Ridley (SSBU)

Ridley Hits the Big Time! Ridley (, Ridley) is a playable character in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He was revealed as a newcomer alongside and  during Nintendo's 2018 E3 press conference on June 12th, 2018. Ridley is classified as Fighter #65.

Like in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, and the series, Ridley's voice clips consist of computer-generated, realistic roars and screeches.

Ridley is ranked 60th out of 82 on the current tier list, placing him in the C+ tier.

How to unlock
Complete one of the following: With the exception of the third method, Ridley must then be defeated on Norfair. In World of Light, he is fought on the Ω form of Brinstar Depths.
 * Play VS. matches, with Ridley being the 25th character unlocked.
 * Clear with  or any character in his unlock tree, being the 6th character unlocked after.
 * Have Ridley join the player's party in World of Light.

Attributes
Ridley is a heavyweight character and the tallest fighter in the game, tied for the 13th heaviest character, and possesses the third lowest traction. Ridley has overall good mobility, especially compared to most heavyweights: with two midair jumps, slightly above average walk speed, tied with for the 10th fastest dashing speed, average air speed, air acceleration and gravity, and the 18th fastest falling speed. Ridley also boasts faster frame data than most heavyweights, further setting him apart from them. Ridley's most defining trait is his potent and varied punish game and aerial pressure. With remarkably long range, high power, and decent speed throughout his moveset, as well as a projectile, Ridley is a serious threat once he gets the advantage; with opponents often overwhelmed and/or find it difficult to get in.

His key strength is his strong air game. Boasting overall quick, powerful, long-ranged aerials, and decent air mobility give Ridley overall excellent air pressure potential. Thanks to his additional jump and relatively high fast fall speed, he has superb vertical flexibility, and can use additional jumps or surprise fastfalls to fake out and punish his opponents with his far-reaching aerials. His neutral aerial is arguably his most effective aerial, having low all-around lag, good range, and average knockback. It is a good combo, spacing, and edge-guarding tool, while also being fast enough to break out opposing pressure if positioned correctly, making it among his most commonly used moves. Forward aerial has the highest damage output of Ridley's aerials when all hits are sweetspotted, but it doesn't have the KO power of his other aerials, though this allows it to perform a wall of pain at low percentages. Back aerial is decently quick and has consistently high damage and knockback, making it a deadly KO move especially if used off-stage for edge-guarding. Up aerial is a decent juggling move with decent startup and good KO potential when sweetspotted, but requires opponents to be very close to or above Ridley to land and the hitboxes don't last long. Lastly, down aerial is a stall-and-fall that powerfully meteor smashes opponents when sweetspotted while still having good KO potential when sourspotted, though he is stuck falling for a while and has a lot of landing lag.

Ridley's grounded game is also noteworthy in terms of utility. His neutral attack is his fastest attack (with a 4 frame startup), leading into either a rapid jab with a finisher or a gentleman jab. His forward tilt has good range and low lag overall, while dealing high knockback if sweetspotted, with the low angled version being a reliable two-framing option. Meanwhile, his up and down tilts offer varied potential, with up tilt being a great anti-air that can chain into itself, most aerials, and even up smash, whereas down tilt allows Ridley to combo off from a safe distance and set up punishes or juggles. His dash attack is one of the few to lack a sourspot and has respectable power, however it is only active for 2 frames and has a lot of ending lag. Forward smash has below-average startup and is short ranged, but good damage and knockback and is fast enough to punish whiffs, landings, or be a more situational follow up like off a late hit of a landing neutral aerial. Down smash has slow start up and less raw power, but is disjointed, covers a very large area, hits both sides simultaneously, and physically moves Ridley upwards, making it very useful to punish rolls and slow ledge attacks or to avoid grabs and low-to-the-ground attacks. It is also a notoriously effective punishment option after a successful Skewer sweetspot as it can cover most get-up options. Up smash is Ridley's fastest and most reliable smash attack, being an effective KO move despite being the weakest of his smash attacks, and serves as a very effective anti-air as Ridley's foot is granted invulnerability.

