Marth's Up Smash Stage Spike: Who, How and Where (Video Added!)

Here's a brand new Marth tech that can be used in nearly every match you play!



As previously discovered by bigmack209 (Thanks to him!) , Marth's up-smash will stage spike characters who hang on the ledge of a stage for too long. Some testing was done for this situation (Yay zero5 and armalite!) and it was found that some characters work, while others don't.

I, seeing this thread, began experimenting on my own and discovered that this not only works while hanging but also while about to grab the ledge.

Since discovering this, I've gone ahead and tested every character to see if this works. The results are below, along with some suggestions of use and situations that this tech can provide for you.



A few notes:

The physics behind this are a bit odd. During Marth's up-smash, he assumes a semi-split like position where his feet are about shoulder length apart. For some reason, his feet actually possess a hitbox and thus are part of the up-smash. When a character is holding/about to grab the edge and Marth's nifty foot smacks them, they go up, into the stage and then down once again.

Which foot you use seems to be irrelevant. However, how far your foot is off the stage CAN make a difference.

Stage bounce is a term I sort of invented since I'm not sure what to call it. This is when the character hits the stage and bounces outwards.

The characters that do not get hit by this tech usually have a second jump that creates an odd, hard to hit hitbox (i.e. Bowser's second jump has him spinning in his shell.) and others can't even be hit after hanging for too long. Others, however, can still be punished if they wait.

This will be sorted by stage, as this does change on each stage. I tested every neutral stage, thus the ones you will be playing the most.

Also, These results are not set in stone. If any of you find that you can cause a result on a character that I list here otherwise, then I will retest them to see if it's true and change the list if so.




NOTE: I am currently preparing for a tournament on the 2nd but after that's over with, I'll begin testing if this will work on any character's up-b's which I suspect it will. Stay tuned for more uses of this and please post here if any of you gets one of these off in a match! I'd love to hear about it and I'm sure bigmack209, armalite and zero5 would love to hear about the results of their work!




Battlefield

Stage Spike
Mario
Donkey Kong
Link (Very difficult to time)
Kirby
Fox
Marth
Mr. Game & Watch
Luigi
Diddy Kong
Pit
MetaKnight
Ivysaur
Charizard
Snake
Yoshi
DeDeDe
Wolf
Lucario
Ness
Sonic
Wario
Toon Link
ROB
Jigglypuff


Stage Bounce
Pikachu
Zelda
Zero Suit Samus
Ice Climbers
Lucas

No Effect
Samus
Sheik
Falco
Squirtle
Ike
Peach
Ganondorf
Bowser
Olimar
Captain Falcon



Final Destination

Stage Spike
Donkey Kong
Ivysaur

Stage Bounce
Mario
Link
Kirby
Fox
Pikachu
Marth
Mr. Game & Watch
Luigi
Diddy Kong
Zelda
Sheik
Zero Suit Samus
Pit
MetaKnight
Charizard
Yoshi
Ice Climbers
DeDeDe
Wolf
Lucario
Ness
Sonic
Wario
Toon Link
ROB
Jigglypuff
Lucas

No Effect
Samus
Falco
Squirtle
Ike
Snake
Peach
Ganondorf
Bowser
Olimar
Captain Falcon




Yoshi's Island

Stage Spike


Stage Bounce
Mario
Donkey Kong
Link
Kirby
Fox
Pikachu
Marth
Mr. Game & Watch
Luigi
Diddy Kong
Zelda
Sheik
Zero Suit Samus
Pit
MetaKnight
Ivysaur
Charizard
Yoshi
Ice Climbers
DeDeDe
Wolf
Lucario
Ness
Sonic
Wario
Toon Link
ROB
Jigglypuff

No Effect
Samus
Falco
Squirtle
Ike
Snake
Peach
Ganondorf
Bowser
Olimar
Captain Falcon
Lucas



Lylat Cruise

Stage Spike


Stage Bounce
Mario
Donkey Kong
Link
Kirby
Fox
Pikachu
Marth
Mr. Game & Watch
Luigi
Diddy Kong
Zelda
Sheik
Zero Suit Samus
Pit
MetaKnight
Falco
Ivysaur
Charizard
Yoshi
Ice Climbers
DeDeDe
Wolf
Lucario
Ness
Sonic
Wario
Toon Link
Rob
Jigglypuff

No Effect
Samus
Squirtle
Ike
Snake
Peach
Ganondorf
Bowser
Olimar
Captain Falcon
Lucas


Smashville

Stage Spike
Mario
Donkey Kong
Link*
Kirby
MetaKnight
Falco
Ivysaur
Charizard
Snake
Yoshi
DeDeDe
Lucario
Ness
Sonic
Wario
Toon Link
ROB
Jigglypuff

Stage Bounce
Zero Suit Samus
Pit
Ice Climbers
Wolf
Bowser
Olimar

No Effect
Samus
Sheik
Squirtle
Ike
Peach
Ganondorf
Captain Falcon
Lucas

Suggestions of Use
The primary usage of this technique is quite obvious: spiking your opponent. Connecting with this leaves them in a VERY awkward position, usually without any jumps left.

