Before watching the vids, here are pretty much all my thoughts about this match-up, for your or anyone's benefit:
Thank goodness Samus only has to overcome Metroids, Ridley, Mother Brain, etc. in the games, because if she had to fight Ganondorf, it would be impossible. I despise this match-up, and if I had to fight as many Ganons as I do Sheiks and Captains, I'd fear it more than those two.
My understanding on how to approach this match-up is on the ground, spaced back. Ganon wins in the air, period, if he's playing right. Sure if you have a Ganon that spaces too close and starts a move too late, you can punish with aerials, but I'm talking about good Samus-rapers here.
My Samus strategy is very aggressive, and I'm often right up on peoples' shields, which is the worst idea possible against Ganon, whose shield-grab owns Samus, and who has a roll which is ten times better, and can up-b a shield-campy Samus. Not to mention his jab.
I think against an aggressive Ganon, spot-dodge should actually be used. I try to avoid spot-dodging or rolling with any character, but Samus really does have a nice spot-dodge, and if used to avoid an aggressive attack, then followed up with a down-smash, can frustrate your opponent.
So I think Samus chill outside Ganon's short-hop aerial range, and wavedash / dash-dance around in between tilts. Uncharged blast is nice since Ganon can't clink with it like he owns her Missiles. Putting a bomb between you can't hurt, but also doesn't terribly help unless you're trying to SWD or grab.
Edge-guarding Ganon isn't terribly tricky, thank goodness. If he has enough height, watch for his midair then down-b, and try to punish it with a missile. When he has to up-b, follow him with a nair. Standing back and passively trying to get an up-tilt edge-guard is fine if he's high enough to land on the level, but if he's sweetspotting, it's a bad idea since pro Ganons will wall-jump tech then immediately up-b again, catching you with it. It's a pain.
So dance outside Ganon's range, if he stays back as well, aggitate him with uncharged blasts and missile cancels. When he's staying grounded for extended periods of time, throw out a grab, especially if you drop a bomb between you two and he's still in his shield. If he approaches, up-b from shield or wavedash back tilt or spot dodge down-smash. Ganons hate being down-smashed, since they can't boot recover. Missile and nair edge-guard, with possibly an up-tilt at the end.
I only jump after Ganon jumps; jumping near Ganon before he does is a sure way to get knocked off the level, and against the best Ganons, be killed at any percent. I try to charge my blast, since it's a great tool in this fight, especially since you can shoot it above Ganon and have him jump into it so much of the time.
In this match-up, combo'ing is very difficult, so one of my favorite start-ups is dair, up-tilt, dsmash (if the edge is behind me), or dair, up-tilt, fsmash (if the edge is in front of me). This only works from low percents when he won't get knocked anywhere from the dair or up-tilt. Missile spam is a good stall, but is only a stall, but it's a great way to make Ganon come to you, and then space a nair to punish his attempt at punishing you.
Having Ganon on a platform above you is GREAT. I love it. Fair his shield, it'll push him pretty far, oftentimes off the platform to get hit, which you can follow up with a falling uair, and then a jab-tilt or something. Up-B isn't as great a tool in this match-up as it is in some others, since Ganon can pretty much just up-air you as soon as you're done hitting him with it. If you are going to up-B, make sure you don't decide which way to DI until you see where he's going.
Recovering is difficult, just try to stay as high as possible so you can lose height to avoid him but still make it to the edge. If he's standing far enough back that you can't hit him but he can still make it difficult to get back on the level, edge-hop uncharged blasts at him until he moves back or forward. If he moves forward, feel free to edge-hop fair, up-b him, re-grabbing the edge. Watch out for his short-hop back-air, since it owns edge-hopped blasts and attacks. You want him to face you, since his fair takes longer to come out. Save your grapple, and rising grapples only work if your opponent doesn't know to just forward tilt at the edge to knock you out into oblivion. Just try to sweet-spot the edge with up-b, and if the Ganon can up-air edge guard you effectively, change up your timing with the one grapple. If he screws you, that sucks, but such is this match-up.
