How to Style in Super Smash Bros. Melee Guide – Part 1



Written by Bizzarro Flame

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Acknowledgement

2. Introduction

3. Terminology

4. Your Mindset

5. Your Opponent’s Mindset

6. The Timing of the Match

7. Applying Advanced Techniques

8. Using Underused Moves

1. Acknowledgement

I would like to thank all of my subscribers for helping us reach 115 subs for this goal. For those who are not aware, I set a sub goal of 115 for our Twitch for writing this guide to styling. Again, without your help and enthusiasm, I would not be here today writing this guide or even streaming. Even for those who cannot afford a subscription to our channel, I thank you for your continued support and for following me. No matter the amount of subscription, I will always have fun with the viewers just as I have since the beginning of this stream. Special thanks to sdAshkon for helping me in every aspect, especially in public relations and streaming.

I would also like to thank Mango for being one of the stylish smashers while being one of the best players in SSBM. My dream to both win and style has been heavily influenced by examples set by Mango due to his stylish nature.

2. Introduction

Hello everyone including fellow SSBM players! I assume that you are reading this guide in order to learn the art of styling in order to impress as many spectators as possible while making your opponent not just salty, but feel disrespected. For those of you who do not know me, I am a professional Ganondorf main in Super Smash Bros. Melee (SSBM) who is known for styling on his opponents and for providing dank quality stream at twitch.tv/bizzarro_flame.

I cannot guarantee that you will win because of your path to style, but I can guarantee that you will be given a lot of brownie points by spectators and possibly the stream if you choose to opt in for the stylish options rather than the mundane, bread and butter (BnB) options.

Again, some of you may ask again: “Why would I want to style when I could be winning by choosing efficient options instead of reading this ultra DANK guide?” Well, my response is that you should learn how to give the people what they really want and, more importantly, to have even more fun with this game, depending on your goals and personality. Also, you may already know how to style well using your own creativity and hard work, but there is still deep layers of styling that you may not have thought about since there is a lack of guides on styling.. Therefore, I advise you to read this guide to figure out whether you are maximizing your style and, of course, disrespect.

Unlike my previous guide, I will cover more theories than execution, so bear with me and try your best to think critically. I really hope you get to appreciate how much work it takes to set up and execute styling by the time you read this, as well as learning how to style.

3. Terminology & Acronyms

I will order the terminology and acronyms under alphabetic order. I have used these terminologies in this guide in order to make it easier for both the readers and myself.

1. SH = Short Hop

2. N-air = Neutral Air

3. F-air = Forward Air

4. D-air = Down Air

5. B-air = Back Air

6. Up Air = Up Air

7. DJ = Double Jump

8. FF = Fast Fall

9. SHFFL = Short Hop, Fast Fall, L-cancelled Aerial

10. Collision Hitbox = Collision bubbles that describe the area of an object or character that the character interacts with.

11. Full Hop = Full Jump

12. Joystick = Control Stick

13. DI = Directional Influence

14. SSBM / Melee = Super Smash Bros. Melee

15. F-tilt = Forward Tilt

16. F-Smash = Forward Smash

17. D-Smash = Down Smash

18. Up Smash = Up Smash

19. D-tilt = Down Tilt

20. Up tilt = Up Tilt

4. Your Mindset

You have a choice right now: the red pill (Play to Win in Melee), the blue pill (Play Melee Casually), and the purple pill (Play to Win and Style in Melee). If you take the purple pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the style and disrespect hole goes.

If you have chosen to adopt styling into your gameplay, then I congratulate you. It is a very fun and challenging way of playing competitive SSBM, and not only will you possibly become favored among the crowd to win, but you will also have the possibility of gaining a great amount of fame on different online multi-media platforms (Reddit, Smashboards, Facebook, etc.).

But it’s not only the choice you must make in order to successfully and consistently style, but it’s also your mentality. You have to get into the mode of styling by turning your brain into a work of art. In other words, you must think of styling so much to the point where you think about styling during the stressful event of playing your tournament matches or even friendlies.

There are two methods of preparing to style, both of which you should apply: long-term preparation and short-term preparation. For the long-term preparation, this applies before you play any of your matches. Just imagine yourself in multiple scenarios and think to yourself “How do I want to style in this specific situation?” For the short-term preparation, this applies to when you are in the middle of a match, and you are quickly imagining what you can do to style in the immediate situation. Of course, the short-term preparation is a lot harder because you are in the heat of the moment and your stress level is higher than long-term preparation.

Further, do not forget that as much as you have to think about how you can style in a specific situation during the match, you also need to execute your moves correctly. The best way to achieve this is to put your style into use during friendlies against smash friends, when you have a lot of time to test out your stylish theories and execute them. Another way is to practice against computers in the 20XX pack because computers have random DI, but, of course, this is an inferior method of practicing because you want to read your opponent’s mind, as discussed in the next section.

