User:Yellow/AFD 2023/Mario (SSBM)

Mario (, Mario) returns as the most bog-standard starter character in Super Smash Bros. Melee that could ever have been conceived. He was announced at E3 2001. He also has a clone,, who is a superior character by almost every metric and should be played instead unless you enjoy suffering.

Mario is portrayed by Chris Pratt, albeit via recycled voice clips from Chris Pratt's other movies.

Mario is ranked 15th out of 26 on the current tier list, placing him in the C+ tier. This is very similar to his previous ranking in the original Super Smash Bros. arcade game, where he is ranked 7th out of 12. Overall, he adjusted his placement on the tier list as much as Chris Pratt adjusted his natural voice to portray Mario. He remains a well-rounded character with average attributes across the board: passable comboing ability, okay throws, a serviceable projectile in Fireball, and decent edgeguarding, especially with his Cape, which can "easily and efficiently" gimp opponents who haven't faced Mario since the early 2000's and have no idea that it was part of his moveset. But unlike in the movie industry, being average in everything won't cut it in Super Smash Bros. Melee for the Nintendo GameCube. Mario simply doesn't have the X-factor needed to stand out in a cast filled with top-tier talent. Most notably, he doesn't have a truly reliable finisher or recovery and has about the same amount of range as his voice actor, leaving him vulnerable to being gimped or zoned out by characters like. He is also outclassed by his clone and brother, who actually have solid playerbases and don't induce spectators to fall asleep watching them. Overall, Mario has average matchups in tournament play; he can spend hours stomping low-tiered characters such as Koopa, but competitive players will unfortunately have to spend years of their life even coming up with a plan to beat the actually good characters as him.

Attributes
If it was your lifelong dream to become Mario in Smash, then we're sorry to disappoint you, unless you wanted to play the most boring character of all time in a game where you can kill your opponents with giant sword swings and electrified knees. In terms of weight, falling speed, air speed, size, and dash speed, Mario fails to stand out at all, being decidedly average in everything. That is, unless you share 's garbage balancing philosophy where he thought that everyone in Melee should be balanced around Mario... before eventually deciding to ragequit and steal Melee: SD Remix's characters instead. An unforgivable action, of course, but an understandable one, given that even he was driven insane trying to make everyone in Melee as monotonous as Mario.

One of Mario's strengths is unfortunately his rather decent combos; he has plenty of low-lag and low-knockback tilts and aerials that he can string together. While mildly effective, they unfortunately have the dubious distinction of being some of the blandest-looking combos among the entire cast, having absolutely no cool visuals whatsoever besides a flame effect on his forward smash sweetspot that you're probably not going to hit against a real opponent. You could do a Mario combo that no one has ever seen before, and it could be the most technical combo that the character has ever used, and your region's tryhard will still hype up your local laundromat more than you ever will when he takes your last stock with yet another stomp to knee, leaving you questioning why you decided to pick this game up in the first place.

Mario is also pretty good at edgeguarding, but most of his options, predictably, aren't flashy. Nice projectile in Fireball. Nice lingering neutral aerial. Nice back air. Wonder where we've seen all that before? The one saving grace in Mario's edgeguarding kit is his Cape, which is absolutely hilarious in many different ways. It is hilarious in execution because reversing the direction of your opponent's recovery without even a hitsound and watching them awkwardly and helplessly fall to their doom is peak comedy, and possibly the biggest middle finger you could ever give to a recovering opponent. It is also conceptually hilarious because you would think that Mario would use his cape feather power to actually fly for his recovery and make it not horrible, but he uses it to troll his opponents instead, truly the apex of sportsmanship from Nintendo's mascot and most honorable combatant.

The last of Mario's decidedly above-average traits is his grab game. His down throw is the bane of all mains everywhere who thought they were the ones in control of matchup knowledge in your match, being able to execute a chaingrab that is somehow even more of a snoozefest than 's chaingrab into a likely KO. His up throw can also chaingrab, , and , but good luck actually getting that grab or consistently killing them off it. This is particularly notable because these instances will also be most of your clips in your overedited Mario combo video, so there will be more pressure on you not to screw it up lest you lose 15 precious seconds of ad revenue on your montage.

