Make Your Move 26: Top 50 Is In! MYM27 starts on January 31st

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Randall Flagg

Oh man, I heard this name being thrown out in the chat as a potential Stephen King character to get a set, but I never thought it would happen. This set does some incredibly unique things right off the bat, essentially reinventing the “Fly” genre and using it do a unique take on “minions” where the various monsters are only threats in the Fly under various circumstances and can’t be taken down. The Widower and Lobster having attacks that they perform periodically and have overlap every 18 seconds is particularly cool.

I have absolutely no issue with opponents being able to tear a hole to escape from todash space on their own, from a flavour-based perspective - it is far, far better than forcing opponents to escape through exits of Randall’s design on parts of the stages where he chooses. The existence of crossover attacks and foes being able to use their own dimensional-tearing attacks against Randall means his Fly can backfire on him, and prevents silly scenarios where one person in todash space can’t attack a fighter in reality. This Neutral Special is one of the craziest things I’ve read in a while, but you honestly nailed the Fly implementation - a genre that is pretty unpopular in modern MYM and hasn’t been attempted for such a long time. I am all here for it.

Down Special is another move that affects your non-Special moves: powering up moves to greater effect if you prime multiple of them and land them in quick succession reminds me of Light’s deathblow mechanic, which was based on your Elder Princess Shroob’s Down Special anyway. Further readings of defensive-based predictions remind me of Froy’s Hol Horse set, but implemented differently - Randall needs to dodge or parry attacks he predicts, so it requires actual work from the player even in the face of an enemy input they’ve correctly guessed. This I like, as opposed to Randall just dodging an attack he predicts for free, as well as the fact that you get a bigger reward for logging in less attacks. I could imagine hilarious match-up scenarios where Randall has to go up against an opponent with an unconventional move input that they use a lot, like Kazuya’s Electric Wind God Fist - hope the Randall player knows how to input that move!

Side Special is another crazy move, its own full-fledged concept that’s essentially an elaborate version of Ganondorf’s Dead Man’s Volley. This is played off in ways not seen in other sets, specifically where the ball can lure opponents into going into todash space since it won’t follow them through the portal itself. Side Special’s ability to play off of your Down Special predictions is particularly delicious, in what seemed like a conceptually disconnected move. I like that various mechanical notes that aren’t super important for understanding Side Special are placed at the end of the move.

• Jab’s prediction bonus of reversing the attack order so Jab 3 comes out first and Jabs 2 and 1 later is put to really cool effect with Jab 3’s tech scenarios, so you can make foes roll back farther into todash space or punish them with a crossover attack if they roll towards you.
• Dash Attack’s teleport attack function gets a lot of use out of Jab’s tech chase, Side Special and todash space. I like it a lot.
• D-tilt sees a smart use in poison damage on its enhanced version, so the move’s combo potential isn’t messed up.
• Love the Smashes directly using other Stephen King villains.
• “Don't forget to thank your Mother for the assist!” Perfect witty line.
• “With a "cheat" card on an aerial input, Flagg can end a sequence either with a snappy RAR B-Air or a lingering F-Air, depending on which perk he's shooting for. Condition your foe, then take your pick, buh-buh-buh-Billy-boy!” 10/10 Pennywise reference.
• The grab game’s damage being entirely mental flavour-wise is certainly a bold move.
• I like F-throw being a way to manipulate and play around todash monsters.
• B-throw’s extra hit being delayed if you throw your opponent into another hitbox is a nice kill extender that makes great use of all those extra hitboxes you can have out.

If I have any nitpicks, it’s that the set doesn’t really touch upon the Side Special ball’s application of combining and emulating the launch trajectory of attacks that hit it. That is completely trivial though, because Randall is absolutely an excellent set and among your best. Not completely sure if this is on the same level as Mysterio and Elder Princess Shroob for me as, they felt just a bit more conceptually innovate and tighter, but that could very easily change with convincing or if I see other people’s opinions - like the very high possibility of FA glowing over this set. We’ve had a lot of great stuff in this contest, but - aside from Mikazuki, based on other people’s reactions - this really feels like the first moveset that I can safely say will be a frontrunner in MYM26. Excellent work here!

