Fighting Game Garbage: Mr. Game & Watch (Melee) 

Game and Watch mains are the type of blokes to miraculously float towards the aroma of a freshly baked pie.

"Even if you hold R to shield, you're gonna be holding an L" and "The glass-to-canon ratio is a bit fucky" are 2 of my favorite quotes now

The best description of G&W I've ever heard was "an offensively high tier character stuck with bottom tier defenses".

Fun fact about the bowser glitch btw; it’s because the damage as well as the animation is based on weight. The heavier you are the more damage it does. But at the specific weight values of puff and GnW makes bowsers grab miss the frame where it’s supposed to hit because they skip it perfectly enough for the game to not correct it like it does with pichu.

Ah yes, Melee Game & Watch. I guess being a buggy disaster fits his role in Subspace at least. Even still, I'd say he's one of Smash's defining weird characters, and I'm glad the Smash team actually managed to complete him in later games.

“Even if you hold R to shield, you’re gonna be holding an L” Bars

So many characters in melee would be more viable if their weaknesses weren't down to "Oh, sorry! The moveset you ordered doesn't actually work. We'll have to reorder but they won't come in until the next installment."

as the best active melee G&W player in the world, this is a great video! i really like how you focus on the strengths of his offense and the weakness of his defense. but, there are some minor nitpicks and notes that might serve as good accompaniments to your detailed analysis! - regarding his defense, perhaps the most understated element that makes G&W so bad on defense is his combo weight. dying at 70% is one thing, there are a lot of characters that die at early %. but, they dont get combo'd like G&W does. fox up-throw -> up-air true combos G&W well into the ~115% range, and it kills him at 70%. it's not like with Jigglypuff, where once you're past 85%, up-throw up-air is pretty much off the board. this is true of many, many, many kill setups in melee. G&W dies to them early, but they still combo him well into late%. it's unfortunate. - regarding throws, while you're correct that up- and down-throw are definitely the 2 best, his f-throw and b-throw are useful for far more than just positioning. these grabs are amazing DI mix-ups, as if your opponent DIs in, spacies catch huge combos started by either up-tilt or down-smash (depending on %), and non-spacies take a free N-air. and if they DI out, no matter the character, they're offstage - which is where G&W shines most. all of his throws are extraordinarily useful in different scenarios. - regarding his smash attacks, up-smash and down-smash are pretty much flipped from how you outline them here. up-smash ends up being pretty much useless, as any anti-air qualities it has are far outshine by up-tilt, and its impressive shield-stun is relatively meaningless 99% of the time. down-smash however, serves as one of his most potent combo moves at low%, extending perfectly off of his ground game and serving as a legitimately amazing DI mix-up combo tool. - regarding his up-tilt, this move is honestly just really understated. against spacies, it is easily his 3rd best move (behind only f-air and d-tilt). it is one of the strongest anti-air tools in the game, and the follow-up tree that it creates is legitimately insane. at low% you either get grabs or more up-tilts into f-air/n-air. at mid% you get a free n-air to send offstage, and at high %, you get N-air to kill. against non-spacies it is significantly worse, but it is also a great tool vs. Peach and Jigglypuff, as G&W can struggle when directly below many characters due to his awful shield. up-tilt mitigates this weakness significantly, giving him an amazing anti-air vs Peach/Puff that kills Peach at around ~125% and Puff at around ~110%. overall, this video was really awesome and i love the detail you went into to shine some light on melee G&W. i don't want this comment to sound like a nitpicky hater because that's really not what i'm aiming to do. i just feel like i'd be remiss if i didn't throw some of my extensive G&W knowledge into the fold as well. if you dont believe any of what im saying, feel free to watch some of my sets and see how some of these things hold true in high level play!

I feel like you could explain why G&W is bad to 100 different mains of him and 95 of them would respond with "haha funny 9 lol." And I respect it, it's a good reason to play a character

You speak so clearly, the auto subs are almost one to one with what you're saying. As a person with an audio processing disorder, it's really appreciated!

"If you're holding R to shield, you'll still be holding an L" Absolute genius line my good sir

tbh, i feel G&W could've been stronger if the devs had more time to design him. and maybe Ganondorf would've had his own moveset instead of being a Captain Falcon semiclone

"So even if you hold R to shield, you're gonna be holding an L." Greatest line I've ever heard

this is a detailed moveset analysis, well-done! i love how G&W could totally be a good character if most of his moves just... worked LOL. i'd reckon he'd be at least a mid tier with functioning aerials + shield buff. it's very hard to make a small disjoint character bad in smash, but somehow Melee managed to do it.

