Peach (SSBM)

Peach (, Peach) is a starter character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Announced at E3 2001, it is her first appearance in the  series.

Peach is voiced in Melee with new voice clips by, whose portrayals of her prior to Melee's release were in ' and '.

Currently, Peach is 7th in the A tier in NTSC version and 6th in the PAL version. Peach's float grants her a slew of unique tools in movement and aerial combat. Her ability to stall in place midair grants her the best option coverage in the game with regards to edgeguarding, allowing her to easily react to any opponent’s recovery options. Her float cancel and DJC, combined with her fast aerial attacks, give her a fantastic aerial game and pressuring ability. She also has good chaingrabbing abilities, strong KO moves in her down smash, neutral aerial and forward aerial, and numerous setups to lead into them, which is particularly useful against fastfallers. Her down smash is notorious for its high damage output, capable of dealing over 40 percent in one use if not properly DI’ed, and makes crouch canceling extremely dangerous against her. She is also the owner of Vegetable, one of the best projectiles in the game. Additionally, Peach's recovery is among the best in the game; her float and up special allow her to travel extremely far horizontally, and her Peach Parasol grants her great protection at the ledge due to its large disjointed hitbox.

However, Peach's primary flaw is her slow ground movement and floatiness, which impair her approach, especially on the ground, and she gets easily outmaneuevered by faster characters such as and. Her lack of disjointed range on most of her attacks results in her getting walled out by characters with large hitboxes, most notoriously against, who can easily outspace Peach with her back aerial alone. Peach’s light weight and floatiness also makes her more susceptible to KOs, especially on the upper blast lines.

Attributes
Peach does not fall into any specific archetype of a fighting game character; her attributes are quite varied, with average weight, a low falling speed, and among the slowest dashes in the game, alongside a high air speed. These attributes form the crux of Peach's combat: a focus on aerial combat while forgoing most of her ground-based options.

Peach's primary strength is her dominant air game. Despite a poor SHFFL due to a low falling speed and high jumping speed, Peach's unique ability to float gives her an enormous advantage in the air over other characters; in addition to allowing her to easily and effectively pursue characters she has knocked into the air, her midair jump's unusual properties allow her to utilize the Double Jump Cancel, a technique that allows her to quickly perform aerials in rapid succession. Outside of this, Peach's fast neutral and back aerials make them potent out of shield options. As a further benefit from her excellent aerial game, Peach's vegetables can become a powerful approaching technique compounded with her DJC.

As a result of her powerful aerial game, Peach owns among the most powerful, albeit specialized, approaches in the game. Against primarily ground-based opponents with poor aerial games, such as the or, Peach can quickly overwhelm such opponents. Her vegetables can also allow her to easily camp against other characters, and due to their propensity to "bounce" upon striking other characters, they can be compounded with her DJC to combo either by themselves or with her aerials.

Regardless of her average grab range, Peach also owns a powerful throwing game. Her up throw can potentially chain throw characters with high falling speed, as well as lead into her other throws. Peach's down throw can also lead to a variety of options for herself, including another throw, a tilt, or a DJCed aerial. In addition, her forward throw and back throw can both be used as KO moves, with the former having the highest knockback for a forward throw in the game and the latter allowing her to easily segue into her powerful edgeguard game.

As a final, powerful benefit for Peach, she also boasts one of the best recoveries in the game. With a high air speed, low falling speed, the ability to float, a long midair jump, the ability to recover with her side special and a long recovery special, Peach is extremely difficult to KO off the edges, even with her below average weight. Her fast neutral, up, and back aerials can also act as deterrents to edgeguarders, while her vegetables, if they are in hand during her recovery, can further aggravate such pursuers. Despite this powerful recovery, Peach's low falling speed and below average weight can also allow her to be easily KO'd via the upper blast line, and vertical finishers can more easily KO Peach than other top tiered characters.

Barring her grab and throw game, however, Peach suffers on the ground. Peach's side and down tilt attacks are slow, though good reads by players can potentially allow for her to use them as combo starters. Peach's smashes also suffer from similar problems, though her down smash can inflict significant damage to opponents and shields, while her up smash can potentially act as a potent KO move. A slow dashing speed (the second lowest in the game) also prevents her from easily pursuing opponents on foot, and her various attributes give her the shortest wavedash in the game, preventing her from taking advantage of wave smashing. Arguably Peach's best attack on the ground takes form of her dash attack; the attack can act as a useful combo starter, but barring this, the use of Peach's ground game for approaching should be avoided by players, and instead, they should be used to either continue combos or to finish them.