 

[Arctic Tern]

RANDALL FLAGG (Kupa)

Flagg immediately makes a strong first impression with his NSpec - essentially, a full-on modernization of the old Fly concept. Instead of transporting the foe to a full-on separate stage, it as the set itself states is just a really weird status effect flavored as sending them to another dimension. Inside of todash space, the opponent will be constantly damage-racked by flies, recurrently assailed by monsters, dragged into the blast zone earlier through tentacles, and if they reach a high enough damage threshold instantly KOed by an earthworm. Flagg can take advantage of this in many ways, most notably by attacking them while they’re on the other side for higher damage output. Despite how powerful this is, the foe can still break out with their own moves, as well as attack Flagg with the same multiplier - particularly punishing for him, since he’s very light and is subject to the tentacles as well.

His other Specials don’t let up on the insanity. DSpec has Flagg predict the future, represented as either a damage buff to his moves if he lands certain moves in a set order, or various effects upon dodging a specific move. This gives him a lot of potential for flashy set ups, not the least because the move that ends offensive predictions has specific buffs. Flagg’s SSpec is essentially Dead Man’s Volley, as he sends out a ball of lightning that takes on the damage properties of moves that hit it, with the downside that it can easily be directed to Flagg through the foe’s attacks. While I do have minor gripes with it not being as mentioned as I’d like, the uses are fairly self-explanatory, and I particularly like how its presence encourages opponents to willingly enter todash space to escape the ball’s area. Lastly is the USpec, a reliable combo starter that is unaffected by DSpec buffs, at the cost of Flagg taking much more knockback if he’s hit out of the move.

If I was to go over all the cool things in Flagg’s kit, this would easily be at least twice as long, so I’ll just briefly go over the other sections. Standards are great, with Flagg creating magic weapons for his tilts; favorite prediction buffs were Jab and the built in prone pressure it creates and the DTilt poison buff, which both works into the Tunnel Worms and keeps a combo starter a combo starter. Smashes have him summon other Stephen King entities, a very appropriate choice given he’s essentially the main villain of the Kingverse: the standouts were DSmash summoning Cujo as an incredibly powerful trap and USmash turning into a combo starter when normally it’s a kill move. Flagg’s aerials are particularly emphasized through his stats, and the actual moves live up to it, with a mixture of BnB combo moves in NAir, FAir, and UAir and more niche moves like the Belmont-esque BAir and the tricky DAir; the automatic follow up on UAir on prediction is particularly nice for turning the standard juggling tool into an actual kill confirm. Finally, the grabs were my favorite section animation-wise, taking the gimmick of Kazuya’ throws changing camera angles in 1v1 and turning them into actual cutscenes as Flagg shows the opponent the horrors of the world. The actual moves are neat as well, with BThrow’s delayed knockback extension and the enhanced tech chase potential from DThrow on prediction being especially notable.

Overall, reading this felt like I was reading a love letter to King and his works, as expressed through a moveset for one of his most famous villains. The man in black earns a very strong spot on my rankings - one I’m sure he’ll appreciate.

Comment block link here!

 

[ForwardArrow]

Randall Flagg
Its funny how you thought this wasn't going to be some big set when you were talking about your projects between contests and aiming for a smaller scale one. Clearly, this project grew well beyond your expectations, and to be honest, I'm all for it. This is a really exciting character too, I've yet to try out Stephen King's work in any serious capacity but I do know Flagg is the flaggship villain of the series and, from what I can tell, a very popular character with the more devout King readers. Plus given MYM's relationship with Pennywise, another Stephen King villain is inherently going to be exciting.

And boy does this set come out swinging, wow. Attempting a Fly set in MYM26 is an incredibly ambitious choice, especially given Fly is usually just an elaborate way of doing a "cage" genre set, a genre that died for very good reasons. What makes Flagg work is that, as the set itself admits, it ends up playing out more like a really funky status effect than a personalized of a hell stage where Randall is nigh unbeatable. He's not really using it to lock down a foe so much as add an occasional, overwhelming element to defend against and greatly amplify his kill potential, and the set gets plenty of depth out of the way his stage control elements work around the gateways between the two dimensions. Its very cool, although I felt the set truly came alive for me once it started to factor in the tarot predictions and Dead Man's Volley-esque Side Special.

