Link (SSBM)

Link (, Link) is a starter character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. Announced at E3 2001, Link returns as a veteran character from the previous game, acting mostly the same as before, as a swordsman with powerful short range attacks and a wide variety of long range attacks.

reprises his role as Link in Melee, albeit via recycled voice clips from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Link is ranked 18th in the tier list, in the C- tier, which is much higher than his second to last current rank in the Smash 64 tier list (11th out of 12), and one place below his clone,. Link's placement is due to his low lag aerials (with his neutral and forward air), a good variety of projectiles, several kill confirms, multiple strong tech-chasing options and a very high air speed. His disjointed hitbox also gives him a slight advantage against others, as well as a fully functional shield that can block a wide variety of projectiles. Link is also a potent edgeguarder in the NTSC versions of the game; his Spin Attack is possibly the best semi-spike in the game, though he still has many other options like his notoriously active neutral air. Link, however, suffers from a rather high falling speed and a high weight, making him an easy target for chain grabbing and combos. Although his recovery can be extended, he is still vulnerable to being edgeguarded due to it being predictable.

Attributes
Link generally falls under the "slow, but powerful" archetype of fighter, though many of his attacks are fairly versatile and long reaching. Link has a rather high weight, as well as an above average falling speed and high air speed, an unusual combination of physics for someone of his weight class.

Arguably Link's greatest asset is his range. His sword has a large, disjointed hitbox (though not as large and disjointed as 's sword), allowing him to attack safely from a distance; unlike the duo of Marth and, Link only has one hitbox on his sword, allowing his approach to be considerably less "specific" than either. Additionally, Link has a multitude of projectiles on his Special moves; while the Bow is decidedly situational due to its low range, speed, and power, Link's boomerang and bombs allow him to start combos, continue them, or simply deal damage; the latter also can extend Link's recovery if he slashes them with his Spin Attack.

Another benefit are his variety of useful attacks in his arsenal; a majority of his grounded attacks have good KO potential, including his tilts, with his up tilt having rather decent speed and acting as an excellent combo starter that takes advantage of his above-average air game. Link's air game is solid; his fast, low-lag back, forward, and neutral aerials coupled with his low short hop and high falling and air speeds give Link among the best SHFFLs in the game. Link's boomerangs and bombs also give him excellent zoning abilities, with the former's modifiable trajectories potentially making it a good approach tool as well. In addition, Link has a variety of powerful finishers. All of his smashes have decent power with acceptable start-up and cool-down lag. His forward smash can be extended should the first hit fail to connect, and both his up and down aerials can be potent finishers, especially when combined with his aforementioned SHFFL. In the NTSC regions, Link's Spin Attack is also a deadly edgeguarding technique when used on the ground; its later hitboxes sharply semi-spike the opponent, and if Link can land this attack on recovering opponents, he can quickly and safely gimp opponents. While the attack lost its semi-spike properties in PAL regions, the attack's long range and high power still make it a decent edgeguarding technique.

Link's grab game has a variety of positive and negative attributes; while his grab has a long range, it also has high ending lag. Link's grab also cannot grab opponents in the air, limiting his chaingrab potential. Link's throws, however, have low knockback and relatively high hitstun, as well as low ending lag, allowing Link to potentially string in a few hits against his opponent. Common options include using his down-throw into his spin attack, giving Link a reliable kill confirm vs mid-fallers and fast fallers. His up throw is also useful in several matchups, allowing him to combo into up-tilt and sometimes down-smash vs fast-fallers, and into several aerials vs other characters and high percent fast-fallers. In general, Link's grab has reliably high reward, but is extremely committal and somewhat hard to hit with.

Link's recovery is also considered to be above-average. Link by himself is difficult to edgeguard, as his recovery has a wide variety of options; his wall-grapple can allow him to enter "safe-zones" underneath the ledge, and his spin attack covers the top of him, with his bombs also potentially allowing for some form of recovery if he slashes them with his spin attack. In addition, Link's high weight and falling speed make him rather resilient to the upper blast line, though these attributes impact his horizontal survivability.

A high falling speed and being a rather large target, however, reveals Link's primary flaw: Link is a particularly easy target for chain throwing and combos. Against fast characters, such as or, Link players must read opponents very well as to avoid such techniques; unlike most others, however, Link's only fast move that can potentially break combos is his neutral air, causing him to be rather predictable in these cases. In addition, he is arguably the easiest character for Fox to waveshine, for Falco, shine to down air, as well as one of the easiest characters for Sheik to chaingrab. These major setbacks with three very common characters in tournaments is the main problem. In addition, Link boasts among the worst out of shield options in the game; Spin Attack is relatively slow compared to other up-b's out of shield like 's or 's, neutral-air is large and fairly fast but limited by Link's long jump-squat animation, and whilst Link's up-smash out of shield is very fast, it is easy for opponents to SDI out of and only covers above him. Combined with his grab not being able to hit airborne opponents, Link has some of the worst tools for dealing with shield pressure in the game, especially against Fox and Falco.

