Ganondorf (SSBM)

Ganondorf (, Ganondorf) appears as an unlockable playable character in Super Smash Bros. Melee. His model is directly taken from his appearance in the , which is itself based on his appearance in his original Gerudo form from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (being the only playable character in Melee to have his model taken from elsewhere). Ganondorf is a clone of , and as such, he fights in a brawler style similar to Captain Falcon, but in a slower, more powerful manner.
Ganondorf is voiced by , with most voice clips being reused from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Ganondorf currently ranks 14th in the C+ tier on the Melee tier list, which is his best placement in the series. Ganondorf boasts extreme power, good reach, decent chaingrabbing ability, and very useful aerials, including the strongest meteor smash in the game in his down aerial. He also has several effective edgeguarding options including the aforementioned down aerial, both the strong and weak hitboxes of his up aerial, and his back aerial. 
Nonetheless, Ganondorf has extreme flaws to counteract these great strengths as well. He has a bad neutral game due to his poor dash dance and lack of non-committal approaching moves, forcing Ganondorf players to rely more on reads and baits, and the punishes that come with them. However, Ganondorf is also very susceptible to punishes himself, as he is easily comboed and chaingrabbed due to his size and weight, and is very easily edgeguarded due to his very predictable (albeit long) recovery; however, the latter would be among the worst should the aerial Wizard's Foot be absent during the process. He is also vulnerable to projectiles and has few ways to deal with characters that outrange him or have very fast attacks. While Ganondorf has notably good matchups against all characters historically tiered lower than him, and also on a few high-tiers reliant on wavedashing for movement, he struggles to maintain ground against top-tier characters, such as and . Although he is often considered to be a non-viable pick at the highest level of play, a handful of players have shown Ganondorf can get close to the final rounds of major tournaments.
==How to unlock==
Ganondorf must be defeated in battle before he can be unlocked. There are two ways the player can encounter Ganondorf:
*One way is to complete Event 29: Triforce Gathering. If the player fails to defeat Ganondorf, they can re-fight him by completing the event again.
*Another way is to play 600 VS. matches. If the player fails to defeat Ganondorf, they can re-fight him by playing another VS. match to completion. If this method is used, fighters with lower VS. match quotas must be unlocked before Ganondorf can be fought.
Upon meeting either requirement, Ganondorf is fought on , with the track "Great Bay" playing.
==Attributes==
As a slower, larger clone of Captain Falcon, Ganondorf sacrifices speed for power and range. He is often considered to be the most powerful character in the game, boasting as many as sixteen KO options. This is counteracted by his poor mobility, as he has the 6th slowest dashing speed, the 3rd slowest air speed, and a rather short and slow wavedash. However, he possesses techniques that can partially circumvent his low speed, such as the Moonwalk, a great platform-dashing game, and one of the fastest and longest rolls.
One of Ganondorf's most notable strengths is his extreme power and damage output. His up smash, though laggy, is the strongest in the game if fully charged and both hits connect. His neutral special, Warlock Punch, and his notorious up tilt are two of the slowest moves in the game (the latter is the slowest), but can KO as low as 30%. His down aerial is both the strongest aerial attack and meteor smash in the game; it is notoriously difficult to meteor cancel regardless of damage percentage and is nearly impossible to recover from, even at low percentages, and can reliably star KO some grounded characters under 100%. Ganondorf's powerful attacks are counterbalanced by their slowness, but although most of his aerial attacks have long periods of landing lag, Ganondorf is perhaps the character that benefits the most from L-canceling, as it allows him to effectively combo other characters.
Despite Ganondorf's extreme power, he does not suffer from poor combo ability due to the knockback in his attacks, as he manages to retain some of the excellent combo ability from his clone. His aerials flow very well into each other, and when L-canceled, he can chase his opponents and land a follow-up despite his poor air speed. Due to his benefit from L-canceling, a low short hop, and decent falling speed, Ganondorf has a good SHFFL. The core of Ganondorf's combos lie in his grab game; despite a rather poor grab range, his throws have immense versatility, and his up and down throws are excellent launchers, as well as effective chain-grabs. His forward and back throws can also set up edgeguards.