Ridley's special moveset offers a variety options. Plasma Breath is Ridley's projectile: it fires a small, bouncing ball of fire, and can be charged to fire up to five, dealing substantial damage when fully charged and all fireballs connect. The fireballs can also fall when sent off-stage, making them an effective on-stage edgegaurding or gimping tool. However, landing a hit on Ridley's mouth during the move will cause it to deal damage to himself and stun him for a significant amount of time. Skewer is a "high risk, high reward" punishment move that, when sweetspotted, deals extremely high damage and crumples enemies; while situational due to the high difficulty on sweetspotting the move, it puts the opponent in a dangerous position where Ridley can read their reaction. Space Pirate Rush is a command grab with some unique perks: on land, Ridley drags the opponent on the ground, dealing damage in the process; in the air, it causes both Ridley and the opponent to quickly fall similar to 's Flame Choke; it can be cancelled into a throw at any time that puts both Ridley and the opponent into the air; it can cancel itself into a throw upon reaching the edge of the platform; and the aerial version will transition into the grounded version if it reaches the ground. The grounded version has decent KO power at high percents, while the airborne version is weaker and is better suited to sending recovering opponents further from the stage without removing Ridley's own recovery options, or be used as a sacrificial KO like the aforementioned Flame Choke. Lastly, Wing Blitz is Ridley's primary recovery move. It can be aimed in four directions, with the forward input traveling at a slight downwards angle, the backward variant traveling at a slight upward one, and the down variant traveling at a slight diagonal angle in front of Ridley. All Wing Blitz variants have a large ledge sweetspot and have high knockback, with the down input having a meteor smash sweetspot; the down input is also unique in that it can be used at the edge of the stage and grab the ledge as long as the down direction is not inputted for longer, which can let Ridley potentially ledge trump an unsuspecting opponent or send them straight down, depending on their position.

Due to the variety of his kit, Ridley is a jack-of-all-trades. His disjoints are effective against characters with poor range or grab-centric playstyles; his command grab is effective against highly defensive characters; and his projectile is effective against characters lacking projectiles themselves or taking out characters with lackluster recoveries. He hangs very low from the ledge, letting him avoid attacks notable for hitting hanging characters, such as Marth and Lucina's forward smash. Despite so many unique attributes, he has several attributes that fight against him.

While Ridley has many strengths, he also has some critical and exploitable weaknesses. The most notable weakness is his size: Ridley has among the largest, most awkward hurtboxes out of the cast which, combined with his heavy weight and fast falling speed, makes him very easy to combo, juggle, and hit in general. This combined with his lower weight compared to similarly sized characters negatively affects his survivability, as he is often at a considerably higher risk of dying. Ridley's frame data, although good for a heavyweight, is still poor. He has below average startup and above average ending lag overall on his toolkit and lacks a tool fast enough to break combos effectively; this makes him one of the most affected characters by average combo strings and he is rather easy to KO. Ridley's options against projectile users and zoning are virtually nonexistent and he is unable to counter-zone as his own projectile is laggy, travels slowly, are useless against more powerful projectiles, and could even backfire and leave him open to punish if an opponent's projectile hits his mouth. Another major weakness his is recovery, which primarily consists of two, long-startup, predictable moves: Space Pirate Rush and Wing Blitz. The latter only has a couple useful angles and has active hitboxes while in motion, making it very easy to land an off-stage counterattack.

Another critical flaw to Ridley is how drastically his moves vary in quality, which can lead to Ridley becoming quite predictable. While he has plenty of moves offering varying amounts of utility, some of them still have significant flaws; these can range from slow startup (Plasma Breath and down smash), absurd blindspots (up tilt and up smash on some occasions), overly situational and/or strict (Skewer), to being downright unreliable (down aerial). On the other side of the spectrum, some of Ridley's moves like neutral aerial, up smash, down tilt, and Plasma Breath, depending on the match-up, is so favorable that it becomes easy to over-centralize on their use, a detriment to a character that finds the most success in being unpredictable. This, combined with his aforementioned trouble at dealing with fast and/or zoning characters, and with recovering under pressure, makes Ridley one of the most susceptible characters to pressure, as Ridley's disadvantage state makes him easy to overwhelm, and failure to overwhelm or control aggression could force him to take heavy damage or even be KOed outright. His grab game is also poor, with down throw serving as both a combo starter at low to mid percents to a KO through at higher percents. Forward and back throw lack reasonable kill power, even with ideal positioning, and up throw, while being his most damaging throw and a passable kill throw with low ceiling stages, sends opponents too high for any true conversions. Despite down throw being one of his better throws, it is easily affected by opponent's directional influence, further limiting his grab options.