I love this kind of prediction mechanic, it was a huge hit for me back in Hol Horse and Flagg actually adds some extra potency to it with the ability to put up to 3 predictions in each slot. I like how with the defensive predictions, you do still have to actually make the dodge, but the rewards if you do make it absolutely brutal for the foe who whiffed you with that move. It also feels like a very organic way of doing something you sometimes like to do in your set of forcing characters who play a very spammy playstyle to think differently, which I appreciate. Side Special was the move that really blew me away though, its SUCH a cool take on Dead Man's Volley once you get into how it interacts with predictions and todash space. Despite how insanely powerful the projectile is, it feels pretty fair as its something the foe can definitely wrestle control from you over, even if Flagg is at an advantage, and its so slow moving that you do have to actively pressure the opponent into it... while powering it up and maintaining control of it. The payoffs feel very worth the amount of maintenance expected. Even the recovery is very impressive: its not as much a centerpiece as the other specials, but its a really important glue move and I think its a bit wild to see "a combo extender made in a lab" in a Kupa set. But the thing is, you know how obnoxious these mechanics are when unchecked, and put in some interesting limits to let it allow for some truly incredible strings, but at a risk and not in a way that's particularly spammable. Plus it gets around the moves in your set that affect all your non-Specials(NSpecial/Tarot Predictions) for when you don't want to use those by accident, giving him a really useful tool for circumventing the flaws of that strategy.

"This is the part where I pause so you can read all 1,152 pages of The Stand to better understand how this Special mirrors something Flagg does during the climax of that novel. That shouldn't be too big of a lift for the avid literary consumers that make up MYM's readership, right??" Look you joke but I do want to read some Stephen King books, and after the madness of MYM25 reading a story barely over 1,000 pages seems positively quaint. (I do appreciate you sneaking the actual link to the reference in there though.)

I love this set's Specials to death, as I've talked about, but it actually holds really strong for the rest of the set too, having a nice mix of simple moves that fill important glue functions but are none-the-less very compelling(Dash Attack/Nair/DTilt), and some wackier material that is none-the-less very compelling(The Smashes and throws). The pressure Flagg can manage with predictions ramping up his stage control as he spawns more deadly constructs, the ways his moves can make playing around those todash space entries a harrowing experience, and a fair few simple potent melee moves that are competent on their own but become so much more in the context of all his crazy tools really is a lot of fun to experience. I like how the set felt like it wasn't ever really running out of ideas either, each stage control element feeling reasonably unique in its implementation as they lean more into the minion/trap/projectile angles. The set's never really got a dull input and I think the fact he has to land the fairly tricky prediction mechanic to get his stage control/ridiculous kill potential really going makes it all shockingly fair. Especially when basically all his Specials have potential to backfire on him.

Now in spite of all the stuff I've said about how much I like this set, I did come away with a few nitpicks:

• FTilt's control scheme is a bit odd, from what I can tell Flagg's NSpecial effect triggers automatically on the move, and there's not really a way to reconcile between that and "press B to pick which optional follow up you want the NSpecial effect to come out on". I guess when I think about it you could have all three of the pre-todash portal clouds come out, and then either the one you pressed B on or the first/last shot if you pressed it on none of them would be come the gate after it ends? The move doesn't specify though.
• Cujo is a bit much. I'm not opposed to his damage value, his long duration, or the ability to summon 3 of him in a fashion that feels hilariously evil on Flagg's part, but I think having all 3 aspects at the same time is pretty overbearing, especially on a move that comes out Frame 9. I'd dial back those elements a bit, as is he just feels a bit too overbearing(even if overrelying on him is inherently a bit limited by the mechanic).
• If you're going to change one thing in this set, please adjust Dair. I really do not like the fact that the move straight up doesn't activate but puts Flagg into lagg if he's too close to the ground, it just feels like it'd be confusing and needlessly punishing in practice. I wouldn't mind if the move is nerfed close to the ground or whatever but in the current state I clearly view this as the worst move in the set, not because its bad when its doing its job, but because of the weird and unfortunate way that it breaks.
• I'll be honest, I like how Flagg's constructs work with todash space, I really do, but I think he's got 1-2 too many of them that creates a situation where there's just a bit too much overlap overall, and it makes each of the individual choices for it feel a tad less special. A lot of what Up Tilt can do that seems so cool at first is at least semi-replicable with the other inputs and it takes away from it a bit, I feel. This isn't really a big deal and I don't expect you to actually change it, but it did bother me a bit.

