After rewatching the recently uploaded Apex 2014 VGBC Salty Suite’s aMSa vs. CTRL | DJ Nintendo match, I broke the number one rule when it comes to youtube, don’t read the comments. Regardless I decided to pay attention it to it since I like interacting with people interested in smash.

Youtube comment: “Commentators going off on the importance of center stage like they’ve never seen DJ’s Bowser before, even though they have. Platform and edge tricks are how he wins games. Not to say stage control doesn’t matter but this isn’t the match to demonstrate it. Mad props to aMSa, great games.”

Even though I disagreed and wanted to write out my argument, I decided to reach out to DJ Nintendo for a reply since he’s the premier Bowser specialist.

DJ Nintendo: “That’s not true. Bowser taking center stage is definitely imperative and it helps him to approach and perform tricksies. What helps him mostly with his neutral game are platforms. Hence why you never see me fight on Final Destination in tournament. His best stages are Battlefield and Dream Land.

People keep thinking Yoshi’s Story is his best stage when in fact it really sucks for him. There’s no reason to take Bowser to a small stage where he barely has space to do things and Shy Guys who can delay his already laggy moves. People think the stage is good for him because since there are slopes, he can auto grab the ledge with his up-B with ease and doing the M2K jump from the ledge (editor’s note: full jump from edge) under 100% he auto-cancels on the platforms. That stage just makes Bowser fast. It might be a good counterpick against Jiggs.

Bowser isn’t good by the ledge unless he’s the one edgeguarding. His tools make him an amazing edgeguarder. Probably even among one of the best in the game. Although Bowser has options on and near ledge, most of the time its just guess once and thats all you got. Hanging on ledge, his getup attack is fast and has long reach, but its really easy to get around, especially if you crouch cancel it or just respect it. Keep your distance and watch Bowser suffer by still being cornered near ledge, whether he got up safely or he’s still clinging on. If he’s at 100% or more, then its even worse for him to try and get up safely.

Now Bowser has cool stuff like retreating back to ledge with his up-B to be safe sometimes. But then again, he’s back on ledge, which sucks for him. Basically, your neutral game with him has to be your best thing with him or else you’ll never be good with the character and even dream of getting a character near ledge or off stage so you can edgeguard. Bowser has plenty of tricksies and combos in center stage.”

(New Edit: 1/30/14) Here I asked DJ Nintendo to expound on Bowser’s center stage game:

DJ Nintendo:Bowser’s neutral game is pretty lackluster because he’s a severe hit or miss kind of character with his attacks. His moves and movement are really slow. So being able to predict your opponent’s approaches and positioning and having great positioning yourself is ideal in playing the character. Although his neutral game can definitely be remedied by having good mid stage control by using platforms to your advantage. Thus making Bowser’s best two stages, Battlefield and Dream Land, an asset.

Using Bowser’s fair is gonna be your main attack to approach. Bowser has a decent waveland. So you can dash dance a bit, do a quick jump to a platform, do a waveland right before landing on it, then finally slide off with a fair. It can help catch your opponent off guard. If you caught your opponent with the fair and they’re at really low percent, didn’t crouch cancel, and didn’t get knocked down you can end up getting a follow-up grab if you do a regular running grab (not jump cancel grab). If the opponent got knocked down, then you have a tech chase opportunity. If you waveland faired and missed, you have a couple options in case the opponent is coming at you. You can do a preemptive up-B or U-tilt to try and intercept your opponent. Both moves will pop your opponent up. Now you can also block after the missed fair to see if your opponent pressures you. Then up-B the person OOS.

On all the tournament legal platform stages, you can actually waveland on the platforms into Bowser’s down-B and end up grabbing ledge (even on Pokemon Stadium). Another way to put platforms to use is if you’re on one, you can fall off the platform with your up-B in motion and slow down at the last second to fall onto ledge. If you fall off the other way with it, when you land you’ll pretty much have no lag. So you can perform whatever you want. Most people won’t expect you to not have lag from the up-B upon landing. So when a character chases you (lets say Fox) because he sees you landing from the platform with your up-B, you can quickly reverse F-tilt him once you land.