Ganondorf's greatest strength, however, is his superb edge-guarding game. Despite his poor air speed, he is one of the best edge-guarders, with more aerial guarding options than any other character in the game; all of his aerials deal high damage and knockback and are guaranteed to knock foes offstage; his down air is an extremely powerful meteor smash, and Wizard's Foot is a non-recoverable spike. In particular, his sourspotted reversed up aerial (performed while facing away from the edge) is one of the best gimping moves in the game because of its long duration, range, semi-spiking knockback (hard to tech out of) at a 20° (rear hitbox) or 0° (rear bottom hitbox) trajectory with gravity following suit, extremely high hitstun, and cannot be DI'd due to its low knockback.
Ganondorf's major weakness is his poor approach and neutral game. Although his weight and quick falling speed enables him to live longer, they also make him highly susceptible to combos and chaingrabs. His mobility and approach are ultimately crippled by his short, relatively slow wavedash and poor dashing and air speeds. A lack of a projectile also makes it difficult for him to break opposing camping. He also has a very poor dash-dance, as it is among the shortest in the game and leaves him vulnerable to being camped or rushed down. Additionally, he lacks safe moves that allow him to approach noncommittally. As a result, Ganondorf is dependent on punishing opponents through reads and baits.
Ganondorf is also regarded as one of the most easily edge-guarded and edge-hogged characters in the game. On paper, he has a long, extendable horizontal recovery, thanks to his down special, Wizard's Foot, which is one of the only two specials that allow the character to regain their midair jump (the other being Falcon Kick, but is considered inferior to Wizard's Foot because of how much farther downward it travels and Captain Falcon's higher falling speed). Ganondorf's aforementioned abysmal air speed prevents him from efficiently moving off-stage, and his mid-air jumps fail to give enough height to reliably recover offstage. This makes edgehogging very threatening if Ganondorf is positioned poorly offstage.
Overall, Ganondorf is a powerhouse; with some of the strongest moves in the game, he can easily KO the entire Melee cast at very lower percents with his powerful moves. All that's holding him back are his unimpressive mobility and prediction-reliant neutral game, requiring players to play a bait-and punish style to try and land his powerful moves while being careful not to get attacked himself.
==Differences from ==
Ganondorf struggles more often than Captain Falcon due to his slower mobility and a weaker combo game, causing Ganondorf to be more prediction-reliant when approaching and having more difficulty in competing with faster characters like or . However, Ganondorf boasts noticeably stronger attacks, a more dangerous edgeguarding game, and greater reach. He also has no sourspots on his attacks barring his forward tilt, and still retains a few of Captain Falcon's good combo starters, enabling him to still have an good combo game. Despite being designed as a "slower" Captain Falcon, almost all of Ganondorf's moves have the exact same frame data in terms of start-up and ending lag, although all his aerials do have much higher landing lag. A few of Ganondorf's moves also have different knockback angles, usually toward vertically rather than horizontally. Finally, Ganondorf has more electric effects in addition to darkness on his attacks, with only one move (up tilt) using flame.
===Attributes===
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===Ground attacks===
*Neutral attack:
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*Forward tilt:
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*Up tilt:
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*Down tilt:
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*Dash attack:
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*Forward smash:
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*Up smash:
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*Down smash:
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===Aerial attacks===
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*Neutral aerial:
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*Forward aerial:
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*Back aerial
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*Up aerial
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*Down aerial:
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===Throws/other attacks===
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*Down throw
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===Special moves===
*Warlock Punch:
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*Gerudo Dragon:
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*Dark Dive:
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*Wizard's Foot:
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==Version history==
NTSC 1.01 addressed some oversights and bugs with Ganondorf, fixing glitches where he performs a second jab with a Bunnyhood equipped and no longer being considered grounded when using Dark Dive on the ground. The startup lag on the second hit of his neutral aerial was also increased to match the move's animation which had the side-effects of reducing it's ending lag and making it autocancel later.
The PAL version of Melee nerfed two of Ganondorf's aerials, with his forward aerial no longer being a reliable KO move (although it can combo into itself better), and his down aerial dealing less knockback and damage (while still remaining the strongest meteor smash in the game.)
NTSC 1.01
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==Moveset==
For a gallery of Ganondorf's hitboxes, see here.
