Super Smash Brothers Melee is a better competitive fighter than Super Smash Brothers 4.

This debate it extremely fun for me, and I assume it is for my opponent as well. First of all, character viability. I feel this is the most important topic to discuss in this round so I will put more emphasis on this section. I believe opponent didn’t fully read it when I mentioned “speed”. It wasn’t just ground speed I referred to. I referred to “Whether it be on the ground running across the stage, in the air maneuvering over the battlefield, or in their attacks, punishing opponents for the simplest mistakes, those faster than the rest naturally became top tiers. ” Opponent mentions Jigglypuff, Falco, and Peach as counters to this. Jigglypuff was who I was specifically referring to for aerial maneuverability, as her air game is one of the strongest in the game. She has a great air speed and can recover from pretty much anywhere horizontally due to her multiple jumps and Pound. Falco has speed with his attacks and combo game. One hit from his shine can often guarantee tons of % damage on the opponent. He has fast options and combos, and has one of the highest fall speeds in the game, making his combos even faster. Even Icies and Samus can be considered fast, as Icies have the second longest wavedash in the game [1], and Samus has her super wavedash [2]. Opponent might bring up Luigi and Mewtwo as being relatively low tier yet still fast, but they’re low tier for their lack of options against other top tiers (apart from M2’s FD chain grab, I’ll go into chain grabs later). One thing to note though is my opponent’s saying “A skilled Roy can beat a good Fox. ” This is true at lower levels of play. However, when it comes to the best of the best players, Roy has little to no chance. This is due to many factors, such as fall speed and lack of a tipper compared to Marth, to name a few. In low tier matches, this won’t matter too much, as the Roy can still chain grab spacies and combo them easily due to his fast fall speed and similarities to Marth’s chaingrab. However, in higher levels of play, Marth is clearly superior. If the player knows how to space and utilize Marth’s WD and combos, Marth will be a far better pick as he deals more damage with tippers, has a longer wavedash, higher jump for multiple aerials in one jump (SH double fair namely) and can overall deal with the spacies better. Roy has no tipper to easily deal with spacies and spacing and has to get up close and can result in getting chain grabbed and punished greatly due to his high fall speed. So while yes, “a skilled Roy can beat a good Fox”, at higher levels of play, at near equal skill level, Fox will almost always win, further demonstrating fighter inviability at top level competitive Melee. In Sm4sh EVO, for comparison, the top 8 used 10 different characters. [3] This isn’t really something I’ll spend too much time into in future rounds, because no matter how opponent tries to argue this, it’s obviously true that Sm4sh offers player and fighter variety and viability that Melee cannot, despite low tiers placing high such as Samus (and the only reason Samus can is because of her zoning ability and punishes VS Fox/Falco, with nearly every other character she cannot perform as well. In the top 8 at EVO for Melee, Armada, Mang0, PPMD, and Leffen used Fox or Falco for at least 1 match). It's an uphill battle and it's a waste of text space to try and argue it. 2. Informational Wall/Combos/Patience Tying this into one category cause I felt the need to. I’ll start out with Hungrybox and compare him to Mango. Hungrybox plays extremely defensive and waits for opportunities for his opponent to punish, similar to S4. Mango goes all in on his opponents, with his aggressive ability he is easily able to deal tons of damage to his opponent. The reason Mango doesn’t like Hungrybox (even Leffen doesn’t like him to an extent) is because of his playstyle. In fact, in EVO Grand Finals 2015, Armada VS Hbox, on Yoshi’s Hbox repeatedly falls down and grabs the ledge, waiting for Armada to approach him, while Armada was laser camping on the other side. Hbox explains this as “playing to win”, and I’m sure the same can be made for Armada. Apart from going totally against the fast nature that my opponent describes normally, both players are waiting it out. Why? Because they know aggression won’t win all the time, and this is very similar to S4. As opponent mentions, Hbox’s tech is not the best, and he uses Jigglypuff to win. Why? Because Hbox uses patience as opposed to huge tech, again, representing the nature of a fighting game, and this is what I think opponent fails to understand. You do not need to employ fancy combos that last for 5-10 seconds that can’t be broken out of, what you need is patience, and Hbox waiting for the right time to strike embodies this. He will probably never come close to doing anything Mango or Leffen can do with Fox. But he still has patience, and even on a character like Jiggly, that can win him games. While the crowd may not like it compared to what Melee normally is, it’s a necessary part of fighting games, and as patience is more of the major focal point of a fighting game. Also, opponent commonly mentions the lack of combos. While there nowhere near as many "true combos" and more of combos that can be broken out of, this does not mean AT ALL that combos are not present. While these combos are not true, and DI, airdodging, and teching are all applicable to some, Sm4sh thrives off of read based combos. In the video I linked, it shows some combos, most of which are not true, rather, it employs reactions to certain teach, reads based on airdodges or rolls, or even some true ones to further extend these combos. Combos in Sm4sh are not one huge hit, which is what opponent points out quite frequently. Rather, Sm4sh has many, smaller hit combos that have the potential to chain into larger ones. . http://www.youtube.com...PatchesIt is my fault that I said "Melee has had no patches" as it is untrue. But I neglected to note the different versions of Melee simply because I thought we were referring to specifcally the NTSC version, as a majority of this debate is about the competitive sides of both games, and the competitive side of Melee primarily takes place in the USA, with very little elsewhere. I know Heir II The Throne was a huge European tournament recently, but that had many problems associated with it, unfortunately. However, HII's not relevant. In regards to support from Nintendo, while Nintendo has supported Melee this year, let's not count out the events Nintendo did to raise awareness for Sm4sh, such as the Invitational at E3, where top players such as ZeRo and Hbox were invited to test out Smash 4. No such event existed for Melee, nor has Nintendo made any attempt to showcase something with top players. So while Nintendo has supported Melee, S4 is undeniably receiving more support as of now. Online The reason Brawl still had a community despite bad online was because it left too much to be desired. Opponent mentions some of the problems with S4 online, and they were amplified a ton in Brawl. "Terrible connections and laggy fights", to be precise. The difference between S4 Online is superior is because the online is actually PLAYABLE. Either with friends or for glory, connections have vastly improved. Even with P2P connections, S4 still has surprisingly good connections. Opponent does mention lag, which is a common issue, as well as the lack of a ranking system. In For Fun, it doens't matter as much as it's, well, for fun. For Glory however, I admit, is hurt with the lack of a ranking system. A decent alternative, however, is the ranking system on smashladder. com, which opponent mentioned in his argument. It's a wonderful tool that helps by creating a ranking system in which other people can play online and face each other, which is pretty important. Smash 4, also, still retains those 1v1, person to person connections at tournaments. They aren't gone because of online. Rather, online allows for another medium for people to test their skill against other players and learn new tricks. Tournaments are a separate entity altogether, and they still retain those internse player to player connections. That's all for my argument this round. Over to Pro. [1] . http://supersmashbros.wikia.com...[2] . http://www.ssbwiki.com...[3] . https://www.reddit.com...