Exacerbating Link's ease to be comboed is his poor overall mobility. While still rather fast for a character of his strength, weight and range, Link still has a rather slow, inflexible approach on the ground, due to his slow dash speed, poor dashdance, and short wavedash. Additionally, Link has multiple high-lag attacks, notably his down and up aerial attacks; while this can be alleviated with L-cancelling, they can still be punished, requiring Link players to carefully set up combos and KO moves. Link also struggles to quickly cover space immediately in front of him on the ground, as his grab and down-tilt are both very laggy and his short hop aerials are a little too slow to come out. He also can struggle against crouch-cancelling and ASDI down, as his fastest aerials like back air and neutral air are easily beaten by crouch-cancelling and counterattacking, and some of his strongest combo starters are poor against grounded opponents SDI'ing down, such as his otherwise very good dash attack.

Changes from Super Smash Bros.
In his transition from Super Smash Bros. to Super Smash Bros. Melee, Link received numerous buffs, most of which made him a more potent fighter compared to the previous installment. One of his largest weaknesses, his awful recovery, has been greatly improved as his Spin Attack covers more distance and he now has a grab aerial. When combined with the addition of air dodging, his recovery options now remain fairly diverse. His lighter weight allows him to be more difficult to combo, though he is still one of the easiest characters in the game to combo. Many of his attacks also have decreased ending lag, while some of his other attacks have decreased startup lag. These changes grant him a safer neutral and advantage state, granting him more opportunities to approach while being more flexible to recover from disadvantage states.

However, Link has also received some nerfs: some of his attacks, such as his back aerial, forward aerial, and throws, are weaker, while others are even slower, such as his down aerial, which also heavily suffers from the changes to L-canceling. While his grabs are significantly faster, they also have less range, he cannot grab aerial opponents unless he is right in front of them, giving him less room to fend off opponents.

Nevertheless, he is overall a stronger character than in Smash 64. However, he still heavily struggles against most high and top-tiers competitive play due to the faster mechanics of the game offsetting some of the buffs he gained in the transition.

Ground attacks

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

Aerial attacks

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

Special moves

 * Bow:
 * Boomerang:
 * Spin Attack:
 * Spin Attack:
 * Spin Attack:
 * Spin Attack:
 * Spin Attack:
 * Spin Attack:

Version history
Like other characters, Link received some changes in the PAL version of Melee which slightly nerfed him overall as his spin attack's late hit no longer semi-spikes making it worse for edgeguarding. Despite this, he has a slightly easier time against higher tiered characters due to them also being nerfed and he is currently ranked higher on the current PAL tier list at 16th.

NTSC 1.02 PAL

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

Stats
NTSC

PAL

Most historically significant players

 * Any number following the Smasher name indicates placement on the SSBMRank 2022, which recognizes the official top 100 players in the world in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
 * See also: Category:Link players (SSBM)


 * - One of the first notable Link players, and was the best Link in Japan. Placed 17th at.
 * (#16) - The current best Link player in the world, although better known as a main. Placed 1st at  using Link as a secondary to beat  and . Ranked 1st in NYC Melee Power Rankings and has beaten players such as, , , , and  with Link.
 * - The best solo Link player in the world. Placed 7th at, ranked 3rd in Tennessee Melee Power Rankings. Responsible for many of the earliest comprehensive Link guides.
 * - Once ranked 22nd in SoCal. Placed 17th at, 33rd at , 49th at , and 65th at.
 * - Placed 33rd at and 49th at both  and . First Link player to have been ranked on a global Melee top 100 power ranking list.
 * - Co-mains Link with and is considered the third best Link player in the world. Placed 4th at, 7th at , 17th at both  and , 24th at , and 13th at.
 * - The best Link player of all time and considered the best in the world prior to becoming largely inactive. Placed 2nd at and 9th at  and  with wins over, , and.
 * - Placed 13th at Europe and 25th at both  and . Also discovered many techniques such as Ghost Arrow and Bomb Launching.

Tier placement and history
Link ranks at 18th on the current tier list. Historically, Link has always been regarded as an average to below-average character in the competitive metagame, having most frequently appeared at the thirteenth spot on the tier list. While Link's spacing ability and his above-average air game have been noted, his poor mobility on the ground is widely seen as the reason for his low-mid tier ranking; even Aniki's impressive performance with Link in the Jack Garden Tournament could not move him up in the tier list, and Link's metagame has not become particularly powerful in Melee. In the eleventh tier list, Link was ranked lower than his clone,, for the first time, owing to Young Link's better mobility. There are very few dedicated Link mains in the present metagame.