This is honestly an amazingly thorough analysis, this character has so many easy to miss positives and negatives that usually I don't see them all in one place. The only thing I could even think of that wasn't mentioned is his defense being made even worse by his janky tech roll animations, which are relatively easy to react to and punish compared to most characters. Every other interesting factoid of the character is covered, from the 0-frame-lag uptilt and incredible disjoint/duration of some of his moves, to the janky chaingrabs, terrible hitbox on 9, and weird issue with aerial Bucket. Really a solid, complete look at the character.

About the beginning of the video: According to Smash Ultimate's roster numbers, game and watch WAS the last character ever added to melee (ganondorf was 4th last, then mewtwo, then roy, then g&w). According to the debug menu's character order, he was 2nd last, then ganondorf. In either case, it was close to the very end, and the last non clone character.

Imagine trying to l-cancel as G&W when you realize some Numbnuts decided to give him a nonstandard landing state and you just thought you couldn't do it. Totally wasn't me wasting my time in training mode guys...

I think Fighting Game Garbage could feature very poorly designed top tiers. Ice Climbers in Brawl are top two... because they have confirmable ToD chain grab on a lot of characters. Like they just 9-1 a lot of characters and I will swear to this day Meta Knight was the lesser of two evils in the top two and they did more to chase people out of Brawl than MK did. Like MK was incredibly op.... but he actually played a game of smash, the mirror was a really cool matchup that was very fun to watch, and he took skill to use optimally. IC chain grabs might be hard to learn, but I'd argue four free stocks for practicing chain grab set ups is an inordinate amount of payoff for the work. What a dumpster character who I'm glsd has faded into obscurity they deserved it.

22:53 “Even when you hold R to shield, you’re gonna be holding an L.” 💀💀💀

It's so funny to compare G&W's Melee down-smash, where you either explode or take 2 percent with no in-between, to the Ultimate version, where you usually get buried in the ground, but sometimes the game is nice enough to semi-spike you instead. That being said, though, it's interesting to see an overview like this as an Ultimate player, since even though G&W is a lot higher on the Ult tier list than the Melee one, he might've been even more ridiculous if he had some of his moves that got replaced over time like his old nair and fair.

Mr Game and Watch is genuinely so decent that it's kinda funny

If game and watch could L cancel, shield, and dodge I would main him. He is so fun to play

Mr. Game & Watch was the last unique character added to Melee. The six clone characters were added after him.

Melee Mr. Game & Watch is one of the most fascinating characters in the entire franchise. A lot of his moves and properties are just odd, like the pummel slide and kamikaze down-b. But even with all his weird issues and quirks, he’s genuinely fun to play, it’s kinda fun to destroy your friends as the buggy 2-D man.

How to make G&W viable -Make him be able to L-Cancel all of his aerials -Fix his shield and dodges G&W is now viable

People tend to focus on the L cancel thing with G&W when really if you were given one thing to change about him to improve him the most, it would be pretty low on the list. Dying at 80 because you get shield poked by a falling Fox uair or something is way more detrimental to the character than being unable to L cancel 2 aerials that aren't really even that good and 1 aerial that is a kill/edgeguard tool who's endlag doesn't really matter anyway.

I remember in another video you described him as "pretending to have a shield" and honestly I'm still dying at that description. Very well-made analysis on G&W! I knew his defense was bad but I never knew that some of his moves were so jank in both bad and good ways

Ah, Melee G&W, probably the most representative character of the whole game: a fucking broken disaster that can be kinda fun. Even if it’s as broken as RBY which, considering you love both, I’m assuming it’s a good thing in this channel.

IIRC people guessed that he was added very late in development because in melee's debug menu, the character's ID numbers are sorted by when they were added into the game and him and Ganon are the last two

The first Key fighter, before Sora came into the roster at long freaking last.

And now in ultimate, he is rly fricking good.

Game and watch is a character that we've just gotten used to seeing, so much that sometimes we forget having a silhouette that is an amalgamation of old LCD games as a playible character is very strange

RU-vid Gold: Big Yellow (FGC)

G&W is a reason I still have a big soft spot for Melee despite not playing it in 5+ years, I love how even though he's technically low tier he's just so fun to play and he can pull off some amazing stuff.