The best ways to connect with it are:

Merely standing on the edge, as if ready to edge guard them. Instead, allow them to attempt to reach the edge and then time your up-smash right.

Hyphen smashes/Jump-cancelled up-smashes! This is really where the tech shines. Say you hit an opponent and they fly off the stage. Their first thought is going to be either the edge or the stage, obviously. You charge full speed across the stage and throw a hyphen smash! Now, if they grab them ledge and you performed this right, they will die and yet if they go for the stage, they have an up-smash in their face!

However, in some cases and in most cases on Final Destination, Yoshi's Island and Lylat Cruise, players are not spiked but bounced outward instead. While this is not nearly as good of a result, it does put Marth in a great position of power. You can: *obviously* attack them with whatever aerial you like or you can VERY easily, spike them.



Video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDMKcaGYoVg

gasp! my thread! jk thanks for the credit though. anyway, works on a lot more people than he listed. like MK on smashville. not sure it had to be made into 2 threads though. its actually fine... you're just missing some info. guess this means i don't have to sum up that thread if you do it here.

I'm still in the process of testing characters. There's a lot of them >.<

And for the 1,000,000th time: read the thread. They never touch the ledge.

man, i'm tired of saying that too.

Could you put a rush on the video (over more testing) so we can see how effective it actually is?

Yay! Done!

Will post a video tomorrow.

It's late and I have to wake up and intern tomorrow morning.

Happy spiking!


Demonstormkill: You can very easily test it yourself if you wish and do not want to wait until tomorrow if you have two controllers handy.

Go to training mode and place the CPU on control. Use any character listed above that "works" on any given stage, take Marth, place him on the edge and have the CPU grab the edge right below Marth. Using controller 2, press down on the analog stick/control pad so the CPU drops off the ledge and then press up so they jump back to it.

Have your other hand on Marth's C-stick and slam up on it RIGHT before the CPU grabs the edge.

I tested this a bit and it seems to generally work... there are some problems however and obviously more testing is needed if this is going to be a frequently useful move.

The main problem I see is that, unless I'm doing something wrong, it doesn't seem like this is possible (for any of the characters I tried: MK, Snake, DeDeDe, G&W) if they sweetspot the ledge. I could only hit them if they peeked over the ledge and into the foot hitbox.

One thing that needs testing is the difference between a running usmash and a standing one on each character/stage. I tried this with Dedede and noticed you can still spike him, just not quite hard enough to kill. If he has a couple jumps left he can make it back, with only one he can make the ledge but you can just edgehog him. I also tried this with snake and he still spikes normally. All my testing was on battlefield.

Another thing that occured to me is maybe this could spike some characters out of their up-B. That might actually turn out to be a more reliable use if the normal method leaves it completely in the opponent's hands (ie sweetspot>usmash). It does work on snake (but not through SA), even when the cypher stops too low to cypher grab. Just make sure the foot hitbox is out there when he comes up and he'll get spiked, but i've only gotten it to work when snake is moving up into the bottom or bottom-side of the hitbox. This is my favourite use for the usmash spike so far, even though snake was never in a great position recovering low anyway. Tried it on Lucario as well but he sweetspots his up-b too easily.

I can see why some people might call this situational given marth's great alternatives: dair, edgehog, DS stage spike, etc. But given what I consider to be a useful discovery (the easy spike on snake) in a couple hours of me messing around with 2 controllers, there could be other things to be found here as well.

it could probably get snake if he werent in his SA. he's usually pretty vulnerable there anyway. and GREAT work xander! but i have a question. are there any characters that will not get stagespiked from the off ledge position but will be for hanging to long? or the other way around? wow... this takes a lot more testing than i expected.

Yes indeed there are.

Bowser is the best example. It's so hard to hit him while he's jumping on because he's in his shell but omg. If he hangs too long... funniest was on FD... NO chance to recover.

Also, yes. It took me a couple of hours to test everyone. I had 1P dedicated to Marth and then 3 controllers plugged in to test as quickly as possible. Heh.

sweet. well anyway thanks again.