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

Idle poses
Note: According to the debug menu in Melee, Peach will always perform the idle pose listed first, then will randomly perform any of the idles poses listed below.

Most historically significant players

 * See also: Category:Peach players (SSBM)


 * - One of the Five Gods, and widely recognized as the undisputed best Peach player of all time. Armada was known for his unforgiving punish and edgeguarding game, and for holding positive matchups against almost every other top player despite Peach's relative position on the tier list. Armada is also the only Peach player to have achieved a #1 world ranking, and established themselves as a consistent favorite to win majors.
 * - A Washington Peach main best known for his experience in the matchup (popularizing the use of an air dodge to escape his -to-knee combo), and for defeating  at  in 2012.
 * - A Connecticut Peach who achieved multiple top eight placings while active from 2006 to 2009, including 4th at and 4th at, defeating players such as.
 * - A Peach player originally from Michigan known in particular for his 9th place run at, where he defeated , as well as other top Peach players, including and ; he also placed 7th at  in 2022.
 * - Considered the best Peach main in the post COVID-19 era. His 11th place ranking on the SSBMRank 2022 marks the highest ranking for a Peach main other than Armada. In 2022, he notably defeated, a player known for his prowess in the Peach matchup, as well as #1 ranked . He also has four online set wins vs..
 * - While active, was recognized as the second best Peach main behind Armada, ranked as high as 15th on the SSBMRank 2015, with a notable win over at . MacD was known for his heavy usage of.
 * - Known as one of the best players in Japan during Melee's early years (placing 5th at ), and for his matches with Ken in 2006.
 * - Often credited as one of the inventors of the Peach metagame, Mike G was known for his highly aggressive, combo-based style of play. His best placings included 5th at and 4th at.
 * - A top Peach main in the post COVID-19 era, ranking 23rd in 2022, notably defeating at . They also defeated  twice in late 2021, becoming the first Peach to defeat Hungrybox in an offline tournament set since his rise to dominance.
 * - Known for achieving some of the best Peach results during Melee's early years, including 4th at and 2nd at ; he defeated  at both tournaments, becoming one of the first competitors to set off of the best player of the era.
 * - A Peach main recognized as one of the best players in Europe since 2014. Despite competing in North America less frequently, Trif became the third Peach main (along with Armada, MacD, and lloD) to place top 20 on an annual global rankings, earning 16th on the MPGR 2019 (after defeating at ).
 * - Known as one of the best Peach players in the United States during his prime from 2009 to 2012. His 7th place finish at marked the highest placing at a supermajor for a non-Armada Peach main during the era of the Five Gods; he also notably took a game off of  at.
 * - Ranked 10th on the 2006 Smash Panel Power Rankings (the highest ranked Peach player), with notable results including 3rd at . Vidjogamer is also the namesake of Vidjo-dropping and Vidjo-canceling, two advanced techniques using Peach's Turnips.
 * - While better known as a commentator and for his involvement in The Smash Brothers, Wife first gained recognition as a top Peach player in the United States, with strong results including 7th at, 9th at , and 9th at . With , he also formed a part of , one of the most well-known doubles teams of the era.

Tier placement and history
Due to Peach's great aerial potential and combo ability, she has been a character consistently ranking in the top tiers of the Melee tier list. However, she has generally been regarded as below the other top tiers in terms of tournament viability, due to her slow movement speed and floatiness. During the 2000s, several Peach players, including, , and , were able to defeat top players and frequently, albeit inconsistently, place in the top eight at majors. However, Peach's tournament representation truly shined during 's reign of dominance from 2009 to 2013, where he placed 1st or 2nd at nearly every tournament he entered in the United States, defeating North America's top players with Peach.

However, Peach's tournament viability has always been held back by her extremely unfavorable matchup against Jigglypuff. Armada was unable to take a single game off of Hungrybox's Jigglypuff with Peach from 2009 to 2013, despite being considered a more skilled player at the time. He eventually gave up using Peach to try defeating Hungrybox, and switched to counterpicks such as and, with which he had much greater success. He also brought out the Fox counterpick against other players, such as fellow Swedish player, whom he found it increasingly difficult to defeat with Peach. It is generally acknowledged that Peach's tournament success was largely due to Armada's incredible abilities as a player, rather than Peach being better than the other top tiers. This is supported by the fact that only a handful of other Peach players have been able to consistently place in the top sixteen of majors during the modern era. Following Armada's retirement from competing in 2018, Peach's representation in tournaments dropped significantly.