Out of all the stuff I talked about, only Dair is something I really care all that seriously about when I'm not just splitting hairs over "what gets my SV+". And speaking of stuff that will probably matter in that conversation, this is my favorite characterization in any of your movesets ever. There's so much love put into each animation, the set is absolutely dripping with Flagg's malicious personality with some truly incredible details to it. Grab's animations and the other Stephen King summons are such obvious highlights, but I really love the way the FSmash's cameos in particular are resurrected in accurate portrayals of their respective deaths. It really feels like you sat down and focused on how to get the most personality out of every animation and its so satisfying. And like, you're REALLY good at character stuff in general, I feel Walter White's dominant win came off the back of that and even a character with as little to work off as Elder Princess Shroob got as much mileage as you could possibly ask for brought out, but I think Flagg is somehow king in that regard.

I wouldn't say he is, overall. In part due to my nitpicks and in part due to the fact I feel Shroob had a few more standout moves post-Specials, slightly deeper synergies, and a better sense of overall pacing and flow to overcome Flagg's stronger concepts and characterization. But to be clear, this would've been my 3rd favorite set in MYM25 after Shroob and Hakumen, and I'd say its my second favorite set you've made. Its not flawless, but it feels like the kind of set where if I ask myself if I prefer another moveset to it, I can't just say some surface level thing, I have to dig really deep into my movesetting philosophy and figure out what small but distinct advantage the other set has. That's how you know you've made a hell of a frontrunner, at this point this is the set to beat.

 

[majora_787]

Having some fun on a tuesday night to get this done. Now I'll hibernate for a little bit.

​

 

[bubbyboytoo]

Guess it's about time I did this. Here's two comments I did around the start of the contest and never got around to posting, plus one more for our latest arrival. I shall also post a link to my ranking document, which has all the sets I've read ordered by rank.

NATSUME IROHA by Katapultar

Spoiler: roher

Writing this first part the night before, I'm going to spend this first paragraph going over the tank mechanic on DSpec real quick while it's still fresh in my mind as I arbitrarily decided to pull up Iroha and start reading at, like, half past midnight. Honestly, it's no secret that I'm usually kind of iffy on these big overarching mechanics like this, but Iroha's tank actually seems like it'd be quite fun to play both as and against, with a number of measures to make it not inherently super oppressive despite its size. It kind of reminds me of Sana's Size Tweak in a way, though maybe that's just the 200 weight talking. Having her be able to bail from the tank if it's hitstunned is a super cool thing, sensible way to avoid the inherent Stunlock Potential of being that big. Letting you aim and move in different directions is a very tanky thing to do, I like that. I find myself quite looking forward to seeing how the rest of her kit works around this centerpiece!

Moving on to NSpec, another thing I like is the focus you put on Iroha's options to deal with foes standing on the tank with her; if I was to make such a set it'd probably be tempting to list it as a straight negative as they now have free access to her squishy anime girl body, but giving her attacks that remain relatively unchanged while tanked up lets her deal with it nicely. Up Special's team play potential to save your friends is fun, though I'm not quite sold on how useful leaving the tank as a suspended aerial platform would end up being in practice. I'm not sold on Side Special being able to summon minions, feels like the A-button shots would've been sufficient, but that's nothing new on my end, so. It's nice that they can drive your tank to you, at any rate!