Mario, however, suffers from serious KOing problems, with a dearth of powerful or reliable finishers outside of his smash attacks. His forward aerial can be meteor canceled in Melee (because isn't instant meteor cancel such a fun mechanic) and has exorbitant ending lag, making it high-risk for low reward. His other moves don't quite hit the mark, either- it's very telling that his best kill setup against floaty characters is down throw to neutral aerial. Most of Mario's KOs will come from routine, boring edgeguards where he clips some poor Fox or gets some random spot dodge to down smash at 150%.

Mario's approaching game is also below-average, contrary to what early 2010's SmashWiki editors would want you to believe. The truth of the matter is that Mario's "average-at-everything" attributes, especially his lackluster range, make it a complete pain to get in on opponents, particularly the higher-tiered characters, and there are no two ways about it. In fact, the previous description on this page read exactly like a high schooler in English class who didn't do any actual research to justify their statement "Mario also has an above average approach" and just made up complete BS when asked to articulate their point of view by talking about bouncing fireballs. One might even come to believe that Chris Pratt himself contributed to this article with how similar his mannerisms were during the Mario movie teaser with Jack Black.

Mario also suffers from a below average recovery due to his refusal to actually use his Cape to fly, but rather only awkwardly stall him in the air for a split second. Super Jump Punch is probably Mario's most awkward- and pathetic-looking move, covering very little distance and being prone to interruption, while Mario Tornado can only grant vertical distance if you are a literal god of button mashing. He can wall jump to improve his recovery on certain stages such as Fountain of Dreams, but the opponent will likely see this coming from a mile away and simply edgehog Mario without a second thought.

Overall, Mario is just ok, I guess. But "okay" doesn't make you a good character in Melee, and "okay" is not what people come to Melee for. While spectators and pro players alike worldwide will bask in the electrifying energy of a supermajor Top 8, embracing the obscenely high level of skill, mindgames, movement, and overall quality of play on display, all leading up to that decisive moment where the last player standing is crowned, Melee Mario and his playerbase of 10 smashers will forevermore continue to bore the world while not even placing consistently in their region.

Changes from Super Smash Bros.
Mario's dream to become a more competitively viable character in Melee faced one critical challenge. And that is, he had to contend against his diabolical enemy, which was not actually anyone else on the cast, but rather the development team of Melee as a whole. He could not have been adjusted by a more perfect combination of buffs and nerfs from the supremely talented Masahiro Sakurai, who ensured that despite all the changes made to Mario, he would still end up with around the same viability and be the most boring, middle-of-the-road character in the entire game. In a way, he and his voice actor share the same fate, because no matter how much fancy makeup and effects Hollywood puts on Chris Pratt, everyone watching knows it's literally just the same him.

Mario's adjustments overall made him a "faster but weaker" character. He gained a solid wavedash from the introduction of air dodging, which helped his grounded movement, and most of his moves have less startup and ending lag. Due to this, and the introduction of Cape to his moveset, Mario's off-stage game now actually resembles some sort of functionality. On the other hand, he lost a significant amount of power, with some of his moves even gaining notable sourspots that make his KOing ability more inconsistent. It certainly didn't help that he gained a new meteor smash that replaced a previous move in the only game where meteor smashes are wildly inconsistent, but I guess they really liked the animation and just didn't bother to fix Mario's after making Dr. Mario's version actually good.

This is all a shame, because was also in Smash 64 and they gave him almost everything he needed to not only succeed but stand out as a character as a whole. Why they failed to do that with Mario is completely unknown, but given what Sakurai did to his own creation, one can't help but imagine that the soccer enthusiast just takes some sort of sadistic glee in selectively making characters miserable.

Aesthetics

 * He also has a slightly darker skin tone, and his hair and shoes are a much darker brown color.