Steel2nd said:

This is nice, but..

1. It hardly works on any characters.

2. Not many people will hang on to the ledge that long. If they see you standing that close or dashing towards you theyll just do a get up attack, at the very least do something except just hang there.

It's way too situational. I can't see it being very useful.

Click to expand...

i Agree.

But right before they grab on to edge, if you time it riight its gonna be a good stage spike.

but this might be rly useful,` 0_o who knows,=p

man, once again, it's really annoying to repeat myself a bunch of times. desire, just read the posts on my thread.

Again, can you do anything about it if they just sweetspot the ledge (so that they grab it from far below or to the side)? This is very important for the effectiveness of the spike.

Demonstormkill said:

Again, can you do anything about it if they just sweetspot the ledge (so that they grab it from far below or to the side)? This is very important for the effectiveness of the spike.

Click to expand...

The testing I did pertained to double jumping RIGHT to the ledge.

I'm only one guy so I couldn't really test up-b's that well but I suppose quite a few of them would work. That's something I can mess with later and hopefully the community can give me a hand with.

Either way, sweetspotting shouldn't matter if you time it right. There's still those frames where they haven't quite grabbed the stage and when you can bash their head in with your super foot. :-p

I must have tried it 200 times and didn't get one to work when they sweetspotted. Even if my timing is bad that isn't a good indication.

Maybe it should just be a way to condition them to always go for the sweetspot, and then you could punish...

True. Of course I'm just guessing about that. I am at work right now after all >.<

You are right though. People may just focus on a sweetspot against Marth when this gets out which is good for us. Or they might just get scared of the edge altogether, which is also good. :-D

I really think this has a lot of potential once the community gets ahold of it and gives it some solid playtime. Please, readers! Tell me what you think!

I won't be able to do anymore testing for a few weeks since I won't be at home, but I'll be around here checking out the progress.

BTW, up+B spike testing isn't too difficult if you set the CPU to marth, and whatever character you're testing to a B-stick configuration. If need be, just wait for them to fall off the ledge, then hit up on the cstick and time the spike on the other cstick.

BSTICK! TRUE!

I never thought of that! >.<

Maybe I'll give that a try later.

wait what about the bstick? you mean the auto RAR to upb stagespike? or what r u talking about? and why is it good if they sweetspot the edge? ugh sorry im confused.

he was suggesting how to test up-b's by myself. >.<

Instead, I'm honing my fighting skills. I haven't gotten much chance to really play lately. Heh.

ohhhhhhh ok. so anyway, why is it good for them to sweetspot the edge?

Bump due to added video.

I did it several times against myself yesterday. I learned how to hyphen smash him when the toon link I did it on was hanging on the ledge. it's kinda hard to explain, I just knew when to do it but I think that if you start with one foot in one of those rings on the floor and then dash and charge it instantly you're supposed to release it instantly after you hear the first sound coming from your smash charging (the sound that at least reminds me of a gun reloading), but this is all just what I remember, yesterday was a tough night. anyways, what I'm getting to is that with training the hyphen smash works, although it's probably really hard unless your facing a really predictable opponent (I never played against a human yesterday.)

This is useful. Though I prefer generally to fall and reverse DS stage spike, this is safer, and owns people that like to attack while camping the edge (which many people do if you're standing close to the edge.

I wonder if it goes through the lip on Pokemon Stadium?

Good s*** though xander.

Though I haven't actually tried it yet, I'm thinking that you'll probably be able to time it better if you start charging the Usmash, since you'll already be sans the opening animation.

Wow, that seemed to work really well. The move isn't that good to be called broken, but definetely something deserves paying attention to..

Haha, great tech.


Thanks for putting this up, I just did it to my friend and I ROFLD So hard.

i was testing it on metaknight on smashville and sometimes when i did it it would go at a little bit different angle in the same situation. oh, and you know how i was talking about maybe other characters being able to do this when i discovered it? well i havent tested it yet, but there are some other moves that pull characters in like marth's foot does through the edge... and i think it would work the same way.

does it work if u do a sliding upsmash towards the edge?

dude thats awesome. i gotta try it in a match.

Let me try to see if I got everything down:

You can do this only on certain characters, and its efficiency varies on certain stages.

This is a stage spike illuminating from Marth's foot, which has a hitbox on Usmash (and Dolphin Slash, lol).

You can do this if:

They are on the ledge for too long after losing invincibility frames.

Before they sweetspot the ledge from a recovery.

At set moments in the animation from getting back to the stage?