The tank's attacks overall feel fun and powerful to use, and the dash being its own hitbox instead of a Dash Attack is a nice little thing that adds a deceptive amount of depth, no complaints there. Its interactions with DSpec are cool too, some of that risk-and-reward goodness (and the cool factor of blowing up your own tank as a deadly attack too)! I haven't got much to say about the rest of her kit just eyeballing it on a surface level, though it does slightly irk me that so many of her attacks are just gunshots, which in a proper game I feel like would be hard to make distinct in terms of hitboxes. You'd expect all of them to work like NSpec, right? I dunno, maybe that's just me. Anyway, overall this is a cute set for a cute girl (love her foofy hair), inoffensive with the typical Kat flair and interactions you expect. Nice work! Can't wait for all the name confusion when I post my set for La+ Darknesss with Kazama Iroha as a minion.

MCDONALDS CHICKEN TENDERS by FrozenRoy

Spoiler: tendy

This is genuinely a really good set and I'm upset about it. For such a ****post character choice inspired by a throwaway Discord joke, you've got a surprisingly deep system right off the bat with the dual sauces mechanic, and I'm going to make sure to include drinking animations in all my future sets to counter Chipotle Barbeque Sauce and Creamy Ranch. Having the fighter itself be a food item that heals itself for the same amount as it regenerates is a fun way to make that even out, especially with the different sauces having different effects on them. I haven't found myself with much to say about the rest of the set, but it remains competent all the way through with clear writing and just enough humor to keep you smiling. It's fair to say that I'm lovin' this set. Hell, I'm man enough to admit it's probably better than Peppino.

NANASHI MUMEI by majora_787

Spoiler: moom

This is certainly a pleasant surprise! For MYM's very first VTuber set that isn't by me, I definitely wasn't expecting it to be from Majora of all people. Guess that's what you meant when you said you wanted to preview a set with me in VC the other day even if it didn't end up happening, haha. The thematics are on point here; you balance Mumei's "lore" and "feats" sides pretty much perfectly IMO, two meters representing the rise and fall of civilization that also tie in to her penchant for cursed drawings is a (pen)stroke of genius. The nod to the seven world wonders on her NSpec is also super cool, though I assume you picked and chose which seven exactly they are for gameplay purposes as it doesn't seem to align with any of the traditional lists I found upon approximately 15 seconds of googling, and the thematic cycling Side Special based on the four horsemen of the apocalypse is some pretty damn neat stuff too. The one thing I think is missing theme-wise is incorporating runes in some capacity (as seen on her hairclip/shirt brooch and floating around Friend), though I definitely understand why as she's got a pretty packed kit to keep track of already.

Some n88-style stray thoughts to cap things off:

• "After having owned a twitter account for longer than 60 seconds, Mumei gives in to her newfound need for the salvation offered by Jesus." pfffffffffffff
• What happens if she doesn't have a Rising OR Falling unit to spend on Up Smash? Does the move just fail?
• Canonically, I'm not sure she actually has bird wings (if anything they'd probably be tiny head-wings like Takane Lui), but yeah, does make sense to do that for a moveset.
• Using Adeleine-style "drawing comes to life" stuff to create her additional weapons is also a cool touch! Bit of a shame she doesn't use the dagger she actually has on her person but at that point I am actively nitpicking as hard as possible
• NAir is kind of an odd input for the wonder-extending metal beams, if you ask me. I'd probably have incorporated them into NSpec somehow
• Her feather-throw attacks remind me of HoloCure, though that's probably not an intentional nod so much as just a "literally the only way to attack with feathers" thing

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Nanashi Mumei

This… was the last character choice I was expecting from you, to the point where I had to do a double-take to see whether this was actually a Bubby moveset or a joint set between you two. Some setmakers have been planning a set for this character, so it’s great to see someone step in and make her for real.