Ground attacks

 * Neutral attack:
 * Forward tilt:
 * Up tilt:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Forward tilt:
 * Up tilt:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down tilt:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Dash attack:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Forward smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Up smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:
 * Down smash:

Aerial attacks

 * Neutral aerial:
 * Forward aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Forward aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Forward aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Back aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Up aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:
 * Down aerial:

Throws/other attacks

 * Grabs:
 * Forward throw:
 * Back throw:
 * Forward throw:
 * Back throw:
 * Back throw:
 * Back throw:
 * Back throw:

Special moves

 * Fireball:
 * Cape:
 * Super Jump Punch:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Cape:
 * Super Jump Punch:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Cape:
 * Super Jump Punch:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Super Jump Punch:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:
 * Mario Tornado:

Version history
Mario was nerfed in the PAL version of Melee for some absolutely insane reason that we at SmashWiki cannot even begin to comprehend.

NTSC 1.01 PAL

Moveset
For a gallery of Mario's hitboxes, see here.

Tier placement and history
Very early in the Melee metagame, when few players actually played the game competitively, Mario was considered one of the best characters in the game, ranking as high as 5th on the first tier list. This could be attributed to literally everyone being absolute dogshit at the game. As the metagame advanced, however, people finally realized how ridiculous other characters' tools are and that being mediocre at everything, shockingly, doesn't actually make a character good. This caused Mario to slowly slip down the tier list as time progressed (read: immediately), as well as lose significant placing in large tournaments. Eventually, (under the alias "Scorpion Master") was the only person who placed anywhere significant with him, but despite his good record in low-stakes money matches where his opponents probably threw to some extent to feed the Scorpion Master illusion, he rarely placed high enough to earn money from playing Mario, getting 25th at Apex 2010 despite literally being the best player in the world at the time.

On the current tier list, he ranks 15th place in the C+ tier; on the other hand, his clone and semi-clone, who were somehow once considered worse than Mario, have far surpassed him. Despite the tier differences, some players, most notably, believe Mario could potentially be better than Dr. Mario. However, none of these claims should be taken seriously because Shroomed is simply jaded from having his Dr. Mario camped out relentlessly by and the NorCal scene, causing him to view Mario with rose-tinted glasses because his Mario probably never shared the same fate. The harsh reality of the matter is that Mario is so mediocre that good players don't respect him enough to actually camp him in important matches, because it doesn't matter when they can win anyway and also have fun while doing so.

If you're still not convinced, reckon with the fact that while Luigi and Dr. Mario have strong playerbases with frequent rising mid-tier heroes in the top 100, dedicated Mario mains usually instead ragequit the character when they realize that playing Melee Mario is not a productive use of their time. Eat your heart out, Shroomed.

Most historically significant players

 * Any number following the Smasher name indicates placement on the 2019 MPGR, which no actual full-time Mario main would have ever actually reached.

See also: Category:Mario players (SSBM)


 * - yikes
 * - A notable Mario player in the United States, whose uncreative tag embodies the complete monotony of playing Mario at a competitive level. His tag is so uncreative, in fact, that there is literally a SmashWiki user with the same name. Placed 9th at and 13th at.
 * - A braggadocious Mario player whose tag is a reference to the number of Koopas he stomped in the original Super Mario Bros. arcade game at his local laundromat. Later switched to, making his tag completely nonsensical in the process. Placed 25th at . Has wins over and.
 * (#3) - Once "mained" Mario under the tag "Scorpion Master" before realizing he was trolling the wrong game as Scorpion is not a playable character in Melee. Utilized Mario as an occasional counterpick, particularly against.
 * - Former best Mario main in the world when literally no one played the game (much less Mario in it). Placed top 6 at a few Tournament Go events.
 * - Another Mario player with an uncreative tag befitting of the character, stealing the moniker wholesale from Eminem. Later made the correct decision to switch to Captain Falcon. Placed 17th at and 25th at  and.

In Classic Mode, Mario can appear as an ally in team and giant fights (that you would never want), a solo, team, giant, multi, and metal opponent. In Mario's appearances, he either appears on Princess Peach's Castle or Rainbow Cruise. On a team with Bowser, he appears on and with Peach, he appears on Mushroom Kingdom II; during the battle against Mario + Bowser on Battlefield, the stage will play the Mario Bros. movie teaser by Chris Pratt and Jack Black.