===Stats===
NTSC
PAL
===Announcer call===
File: Ganondorf Announcer SSBM.wav
===Taunt===
===Idle pose===
===Crowd cheer===
 	Cheer (International)	Cheer (Japanese)
Cheer 	 	
Description	Gaaa-non-doorff...! 	Ganondorf! *claps 3 times*
===Victory poses===
==In competitive play==
===Most historically significant players===
:See also: :Category:Ganondorf players (SSBM)
* - Ganondorf main from NorCal well-known for his eccentric playstyle which focuses heavily on technical skill such as moonwalking, as well as unusual move choices like the Volcano Kick and Warlock Punch. His best supermajor placements include 25th at and 33rd at and has set wins over and . Additionally, he infamously beat fellow Ganondorf main Eikelmann 3-0 in a best-of-5 Salty Suite exhibition during .
* - Chicago-based Ganondorf who showed impressive results with his placings at multiple Major League Gaming events from 2004 to 2006 and other tournaments such as 5th at . Considered the best Ganondorf player in the world during this era, ranked 9th on the 2001-2003 RetroSSBMRank and 25th on the Smash Panel Power Rankings.
* - Considered one of the best Ganondorf players in the world around the mid-2010s alongside Bizzarro Flame, placing 25th at and and beating top players such as . Entered an indefinite hiatus following allegations of abuse by former partners and his ban from competition in Colorado.
* - Widely regarded the best Ganondorf player of all-time. A long-time Ganondorf player who boasted the best results of the character throughout most of the competitive history of Melee, placing 3rd at where he double-eliminated and 5th at and into the late 2010s, continued to show the character's strengths at supermajors such as 17th at both and . He has been one of the only Ganondorf players to be consistently present on global rankings, peaking at 34th on the 2013 SSBMRank and last seen 95th on the 2019 MPGR.
* - The best Ganondorf player in the post-Slippi era. A player who decided to play Ganondorf in order to help with his representation in the metagame, placing 9th at and 13th at . His 44th on the SSBMRank 2023, the best Ganondorf ranking since Kage's peak in 2013. He was banned from competition after controversies relating to hate speech he posted on social media.
* - Along with Kage, he was one of the strongest solo Ganondorf players during the late 2000s. Placed high at early CEO events and 33rd at . The technique known as Tech Check was formerly named after him. Became semi-active before being banned from competitive play due to sexual misconduct allegations.
* - Florida Ganondorf main mostly active in the mid 2000's with high placings at . Known for popularizing the utility of as a semi-spike, which led to the technique sometimes being referred to as the "Tipman spike."
===Tier placement and history===
Historically, Ganondorf has been considered a high or mid-high tiered character, having fluctuated between 8th and 12th for the first eleven tier lists. Although Ganondorf's great power and strong punish game enabled him to maintain a more powerful presence in the early metagame, this was due to players being less experienced with the character and defensive counter play was less developed. With a better understanding on how to check Ganondorf, his ground with the rest of the cast began to falter, and his flaws became more exacerbated due to Ganondorf players being unable to fend off fast-paced and careful approaches from characters like and . and have developed vastly improved counterplay on his chaingrabs, with the former now considered to win against Ganon. As a result of the metagame shifts favoring against him, Ganondorf's tier placement faltered. This is reflected in the most recent tier list where he is ranked 14th, the lowest he has ever placed.
==In Single-Player==
===In ===
Like and , Ganondorf does not appear as an opponent in the game's Classic Mode, though he can appear as an ally in Team and Giant battles. Despite this, Ganondorf does have an introduction image for the "Now Loading..." screen between matches in the game's files.
===In Adventure Mode===
Upon being unlocked, Adventure Mode makes no concessions to Ganondorf whatsoever.
===In All-Star Mode===
In All-Star Mode, Ganondorf and his allies are fought on Brinstar Depths. Unusually, the music remains unchanged.
===In Event Matches===
Ganondorf is featured in the following event matches:
*Event 29: Triforce Gathering: As and teamed with Zelda, the player faces Ganondorf on the Temple stage. If the player has not yet unlocked Ganondorf upon completing this event, they will have the opportunity to do so after defeating him one-on-one.
*Event 49: All-Star Match Deluxe: Ganondorf is the final opponent the player must fight in this series of staged battles. The player battles him on , and their character has two stocks, while Ganondorf has one. With a timer of four minutes, the player must defeat him and the other five characters one-by-one with the overall time and life the player is given: Dr. Mario, Falco, Pichu, , and Roy.