This is an amazing Christmas gift (no matter how late it is.) Other than this series being fun to watch and you being a great RU-vidr, some of the lines like "Holding R to take an L" and "Glass to canon ratio" are absolute gold.

As far as G&W's base stats goes, given Mario is the "Default" to which all other characters are compared against, as far as development goes, I imagine EVERY character started out with Mario's stats, which were adjusted as development went on. G&W just... wasn't, because we had to WRAP THIS SHIT UP.

Fighting game garbage shouldn't be just for low tiers. It should also be great characters with trash design as well imo

Also absorbing powerful projectiles such as pk flash and then using the bucket on an opponents shield will almost instantly kill you as game and watch is pushed away from the opponent at incredible speed. He also will kill/shield break anyone who dares stand between him and the blast zone

Game & Watch is my favorite low tier in Melee (and also the most viable one imo), so I really enjoyed hearing you talk about him!

I think G&W would actually be a decent mid tier if his bugs were fixed. I don't think Melee mods should do a whole rebalance and nerf the top tiers and such but they should mod G&W and a couple other low tiers just to fix them slightly.

Very glad you covered him, I was hoping you would someday but wasn't sure. Welcome to Melee, the world's most popular unfinished beta... I main G&W and boy is it a struggle. Not covered in the video is how being a low or mid tier in that game feels really extra sucky given just how dominant and powerful the top tiers are.

"the Glass-to-Canon ratio is a little bit fucky" is the best way to describe G&W, thank you so much for finding these words I love them so much !!

Great analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

been hyped for a new FGG, thanks Yellow

hey that's my main. One thing, I don't know if it's a true combo or not but you can combo out of b-throw and f-throw into n-air with bad DI. Not if they DI but how will they know which throw is it ?

I never knew how cursed it would be to see the melee timer count up. Awesome!

22:52 Nice. I like that play on words there. As I have said, you have a knack for those comedic moments.

The thing about Mr. Game & Watch being the second-to-last character added to Melee is definitely untrue. All of the clones were added long after the unique characters were decided. Sakurai has stated that the roster is decided at the very start of development, and that clones are added near the end. This is further supported by the Debug Menu, which lists the non-clones in mostly alphabetical order (just with Zelda and Sheik put next to eachother), while the clones are tacked on at the end, with Ganondorf (who we know was the final addition) at the very end of the playable roster list. If the clones are listed in the order they were added, then the order goes Falco -> Young Link -> Dr. Mario -> Roy -> Pichu -> Ganondorf, meaning Pichu was the second-to-last addition. I think a more likely case for why Mr. Game & Watch is seemingly unfinished is because he might've been on the chopping block but was able to be completed in time for inclusion. This sort of thing has actually happened numerous times throughout the series. Some examples include Lucario, Wolf, Toon Link, and Jigglypuff in Brawl, and Bowser Jr in Smash 4. In direct contrast, it seems like Piranha Plant in Ultimate was an example of a character that didn't get lucky like the aforementioned ones and had to be pushed to DLC off of the main roster.

oh man. I remember there was a time in my life where I mained him in melee for a long time. I actually did okay in my local at the time, but he’s got some hilariously stupid stuff that definitely hurts (and helps) viability I’m super glad you acknowledged his jab! It’s so good, single jab gives you either dtilt shield poke/pressure to beat oos or grab if they hold shield. Up tilt is also a phenomenal anti-air because no end lag and great range too. Also, f-tilt is a good tool to cover ledge vs spacie side b (and guarantee edgeguards on yoshis vs all cast iirc). F-smash still better in neutral tho lol Really happy you made this one! edit: okay I had to talk about this because it wasn’t mentioned, and it was my favorite thing to take stocks with: G&W fthrow and backthrow are kill throws at mid %’s. If your opponent DI’s into either throw, you get a free nair, which usually kills past center stage (especially on Yoshi’s).

He was so fun to play in Melee and it made him my favorite character as a kid. He's just lame as hell in the future games.

One thing about G&W throws that I noticed is that his hands are a pretty obvious tell as to which way he’s throwing. It’s completely impractical, since the motion’s only visible like 2 frames before you’re launched, but it’s kinda neat.

