Bowser (Super Smash Bros. Melee)

From Atrocious Gameplay Wiki
RAAH! RAAAH! (I suck in this mechanic)

NOTE: This page is discussing on how he had a bad start in Melee, not to mention that this page is only judging him on his moveset and playstyle, not him as a character.

Bowser is the usually main antagonist of the Mario franchise. He is a large, powerful, fire-breathing Koopa who leads the Koopa Troop, an antagonistic organization of turtle-like creatures and usually successfully or attempted to kidnap Princess Peach (but not always) and attempted to dominate the Mushroom Kingdom.

Bowser also appeared in the Super Smash Bros. series as a playable character since Melee, with also receiving a boss counterpart, Giga Bowser. However, he had a bad start in Melee citing him as one of the worst characters in the game.

Why He Sucked

  1. His jumping ability is poor, and doesn't jump that high due to his weight, making it sometimes difficult to reach higher platforms without using Whirling Fortress.
  2. His dash animation is hilariously bad and it looks like that his feet is grinding instead of dashing or running without any proper effects. Brawl had this problem as well.
  3. Bowser's large size make him extremely easy to combo, with the worst offender being in Trophy Tussle 3, as there's barely any space for Bowser to escape from combos.
  4. His moves have a sluggish frame data, especially his jump squat, making them easy to punish.
  5. His aerials are far too laggy, making it quite hard to hit his opponents with them.
  6. His falling speed is too high, which could put Bowser in danger and result in a failure in recovery because of this.
  7. His approach towards any opponent is so bad.
  8. His projectile is badly made.
  9. His recovery is way poor and predictable.
  10. As a level 9 CPU, Bowser will try to use his down smash and Bowser Bomb even if the move cannot hit the opponent due to being under a platform.

Redeeming Qualities

  1. He was improved in the next games afterwards. He was slightly improved in Brawl (though he still wasn’t good enough), and even more so in Smash 4 and Ultimate, and his dash animation was made correctly now.
  2. He has a major strength on his side: he's the heaviest character in the game and consequentially, the hardest to KO.
  3. He had some good moves, like his Up-B (provided it was used on the ground).
  4. Some of his aerials were okay as well, despite their slowness (one example being his FAir).
  5. Unlike Luigi, his voice clips from the Mario games were used, so at least his voice, despite having realistic roars, is more loyal than Luigi's voice.

Trivia

  • Bowser has a glitch that makes his hand gigantic for a brief second. To perform this, Bowser needs to hold any item you can throw with the A button, perform a short hop and then immediately an air dodge. If done correctly, the glitch will be successful, and it can be seen longer once the player pauses the match at the same time as Bowser lands.

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