Lastly, Ridley's advantage state, unarguably being very oppressive, is greatly held back by his middling airspeed. Despite possessing an additional mid-air jump and impressive aerials, Ridley has a surprisingly difficult time staying airborne. He generally needs to gain some distance while grounded to approach with his aerials, and while his dash speed is very impressive, it's restrictive regardless, and Ridley lacks the number of jumps that characters like and  have to help circumvent their airspeed issues. Various combos are usually unable to extend in the air for long thanks to this, as his aerials may deal too much knockback to follow up after one or two attacks. This is further shown in his recovery, as Wing Blitz and Space Pirate Rush are usually options he must use to recover, even if Ridley isn't that far from the stage. While Ridley's airspeed is definitely better than most other fellow characters with multiple jumps, it's still merely average compared to the whole cast, which tones down his overall effectiveness in the air, and this is further exacerbated by him being a fast-faller.

Overall, Ridley is a character of extremes with a relatively high learning curve. Similarly to what is among lightweight characters, Ridley fills in the position of being a glass cannon heavyweight. He has excellent damage, pressure, and edge-guarding potential with a broad arsenal of powerful moves and tools to gain and sustain advantage, gradually poke and pressure from a fair distance away, and punish whiffs or what would normally be an inconsequential slip-up. This allows Ridley to easily make comebacks or greatly widen his lead with minimal set up should an opponent make a single error in considering Ridley's approach. However, despite possessing a powerful and highly versatile moveset, Ridley lacks strong options out of disadvantage and generally struggles to oppose pressure from opponents due to his size and the frame data on his aerials and grounded attacks. This makes top tier matchups like Snake and Palutena difficult for Ridley, as they are well-equipped to combat Ridley through oppressive walls of projectiles or strong aerial combos respectively. As such, mix-up heavy playstyles are heavily encouraged when playing Ridley to prevent opponents from capitalising on his own susceptibility as much as possible.

Update history
Ridley received a mix of buffs, nerfs and glitch fixes via game updates, but was buffed overall. Update adjusted the mobility attributes of both Space Pirate Rush and Wing Blitz to varying degrees. However, the only remotely useful buffs among these changes were Ridley incurring less landing lag after jumping out of Space Pirate Rush, and his faster traveling speed during the beginning of Wing Blitz's forward and backward flights. Update was also uneventful for Ridley, since it negligibly buffed neutral, forward and down aerials by slightly decreasing their edge lockout times. Update marked Ridley's first nerf, in which Plasma Breath's shield damage output was decreased as part of a near-universal nerf to projectiles.

However, update marked a noteworthy turnaround for Ridley. Most notably, Wing Blitz has less start-up lag, propels him faster, and covers more distance to the point that it now allows Ridley to recover from the magnifying glass range of the bottom blast line when it is angled upward. Ridley's inconsistent KO potential was also improved noticeably: up smash, back aerial and Space Pirate Rush's edge throw were strengthened, and up aerial's sweetspot became much easier to land thanks to it being enlarged and out-prioritizing the sourspot. Aside from these buffs, up smash became more reliable as an anti-air attack and out of shield option thanks to its additional active frame, and Ridley incurs less ending lag after jumping out of Space Pirate Rush.

Following this, update adjusted Ridley's posture while he is shielding himself. On a related note, a portion of Ridley's wings now possess intangibility when he activates and deactivates his shield, while a portion of his tail also possesses intangibility when he deactivates his shield. While these buffs are minor compared to the ones Ridley received in update 4.0.0, they nevertheless benefit him quite noticeably; Ridley's status as the tallest character in Ultimate previously resulted in him being very susceptible to shield stabbing, even with a full shield.

Update granted Skewer a buff and a nerf, although the former is outweighed significantly by the latter. Its sweetspot deals more damage, making it far more rewarding if successfully landed. However, if Skewer hits an opponent who has grab immunity, it inflicts minimal knockback instead of crumpling them. In addition to making it unsafe as a follow-up from down throw, this change removes Skewer's infamous infinite combo in doubles matches when paired with a character that has a burying throw.

Update improved the consistency of Wing Blitz's downward angled landing hitbox and, as part of a near-universal buff, granted transcendent priority to neutral infinite and its finisher. Update would then buff Space Pirate Rush by shortening the amount of time between its slamming and dragging animations and when a jump and be inputted. Lastly, update improved dash attack's KO potential by increasing its damage output at the negligible cost of its knockback scaling being decreased slightly.

Overall, Ridley fares better than he did at the launch of Ultimate, thanks to his buffs improving his KO potential, recovery and, to a much lesser degree, his defense.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Moveset
For a gallery of Ridley's hitboxes, see here.
 * Ridley can perform 2 double jumps.

On-screen appearance

 * Swoops down at an angle before landing and then roars briefly.

Taunts

 * Up taunt: Roars and strikes a menacing pose, flapping his wings rapidly.
 * Side taunt: Spins in a circle, finishing in a celebrating pose similar to his official artwork.
 * Down taunt: Stands up straight while slightly smiling. His body emits a noticeable crackle as he stands upright.

