Mario (Super Smash Bros. X Zone)

**Mario** (マリオ, *Mario*) is a playable character in *Super Smash Bros. X Zone*. He is described to be the most well-balanced character in the game being easy to be picked up and played with recommended to First-time players who are joining the game.

## Attributes

Like in the majority of his games and spin-offs, Mario is intended to be a balanced character in terms of attributes, possessing average walking, dashing and falling speeds, air acceleration, gravity and weight. However, he also has high air speed and jumping force, but low traction. These balanced stats do not give Mario the edge when it comes to overall movement, but they nevertheless make him adept at most situations where a key attribute is needed to gain the advantage, which when combined with his very quick frame data, grants Mario a very effective neutral game. As a result, despite his attributes implying a jack-of-all-trades type of character, Mario is more of a rushdown character in practice.

Thanks to his incredibly quick attack speed, he has a formidable close-range game, as few other characters like Baxter and Zero are a match for this speed. His fast attack speed allows him to consistently apply pressure to the opponent, and he's capable of quickly racking up damage once he gets the momentum, which is easy to do so on characters that cannot match his attack speed without getting heavily punished for it. Excluding his forward smash, forward aerial and special moves, all of Mario's moves have fast startup and low ending and landing lag (the latter in the case of his aerial attacks). All of his grounded moves are prime examples of his quick frame data: his neutral attack is his fastest move and an overall effective way to rack up damage, along with handy combo capabilities, while his up and down tilts are very effective combo starters that can help rack up plenty of damage, and the former easily chains into itself at low percentages, as well as being hard to escape. All of his smash attacks are excellent KO options, as they can reliably KO at high percentages without being endlag-heavy; his forward smash has the highest power of all of his smash attacks when sweetspotted, down smash is a semi-spike, making it useful for forcing opponents offstage, and up smash is very hard to punish due to its speed, power and the fact it grants intangibility on his head.

Mario's aerial attacks are also very useful in many cases. Neutral aerial is a sex kick that can be useful in edgeguarding or for breaking combos. Back aerial has the longest reach and the highest knockback of Mario's aerial moves, allowing it to space effectively and reliably KO offstage. Up aerial's extremely quick startup, vertical launch angle and lack of sourspots let it combo into itself or other moves, on top of letting it easily break combos and setup the aforementioned. Down aerial is a great anti-juggling move that can also KO if used near the top blast line. It also benefits from frame cancelling, as its moderate landing lag is reduced, allowing for potential follow-ups. Finally, his forward aerial is a meteor smash with high base knockback for one, making it great for gimping all but the farthest reaching of recoveries.

His special moveset is highly varied and has plenty of uses. Fireball is a projectile with decently long range. It can be useful in the neutral game or in edgeguarding, thanks to its disruptive knockback, along with very useful chances to disrupt direct approaches. Super Jump Punch travels in a controllable diagonal direction and grants moderate distance, making it good at recovery. It also has intangibility upon startup, allowing it to be used out of shield very effectively. Due to its extremely quick startup, it is also a useful combo finisher, especially near the blast line. On the other hand, Cape reverses opponents, with the induced disorientation often being enough to allow a free hit or efficiently gimp a recovery, which aids in edgeguarding opponents. It is also a powerful reflector, making it highly useful in matchups against projectile-heavy characters, such as Mega Man. Star Spin allows him to hit the opponent multiple times in a row and KO them at high percentages and a good recovery maneuver.

Another valuable strength of Mario is his grab game. Even though his grab reach is only average, his grabs are among the fastest in the game, and his pummel is moderately fast and can rack up quite some damage before throwing the opponent. His forward and up throws have the same overall use: they send the opponent at a disadvantageous position, where Mario can capitalize on their mistake. His back throw is by far his strongest throw and can reliably KO below 150% near the ledge on any character, and even earlier with rage. Finally, his down throw is a notorious combo starter. It can repeatedly lead into up tilt at low percentages, or down tilts to regrab on fast fallers or heavyweights and rack up at least 20% in the process. Alternatively, it can lead into neutral attack, forward tilt, down tilt, up smash and down smash at low percentages, as well as neutral aerial, up aerial, down aerial and Super Jump Punch at medium percentages. Finally, and due to the favorable angles his moves send at, his tremendously quick frame data and his extensive amount of combo starters, Mario's combo ability is among the most reliable in the game, and it is also worth noting that seven of Mario's moves can lock (forward tilt, neutral attack's first two hits, Fireball, down aerials landing hit, and neutral, forward and back aerials (the former and latter being usually effective when sourspotted, though a majority of them are only usable at low percents). This makes it almost always imperative for Mario's opponent to tech all attacks at low percentages when needed, otherwise Mario can capitalize on the opportunity, and tack on unavoidable massive damage in the process.

Despite Mario's slew of pros, he does have some weaknesses. Most characters are able to outperform him in various areas: notable examples include Bax2 having a more versatile combo ability, Baxter having better mobility, Homer Simpson having higher power right off the bat and Spyre having larger reach. In particular, the latter two are his main weaknesses: his KOing ability is largely inconsistent, with very few guaranteed KO set-ups, and all of them being hard to confirm. While much of his moveset can get the job done, there is a noticeable gap in power between his strongest moves and his other ones, with this meaning he'll usually have to rely on his sweetspotted forward smash, up smash, down smash's back hit, or back throw to score kills, which are all further compounded by the poor reach of his attacks. As such, he cannot afford to get predictable, especially with the existence of stale-move negation. His lack of reach also prevents him from fighting at a safe distance and consistently forces Mario to approach characters. This leads into having some difficulty against characters with large or disjointed reach, though fortunately, these types of characters tend to have significantly slower attacks than Mario, meaning that this tends to be the least of his worries. Lastly, his recovery is limited and fairly linear, making it rather easy for the opponent to anticipate where he'll land, though it should be noted that Mario's high air speed, Capes reflecting abilities, and the invincible Super Jump Punch makes him surprisingly difficult to gimp.

Overall, Mario has many clear strengths, and very few glaring weaknesses. Despite being intended as a jack-of-all-trades character, his very quick speed overall and largely reliable combo ability allows him to get the edge easily against most characters, as it is hard to escape from him once he gets to combo the opponent, while being easy for him to escape and regain the advantage.

## Moveset

### Smash Attacks

 Down Smash |  | 10% (front), 12% (back) | Mario perfroms a breakdance kick around both sides.

## Misc.

 **Idle poses** | * Moves his head from left to right and holds his fist in front of his face.
 **Victory pose 3** | Does a short spin-jump and lands in a strong-man pose. It originates from his "character chosen" animation in Super Smash Bros.