*Event 51: The Showdown: The final event match pits the player against a team of Giga Bowser, , and Ganondorf on the Final Destination stage, without friendly fire, and all four characters having three stocks apiece and unlimited time.
===Congratulations Screens===
GanondorfClassicMode.jpg|Classic Mode
GanondorfAdventureMode.jpg|Adventure Mode
GanondorfAllStarMode.jpg|All-Star Mode
==Trophies==
In addition to the normal trophy about Ganondorf as a character unlocked by completing as Ganondorf on any difficulty, there are two trophies about him as a fighter, unlocked by completing and All-Star Mode respectively as Ganondorf on any difficulty. Each of the trophies can also be unlocked by playing 100, 200, and 300 versus matches respectively as Ganondorf:
==Alternate costumes==
				
				
==Gallery==
SSBMWebsiteGanondorf1.jpg|Fighting and on Temple.
Ganondorfbmove.jpg|Using Warlock Punch on on Princess Peach's Castle.
SSBMWebsiteGanondorf3.jpg|Using his neutral attack on on Pokémon Stadium.
Ganondorfbdownmove.jpg|Using aerial Wizard's Foot on on Temple.
Ganondorfbupmove.jpg|Using Dark Dive on on Jungle Japes.
Ganondorfbforwardmove.jpg|Using Gerudo Dragon on .
==Trivia==
*In the 1.0 version of Melee, if Ganondorf had a Bunny Hood equipped, he would during his neutral attack, an apparent leftover from Captain Falcon's moveset. This second jab had no hitboxes however, and was removed in the subsequent versions of Melee.
*Despite being a rather poor jumper, Ganondorf has the highest ledge jump in the game, jumping higher than his more agile counterpart, Captain Falcon, and even (who has the highest normal jumps, and the second highest ledge jump).
*Ganondorf's AI is infamous for its extreme level of dominance when fighting other CPUs, where it’s been observed that a level 9 CPU Ganondorf will win the majority of the time against every other level 9 CPU, even against level 9 Luigi (who is normally considered the best CPU character against human players). As such, when AI tournaments are held, where players choose a CPU character to represent them, there are usually limitations on choosing Ganondorf, such as charging a higher fee to pick him.https://www.reddit.com/r/smashbros/comments/3jap9v/the_largest_level_9_cpu_tourney_ever_has_just/
*Ganondorf is tied with the for the world record in the Home-Run Contest. Ganondorf is also the only character that can break the max distance in the Home-Run Contest without the use of a glitch or Action Replay (the Ice Climbers have to utilize the freeze glitch to break the max distance).
*When Ganondorf's trophies are viewed under the "night"/"dark" background in the Trophy Gallery, his eyes glow. He is the only character whose trophy holds this trait.
*Ganondorf's hand is briefly seen during Link's montage in the introduction to Melee, making him one of the five hidden characters, along with , , , and , to have some kind of involvement with the intro.
*A voice clip with Ganondorf saying "Ooya!" only appears in Melees Sound Test. This clip was reused in Brawl as his Wii Remote selection sound, despite Ganondorf's design and voice actor changing to that of Twilight Princess.
*Ganondorf's Ocarina of Time voice clips that were used in Melee do not have the filters that made them deeper and gruffer. In Ultimate, where he has all new voice clips by Takashi Nagasako, the tone of Ganondorf's voice is closer to the one Ocarina of Time had.
*Ganondorf is the only clone whose original character () is from a different series.
**Sakurai did not plan to include Ganondorf as a playable character in Melee, only including him later in development because a model was already provided and his body had a very similar build to Captain Falcon's, allowing him to be easily added on as a last minute clone of Captain Falcon.
*Alongside fellow fighter , Melee marks Ganondorf's first playable appearance. Both would eventually become playable characters outside of Smash in .
*Not counting Donkey Kong and Mario, as they have been both a protagonist and antagonist, Ganondorf, along with Bowser, are the first two playable antagonists in the Smash franchise. 
*Strangely, in his challenger approaching screen, Ganondorf appears to have no cape, more closely matching his design in the promo art of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
*This is the only time in the series where Ganondorf is ranked higher than a low/bottom tier.
==References==
==External links==
*Ganondorf's page at Smabura-Ken (Translation)
 
Category:Trophies (SSBM)
es:Ganondorf (SSBM)