Idle poses

 * Spreads his wings out and quivers slightly.
 * Caresses his chin with his claw and licks the edge of his mouth while audibly snarling.

Crowd cheer
 

Victory poses

 * Left: Flies into the scene, lands, and drifts to a stop.
 * Up: Flies in from the background then roars immediately before performing a somersaulting claw swipe as he lands.
 * Right: Claws at the ground repeatedly and bites once afterward. He then turns toward the camera and grins. The way the camera is angled makes it appear as if Ridley is supposedly ravaging a downed opponent, but in Team Battles, it clearly shows that he is scratching at the bare ground.

Tier placement and history
Being a widely requested character, there was a lot of hype when Ridley was first announced to be playable. However, initial opinions of Ridley's viability in the E3 demo build were very negative. Due to him having one of the largest hurtboxes in the game while not being a super heavyweight like similarly large characters, along with his attacks suffering from poor frame data, many people claimed that Ridley's disadvantage state was too risky for him to make a significant impact towards the meta. This perception remained in the early metagame, and Ridley was initially considered to be a low or even bottom tier character.

Despite the initial negative perception and below-average representation, dedicated mains have still seen sparks of success with the character. During the early metagame,  notably defeated  at  and was ultimately ranked top 10 in Mexico. Even after the pandemic, Nair^ continued to garner solid results, including a win over at. Although Nair^ has since shifted towards, the post-pandemic meta also saw the rise of other Ridley players such as and , both of whom have taken notable names in their respective regions such as  and , respectively. Furthermore, players began taking more note on Ridley's strengths, specifically his excellent advantage state, which allows Ridley to utilize his range, speed, and power to provide him with a strong and versatile neutral game. These positives has since improved Ridley's perception in the current metagame, and many players such as and  consider Ridley to be a mid-tier, ranking 60th on the first and current tier list.

Most historically significant players
See also: Category:Ridley players (SSBU)


 * - The best Ridley player in the world. Made his first strong start offline with a 7th place at and 13th at both, being the best Ridley results seen at a major and supermajor respectively. Afterwards, he continued to pioneer solo Ridley results with 13th at , 17th at , and garnering notable wins over , , and . He is currently ranked 25th on the OrionRank 2022 Europe.
 * - The best Ridley player in Japan. While his results vary a lot, he has made some impressive solo Ridley runs at supermajors such as 25th at and 33rd at  with wins over  and . His win over  at MaesumaHIT#25 marks one of the biggest upsets relating to the player.
 * - One of the best Ridley players in Japan prior to his inactivity after 2022. He made notable placings at smaller regionals such as 3rd at and 4th at  and larger tournaments such as 13th at  and 25th at  with overall wins over players like, , and.
 * - The best Ridley player in the world pre-pandemic and the second best overall. He gained notoriety when he took a set over at  where he placed 2nd and continued to place well regionally with 5th at both  and . In the current meta, he now co-mains the character with, though has still shown prowess with Ridley with placements such as 9th at , 25th at , and a notable win over . He also won one of the largest online tournaments with  with Ridley as his central character and was ranked 27th on the Wi-Fi Warrior Rank v7.

: It Can't Be! Space Pirates!
Ridley fights characters who pilot their own spaceships.

Credits roll after completing Classic Mode. Completing it as Ridley has  accompany the credits.

Role in World of Light
Although Ridley does not appear in the World of Light opening cutscene, he was vaporized and later imprisoned alongside the rest of the fighters (sans ) when Galeem unleashed his beams of light.

Ridley was one of the many fighters that fell under Dharkon's control upon Galeem's first defeat. He is in the sub-area, appearing on the map in the subterranean section, once the player defeats The Creature & Flea Man spirit.

Spirits
Ridley's default fighter spirit can be obtained by completing. It is also available periodically for purchase in the shop for 300 Gold, but only after Ridley has been unlocked. Unlocking Ridley in World of Light allows the player to preview the first spirit below in the Spirit List under the name "???". As a fighter spirit, it cannot be used in Spirit Battles and is purely aesthetic. His Meta Ridley outfit has a fighter spirit of its own, available through the shop, or by completing a challenge (Smash: Use Ridley's down special, Skewer, for a critical hit on an opponent 4 times within a single battle). Each fighter spirit has an alternate version that replaces them with their artwork in Ultimate.

Additionally, other forms of Ridley make an appearance in a few primary and support spirits.

