Kirby's Fan Base

[Dodger]

Compared to other low tier characters the Kirby fan base seems to be pretty... well, non existent. I mean, we even seem to lack fan boys who (would if they existed) scream "Kirby is teh rox0r!1." I wonder why this is?

I wish I could say that people just don't understand Kirby. But if that were true I would think we would have people out there defending Kirby's honor so to speak. Bowser and Ness have some great characteristics which lead their players to argue that those characters are better than their tier placements. Kirby doesn't seem to have those players, no offense to Omni and a few others who I have seen defending Kirby's tier placement and who is basically this entire board, but the difference is that Bowser and Ness players say their character should be higher, whereas we seem to say Kirby is good where he is. And by acknowledging that Kirby is good where he is that seems to admit that Kirby has no more potential and while we may not believe it ourselves, but we are sort of sending a message to the rest of the community that we think Kirby is boring.

Now it could be just that there aren't a lot of Kirby players out there. Lack of players = less chance of discovering something new, Kirby is not as fully explored as other chars etc. But I imagine the Bowser community was pretty small before luke showed up. And we have Kirby pros like omni and KirbyKid but we haven't rallied around them like the Bowser community rallied around Luke.

Anotherthing I find ironic is that I don't ever see any Kirby players. Yet whenever I play new people, I always seem to surprise them because Kirby has this wide spread reputation for being a suicide char and I'm not a suicider. I guess if Kirby players are a rare breed, then non-suicidingg Kirbys are an endangered species.

I know I wasn't very eloquent about it so let me sum up. The goal (I think) should be to increase interest in Kirby so that 1)this board becomes more active, 2)More people pick up Kirby as a char.

So do you think it's possible or was this just a pointless rant?

Other topics for discussion: What do you think about Kirby's fan base in general? How many suiciders vs. actual players are out there? Persoanly, I've never met or played a suicider let alone a serious kirby player. (Ok there was that one guy who beat me in a ditto but he played everyone!)

Sorry for the long post. Hopefully it will get some sort of discussion started.

[Ironboy]

I agree with that. Kirby without a doubt is a underestimate character , there some matches were he does well. I just think kirby is a rare character too see.

[exarch]

Everyone has some matches where they do well, just not everyone has that match with sheik. i picked up kirby,and had fun frustrating my friend with him(he's too short to grab!!). but I just cant ko with him. Kirby is not boring-he's fun to play with, and thats what smash is about. I dont know if kirby is underrated, but I do know that someone has to be low tier, and if everyone is fighting for higher placement, not everyone is going to get it. Maybe I'll start hanging out in this forum, im looking for characters not many people play as (I played as peach before i found this site.) Now im working with the ice climbers. why not kirby too? Although it seems to me that the game designers spent too much time "deflating" kirby from the 64 to leave anything too good in.

Cheer up kirby players ssb3 is coming out and he'll be mid tier while marth sheik and fox look up at him.
Marth who has lost his falchion, and now carts around a claymour which has too much lag, and no longer has his precious tippers.
Sheik whos moves do less damage and have too much knock back for any decent combo's
And fox who has been deprived of jumping out of his shine, and now has a weakened upsmash and a weakened up arial.

While kirby's upsmash sweetspot is increased and the hammer has less lag time. oh and more range too

[Omnigamer]

I have my own thoughts on this subject.

A lot of why Kirby doesn't support a large fanbase is due to a few major things. First off is the simple scaling down between SSBM and SSB64. Since a lot of his immediate uber-ness from the previous game was removed, a lot of former fans became frustrated that the same tactics and abilities either no longer worked or weren't nearly as effective. Noting that, they moved onto other characters that were either completely new to the game or had similar exploitable tactics.

The next thing to note is Kirby's immediate moveset. Speed, range, and knockback are the main big things to note. First off, Kirby has some moves with pretty big lagtime. Though we can pretty easily find ways to speed up Kirby overall, it takes a while to figure out some of the tricks behind that. Looking at range, Kirby has some pretty good range with most of his attacks overall. It's just the fact that he lacks disjointed hitboxes that make him looked down upon. His dtilt may be able to hit you at tipper range, but a fox forward smash can connect with that same dtilt from much farther away than it should. And finally, knockback. Without much experimenting, Kirby seems to have very few moves that can easily kill someone. That can easily turn somebody off of him.

