. Mew2King placed highly on numerous power rankings for the game, being formerly ranked at the 0 position on the discontinued North Florida Smash 4 Power Rankings, and 1st on the SoCal Project M and Smash 4 Power Rankings (right below ZeRo on the latter, who held the 0 spot). However, Mew2King was also notorious for dropping out of national SSB4 tournaments to focus on Melee, generally if he was sent to losers bracket early in pools. Tournament placings[edit]Super Smash Bros. Melee[edit]Main article: Smasher:Mew2King/Super Smash Bros. Melee
Super Smash Bros. Brawl[edit]Main article: Smasher:Mew2King/Super Smash Bros. Brawl
Project M[edit]
Super Smash Bros.[edit]
Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS[edit]
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U[edit]
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate[edit]
Controversies[edit]Bracket manipulation controversies[edit]Mew2King has been accused of harming the progression of multiple tournaments in the past, with much of the controversy focusing on three bracket manipulation infractions in Brawl tournaments:
In response to some of these splitting controversies, Mew2King has stated that he was either in a poor mood during the tournament sets, or that he agreed to split because splitting was extremely common at the time, with him believing that splitting money was considered acceptable behaviour; he has stated that he was also not aware that the MLG's ruleset banned splitting. Revival of Melee 5[edit]After some time without major controversy from bracket manipulation, Mew2King caused a significant stir-up at Revival of Melee 5's Melee singles event. Assuming that Dave's modified stupid rule was in effect, as it was with most other tournaments during that year, he counterpicked Final Destination, a stage he had already won on, for his game 5 against Ryan Ford in Winners' Semis. After M2K won the match, Ford expressed his skepticism to the TO, Alukard, who ruled that game 5 was to be replayed. Ford proceeded to win the replay, leading to the following chain of events:
While this controversy started with Mew2King's mistake in his stage counterpick, it is not considered entirely his fault. Many place the majority of the blame on Alukard for forcing the players to replay the match, and some on Ford for not checking the rule until after the game. Trivia[edit]
Gameplay videos[edit]Super Smash Bros. Melee[edit]
Super Smash Bros. Brawl[edit]
Project M[edit]
Super Smash Bros. for Wii U[edit]
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate[edit]
External links[edit]
References[edit]
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