When you have an opponent on a platform, you can mindgame them sometimes into thinking you’re gonna jump on the platform to do a regular attack and instead Koopa Klaw them. Pretty much people end up blocking when in sticky situations. So Bowser can Koopa Klaw their block and can perform combos like forward throw out of Koopa Klaw into short hop or full hop uair or back throw out of Koopa Klaw off stage. So basically almost like any other character, have good dash dancing mixed in with wavedashes and platform movement for offensive and defensive purposes.

Avoid Final Destination. It makes Bowser’s approaches way more obvious and you have no real safe way of getting back down if you get hit or thrown into the air. So a great way for me to show you how to use platforms for approaching and performing tricksies is to watch the Zenith set of me vs. Unknown when I went Bowser (especially the second match).

Zenith 2013 Unknown vs. DJN: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9NaIYFnVgY

He also shed some light on his match with aMSa that weekend:

DJ Nintendo: So I just wanna go over the matchup between me vs. aSMa, Bowser vs. Yoshi. Many people said I got bodied. I understand since it was a 3-0, but the matches were close considering how lopsided it was. The second match wasn’t close. I played really bad that game.

The matchup is almost unwinnable for Bowser. I know the Yoshi matchup really well, even knowing aMSa’s tricksies and whatnot. My knowledge of the game and mind games shows it but the matchup is that bad. Bowser is a straight mindgame character. His moves are slow and you have to make them count or else you’ll get punished or miss a really good opportunity. So a lot of times when I can make a move count, like lets say I read him in a certain situation and went for a fair, I couldn’t go for it because he’ll either DJ cancel it into an attack or parry me if he’s shielding. So that alone removes a big thing for me to go for certain hits, even when I know they’re gonna connect. If I go for them, I get a nice clean hit but then he starts a big combo. So its even more patience from me and making sure I’m constantly putting myself in good positions for defense and offense.

aMSa just goes berserk. He hit my shield like 10,000 times doing DJ cancel approaches lol. That’s how Yoshis usually approach. Ness is a character that does a similar approach as well. Always trying to get people with those8 fakeouts. Despite me reading most of them, Bowser gets constantly shield stabbed and thats what happened to me so many times during our set. Even in the very beginning of the first match, I shielded an attack, he got up-B'ed OOS. He right away went for another attack, I shielded, but then I got shield stabbed. I literally just started using my shield in the match. How do I get shield stabbed so fast?

Bowser’s shield sucks. Thats another thing I have to go through in that matchup. I got shield stabbed by so many moves he did and he got a big combo out of it. Its so easy to combo Bowser too from almost anything. I can’t really do any tricksies or combos to Yoshi. I can’t really even do Koopa Klaws when he shields sometimes because I can miss since I believe Yoshi has a few frames of invincibility when he rolls. Plus I can’t be predictable spamming it either because then he’ll adapt. I definitely can’t edgeguard Yoshi either. Its almost never worth it for Bowser to go off stage to edgeguard a character. So I always gotta respect him and let him come back.Of course, Yoshi can edgeguard Bowser extremely well, but who can’t? Since Bowser is so big and slow too, its tough for me to get down safely from the egg spam, which that also shield stabs easily.

I could definitely beat him in a set with Bowser. Its not completely impossible but its too damn hard considering free hits because of shield stab and one mistake from me gives him too much reward. I only did that exhibition because people wanted to see a dinosaur fight between the best Yoshi in the world and the best Bowser in the world. I had a lot of fun in the set and it was definitely challenging. I love a challenge!

I’m glad everyone enjoyed it and got hype! Of course I would never do that matchup in tournament lol. I would just go Fox Besides, aMSA and I were teaming together in friendlies doing Bowser/Yoshi and were bodying people and having really good chemistry. Future teams?!“

I would like to thank Control Gaming’s own Hendrick ”DJ Nintendo“ Pilar for his time. The 28 year old Bronx native plays Melee, Project M, and Pokemon VGC competitively. He’s also an avid gamer that has a soft spot for old school releases. If you’d like to know about more him and Smash in general, feel free to reach him here: @DJNintendo17