Seems useful, and I need to refine my aggro side anyway. FullMetal's Marth ***** everyone at this monthly and he's very aggressive. Eh ***** MKs and doesn't afraid of anything.

It definitely works with a sliding up smash. That's basically what I was thinking with the whole thing. >.<

If this works with Up+B moves, it'll be a force to be reckoned with *-*
And lol at his foot being a hitbox XD

This is an insanely good find. I guess F-smashing is better if they still have the ledge a lot of the time, but this will definitely be better and should kill some really annoying players like Game and Watch from completely recovering. This shouln't have a major effect on Jigglypuff, Kirby, Metaknight, DDD or Ike (even if it hit, Ike and DDD have super armour for B-Up and Jigglypuff, MK, and Kirby have 6 jumps). I wonder if this is related to the pound spike (Jigglypuff) I found on charizard B-Up.

up smash stage spike.. USSS?.. hmm.. we should find a different name for it.. :D

No, the name is what it is. We don't need more silly names to have to be explained. Especially because this isn't complicated.

I don't have much hope for this technique against good players, especially because if you miss the u-smash you're lagging and they have enough time to ledge attack you. Who knows though I'll test this out againt my crew.

sometimes it kills them before they react or with some characters they have no chance to recover. in some cases, metaknight can't so yes, it does affect him.

lol at "Ken" in video.

Interesting. So here I was thinking you were talking about if they were hanging on the edge for too long. This might be worth mastering since it's not exactly uncommon to be in a situation where this is usable.

Few things that come to mind that might be worth looking into briefly.

1) Does Marth have to be facing off the stage for it to work?
2) Which characters can still recover from the spike?(i.e. via immediate use of their up+b and whatnot)
3) Are you absolutely sure that they have no jumps left? Or are they just not connecting with the ledge?
4) Maybe we should come up with which frame of marth's up-smash(I know this would be hard to do but just some sort of way of figuring out when to do it) that this actually works. Just a thought. (from what I can tell, you have to do it while he's raising his sword upwards, but after he gets into the thrusting stance)

But good find =] It'll be fun when my friends stare at me and go "but...but....you UP smashed!"

feardragon64 said:

lol at "Ken" in video.

Interesting. So here I was thinking you were talking about if they were hanging on the edge for too long. This might be worth mastering since it's not exactly uncommon to be in a situation where this is usable.

Few things that come to mind that might be worth looking into briefly.

1) Does Marth have to be facing off the stage for it to work?
2) Which characters can still recover from the spike?(i.e. via immediate use of their up+b and whatnot)
3) Are you absolutely sure that they have no jumps left? Or are they just not connecting with the ledge?
4) Maybe we should come up with which frame of marth's up-smash(I know this would be hard to do but just some sort of way of figuring out when to do it) that this actually works. Just a thought. (from what I can tell, you have to do it while he's raising his sword upwards, but after he gets into the thrusting stance)

But good find =] It'll be fun when my friends stare at me and go "but...but....you UP smashed!"

Click to expand...

Well first of all, I was talking to BlackWaltzX about this exact thing and I knew I was gonna hear about it. Haha.

My name is Ken for real. And I've always played Marth.

It's just an odd coincidence.

Anyway! To your points:


1. Totally doesn't matter. He can face either way. It still hits them.

2. Well if they tech the stage, they probably all can but honestly, who's going to? Regarding up-b's, I'm not sure. They'd have to be REAL fast to get it.

3. If they get to the ledge then yes, of course they still have a jump left. If they don't, which is the primary situation for this technique, then no, they wouldn't have a jump. They never grab the ledge and they most likely used their jumps to get to the position. Thus, no jump renewal and dead character.

4. I'm relatively certain it's the duration of the move. Whenever you sliding up-smash someone, they FIRST thing you hit with is your foot and THEN the blade of the sword. And, judging by my testing of this, the only timing you need to worry about it when they hit the ledge, not what part of the move you hit them with.



In the past few days I've been playing my friend's Olimar a lot and, even though Olimar doesn't really work that well with the tech, I've been throwing sliding up-smashes at him for the hell of it.

While I haven't hit him with the spike, which as the chart states is very unlikely, I find myself making contact with the up smash itself as he climbs up the edge anyway.

I'm pretty sure that in order for someone to punish us for this, they need to SEE it coming. How many Marths do you see dash towards edges and up smash? None. Maybe after this, it can be a move we throw in for a surprise that will turn the tide for us in battle!

thats really what i intended when i posted it after i discovered it. i'm happy that people are finally seeing the usefulness.