Alternate costumes
Ridley had two palettes in demo versions of Ultimate that are not available in the final game: a dark, charcoal colored one with orange wings, and a light gray one with green wings, claws, teeth and protrusions. Each corresponds with the colors of Meta Ridley and Mecha Ridley, respectively.

Trivia

 * Due to his debut in August 1986, Ridley is the oldest newcomer in the base version of Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, beating out by one month.
 * With DLC included, he is beaten by.
 * Ridley's model appears to be based on his Super Metroid sprite with additional details and embellishments, some of which loosely resemble his clone's design in . His size is significantly reduced to that of his appearance in the original Metroid for the NES, where his hunched posture is only slightly taller than Samus Aran.
 * Masahiro Sakurai was reported to have heavily based Ridley on his depiction in the original Metroid, specifically how his sprite appeared hunched over even while flying.
 * Ridley's fighter tagline, "Ridley Hits the Big Time!", likely references his exclusion in previous games due to Sakurai's prior perception of him being too large to implement as a fighter.
 * Sakurai stated in a Nintendo Dream Magazine interview that Ridley was added because of his popularity on the Smash Bros. Fighter Ballot.
 * Ultimate marks Ridley's debut as a playable character in any capacity.
 * Ridley's pose in his official artwork resembles 's pose in his official art for Super Smash Bros. 4, albeit mirrored.
 * His animated reveal trailer is the first time since Ridley's role in the Metroid manga where Ridley has displayed a sense of humor, playfully twirling the hat of a defeated when revealing himself to  while grinning.
 * The way Ridley twirls Mario's hat is a callback to Mario doing the same in the beginning of 's reveal trailer.
 * The part where a attacks Ridley while he is near a stunned  resembles a pivotal point in his boss fight in  in which the Baby Metroid saves Samus from Ridley by leeching some of his energy. On an extended note, Pikachu and Samus teamed up to fight Ridley in The Subspace Emissary.
 * The moment Ridley appears in his introductory trailer resembles his appearance in  just before Samus fights him. This includes the way Samus looks at the screen, Ridley's reflection in her visor, his entrance animation, and the music's timing.
 * On a similar note, the zoom-in on Samus' eyes during this scene shows her irises jittering in a state of panic, indirectly referencing the scene where Samus ends up freezing up from PTSD at the sight of Ridley's clone at the end of Chapter 17 of Metroid: Other M, and to a lesser extent, a similar reaction from Samus regarding Ridley himself in the Magazine Z prequel manga to Metroid: Zero Mission.
 * Ridley (and by extension, Meta Ridley) is the second Super Smash Bros. boss character to become playable in the series after Giga Bowser, and the only boss character to be playable at all times, as Giga Bowser is limited to Bowser's Final Smash. He is also one of the only two stage hazards to become playable in the series, the other being.
 * There was an error on Ridley's page on the Latin American and Canadian French versions of the Super Smash Bros. website. The reveal trailer videos were unavailable, with the Latin American version mistakenly linking to a Japanese  video. This has since been corrected.
 * Ridley is the only playable character from the series whose animations are mirrored.
 * Masahiro Sakurai stated in an interview that Ridley's down taunt is among his favorite taunts in Ultimate.
 * Due to his eyes being yellow by default, Ridley is the only character in Ultimate to not receive a significant eye color change after obtaining a Smash Ball or upon perfect shielding.
 * Although 's default eye color is also yellow, his eyes turn red in these circumstances.
 * When zooming in behind Meta Ridley's wings, his right wing does not fully connect to his back.
 * Ridley's damage meter portrait protrudes downward the most out of every fighter.
 * Strangely, Ridley has code for gliding, despite the mechanic not returning from Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Ridley himself not being playable or cloned from a playable character in Brawl.
 * Upon further inspection, the code is identical to 's, which has been carried over since Brawl. This suggests that Charizard was used as a template for some aspects of Ridley's implementation as a fighter.
 * Ridley is the one of few characters who has only two knockback voice clips (with the others being the and ) and one blast KO voice clip (with the others being  in the international versions,, , the s, , and.
 * When Ridley receives damage, he may assume a pose similar to 's flying pose.
 * Ridley and appear in the most Legend-rank spirit battles as the main opponent, at a total of four.
 * Specifically, Ridley appears in the Omega Ridley, Dark Emperor, Ender Dragon, and Bahamut ZERO spirit battles.
 * When counting ally spirits, he appears in the most Legend-rank spirit battles, at a total of six.
 * Ridley and are the only newcomers who were not shown being added to the panoramic group artwork. This does not include, who was featured on the artwork when it debuted.