In Project M, I play Marth, a sword-wielding character that excels 1) on the ground, 2) when his opponent is around the tip of his sword, or 3), when his opponent is above him. However, Marth is very strategically weak 1) above his opponent or 2) when knocked off stage.

Marth’s splendid sword.

James plays Mario. Mario has a fantastic fireball projectile that 1) forces Marth into the air to approach Mario and 2) is great for keeping Mario away from Marth’s sword. Mario also can throw out a Cape that reverses horizontal momentum, resulting in easy kills when Marth attempts to recover back onto the stage. James’s strategy was to run to the edge of the stage and spam fireballs, forcing me to approach unsafely from the air. This made it easy for him to throw me off the stage, and prevent me from recovering back onto the stage with his momentum-reversing Cape.

Mario’s stupid fireballs.

James figured out that abusing Mario’s Cape and spamming fireballs resulted in a very dead Marth. I grew frustrated over time. I could barely win. I knew this wasn’t the fault of the game designers — Project M was a well-balanced, competitively played game. No one at the competitive level got as easy kills with Mario as James did against me. I just couldn’t figure out how to work around Mario’s strengths, and the lack of improvement was disheartening. I ended up resigning myself to a matchup I believed was strongly in Mario’s favor. It made me feel better about it.

About a month after James begins using Mario’s Cape and fireballs, I accidentally stumbled over some Marth vs. Mario matchup advice online. I learned that Marth does indeed have the tools to combat Mario’s projectiles. I could strategically use my shield to protect myself from fireballs but still move (albeit slowly) towards Mario. To combat the Cape, I could “sweetspot” the stage edge by recovering at a distance outside of the range of Mario’s Cape, but within the range of grabbing the stage edge. These counter-techniques were harder to execute than the Cape or fireballs, but it was at least something! I began incorporating these techniques in my gameplay and soon after, my games with James went from landslide defeats to exciting, fresh challenges.