I know the topic isn’t on BM, but I really hope they just fix his shield and L canceling and nothing else because that’s sorta all he needs to be at least good

Oh boy, a new Big Yellow video! 😃

I’ve wanted to main G&W in Melee for the longest time. Really interesting character due to his jank nature and weird properties. His combos also seem fun.

I instinctually said "oh fuck yeah" when I saw this in my feed.

great vid! love gnw and hes one of my favorite characters in p+

Thanks for the guide, I plan on going to weeklies as G&W only with dreams to be the most toxic player that places well and mocks others on stream when I win.

I always questioned how he has the parachute for his neutral air but not his up-b

8:26 it's unsettling seeing G&W face directly at you, w/ hammers out too...

i love these videos, are there plans to make a fg gold or fg garbage on hftf? that game is full of war crime and disfunctional characters

Cool video, just wanted to point out an error. It's a common missconception that grabs come out on frame 6 (because for some reason the frame counter starts at zero on grabs instead of 1 like with other moves) but G&W, like other characters, actually has a frame 7 grab.

I… I still don’t get how they managed to not check his shield. Like… HUH!?

Melee G&W DAir walked so Smash 4 Cloud DAir could run

I’m amazed how he went from being complete shit to being god in ultimate

Melee is 100 percent one of the more interesting Nintendo games in terms of wanting more info about it's development. I would pay good money for a book that goes into the nitty gritty of it's development cycle. it sounds chaotic and stressful for the amount of time they had to make it. like the problem with a book trying to figure all the details out about it is I wouldn't be shocked if the people who worked on it have generally truama blocked that period from their minds cause the conditions sound generally inhumane and bordering if not overtly exploitative. maybe Nintendo also has some investment in not letting all the brutal crunch details getting out. I know Sakurai has some lingering health problems from his work schedule and I hope gets time off more now to rest.

The nose specifically having a grabbable hurtbox is really funny to me

Babe wake up, new Big Yellow video

Thank god mr game and watch is a finished character now

G&W is one of the few characters that are bad by mistake rather than terrible design. He'd be in a far better position if only he could actually block and L-cancel (more so the former). Wouldn't make him top tier, but he'd be perfectly serviceable. That's the kind of low tier where I can at least get what the devs are going for. Meanwhile, you have nonsense like Kirby having low range and low mobility (like why is that even a thing, how is he supposed to do anything?) and Little Mac being a stupidly polarizing, but still low tier character that's neither fun to play as nor fight because he's too good in his own field, but also too terrible anywhere else (which just happens to include literally 2-3rds of the combat in Smash, i.e. aerial combat and platforms) to actually fight his opponent in anything resembling a fight. I'd also throw in basically every super heavyweight until like 4's Bowser, who doesn't even really stick to that archetype anymore because he is too fast for that now. They really need to just give extra hitstun for big guys so that they can have combos rather than get one lucky hit in, then have to win neutral again when that's already pretty hard to do. It's one of the main differences between beefy guys in other fighting games and Smash.

21:55 So that's why Hungrybox rolls so much more then any other smash player and yet somehow get's away with it.

Yissss another Melee FGG G&W is so weird lmao. My friend from uni mains him and made him work at our weeklies, but it's such a struggle to get over his weaknesses. On the flipside tho, that same friend mained G&W in PM (back in 3.6, no less), and good god did the PMBR turn the character into a glass cannon but without the glass lmao. P+ has since toned him down, but the G&W of 3.02 thru 3.6 was a fucking monster lmao

“Even if you’re holding R, you’re gonna be holding an L” Hilarious I had to drop a like on the video at that moment

imagine a universe where game & watch's nair was L-cancellable

I love GnW hes been my main for 10 yrs nice vid yellow

G&W being a total janky mess fits him perfectly.

Fast forward to Ultimate and he's an incredible character, 2nd only to Pikachu among lightweights

Kinda interested to see a similar Fighting Game Garbage video on Melee Pichu, since he’s a joke character who was made bad on purpose but who isn’t actually as bad as you’d think.

Man, imagine how crazy GnW would be if just his "special" aerials and shield was normal... L cancelling that nair would be a war crime Maybe a Melee but Dev oversights are fixed mod would be cool.

Throw animations are useful for mixups at the ledge against fastfallers. If they di in against up throw and you forward the punish is very easy

17:49 Man, I love fighting games.