Today, Peach is generally considered among the least viable of the top tier characters, and is often seen as having the worst matchup spread among all the top tiers. Her lopsided matchup vs. Jigglypuff is considered the single hardest counter among any of the top tier matchups, and she is seen as clearly losing every other top tier matchup (with the exception of Falco). As a result of this perception, she has dropped to 7th on the thirteenth and latest tier list, at the bottom of A tier.

PAL viability
Peach did not receive any changes from NTSC to PAL, but several characters that would years later be placed higher than her on the tier list did; Fox now has a harder time KOing Peach and gets edgeguarded much more easily, Sheik has no guaranteed followups with her down throw and relies more heavily on zoning, and Marth has slightly lower air speed and weight, improving Peach's chances in those matchups. Peach is still ranked 6th in the PAL tier list, but is notably placed in her own tier at B, where most European players can see a noticeable difference in viability between Sheik, Peach, and Captain Falcon.

In
Peach can appear in one-on-one battles, as an ally, on a team with, , , or , or as a metal opponent. Peach is fought on when on a team with Bowser or in the metal battle, at Onett when on a team with Ness, and on Temple when on a team with Zelda. In other cases, she is fought on either Princess Peach's Castle or Mushroom Kingdom II. Unusually, unlike every other Mario character (including sub-series), Peach does not appear as a giant opponent, making her the only Mario character overall that is ineligible for this battle type.

In Adventure Mode
Peach appears in the second portion of Stage 1 along with Mario or Luigi on Princess Peach's Castle.

In All-Star Mode
Peach and her allies are fought on Princess Peach's Castle.

In Event Matches
Peach appears in the following event matches:


 * Event 10: All-Star Match 1: Peach is the fourth of five opponents the player must fight in this series of staged battles. The player's character battles her on the Princess Peach's Castle stage, and their character has 2 stock while Peach has 1. With a timer of four minutes, the player must defeat her and the other four characters one-by-one with the overall time and life the player has:, , , and.
 * Event 15: Girl Power: Peach is one of the opponents fought along with, and . The player's character is tiny and must KO all opponents in a two stock battle.
 * Event 19: Peach's Peril: As Mario, the player must prevent Peach from being KOed by Bowser for 1 minute. If Mario or Peach dies, the event results in a failure.
 * Event 25: Gargantuans: A tiny Peach makes a cameo appearance in this event. She is not required to be KO'd to complete the event, though she can be KO'd without penalty.
 * Event 35: Time for a Checkup: As, the player must KO and Peach in a 1 stock battle. Peach wears her white alternate costume in this event to emulate the white garb traditionally worn by nurses.
 * Event 38: Super Mario Bros. 2: The player must KO Mario, Luigi, and Peach in a 2 stock battle.

Trophies
In addition to the normal trophy about Peach as a character, there are two trophies about her as a fighter that are unlocked by completing the Adventure and All-Star modes on any difficulty with Peach.

Trivia

 * When Peach uses Peach Parasol at the end of the match, she will be rewarded with the Parasol Finish bonus. In addition, if she uses it with the Parasol item, her up special animation will remain the same, but with the Parasol in her hands instead.
 * The animation filenames for Peach's neutral special and down special are swapped, likely indicating that Toad was originally designed as a down special, similar to other counter moves.
 * Peach and are the only characters in Melee who cannot use their down special in the air.
 * Peach is the only character in Melee to be in their own tier (in the PAL version) and also not be ranked first or last.
 * Across the whole series, she shares this trait with the on the NTSC Brawl tier list and  on the PAL Brawl tier list, though she is the only one of the three that is not ranked 2nd.
 * Peach is the only Mario character in Melee, including sub-series and, that cannot appear as a giant character in Stage 5 of.
 * Peach's design in this game, like the rest of the cast, is based on her appearance in the Nintendo 64 era. This is one of two GameCube games to do this, with the other being Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. Her modern design was standardized in Mario Party 4, and has been used in every Smash game since.
 * This marks the only time Peach's Daisy costume is designed to make her look exactly like Daisy, as opposed to simply recoloring her with Daisy's colors, as in Brawl and Smash 4.
 * This makes her the first non-Pokémon playable character to have an alternate costume that changes their appearance completely, rather than simply just the colors of their clothes, although only in this game.
 * Peach,, , , , , and are the only characters whose portraits on the character select screen match their official artwork.
 * Peach is the only fighter in Melee to have new voice clips from an English voice actress. The other fighters with English voices — Mario,, , and — reuse material from previous games.
 * While and Falco have new voice clips from English voice actors, these are only used for the Star Fox Smash Taunt on Corneria and Venom, and their playable appearances use their Japanese voices instead.