Giving Mumei two meters to represent creation and destruction is not only very character-fitting, but also unique from a design perspective as the second meter builds up when your constructs are destroyed - and can backfire on you if the meter overloads. Specifically, the idea behind you taking knockback or hitstun when a construct of yours is destroyed is cool. I know the ink hitbox from overloading your Falling meter damages Mumei but doesn’t deal her knockback, but does it cause hitstun? Perhaps you could make the ink deal high hitstun to Mumei but low hitstun to outside opponents. It would sell how dangerous the ink hitbox can be if Mumei lets her Falling meter get too high. I also wonder if Mumei’s quicker attacks that spend Falling meter (Forward Tilt, Back Air) should only do so if that attack connects, so she can’t just spam a quick move to empty out her Falling meter and get around the risk of the ink hitbox that comes from getting too much Falling meter.

The uses of the ink hitbox don’t seem to be elaborated upon in the set, other than what I assume is meant to be a defensive hitbox. It sounds like it would be a bit annoying for opponents who destroy your constructs and automatically get hit just by being close to Mumei - perhaps foes are immune to the ink hitbox if they triggered it by destroying one of your constructs?

I like the way you handled Mumei’s various constructs. They’re not all solid or platform-based, and some of them even give Mumei buffs while they’re out! It adds a nice risk-reward factor to littering the stage with constructs to make Mumei more powerful, at the risk of your Falling meter being overloaded. The construct descriptions are nice and short, but writing-wise their interactions with later moves should be saved for those moves themselves, like how Side Special is referenced in a few of the constructs.

Speaking of Side Special, the idea of a cycle-based move that can be manipulated by standing near certain constructs is very unique too, plus the Fall meter you get from hitting an opponent makes these moves dangerous to spam. These cycle-based moves are best sold when the setmaker displays a strong awareness of the implications of the next or previous move that the character cycles to, which you do here a little as Pale Rider can set up for White Rider. As someone who isn’t overly-familiar with Mumei, it would be neat to have some context for her Rider moves, like whether they’re something she does in her VTuber lore, in a video game she’s streamed or if it’s something her fandom invented.

I appreciate Down Special as a simple counter that plays off of Mumei’s meters while showcasing her forgetful character, which I’ll assume is a notable aspect of her character since this is a Special move. As this is a counter, it could be used as a construct/meter reset against projectiles. Move doesn’t go into detail about how it could be rewarded in a melee situation: as it deals no knockback or hitstun, I suppose it would come down to how much end lag your opponent experiences. Maybe the player could also hold down the input for a few seconds to get their reset without landing the counter?

Forward Tilt is an unexpectedly crazy move - you’re pretty good at sneaking these fun little concepts in otherwise short and simple moves. I like the way the doodle clone is handled here - you normally get a clone of yourself, but you can get a clone of your opponent if you hit them with your Jab. The fact that the clones only use your Jab makes them nice and simple, and means that they can never be -too- powerful unless you’re facing someone with a very powerful Jab like… Bowser Jr., or Goddess Illias from last contest. This does feel like a Special-type application that you could have gone into a lot more detail on, even if it was as simple as saying that the clone can be used for ranged pressure to give Mumei time to set up her constructs or create an opening for her Side Specials. Add in the constructs Mumei can create, and the potential buffs she can get from them (what if they could be applied to clones as well?), and there are tons of opportunities to expand upon this short move. F-tilt also doesn’t state how much knockback it deals and on what trajectory, but I assume it would deal solid knockback to set up for a clone you create.

Up Tilt is also a funky move that creates a pillar construct that you can hit to tip over and create a falling hitbox. Up Smash I like for the Rising hit being a one-two where the second hit slams the pillar behind Mumei and knocks opponents downwards. Down Smash being able to turn your constructs into a trap is decent - it might be a bit strong even with the limitations (high end lag, whirlwind only lasts for 4 seconds, can only use it when you don’t have Falling points?), as I could imagine Mumei turning multiple constructs into traps to section off large parts of the stage. It also sounds like there is nothing to stop Mumei from just camping in her whirlwinds, as it doesn’t state that she is immune to them. Finally, Down Smash doesn’t mention that the Chichen Itza construct lets Mumei throw out whirlwinds - I had to go back to that part of Neutral Special and re-read it after finding out what Mumei’s whirlwinds do. The effect feels glaringly powerful in spite of the construct’s 15 second cooldown on making further whirlwinds, making practically any attack in Mumei’s set safe, and like the doodle clones the whirlwinds and how they can cover various attacks could be expanded upon.

