Name: Mariomario345

How old are you?: 14

Which characters do you play in SSF2? Why do you play these characters? :
I main Ichigo, my secondaries are C.Falcon, Fox and Marth.

Ichigo was the first character that I used in SSF2, back in the version 0.7 when I was a casual player, and since then I have playing him as either my main or secondary. He suits my playstyle the best, due to his good keepaway game and having the longest sword in the game.

C.Falcon is a character I loved playing as in Melee, with his speed and combos, and the amount of satisfaction produced by spiking/kneeing/falcon punching an opponent was just right. Now that I don't have the game and have switched to SSF2, I still use him though not as often.

Fox is just kinda a character I used in Melee if I was salty after a loss against a friend and I usually won when that happened. I feel like I lost a lot of experience how to play him after switching to this game, but I still like playing as him.

I picked up Marth back when I was somewhere inbetween being a so called "Anther's Noname" and a legit player, right after I got 0-4d in my first ever SSF2 tournament. He is a pretty weird character for me to use, because while I do not feel comfortable with his blend of speed and range, and the amount of spacing needed, I still use him in uncomfortable matchups.

How much experience do you have with official Smash titles? :
I have played Brawl three times and had been playing Melee(mains were C.Falcon and Fox) for a year before my parents sold my Gamecube.

Have you ever attended any Smash tournaments? If so, give some details about the tournament (number of participants, which games, etc). How well did you place?
I did not attend any tournaments, because the competitive scene in Poland is nonexistent, tournaments showing up about every half a year, on the other side of the country.

When did you start playing SSF2?
I started playing SSF2 in 0.7, played for about 2-3 months and then I haven't played until about a year ago.

What is your favorite stage in SSF2? Explain.
My favourite stage in SSF2 is Tower of Salvation. I like how dark the atmosphere on the stage is and the fact that it's pretty much FD 2.0.

Who, in your opinion, should be placed first on the SSF2 tier list? Under competitive settings why would this character perform on a higher level than all others?
Meta Knight. High damage racking potential, very fast kill moves, a disjoint, 5 jumps and a small hurtbox. His only weakness is his weight making him be KO'd sooner than normally but it's not that big of a deal because of his ridiculous upsides. I don't think he could be as dominant as in Brawl, but he is still great.

Who, in your opinion, should be placed last on the SSF2 tier list? Under competitive settings why would this character perform on a lower level than all others?
Certainly Wario. Low ground mobility, very slow KO moves, mediocre recovery, low grab range, combo food. He does have a ridiculous downthrow semispike, but landing the grab is the problem here.

If you could make only one change to SSF2 as it currently is, what would it be and why?
Mega Man regains his upspecial after being hit out of it. Done. Megaman high mid tier boiz! This is the biggest flaw Mega Man has in his entire moveset. Right now, his recovery
is very easy to exploit, one hit and he usually loses a stock.

What is your view on items in competitive play?
Items and competitive play? That is not a combination I wanted to see in one sentence. Items give competitive play a random element that makes it so random that skill can sometimes not be a factor in winning a match. A lot of them can swing the game ridiculously, for example, Smash Balls, any healing items, Blue Shells, Assist Trophies, Pokeballs, Bob-ombs...
There is one exception, and that is when the character itself can generate items which is acceptable because those items are a part of the moveset of the character and aren't a ridiculous
"-1 stock for your opponent(s)" button.

Do you have or can you download Skype? You don't need a mic or webcam.
I do have Skype.

Why do you want to join the Smash Flash Back Room? What will you contribute? Why are you an exceptional applicant? Be as detailed as possible.
The well known competitive scene of SSF2 doesn't really have an established metagame, a big chunk of players main mid tiers(inb4 someone says I am a hypocrite) or spam the same attacks and combos, even the players that attend tournaments. The community isn't that bad, but cancerous or if you prefer being more polite, not well behaving people are common. We also have a problem with good communication. Most of those problems are probably way smaller in the Back Room. My contributions probably would not be that big as, for example, Starkiller, but I try to participate in a lot of conversations where I can contribute in a meaningful way. I am currently trying to make a matchup chart for the whole roster.


Additional information (Include in this section anything relevant to your application. This could include links to videos of yourself playing.)

inb4 i don't get in because of my age

Sorry, this is more questions than I usually ask, but I think they're all very interesting questions. Feel free to break up your responses so you don't write all of it at once.

For all these questions, use the following stagelist (note that it is not standard, just made up for this series of questions):

Neutrals:

Tower of Salvation
Yoshi's Story
Dreamland 64
Pokemon Stadium 3
Smashville

Counterpicks:

Battlefield
Dracula's Castle
Final Destination/3DS
Mirror Chamber
Jungle Hijinx/Castle Siege
WarioWare


1. You're playing Ichigo and are character-locked in a tournament. You come up against a Fox, and you agree to strike first with a 1-2-1 striking system. Describe the thought process behind your choices and your opponent's.

2. Describe the Ichigo-Fox matchup as comprehensively as you can (neutral game, combos, offstage game, etc.), and conclude your analysis with a numerical summary of who it favors, either in the form of an integer (e.g., -2 if Fox has a significant but not overwhelming advantage), or a ratio (e.g., 55-45 for Ichigo having a slight advantage or 80-20 if Fox has almost no options).