Adventure Mode
Mario is one of only two characters who can appear twice in Adventure Mode, alongside his brother Luigi, because a character as bland as Melee Mario needs every little bit of help standing out.

In the game's Adventure Mode, Mario gets carried by against the player in the second part of the first stage, taking place on Princess Peach's Castle. If the player finished the previous segment, Mushroom Kingdom, with the remaining time registering 2 in the seconds digit, his younger brother will take his place in a cutscene that will trigger right before this battle, which has Luigi stomping on Mario's head to get to the top of the castle, just like how he stomped over Mario on his way to a higher placement on the tier list.

Later on, in the second half of Stage 11, Metal Mario will fight the player's character on the Battlefield stage, where he functions as simply a Mario permanently under the influence of the Metal Box item, a buff that he probably would have needed on his base character to compete meaningfully anywhere in Melee. If the player unlocked Luigi, Metal Mario will be joined by Metal Luigi, and they both team up on the player, making for a harder fight due to the presence of a better character.

All-Star Mode
In All-Star Mode, Mario and his allies are fought on Rainbow Cruise, because the only way you would lose to an AI Mario with a better character is to SD on an autoscroller.

Event Matches
Mario is featured in the following event matches:
 * Event 1: Trouble King: In the most predictable first event match of all time, the player plays as Mario and fights against on.
 * Event 10: All-Star Match 1: Mario is the first opponent to be fought in this series of staged battles. The player battles him on, which will transition to the next stage if when Mario gets defeated. With a timer of four minutes, the player must defeat him along with , , , and Bowser.
 * Event 19: Peach's Peril: Mario must protect Peach from a slightly larger Bowser on, even though in Melee, this would very clearly be the other way around. Both Mario and Peach have 1 stock each while Bowser has infinite lives.
 * Event 22: Super Mario 128: The player chooses any character and must endure the torture of listening to 128 tiny Marios' KO sound effects on Mushroom Kingdom II.
 * Event 25: Gargantuans: A scenario designed as a homage to movies and their various tropes. On the Fourside stage, with unlimited time, the player plays as a giant-sized Bowser (as "Godzilla") with 1 stock against a giant-sized Donkey Kong (as "King Kong") with 2 stock. A tiny Mario and a tiny Peach are also present in this match, who usually gets KO'd in one hit. It is a wonder how Universal didn't try to sue Nintendo again for making this reference given how weak  was in this game.
 * Event 31: Mario Bros. Madness: The player chooses any character and must fight Mario and in a two-timed match on . The player must have more points than Luigi (well, Mario too, but that's usually a given) within the two minutes to clear this event.
 * Event 38: Super Mario Bros. 2: The player chooses any character and must defeat Mario, Luigi, and Peach in a two-stock match on Mushroom Kingdom II. Both the characters and the stage are a direct throwback to the original Super Mario Bros. 2, an NES sequel to Super Mario Bros. It is a little-known fact that this event match was actually designed to be unwinnable, but they substituted Mario for Toad at the last minute and removed the blatantly overpowered Toad from the game, thus unintentionally making it feasible.

Trophies
In addition to the normal trophy about Mario as a character, there are two trophies about him as a fighter which both try to downplay his mediocrity in gameplay, unlocked by completing both Adventure and All-Star modes respectively with Mario on any difficulty:

Trivia

 * Mario's Up Special attack is the only Up Special move in Melee that allows the player to break out of their freefall.
 * A taunting Mario with a Super Mushroom in Giant Melee Mode is the largest possible character size that can be achieved without hacking.
 * Mario's taunt is the second longest taunt out of all the characters, the longest one being 's.
 * If the Master Hand glitch is used in an event and sets a record, the score is shown on Mario.
 * In the PAL Version, Mario's weight was decreased from 100 to 98. This has been carried over into future installments.
 * Mario's taunt also expands his hitbox size. Getting hit during the taunt animation causes Mario to automatically transform to back to his normal size.
 * Mario,, , , , , and are the only characters whose portraits on the character select screen match their official artwork.
 * Mario, Peach,, and  are the only fighters with English voice actors in Melee.