vs Yoshi - I would say is 55-45. He has a much easier time killing Yoshi than Yoshi has trying to kill him as well can approach better.

vs. Sora - at least 40-60 disadvantage. Mario is that perfect weight and fall-speed where Flowmotion can be comboed 3-4 into itself. Sora can be very difficult for Mario to get a good punished on Sora.

vs. Lloyd - is 30-70, maybe even worst. Lloyd is so ridiculous. Safe moves, difficult to defend against recovery.

vs. Tails - it feels almost ever to me, but I don't want to give a definitely answer on that.

vs. Goku - even to 55 advantage.

Vs. Zelda - 45-55 Zelda outranges Mario in the air. She has better KO power, recovery, and her dash attack alone eats fireballs and clanks/overrides most of Mario's ground game. Not to mention Down Smash kills Mario at ridiculous percents if he misses the tech or is too close the ledge. It also doesn't help that Mario has very predictable recovery and that cape can't reflect Din's Fire since it's not a traditional projectile. Faore's Wind also kills any dreams Mario has of an edgeguard or gimp.

Vs. Peach - 60-40 Mario can throw out more fireballs than Peach can pluck turnips in 9b. The nerfs to Down Smash and Turnips as a whole really don't help Peach either. Mario's UAir stops Peach's float approaches pretty easily ( Unless you're catching a Crown Slap.) and his NAir and FAir are really mean. Peach also has a pretty easy time edgeguarding Mario though, especially with her D-tilt.

Vs. Zero Suit Samus 30-70 Easy ZSS has waaaay more options and tools at her disposal than Mario. Her Side-B alone shuts down fireballs and stops his approach entirely. This is also one of the many, many, many MUs that Mario's predictable recovery get's him the short end of the stocks.

Zelda doesn't have an advantage Mario. Zelda loses to patient play from characters that are significantly faster than her really easily. They can take advantage of her opening and she has difficult preventing that because of the lack of her own mobility. You can't try boast her up every time someone says something negative about her. She's has visible weaknesses that can be exploited in-match.

Jesus I didn't even .-., I'm not trying trying to "boast her up", I'm sharing my experience on the match-up. Now If it was Ichigo, ZSS, DK, MK, Link, Lloyd, Marth, or Naruto. Sure I can tell you those matchups are 55/45, 60/40, 70/30, 80/20 and I'll give you a good reason why they can beat Zelda but I've never had a problem with any Mario. I know he has his strengths and can beat Zelda, but it definitely isn't in Mario's favor either. All because he has better dash speed doesn't mean squat if all Zelda has to do is Dash Attack to force Mario into a situation the Zelda player wants.

Everybody's just throwing out MU numbers and im just sitting in the corner like "I like his f-air..."

But legitimately, I've taken many, many, many stocks with well timed F-airs. It's just really hard to hit most of the time.

I'm a newbie trying to get into competitive play, but I'm horrible. Mario's the only character I've consistently been able to have more than one stock at the end of a 4-stock match with a lvl 9 cpu. Anyone got tips about mario or tips in general about playing well?

Yay, i'm not as bad as i thought

Seriously, here are some tips on mario.

Fireballs are anti-shield. any damjm CPUs trying to powershield them will deplete their shield slowly.
u-air spam is a juggle almost of Dk's caliber.
Cape is the most embarrasing way to take a stock when they recover.
Horizontally, Mario is the god of recovery. Starapsin then cape spakm until you're in range for SJP is a slow but gradual way to get back onstage.
SJP can be angled left or right for better horizontal or vertical recovery at the cost of the other.
If you main mario, you will face an endless struggle against range. short hop ari dodge is a good apporach to get in range.
Short hop f-air cancels a lot of lag and is a good K.O move above 100%, but can't sweetspot it. Same with DK, except stronger, faster, better ranged...