3. The Fox player switches to Marth after losing the first game. Where do you ban? Why? Assume you have 3 bans.

4. Briefly describe the Ichigo-Marth matchup. There's no need to go into too much specifics (e.g., the percents that combos work at or the percentage ranges of kill moves), but provide a numerical summary and give an explanation for that summary.

5. The stagelist for these questions has some oddities. If you were in the BR and I suggested using this as an official stagelist, how would you respond? What problems do you think it has? There's no need to suggest a stagelist of your own. Just critique and analyze my choice of mergers, my decisions on counterpick vs. neutral, and my decisions on legality.

Question 1:

My first strike would be ToS. This stage has a pretty low ceiling and close KO boundaries on the sides. Together with 2 platforms that Ichigo has hard time recovering to and using, this stage is the worst one for Ichigo.
The opponents 2 strikes would be Yoshi's Story and Dreamland. Both are good stages for Ichigo, have KO boundaries pretty far from the stage and have a Battlefield-esque platform placement. It's also pretty hard to recover on them with Fox against Ichigo because of the overwhelming amount of meteors he has so to recover he would probably have to snap to the ledge instead of recovering to the stage. Yoshi's Story also can give Ichigo an advantage due to the slopes it has and the way his side-b works.
The last 2 stages are Pokemon Stadium 3 and Smashville. Smashville is the better stage for Ichigo because it has a platform that can be used for edgeguarding and recovering, and a pretty close bottom KO boundary making Fox very easy to kill once he's offstage.


Question 2:

NEUTRAL
In this matchup, you usually approach with a well spaced dash attack or a side-b because Fox has way better tools for camping just because of lasers and shine. His uptilt can stuff most approaches that aren't spaced well. Uptilts are useful once Fox starts Nairing to you, same with Fair but not as much, the problem is Nair is really fast meaning it's hard to punish it. I think Fox wins the neutral with a ratio of 35-65.

PUNISH GAME
Ichigo: upthrow-uptilt or uptilt strings, pseudowavedash-downthrow, any combo/move that sends Fox offstage(Nair, Bair etc.), downthrow-upsmash. Smash attacks only used for hard reads.
Fox: Shine-upsmash, uptilt strings, upthrow-upair, upthrow-bair, downair-shine-downair, downtilt if Ichigo is near a ledge, downthrow-downsmash for techchases.
As seen here, Fox has more options, most of them are good or great. Again, Fox is better at this, 35-65 ratio for this.

RECOVERY AND EDGEGUARDING
Ichigo has a better recovery in terms of safety, Upspecial - pretty much impossible to attack from above, Sidespecial catches a lot of people offguard though easily destroyed by shielding and backthrowing/backairing, Nspecial has a windbox and stalls the fall for a while and can be used with Upspecial to poke shields of characters camping by the ledge, but the problem is that if Fox gets through the windbox, Ichi will be usually dead because of Bair. Fair can be also used for slight horizontal recovery and stopping an edgeguard far from the stage and above a ledge. Ichigo also has one of the best ledge attacks in the game if he's below 100%.
Fox has Firefox and Illusion, both easily dealt with meteoring and shield-backthrow respectively. If Fox tries to snap to the ledge he'll get usually hit with a downsmash or a well spaced upsmash when trying to get back to the stage.
Ichigo wins this situation dramatically, about 70-30.

FINAL RATIO
The final ratio for this matchup is 40-60. Fox wins the neutral and punishes way better but if he's offstage and recovering he'll get wrecked by a meteor.


Question 3:

I'd ban Battlefield, Warioware and Yoshi's Story. Marth gets way more out of Battlefield-esque platform placement than Ichigo and Warioware gives free tippers really often(Even F-tilt can land a tipper on someone 1 platform above Marth). All stages listed also don't hinder Marth's recovery much, for example on 3DS and Mirror Chamber you can cause a Marth to go below the stage and lose his stock fast.


Question 4:

The matchup is in favour of Marth. Marth has better approach options, and camping against him is hard. You have to have really good spacing in order to not get hit by a free tipper while attacking. Marth's fair overall beats most Ichigo's options in neutral, Ichigo's fair is fast and can lead into an easy punish. Marth has an offstage game while Ichigo pretty much doesn't. Edgeguarding Marth is very hard, Dolphin Slash disables all of Ichigo's options if spaced correctly, but so does Ichi's upspecial. Marth's punish game is better than Ichi's due to his throws. The rating for this is 43-57. The matchup is better than Ichi vs Fox but not by much because, while Marth beats Ichigo in neutral and punishing, he doesn't dominate neutral that much and doesn't punish as hard as Fox. Ichi's recovery and edgeguarding is on par with Marth.


Question 5:

Yoshi's Story doesn't really fit in the neutrals section due to the slopes it has and Randall, Battlefield would be a good replacement because it's very similar and is slightly less polarizing.
The merger Jungle Hijinx/Castle Siege doesn't really make sense to me, Castle Siege has 1 more platform and usually favours P1 as opposed to P2 on Jungle Hijinx because of the slopes the stage has.
Warioware isn't a good legal stage, it heavily discourages using projectiles and gives a big advantage to swordsmen. It's a very polarized stage compared to most other legal stages.

I'd like to inform BR members that I won't be able to answer any questions until 4th of September.

It has been about a month after my application. Is it still being reviewed?

First of all, I am REALLY SORRY that it took us so long to respond.

Second of all, I'm sorry to tell you that your application to the Back Room has been denied. Please feel free to reapply in Beta.