Smash 4 Character Opinions/Mario

What better way to kick off this new series of pages than with the mascot of Nintendo himself, Mario? Let's take a look at Mario's play style, moves, and my opinions about the character.

Moveset and playstyle
Mario is a pretty easy character to pick up. He's a nice all-around character, and being a top tier sweetens the deal. Let's start with his throws.

His down throw and up throw can be used to start long combos, and his back throw can be used to kill at higher percentages. Honestly, I've never found any use for forward throw, but that may be because I haven't been trying to find any uses for it. I GUEEEESS you could use it to throw your opponent offstage and set up an edgeguard, but...

A stereotypical Mario main will usually use moves like his up tilt, up air, up smash, and up special Super Jump Punch. So I guess you could say Mario is on the up and up... and up and up. You'll often see players on For Glory link down throw into several up tilts. But this isn't the best way to play Mario, obviously, since he has many other options that don't involve the control stick pointing upwards.

Mario's forward smash is a nice and powerful move to get the kill, as well as up smash. Forward air can be used as a meteor smash, and in some scenarios, you can combo down throw into forward air near the ledge for the kill.

Mario's side special Cape and down special F.L.U.D.D. are both good edgeguarding tools if you know how to use them. His cape can not only reflect projectiles, but it can also reflect opponents, which can send them to their death in certain situations. You can see it in action in the video above.

Other useful moves include his neutral air which allows him to escape combos as it comes out on frame 3, like Luigi and Dr. Mario, neutral special Fireball which can tack on a bit of damage here and there, and, I kind of kicked this one to the side a little earlier, Super Jump Punch. If you string together a few up airs and get closer to the upper blast zone, Super Jump Punch can be used as a combo finisher for the kill. Mario's down tilt seems to be a pretty underrated move. It combos into itself just as well as up tilt, and can set up a regrab.

My thoughts on people who main Mario
Now I don't know about you, but when I first got Smash 4, I picked up Mario for two reasons. I was really into Mario games at the time, and I still am to an extent to this day, and I really like the all-around character archetype. No overpowered strengths, but no crippling weaknesses. Average weight, average size, average power, average speed, average everything. At the start, I didn't know much about the game, so I flicked the right stick silly and threw out smash attacks and nothing else against level 5 CPUs. Man I was a scrub back then. But then I realized Mario's true potential and he remains one of my favorite characters to play to this day.

As for other people who main Mario, I love watching Mario mains play. Fair spikes are hype, up air combos are awesome, Mario is just a fun character to watch.

If you main Mario, you're the kind of person who is OK with not having any outstanding strengths in exchange for not having any weaknesses, which I think is a great balance.

Miscellaneous experiences playing Mario
One time I was playing 1v1s with my friend and he was playing Villager. It was a 2 stock match, and I ended both of those stocks with a down throw to fair spike combo. That was fun. :)

Mario is also one of the few amiibo I own, the other one being Pikachu. I've had a blast training them both up. The number of times I fair spiked my Mario amiibo at low levels is obscene. I saved ALL the replays.