Planning to join the Melee competitive scene, I need a few questions answered.

[cadentoob]

I plan to get a new controller (have been stuck with a crusty, old, third-party one for a long while) and I am curious if I should use it right off the bat when I begin practicing, or if I should conserve it a bit.
Also, I am not very familiar with the metagame. What character should I begin with to learn all of the necessary techniques and learn the whole game around me with? I want to eventually play as Samus if that is not too much of a pain of a character to switch to.
Finally, (sorry if this is a common or stupid question) I only have access to a Wii at the moment, does the Wii run melee any slower than the Gamecube does? I need to know if I need to invest into one of those things too.
Thanks in advance for at the very least giving concern to my questions and I am very grateful for those who can answer.

 

[EPsilon933]

You should use your new controller as soon as you get it. They can last a pretty long time

Fox and Falco will help you learn the essential ATs the fastest

What do you mean by "learn the whole game around me with?"?

Samus a little bit bad. You should probably choose 1 of the top 8 and stick to them (Fox, Falco, Sheik, Jigglypuff, Peach, Marth, Ice Climbers (a very complicated character), Captain Falcon)

Melee will run the same on both consoles

 

[cadentoob]

Thanks for answering btw.

For the "learn the whole game around me" I guess I mean a well rounded character who can let me understand other characters strengths and weaknesses on a higher level and help me learn how to deal with them along with things I don't know about the metagame so far.

I think i might start off with Falco for practice then, let me know if you guys think otherwise about that!

 

[EPsilon933]

For the "learn the whole game around me" I guess I mean a well rounded character who can let me understand other characters strengths and weaknesses on a higher level and help me learn how to deal with them along with things I don't know about the metagame so far.

I think i might start off with Falco for practice then, let me know if you guys think otherwise about that!

I other words, a character with the least specific traits for them, something more general. That character might be Captain Falcon or Marth

Falco's tech skill demand will push you to develop the needed abilities faster most of the others. Have fun

 

[TheHartChip]

I wouldn't discourage him from picking someone outside of the top 8. Personally speaking I would say that if he wants to play samus then he should give it a shot. I would say that maybe he should try just feeling around for characters he likes. Samus can be successful it just takes more work. Beside that though I agree with what you are saying.

 

[SAUS]

I wouldn't discourage him from picking someone outside of the top 8. Personally speaking I would say that if he wants to play samus then he should give it a shot. I would say that maybe he should try just feeling around for characters he likes. Samus can be successful it just takes more work. Beside that though I agree with what you are saying.

I agree with this. Samus has placed decently high at some tournaments anyway, so I don't see why you should avoid player her.

Also @cadnetoob, you say you are joining the competitive scene, but how much have you played the game already? Do you have a familiar understanding of the controls? Can you do tilts and smashes on demand? If you are fairly new to the game, I'd say just mess around against low level CPUs and get a feel for the game.

If you've already played the game a lot, you should look up the advanced technique videos and learn some of those. Finding your local scene would be good as well, since you will be able to meet people who can help teach you.

 

[cadentoob]

I agree with this. Samus has placed decently high at some tournaments anyway, so I don't see why you should avoid player her.

Also @cadnetoob, you say you are joining the competitive scene, but how much have you played the game already? Do you have a familiar understanding of the controls? Can you do tilts and smashes on demand? If you are fairly new to the game, I'd say just mess around against low level CPUs and get a feel for the game.

If you've already played the game a lot, you should look up the advanced technique videos and learn some of those. Finding your local scene would be good as well, since you will be able to meet people who can help teach you.

I will definitely give Samus a try once I become more skilled and see how I like her.

To be honest, I have always had trouble executing tilts, it usually turns into a smash that I did not want to perform, I'll see if the controller is somewhat to blame for this because I have played this game for a while.

I live in SoCal, so finding tournaments will not be a problem

 

[MookieRah]

Falco's tech is easy, actually. I have never been someone to gravitate towards tech heavy characters, but for a time I played Falco and most of his bread and butter was quite easy to learn.