One tip per character below:
Ichigo's Side-B->U-tilt can lock almost any character. fully charged.
DK's recovery can neutralize every projectile, has super armor at startup, and can spam the special button to make recovery skyrocket. CPUS NEVER DO THIS SO BEST CPU FOr GIMPING PRACTICING IS DK. giant Punch KOs at 40%
Tails can unleash combos, even if you suck. utilt and side-b spam is god.
d-air off stage with Lloyd is good for characters with bad diagonal recovery, but you need to maintain your double jump to get back stage.
Marth has more damage and knockback near the edge of his attacks.
Jigglypuff kinda sucks now. almost every move was nerfed, and she takes exactly 3 seconds to run from one side of Bomb factory to the other(versus Cpt Falcons and Sonic's half second). I wouldn't reccomend her.
Kirby makes good use of his aerials.
Links's Bomerang can lead to both hits of the d-smash hitting as they are dragged towards you. Also projectile spam.
Zelda has one directional, but recovery good enough to go from the bottom blasrt line of FD to the edge. It is worth falling a bit or transforming from shiek to get into a good position to recover.
Shieks recovery is s***, but the first teleport can lead into the second, turning an average knockbakc move into a windbox K.O.
Goku: What do i say. Just pure offense, always trying to stay in range, using Ki blast to apporach rather than keep at bay.
naruto's Down-b can block some projectiles. Side-B can get them in your range.
Chibi robo's final smash can be powershielded against him. Also down-B can capture almost anything except Finals Smahses,
D-throw into flow motion into f-air. they can even gimp. Don't flow motion offstaeg or gg.
FALCON PUNCH!!
Sonic Meta Knight and Pikachu i dunno what to say, as i don't use them much.

Hope this helps.

firstly, welcome to the game! you will LOVE it on the long run.

well, mario is probably one of the best characters to start playing with.
the trick of using mario is the same as to all other characters: combo until 100 and go for finishers, OR throw him off-stage ASAP and edgeguard/gimp to death (mario is pretty good at this) OR play defensively and punish when needed.

any of these 3 paths are viable strategies to win, but of course they all have different approaches.
offensively, Mario is not the best character, but its still very good. he boasts high priority and damage on almost all attacks, good combo potential, a few very fast attacks and can do great setups. his specials are also very effective for mid-combo breaks, finishes, or spacing. for offense, you can go for short-hopped Nairs (read: Neutral Airs - when you hitt attack without pressing a direction while in midair) which are great for a combo starter, then grab them, or tilt them, or simply do another short-hop Nair... you can also jugle very, VERY effectively, with his Uair (you got the idea, didnt you?), which is fast, deals lots of damage, but has little knockback, meaning you can string multiple hits before landing. you can sometimes deal well over 50% before you need to land. then, for finishers, you have your good old Fair (that PUNCH) which is deadly even without sweetspotting, Fsmash and Usash are both amazing, off-stage Nair is also good for gimping... all in all, its a mater of personal habits.

As a Gimper, Mario has great tools, but little time off-stage, you rarely will attack your opponent more than once before needing to return. depending on your opponent, however, this tends to be enough. send your opponent out of the field, WAIT for him to double-jump, and THEN use N-air on him. he wount get KO'd, but he wount be able to recover either. other options would be using his cape to reverse your opponent's momentum and direction, which completely murders linear characters like Fox, Mario, and Sonic, among MANY others.

as a Defensive Character, MArio is somewhat Lacking, but still more than capable of wreaking havok. learn how to short hop fireballs, and also to do this on reverse short hops - this allows you to keep your distance from rushing opponents while stalling them with projectiles - and learn hot to properly reflect projectiles with cape and by powershielding them. learn how to dodge correctly, and to do tech-chases - VERY important for the second side of this playstyle, punishing: force your opponent into approaching with fireballs, then make him MISS an attack, then follow up with an attack of your own. you can do this by defending and grabing, dodging, or simply moving away and countering. once you START effectively punishing, you can choose to follow up woth an Offensive playstyle, or you can try to throw him offstage and Gimp or you can simply keep your spacing and keep playing defensively.


once you feel like you can do all this correctly, then you are ready for just about ANY character in the game. i would suggest you to start learning Naruto right after, since he shares some similarities with mario, then go for Lloyd, Sora, Meta Knight, Donkey Kong and Link. after these, try to main Fox. insist. keep trying. once you learn how to use fox properly and learn how to do some basic techs with him, you will be capable to play very efficiently with EVERY character.

hope this helps

Thanks for all the tips. I'm way better with Mario now after reading your posts. Also, off topicly, I realized that I can actually 4 stock lvl 9 cpus 80% of the time with Zelda and Sheik, either separately or switching every once in a while.