Finally, as compared with the rest of the low-tiers, Kirby has very little that people can see as "special" or easily abuseable. Bowser, despite having a bunch of speed flaws and weight problems, is a powerhouse with a few very useable B moves. Ness has DJCing and some complicated tricks. Mewtwo also has DJCing and... er, stuff. Game & Watch has disjointed hitboxes up the wazoo. Pichu is very fast and gains players simply by virtue of being considered "the worst". And Kirby... makes a really annoying sound when he taunts. That's about all that people see from him. Experienced Kirby players know that there's much more to him than that, but that's the difference. Experienced players have stuck with Kirby long enough to know his flaws, good points, and special tricks. It just takes a while for those things to start kicking in.

As far as bringing in the suicider comment, most competitive players of today realize how silly being a suicider is. So many more risks associated with it than gains, and all setups are easily avoidable if the other player is expecting them. Even the beginning players should see how its usefullness drops off very quickly. What I see much more often are the players that know Kirby's dtilt is good. And that's what they use. Over and over. This is the base for how most people learn to play Kirby: crouching at all times, spamming dtilt whenever possible, and using wding for movement. Again, it has its problems, but it's what seems most usefull to the players. But if the players don't plan on playing Kirby more than at random times when they don't feel like playing any other character, this is all they're ever going to learn to do with Kirby. And from there, other people will sometimes pick up on it, and thus the style spreads. This adds to the idea that Kirby is a boring character with not much going for him, and again discouragaes new players.

That's just my view on things. We do need to get more players to actually try out Kirby, as he is pretty under-rated, but it's just that complete lack of players that makes him so. Kirby is very fun, as many have said, but it's up to the rest of us to show that to other people.

[exarch]

heh heh omnigamer: do you have any idea how to show that to other people? talk about an impossible question... The answer to it would solve the kirby fan base "problem."(although the novelty effect is so sweet)

kirby or zelda? which is the character with the least fan base?
They are both over shadowed, one by his former self, and the other by her alternate self... Tough call if you ask me.

But after playing smash last night, against a darn good game and watch, and us having team low tier vs other guys, kirby is now too much fun for me to ignore him.

[Omnigamer]

I was just giving my analysis on the current situation of things. This late in smash's life, and with Smash Revolution on the horizon, there really isn't too much that can be done to get a large inflow of Kirby players suddenly. I've done what I can, making vids of my Kirby and putting them up on the hub, giving my comments and advice on strategies and tactics, and sort of advertising at different places. It may only grab a few new people here and there, but the point of my doing so is to show that Kirby can be a competitive character. Perhaps people will start paying more attention to him once he springs up into top 10 places at some major tournies... who knows.

[Ironboy]

many people see suciding as bad to do but sometime it useful like aganist very bad recovering character , like popo alone . good suciding Kirby should know recovering for that character. I do sucide now or then.

[white peachy]

well i've been playing kirby for a long time and i think the reason why so many people don't play him is that his learning curve is so tremendous. in my time playing kirby i've found that he is one of the toughest characters to master. like omnigamer said, suicide tactics and all that kind of stuff are well and good, but in the long run, you're not going to be able to win like that. my style has kind of evolved on it's own and involves a weird variety of tilts and shffld aerials. i like that they're aren't many vids of kirby because i've learned stuff mostly on my own. i think the main reason why kirby's fann base struggles is a lack of readily available, easily performed, information and tactics. you have to kind of explore and find out what works in what situations. that being said, i still enjoy playing kirby more than any other character.

[g-regulate]

kirby is my hero, i love being kirby and beating people with kirby. all you gotta do is be smart with him and hes NASTY. extremely underrated

[kirbstir]

Kirby is a beast. He's very underrated if you know how to play him. Him and his river dance spike