Marth is a great starter character, as people often do well with him in the beginning. Same goes to Sheik, although I think one can learn more "general" aspects of the game with Marth than with Sheik (but that is just my personal opinion).

Samus is a pretty good character, but in order to be really great with her you have to put more time into character specific tech than any other character (unfortunately most of her tech is unique, so it won't cross over to other characters). To be a real Samus main requires a ton of dedication in order to be good.

 

[AceMan]

Keep Samus if you want but if you're starting out I would recommend Sheik (If you want one of the top 8), maybe Falco. Sheik has the lowest learning curve of all the top tier characters

 

[Massive]

If you want to get good with Samus, make Samus your main, play her when you fight someone seriously.

That being said, I still highly recommend you practice other characters to get a feel for them, especially characters you might not naturally feel very good about playing. I have found that playing characters you do not resonate with will highlight deficiencies in your general understanding of the game, and make you better overall.

Aside from that, I wrote up a brief structure of steps a while back that I have used to move newer players in my area from casual to a level that lets them stand a chance competitively. Check it out.

 

[Elyssa Xey Hexen]

I plan to get a new controller (have been stuck with a crusty, old, third-party one for a long while) and I am curious if I should use it right off the bat when I begin practicing, or if I should conserve it a bit.
Also, I am not very familiar with the metagame. What character should I begin with to learn all of the necessary techniques and learn the whole game around me with? I want to eventually play as Samus if that is not too much of a pain of a character to switch to.
Finally, (sorry if this is a common or stupid question) I only have access to a Wii at the moment, does the Wii run melee any slower than the Gamecube does? I need to know if I need to invest into one of those things too.
Thanks in advance for at the very least giving concern to my questions and I am very grateful for those who can answer.

You should simply stick with Samus right from the get go and never look back. The very good reason to do so is because you will probably stick with the game longer by picking the character you enjoy itself. Its an additional bonus that Samus herself is a reliable character to stick with. As I always said in the past to other people is to pick your goals.

If you want to shoot for the best at say nationals, then you should stick with a top 6 character Peach, Marth, Fox, Sheik, Jiggs, or Falco. Otherwise, Samus is just fine for pretty much any other goal I think you might have with the game. Pretty much all universal game knowledge can be done with any character. To be honest there really is not that much stuff to practice that is universal to all characters and to play effectively. Wavedash and l-cancel are literally the only two universal things I believe you need to practice. When I say that I mean its varous applications as well. For example, getting off the ledge into a wavedash or getting onto a platform quickly with it. The rest is strictly character specific.

Again, I see no reason to stick with say Fox/Falco first if you want to end up using Samus. Practicing doing shine wavedash is not something Samus will ever need to do, so its pretty pointless to practice said thing if you want to end up with Samus in the end. So, I say again to simply drop any other character and just pick up samus and stick with it.

For hardware questions. I believe I was told that the Wii actually does not lag with 4 people on stages like Fountain of Dreams or Mute City. On the gamecube those stages can lag with 4 people on the screen. With that information I would say the Wii is a stronger system to run on for melee. As for the controller, I have used the same controller for a couple of years and had no issues with it at all. If anything the performance actually improves as time goes on since the initial resistance to the control stick starts to go away making stuff smoother to perform.

As much as other people have told me to stick with a single character (which is good advice) I would tend to agree with @ Massive as well for taking some time to look at other characters. When I started out there was a ton of stuff I simply did not know about Melee and learning it either through experience of playing other people or trying it out myself gets you that necessary game knowledge. You do not need to be an expert at doing stuff, but it helps to know say a fundamental basis for each character. I primarily did it as a way to get used to the way a character launches an opponent. It seems to make it more ingrained to my memory to know that when grabbed as say Ganon his Dthrow sends me behind him or his other moves. You can get that from asking other people or simply learning through losing to it (lol), but I found it easier to remember by physically doing it myself a number of times.