Most importantly, you have to want to style! If you don’t feel the excitement come to you when you are about to style and/or when you finish styling, then perhaps a focus on style is not for you. It comes from deep within your heart, and when your heart really wishes, then what you desire usually comes true including styling. Therefore, your mind and heart should be the same in order to become a master of style.

5. Your Opponent’s Mindset

Just as important as your own mindset, understanding and exploiting your opponent’s mindset is crucial! You have to take many factors into account within a short amount of time.

For example, when you are in the middle of a match against your opponent, you need to recognize whether the momentum is in your favor or in his/her favor. By recognizing this, you can sense whether your opponent is likely focus enough or not in order to figure out when the perfect time to style is. In other words, the less your opponent is focused and nervous, the more your execution of your style is against your opponent. Another example is your opponent’s habits, especially DI habits, in order to execute flashy punishments and creative combos against your opponent.

I think the best method of understanding your opponent’s mindset, including feelings, would be to apply the popular saying: “put yourself into the shoes of another.” Either before the match or during the match, you would immediately have to ask yourself what you, yourself, would do in your opponent’s situation. If you guessed correctly, then you finished half of your job as styling, and all you have to do is to execute your style plan.

There is just so much about your opponent’s mindset that cannot be covered in this section, so it is up to you to train yourself to understand and exploit your opponent’s mindset in order to set up stylish moments for yourself!

6. The Timing of the Match

The timing of the match can make a huge difference, in general, depending on what type of opponent you are playing against such as cool or nervous under pressure. There are three different scenarios concerning the timing of the match: 1) When there are equal amount of stocks, 2) When you have less stock(s) than your opponent, and 3) When you have more stock(s) than your opponent.

The general rule is that during the second scenario, your opponent will be more confident, so your opponent is more likely to not fall for your tricks and apply Combo DI (usually DI away in order to avoid getting combo’d) more efficiently. During the third scenario, your opponent will be less confident and more nervous, so your opponent is more likely to commit error in his or her spacing and apply Survival DI (usually DI up and towards in order to reduce knockback as much as possible).

So, what does this mean? This means that, in general, you are more likely to be able to style during the third scenario (when you have more stock(s) than your opponent) because you are able to use less efficient moves in order to punish your opponent’s neutral game and/or apply unconventional combos in order to punish your opponent’s Survival DI. And, of course, you will be generally more comfortable in choosing riskier moves when you are ahead of your opponent.

Therefore, be aware and mindful of the timing of your match in order to have a better idea of when to style on your opponent.

7. Applying Highly Advanced Techniques

It should be apparent that at this point of the competitive scene, general advanced techniques such as Teching, L-Cancelling, and Wavedash should be BnB. However, it is possible for highly advanced techniques to be considered stylish when executed correctly due to its high level of difficulty to pull off, especially in the middle of a tournament match.

Applying a highly advanced technique for either a set-up for a punishment or a punishment can be very exciting for the audience to watch and your opponent to appreciate. One good example is multi-shining an opponent’s shield when up to the point where his or her shield breaks. Another good example is executing a platform-cancelled b-air during a combo that leads into another hit.



Westballz Applying Multi-Shine Shield Pressure



TAS Mario with Platform-cancelled N-air into a F-Smash

Of course, I cannot practically cover every highly advanced technique in this guide. Just experiment with different highly advanced technique and apply them at different scenarios to see how stylish people would perceive them to be.

8. Using Underused Moves

This is probably the most important section of the entire guide. Usually, the most style points come from the use of underused moves for either comboing or the neutral game.

In general, the amount of style for executing a certain underused move depends on two general factors: 1) startup lag time of the move and 2) hitbox size of the move (or specific hitbox of the move). The startup lag time often denotes how difficult it is to land the move itself. Ganondorf’s Up-tilt and Roy’s Fully Charged Neutral B are prime examples of this. This means that charging your smashes leads to more style points, especially fully charged smashes. The hitbox size of the move (or specific hitbox of the move) also often denotes how difficult it is to connect the hitbox. Sheik’s sweet spot for her Charged Up-Smash is a great example of this.

Of course, there are a lot of other factors that add even more style points such as whether the move looks flashy itself (i.e. Captain Falcon’s knee), whether it has meteor smash or spike capabilities (i.e. Ganondorf’s Down-B), and a lot more.

For this section, the best way to train yourself to use these underused moves is to apply these moves in different scenarios as much as possible whether in training mode or training against your friends. Remember to experiment!

Continue to Part 2!