Zero Suit Samus first made her debut in Metroid: Zero Mission, dressed from neck to toe in slim, fitting light blue suit, armed with only a gun that dispensed paralyzer shots. ZSS has received a few upgrades since then, having excellent combos, a paralyzer, a tether recovery, a Flip Jump for recovery, and excellent speed. Despite being on the lighter side and unable to live as long as Power Suit Samus, she is nonetheless a formidable foe.
For those who aren't familiar with this match up, the first stock between you and our space bounty hunter pal will be played with three items from her power suit; the helmet, the blaster, and I believe a leg/arm piece, all which can be glide tossed for use as an approach, or used defensively to create distance. Whether or not you decide to play these items is up to you, but I personally always throw them offstage. My reasoning for doing so is based on the simple fact that us DeDeDe users do not have a glide toss, and by removing her armor pieces from play take away the initial edge she has on us the first stock. She moves fast enough in my opinion, and having a glide toss to use at her disposal only hurts us.
Thankfully, ZSS doesn't have any sort of guaranteed combo on us during the early percents, but on the flip side we don't have any sort of chain grab on her either. Get to back throwing or down throwing to forward tilting to put on the damage, and don't forget to space her if she's approaching aerially with forward tilts in attempt to keep her at bay. Normally I would say get to tech chasing, but ZSS can just L and down+b out to escape quickly. Even if you keep her outside of your realm of comfort, this doesn't mean that she doesn't have insane combo potential. Her down smash suffers from 0 hit lag. Yeah, I was surprised by the 0 hit lag, too. This means that Zero Suit Samus' down smash imparts no innate disadvantage even when it hits something. Meanwhile, the opponent's frozen in shield for 8 frames. Good luck getting the shield grab when squaring off against this move. Although possible, the timing is super strict. She has the frame advantage on you, so in order to level out the playing field, you need to perfect shield her attack, granting you a +2 frame advantage, enough to snare her in your greedy little hands. Proceed with caution, however, as getting caught in one of her paralyzer shots always ensures another shot, followed up by an attack of her choice. This is where her combo potential comes into play, as one down smash means a three hit string at the minimum, meaning that your opponent can put on the damage very quickly should you choose to play impatiently/carelessly and try to rush down a ZSS user. Find openings in between her walls of attacks and exploit them.
If any of you have played Melee in the past, recall Marth's style of fighting if you will. Do you remember how the tip of his sword was the range you had trouble getting past? ZSS has something similar, utilizing her side B, neutral B, and down smash. Perfect shielding the charged shot is an easy task, but the down smash in some cases will push you back far enough for your opponent to use a retreating side B, keeping you outside of her realm of comfort, making this fight long and tedious if you can't find a way in. Not only that, by ZSS' side B hits twice, once when during the whip portion of the attack, and the other during the materialization of the ball at the end of her whip during the end, so learn to shield both hits before attempting a grab if your brave enough. If the ZSS user is playing campy, go ahead and throw some waddle dees and doss out on the field to absorb some stun for you. This could provide the opening you need, or keep her toes trying to avoid the lasers assuming she doesn't get rid of the Waddle Doo asap. Don't spam your projectile if she attempts to close the gap, I'd say about mid range is when you should stop using your minions, as this will only get you punished. When you get a grab, you should always try to put the ZSS in a bad position if you can't land that up tilt or down smash, and her worst position by far is recovering. Abuse the fact that she has a tether recovery, but don't assume it's always going to be a free gimp. Her Flip Jump has the ability to spike you, so be careful when chasing her off stage! ZSS dies to a fresh up tilt at 101% off the top of Lylat, and the up tilt damage added means you'll see her stock disappear with a total of 114% damage. Here's a random bit of information, side B goes through up tilt. The more you know, right? If your used to setting up your up tilts by air dodging into your opponent and buffering your headbutt, watch out if you come in to high. ZSS' Up+B has the ability to drag you downwards if the tip connects, sending your hurling towards the stage or in some cases used as a surprise spike. Learn the timing in which you hit the ground and tech roll away, you don't want to give her any sort of follow up. You need to also be very careful when having to recover back on to the stage. If the ZSS user makes you use your Up+B, that's a free Up+B hit for them in most cases. Not only that, but up air comes out extremely fast, and in some cases can be used to kill, so try to use your other four jumps in a smart manner so as to not put yourself in this situation. Speaking off lethal percents and odd methods of spiking, ZSS in most cases utilizes most of her kill moves in order to space sometimes, meaning she doesn't have a reliable stock taker. With good DI, it is possible to live well over the 140s and higher. This is one of our strong suits in the match, our weight. She has a real hard time killing us, even if she can combo us to SSB64 and back.
All in all, the victor of this match will be the one who can take advantage of the few openings offered up by both players. I want to call this match up 55:45 ZSS favor, but match up experience plays a vital role as well. I'm going to have to say 60:40 if you don't know what your doing. Good luck, guys and gals, this match up is tough.
Credit for frame data goes to Adapt for showing me the application of frame advantage, and Ankoku for displaying it's actual use. Credit is also dually deserved to Fogo for reminding me of side B's twin hits, and CO18's clarification of tech chasing.
.
