Author: Sam "Trilby" Foxall

In a break from his “Viable Melee” video series, where he makes checks and balances to the cast of Super Smash Bros. Melee to make everyone viable, MagicScrumpy has decided to show how you make a character overpowered. Rather than simply giving a character one move which is completely broken, Scrumpy has chosen to overbuff a character by giving them way too many options to cover every situation. After accidentally creating a new movement technique for Mewtwo, similar to Samus’ super wavedash, Scrumpy decided to keep the buffs coming and create the ultimate Pokémon in the form of overpowered Mewtwo.

He had already made grounded Teleport overpowered with this unintentional tech, so making it so Mewtwo can act instantly out of Teleport makes for an insanely powerful movement tool. Alongside tweaking his other specials, removing Mewtwo’s tail hurtboxes and adding a disjoint to his tail based tilts means that this Mewtwo can poke opponents without fear of trading as much. Combined with general landing lag cuts to all of his aerials, as well as buffed smashes and you have the recipe for a busted character. Watching this process of making a character overpowered but not broken is quite an odd one and elucidates how difficult the balance process must be, especially when an overpowered character is fun to play.

Source: MagicScrumpy

Inspired by MrHoward123’s extensive guide series on how to crush V-Reversals, it seems other players have taken the initiative and discovered other ways to blow up a hasty reversal. Samflaful has been in the lab with the chain wielding glutton Birdie, in order to discover how he can react to every character’s V-Reversal to guarantee damage or stun.

For some characters like Zangief, the safest option is simply grabbing them upon seeing the V-Reversal flash, as other options aren’t that safe or require a hard read. However, Rashid’s V-Reversal is fairly easy to punish, so Birdie players can even go for a Critical Art to catch Rashid as soon as he exits the roll animation. In some cases, Samflaful chooses to EX Bull Horn but not cancel into V-Trigger; this is because there would be no decent midscreen followup after this punish, so it’s better to go for an option which doesn’t waste your V-Trigger and EX bar. With more and more people developing anti V-Reversal tech, I would be pretty hasty about hitting those three punches or kicks while in block.

Source: Samflaful

Inspired by MrHoward123’s extensive guide series on how to crush V-Reversals, it seems other players have taken the initiative and discovered other ways to blow up a hasty reversal. Samflaful has been in the lab with the chain wielding glutton Birdie, in order to discover how he can react to every character’s V-Reversal to guarantee damage or stun.

For some characters like Zangief, the safest option is simply grabbing them upon seeing the V-Reversal flash, as other options aren’t that safe or require a hard read. However, Rashid’s V-Reversal is fairly easy to punish, so Birdie players can even go for a Critical Art to catch Rashid as soon as he exits the roll animation. In some cases, Samflaful chooses to EX Bull Horn but not cancel into V-Trigger; this is because there would be no decent midscreen followup after this punish, so it’s better to go for an option which doesn’t waste your V-Trigger and EX bar. With more and more people developing anti V-Reversal tech, I would be pretty hasty about hitting those three punches or kicks while in block.

Source: Samflaful

Top 8 replays from big tournaments are common, but it’s rare to see analysis videos which break down situations at a micro-level, diagnosing what players did or didn’t do to avoid a certain setup or attack. Looking at Melee top 8 from The Big House 6, Remix has gone through the matches with great care, selecting moments where players failed to dodge a specific setup, or where they were cognizant of a tactic and actively punished it through optimal DI, correct option coverage and so on.

He even looks at the psychological damage players are trying to inflict between sets, like SFAT taking off his jacket in his final match with Ice, in an attempt to dishearten his opponent to avoid the 3-0. The video is certainly in-depth, isolating moments that even mid-level Melee players would gloss over so it is worth a watch, just to see how much thinking goes into one interaction of hundreds in a single game of Melee.

Source: Remix

Both character loyalists across multiple games, Daigo Umehara’s Ryu and OR|Nuki’s Chun-Li have clashed once again, in this first-to-seven online set. As is the case with online sets between notable players, XusesGB has cataloged this battle which goes all the way to game 13, in traditional Nuki vs. Daigo fashion.

Xuses has previously uploaded a first to 10 between the two Street Fighter stalwarts back in May, which went to game 19 and their last offline set at EGX 2016 went to game 5, after Daigo quickly went up two games. It seems that whenever these two veterans clash, it is bound to be a nail-biter. As long as Chun-Li and Ryu are in Street Fighter, I think these two players will be destined to have close games with each other.

Source: XusesGB

Continuing his series of well produced character guides for Smash 4, IzAw has turned his attention to the psychic child that appeared in the very first Super Smash Bros.: Earthbound protagonist Ness. As with his other “Art of” videos, this guide goes through all of Ness’ normals, specials and his overall gameplan in a match.

Ness is a straightforward character; he has a fantastic grab game, the most powerful kill throw in the game, and fast disjointed aerials–but he suffers from an exploitable recovery, poor range on his tilts, and a linear approach on flat stages. While IzAw doesn’t cover super advanced tech with Ness, as there isn’t really a lot to him past what he details in the video, it’s still a thorough guide for anyone wanting to pick up the kid from Onett or wanting to learn how to beat him. S1, the best Ness in Europe, helped IzAw compile this video, so the information presented here is coming from someone who knows the character like the back of his hand.

Source: IzawSmash

It’s unlikely you’ll see someone throw an actual Hadouken, or do any of the crazy stuff you see in Guilty Gear, but the mostly realistic movesets of the Tekken games are things actual humans can do, outside of the eye lasers and transforming mecha girls. In his ongoing “Real Life Tekken” series, stuntman, martial artist and Tekken fan Eric Jacobus has turned his attention to replicating the moveset of the feline wrestler Armor King.

This involves doing a lot of fierce kicks, flips, punches and wrestling throws on unfortunate dummies. The actual power and fitness needed to do some of these moves is phenomenal, and there is no way in hell that you’d be able to pull off an Armor King combo in a real fight. Eric has previously re-enacted the moves of Heihachi, Raven, and Paul Phoenix, and he does allow fans to vote on the next character so if you like his skills, get voting. I can imagine he will be doing something special for Tekken 7’s eventual console release.

Source: Eric Jacobus

Introduced in Street Fighter V and somewhat similar to Alpha Counters, V-reversals help alleviate pressure when blocking an opponent’s attack, giving the defender some breathing room in order to reposition to either reset to neutral or help regain positional advantage. Just like with Shadow Counters in Killer Instinct, clever players can bait and then punish V-reversals, earning themselves a hefty amount of damage.

MrHoward123 has collated a series of helpful guides for this very purpose, detailing how members of the SFV cast can punish V-reversals most effectively. For someone like Ryu, a well-timed parry can lead into a great V-reversal punish, while grapplers like R. Mika can go to town as the majority of V-Reversals are throw punishable. Some characters like Ken, Dhalsim, Vega and Juri are not detailed in these short guides, but I imagine MrHoward123 will rectify that in future videos. Check out the entire playlist below and you too can become a V-reversal punish master.

Source: MrHoward123 via Ian Walker