All this said, I consistently lose to highly skilled Ganons. I'm thinking carefully now, but in the match-up, I just lose concentration and get frustrated. This is why the single most important tip in this match-up is that Samus needs to keep her cool throughout the entire match. One slip-up and you'll get knocked hard, and if you slide down a slope of agitation, guarantee a loss.
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Comments/feedback on the videos you posted:
He missed some easy punishes on Samus, but generally played a solid Ganon. You exploited his shortcomings will with aerials, especially nair and uair. Fair worked sometimes, but I especially liked it when you used it while retreating aerially.
Don't missile or missile cancel if Ganon is close enough to fair you, which he will do, going through anything you happened to have shot.
Spot-dodging against a Ganon on the ground is a bad idea, since his jab and grab are fast enough to negate any lag from missing you while spot-dodging. In general, if you can jab Ganon's shield, you're standing too close to him. Do one maybe, then wavedash back and forward tilt, or up-tilt if he likes to spot-dodge.
Hitting Ganon's shield with aerials is a bad idea unless you can land behind him, but even then, he can jump out and aerial you. In general, you should always keep back from a shielding Ganon. Down-tilt works great against one though, just stay back far enough. If he wave-dashes at you in shield, down-tilt again, it'll keep pushing him too far back to shield-grab you.
Your use of running off the level then midairing back to blast, aerial, or waveland attack was good. I like that you can mix it up, I hadn't thought of that before. I must say that your use of this to fire your fully charged blast became predictable though.
If you knock Ganon out, keep in mind that oftentimes it would be better to fire a standing missile than to jump and fire one, since the standing one is more likely to connect with his down-b.
Do you intentionally rising grapple close enough to the level that you just fly up without grappling? At first I thought it was a mistake but you did it frequently, and I saw it could have benefits.
You have a pretty nice game vs. Ganon, and he definitely knows the match-up.
Things I most appreciated that I'll try to add to my game vs Ganon:
• Run-off, jump back wavelands and blasts.
• Shffling fair after he's performed an attack and is landing.
• Intentionally grapple-cancelling against the level while rising grappling
As a general note, your wavedash distance is almost always perfect, just wanted to kudos you for that. I think if you threw in edge-hopped blasts that it could help rack up some damage while upsetting your opponents game. Wes' strategy of running up and bombing off their shield could be very useful in this match-up, consider trying it, especially if you can pull off wavelanding back and seeing what he'll do to punish it. For the long-term, you could consider adding shield-dropping through platforms, pivoting, and crouch-cancelled dashes to your game. I also sometimes uses bombs Mike Nasty style to interrupt their recovery when I can't think of anything else to do. In fact, now that I think about it, I didn't see you use a single bomb on the level, and very few while recovering lol - not that that's bad, just an observation.
So I enjoyed the fairs, but consider down-tilting in more cases, and you were very sparse with grabs and bombs, which I know can both be punished, but they can also be sprinkled in with great effectiveness, especially when used together. Also, your missile spam on levels like Pokémon Stadium worked greatly to your advantage, but you missed opportunities for missile spam on other levels like Battlefield. Try my DJC trick if you haven't heard of it, I think you'll like the results (
video).
And I know you know this, but just general advice for any Samus: Don't roll or upsmash. Don't attack or roll-up on a platform when your foe is directly beneath you.
As an open-ended question: Why do we mid-air after we get knocked across the level? I constantly find myself doing this, in order to 'recover faster' it feels like, but I can't conceptually understand how jumping further above the level could speed it up at all. Is it just a lazy un-tumble before we fast-fall and waveland, or does it actually give us the ability to horizontally DI more? I ask because I saw you doing this, and I know I instinctively do the same, and I had forgotten this question until now. Fake edit: Now that I think about it, I do the same thing when I know I would have died otherwise, so I guess it burns off some horizontal momentum, which makes it worth the time to fast-fall the height we gained to recover faster overall.
And as one last side note, I actually enjoyed that the audio got in front of the video at times, because I could hear the punish that was coming. Almost a good exercise, to be able to better anticipate the consequences of an action.
Having finished writing this post, I must say it came out to be rather lengthy. At least it's in paragraphs of ideas, so I guess people should skim over it if nothing else.
Really enjoyable videos, I loved watching them, and definitely got some new and fresh ideas to try out. Hopefully my feedback provides some as well for you.