Game and Watch was one of my mains back in brawl when I first started with the series. I always chose the cool looking characters, or the ones I recognized, and I've stuck with G&W to this day. I never got to play OG Melee considering I didn't exist yet, but he still looks like he has all the traits I loved him for in Brawl. (and also he goes bip bop bep beep beep boop and he is like I am Mr gay man watch and he get 9 and crowd go OOOOOOOO)

Now you gotta do a fighting game gold on PM game and watch to show how just a few changes to an otherwise middling character can turn them into a monster.

What I think of when I see these stat comparisons is that maybe game and watch is a reference to him existing before Mario

is that what sausages look like over in the queen's land

Man, I never knew some of these things like Forward Smash avoiding grabs, I wonder if him being finished in Melee would’ve changed his place in the tier list

Lemme tell ya somethin bout ultimate game n watch tho: there is nothing more satisfying than taking a stock, and then immediately taking another at 0 with a 9. Fuckin beautiful

Fuck yea, new video!!

I am also 100% of the camp that G&W should’ve kept his Melee N-Air.

SSBU i feel many people have been traumatized by his up special XD

Wanna see a character with just as good offense but the easily worst defense similar to this character? Try Alpha-152 in any of the Dead or Alive 5 series. Fast pokes, some powerful and quick throws, does excellent strike damage, and is fast in general as MOST of her stats are Kasumi’s. The issues? These are HUGE: Cannot actually counter hold attacks. She just teleports behind her opponent. Her parry does a very weak hit that isn’t comboable into anything. This character has no regular wake-up kick, which in a game based on pressure and momentum is a big weakness. Her H+K getup attack is okay but easy to catch onto. She is the lightest character in the game and gets juggled for more damage than any other character in the game. In every character’s combo challenge, every character gets a specific combo to do that only works on her. Juggles are the core element of doing damage in DOA, so this combined with a gimmick wake up kick is a fatal blow. She’d make a great character for fighting game garbage

I've been a big fan of G&W ever since I first unlocked him in Melee so many years ago (I feel old now). I honestly prefer Melee G&W over Ultimate G&W, as janky as he is, because they changed his F-Air to a weird bomb drop, which takes away one of his best moves, in my opinion.

I wonder how good a finished game and watch could be, as his shield and lack of L-cancelling would probably be fixed if the game had time to finish, along with some of his other just plain weird stuff, like the lack of nose invincibility (love having to write this type of sentence)

I main game and watch because he's funny, but also I play Rivals of Aether so no shield isn't a huge behavioral shift for me. Nair is an incredible kill move and his edge guard options aren't bad. Once you get used to edge-cancel spacing his options open up a bit more. Edge cancel bair or upair just kinda locks people on platforms. He can grab ledge from farther than it looks, though his recovery still isn't fantastic.

It's funny how just having a jank shield and spot dodge is enough to bury him into low tier. If both of those were fixed, perhaps he could be high tier.

I've always wanted to try playing G&W, but until smash 4 hit I never could get a good feel with the character to the point where I had fun with him, but Melee was one game where he always drew my curiosity since he was the last character on the roster you'd think he was really good (when you're a kid who doesn't know much that is) but to me he never felt very strong like I would have expected and that kinda bugged me back then since it felt like it must be something wrong with how I tried to play him, but of course later in life and once again now I learned more of what makes him tick and how my previous conclusion wasn't quite the case.

1:08 that might be part of the reason, but it could also be a reference to the fact that meny of the original Game and Watch games actually stared mario. I think that's a very cute reference ifit was the real reason. :)

Hey, whatever happened to that Tekken video you had planned? Were you ever able to get the ps2 emulation working, or is it still really compressed looking?

I've been a G&W Main every Smash. He's been a fun quirky goof and no matter the game its always fun to fight a ditto match against another one. Smash Ultimate was a bit weird for him, replacing his Forward Aerial with a kinda 'eh' bomb but having a burial move in Down Smash and an amazing out of shield really makes him be able to stand up to the stupidly OP DLC fighters. Shout Outs to Smash 4 where his down tilt has a fun abusable windbox. I've killed so many Lil Mac's spamming Side Special by simply using that windbox near an edge to make them float right off the stage.

“down smash is pretty bad” Sakurai creating Ultimate: Are you sure about that?

To sum it up, Game and Watch in Melee is exactly like his inclusion in the game. Really damn weird.