As part of an April Fools' joke, Link has once ranked sixth on the tier list; in the two days that this version of the tier list was declared official, the Melee Back Room claimed that Link's high-tiered ranking was due to having untapped aerial prowess. While another prediction on the tier list involving eventually came true in the post-Brawl metagame, opinions of Link have consistently been that he is still in the low-mid tier range.

The online Slippi era has notably reignited discussions about Link's viability. This has most notably been the case with 's resounding first place finish in doubles alongside at multiple European tournaments and Aklo's win over numerous other top-level players as solo Link (in addition to his wins over players such as, , ,  and  while using Link as a counterpick). Although Link is still considered to be a mid-tier character, it is more commonly agreed that his strong projectile game and kill confirms off of them give him a competitive edge against many of the higher-tier characters on.

Link can appear in Classic Mode as a solo opponent, an opponent or ally in team battles (paired up with either, , or ), a giant opponent, or a metal opponent. Link will always appear on either Great Bay or Temple with the exception of when on a team with Luigi, where they will be fought on, as well as the metal battle, where, like everybody else, he will be fought on.

Adventure Mode
Link's sole appearance in the Adventure Mode is in the Underground Maze stage. In the stage, the player must find the Triforce in one of six stages; however, five of these stages contain a Master Sword, where the player will fight a Link. While players have the option to skip these matches by merely jumping over the stage, the player receives the "Link Master" bonus if they KO all five Links in the stage.

All-Star Mode
In All-Star Mode, Link and his allies are fought on Great Bay.

Event Matches
Link is featured in the following event matches:


 * Event 3: Bomb-fest: The player chooses any character and must defeat Link and on Princess Peach's Castle. Link and Samus will only use their bomb special moves, and only items that create explosions (such as the Motion-Sensor Bomb and the Bob-omb) will spawn on the stage.
 * Event 18: Link's Adventure: The player uses Link and must defeat Dark Link in a two-stock match on Temple.
 * Event 20: All-Star Match 2: Link is the second opponent to be fought in this series of staged battles. The player battles him on Great Bay, which will transition to the next stage if Link gets defeated. With a timer of four minutes, the player must defeat him along with, , , and.
 * Event 29: Triforce Gathering: The player plays as Link with Zelda as their partner, who each has 1 stock, and must work together to defeat, who has 2 stock, on Temple. Clearing the event allows the player to unlock Ganondorf.
 * Event 34: Seven Years: As, the player must defeat Link in a three-stock match on Great Bay.
 * Event 41: En Garde!: As, the player must defeat Link in a two-stock match on Temple stage.

Trophies
In addition to the normal trophy about Link as a character, there are two trophies about him as a fighter, unlocked by completing both Adventure and All-Star modes respectively with Link on any difficulty:

Trivia

 * Link and Young Link both use the same model for the Hookshot; as a result, it looks larger when Young Link uses it.
 * Link is the only character in Melee to get only 33 frames of invincibility when grabbing a ledge. All other characters get 37 frames of invincibility when grabbing a ledge, however this is due to him being actionable on the ledge 4 frames faster than any other character.
 * Link is one of 3 Super Smash Bros. characters whose neutral special move changed during the transition from Super Smash Bros. 64 to Super Smash Bros. Melee, the others being Ness and Jigglypuff. In the first Super Smash Bros. game, Link's neutral special was the Boomerang; from Super Smash Bros. Melee and forth, he instead uses the Bow (or variants such as the Hero's Bow), with the Boomerang being reassigned as a side special move.
 * Melee is the only Smash game where Link is paired up with another version of him who is technically the same character: in this case, the adult form of the Hero of Time is paired up with his own child form, who is now portrayed here as being his own character. Both Brawl and SSB4 replace the two with the Twilight Princess and Wind Waker versions of Link, respectively, while Ultimate replaces the former with the Breath of the Wild version of Link, brings back the younger version of the Hero of Time, but keeps the latter from The Wind Waker.
 * Despite having his adult form from Ocarina of Time being retired after Melee, the Adult Hero of Time still makes a cameo appearance in Brawl as a sticker (while riding Epona), a trophy in 3DS, and as a spirit in Ultimate (once again riding on Epona).
 * Wii U is the only game where Adult Link does not make any appearance at all.
 * Link's neutral aerial is the only move in the game that lacks a flag for when the hitbox is supposed to end; because of this, the hitbox stays out for longer than it is supposed to.