Anyways, Back on topic. I'm really liking Mario. I've tried out a few other characters, and I can say that I'm doing the best as Mario, Sheik/Zelda, and Sora.

I think my main problem is knowing when to dodge and when to shield. I'm not the best at playing defensively, no matter what character I use.

I'm also not good at finding openings on my opponents some of the time, but I'm getting better at that by the day.

Bringing some "interesting" Mario gifs:

Cape glide:



Already saw it discussed in the thread but think it's still worth showing. As you can see you can move a great distance horizontally. I believe this is the max range, changing your timing can result in a shorter glide (or no glide at all of course).

Reverse cape glide:



Pretty much the same as above but by dashdancing away from the edge of the platform just as your about to fall from it. As you can see it does the same but in the opposite direction. Could be used for mindgames.

Extra:


While trying to do the reversed one, discovered this little "trick". As you're about to drop from the platform turn around, followed by a neutral special. You will fall but will be able to shoot anyone on the platform, so could be useful for trying to make some room against an opponent or fleeing.

Was messing with Mario's up-b in FD's ledges and discovered that there's a position from below the ledge where you will instantly enter your idle animation after finishing the attack, no free falling and subsequent landing animation nor sweetspoting. The problem is that I haven't been able to recreate it so don't even know if it's FD exclusive. Has anyone done it before? Would appreciate some info.

for all that are unsure about the tails matchup. I feel that the matchup is 55-45 to 60-40 in tails favor, the reason being that if mario decides to actually use his fireball, and cape side-b approaches, tail's options can decreased. cape can also nullify most approaches with tail's projectile. but despite this tails has a incredibly easy time baiting and punishing these option limiters. and cape cant actually force tails into a defensive pose so long as the tails player stays to the air with the projectiles. down-b on mario is a surprisingly safe option in this matchup to counter any bait attempts. sidesmash also kills tails at 89% or so on FD. attempting any strings of attacks on tails is a horrible idea unless you are comboing from the direct bottom. tails has far too many quick and viable options, the most of which is side-b, to escape any potential horizontal combos. even then vertical strings have to be spaced carefully or you will get caught by tails nair. when recovering space your down-b as to prevent any easy dair kills from tails. this is just going based off of the few mario players i played, and my decent knowledge of mario. just spam fireballs.

edit: though i did get a mario main to ragequit and ban any character besides mario in his games because of this match-up, but he was not that great to begin with.

I haven't ever played a good Tails before, but I think the MU has more for Mario than you say. He has good high-priority aerials and combo breakers of his own, low-percent grab combos, and can edgeguard Tails somewhat effectively with bair, nair, and Cape.

So, I know Soldier Sunday is gonna make a lot of fun of me for this...

...but I've found that Mario's DownB is an excellent tool. It's really good at countering characters who approach with their body (Falcon's Nair, Peach's Nair, Fox's Nair, nair nair nair nair...)

The move has a lot more priority and disjointed range than opponents expect, and it outspaces all sorts of moves horizontally.

It's vulnerable from the top, so it's a good idea to rise as high as the opponent's short hop range in case their Nair would go over a grounded DownB.

Make sure not to spam this. Much of the time spent waiting for your opponent to approach would be better spent shooting fireballs.

Down-B beats a ton of landing options for some characters. If you read airdodge or dair, down-B can punish and kill. However, I would shy away from using it except VERY sparingly as a hard read. It's punishable on SDI or if you miss a read, and you can get BIG punishes off of it if you whiff.

Good point about the SDI. I haven't had problems with that yet, although lag probably has a lot to do with it.

I started using Mario as a "counter" to Ichigo for this very reason, Mario Tornado is one of the few moves that can easily counter his side-b; and since both clank, you don't have the awful ending lag. You still have to act quick tho since he can act almost immediately and do another one but still.