Neutral Air is another funky special-like move, one that can create a platform! It is balanced decently well, as Mumei can only create the platform near ground or a wall (though this means that she could create platforms on the side of stages like Final Destination, as they do count as walls for purposes like Sephiroth’s Forward Air wall-stabbing). I also like that the extending beam that supports the pillar is a hitbox that deals radial knockback. I have two complaints, though. The animation of Mumei firing her wings for her N-air hitbox and then pulling out a gavel to build her platform feel segregated from each other animation-wise. It would feel more organic if say, Mumei used the gavel to perform her N-air attack in the first place, and ended the attack in a position that made sense for her to start building her platform. Your Down Smash whirlwinds being extended by the 3 grid long beams also makes them even more overpowered as their lingering hitboxes become ridiculously large, especially if you made the beam horizontal by using your constructs. That the whirlwinds knock opponents away from the beams and have the potential to launch opponents horizontally (“When beams are placed horizontally, the whirlwinds engulf the beam horizontally from the wall that the beam extended into, and opponents are thrown away from the wall rather than upwards.”) also feels like it would be an absurdly powerful edgeguarding tool.

Like most of your sets this contest, Mumei has some genuinely fun and innovative ideas if they were expanded upon and all worked together. Sorry if I’ve been saying that over and over in my comments for your sets this contest. Where Mumei differs from your sets is that she might have your most potent ideas of your sets, perhaps barring Emidius, but her Down Smash whirlwind feels very unbalanced as is, and the way Falling units and how the ink hitbox works against Mumei could do with some changes/elaboration to better sell its risky nature. For the whirlwind hitboxes, you could just make them only hit once in their life, and perhaps give them a little left and right movement so opponents can throw up their shield close to them to negate their hitboxes. Maybe even attack the whirlwinds to destroy them so they aren’t too powerful in the air?

In spite of everything I’ve said, I’m very glad to see another VTuber set, and a lightweight female type character from you. No one leaves MYM without making a set for a female character - not even the biggest lovers of Heavyweight Male Antagonists. I take it that Mumei was the anime character you were talking about making a set for in the chat?

 

[Arctic Tern]

"I was the one who brought you here. A traveler who has journeyed to and from past and future. I'm the most clever, most charming, and most trouble-making boy ever... Master Porky Minch! I welcome you once again, you weak hangers-on pretending to be the last survivors of this world! Spankety, spankety, spankety! Ahahahahaha!"

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Porky Minch

The first notable set for this iconic Nintendo villain, Porky is an interesting take on the super heavyweight archetype, where he utilizes status effects to soften his heavyweight disadvantages. A status effect that makes your opponent’s 4th attack miss automatically could have been annoying with less careful execution, but it works in my opinion: NSpec is hard to land, it doesn’t work on grabs/throws and the status effect only lasts for 5 seconds. Plus it can be cheesed out with long-ranged attacks like projectiles.

This might also be the first heavyweight set to give your opponents’ weaker attacks a knockback increase so they combo less effectively - an idea US was going to explore on a set for the main villain of the Marin game. One thought I’ve had to that kind of approach is to simply increase the base knockback of attacks, but not their knockback scaling. The Mecha Porkies are decent enough, and feel fair enough as auto-reflectors since Porky is a big target.

• What happens if you use NSpec’s back option and it ends in midair? Does the foe just take a little downwards knockback?
• Even if it’s a no-brainer interpretation, I like the Mecha Porkies having stats that are comparable to Ness.
• “Upon charging the smash, Porky’s mech scrunches backwards, with the charge hold occurring over 22 frames. Once the move is released, the mech jumps forward 1 frame later” I get the impression that the 1 frame post-charge start-up was a typo - the last paragraph mentions that F-Smash has practical starting lag of over half a second. The move doesn’t mention coming out super fast post-charge either, and you’re good at covering all those little practical applications and details in your move descriptions.
• F-tilt is a neat enough attack, a short-ranged but quick and powerful attack that deals tons of shield damage. I also enjoy D-tilt for playing around with Sakurai knockback, which isn’t done too much in movesets.

Porky admittedly feels underwhelming from a conceptual standpoint; relying on a few status effects and the smokescreen effect, to the point where a lot of his moveset feels less inspired than it could be for a villain in a spider mech. Up Special, Down Smash and Forward Throw felt like some of the weaker moves for their input sections, even when the latter’s write-up justifies re-using the gas effect from Side Special (it could be more fun if it applied an entirely different status effect), while Down Smash didn't feel like it had much of an application beyond just covering either side of Porky. He’s a solid set for the concepts he had to work with though, and one that will definitely be appreciated by MYM for the character choice.

 

[tunz]

I teased this set in the discord a few days ago as being crustacean related, but nobody quite managed to guess exactly what it was. I've shortened my moveset template to make writing them more enjoyable for myself, hopefully avoiding that wretched burnout. This means that some things aren't quite as clear as they could be, and if you should encounter an issue in clarity and have any questions, you can ask me directly. Whoever's in charge of keeping track of the Gen 1 Pokemon list, make sure to update it. Because here is Kingler!

 

[Arctic Tern]

NANASHI MUMEI (Majora)

Mumei has a lot of really neat ideas! A meter spent on creating constructs is fairly unique (though probably done before), but another meter that rises when said constructs are destroyed gives a whole other reason to make them besides the buffs they provide when they’re out. Additionally, the fact that the Fall meter actually harms Mumei if it gets filled up is an interesting dilemma; I’ve had ideas for a set that uses a similar mechanic, so this is particularly interesting to me. Other things I liked include the USmash pillar that becomes a construct, the DSmash whirlwinds to protect the constructs, and the fact that the constructs make it easier to use specific moves of her cyclable SSpec.

This has similar problems with Emidius, in that it tries to use the most of the character’s potential but ultimately ends up feeling scattered because of it. The buffs Mumei’s constructs give to her are nice, but there’s no real mention of what moves benefit from the super armor. There are also several moves that feel like they have added effects solely to make them not a “generic” move, like FTilt creating a copy of the foe, Jab setting the stage for FTilt and not having much use described other than that, and NAir creating a platform, though at least that does require meter and has the purpose of granting more stage control. We’ve long since passed the era of every move needing a gimmick; we do appreciate “gimmicky” moves, but generally only when they actively add to the core established, and even then they almost always have a purpose beyond said gimmick. On another note, the UTilt pillar not only serves as an example of my point but also has redundancy with USmash also creating a pillar, a much more fitting input.

While I’m flaky on the execution, Mumei’s core concepts are still gold, and I’d be more than willing to take them and use them as a basis for other sets. You definitely have potential to make something great if you keep it up!

KINGLER (tunz)

While Kingler’s stats aren’t really described, I assume he’s meant to be a slow heavyweight character, a very fitting playstyle for him. Crabhammer essentially had to be a special move here, since it’s more or less Kingler’s signature move, and the way it's implemented as a universal high power move is something I liked. Additionally, Swords Dance as a move that only buffs specific moves is quite interesting as a buff, and the set shows awareness that not every move is going to work well with it. For one last note, I appreciated the emphasis on the heft of Kingler’s big claw on the animations that use it, which should be emphasized given that’s more or less the extent of its character. Other than that, there’s really not much to say that I haven’t said about your other sets, but I do appreciate the effort.

Comment block link here!

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Kingler

While its set concepts are modest, Kingler feels like a step-up in that your move descriptions are becoming more detailed and self-aware. For instance, Side Special goes into solid detail on the strengths, weaknesses and applications of a simple power move, various moves that can start or work with tech chases, 2-frames, a paragraph dedicated to Swords Dance buffed moves and justifying why certain moves don't get the Swords Dance buff so they don't get too powerful. That's a smart design choice, as it means Kingler's entire set isn't super reliant on getting Swords Dance out or anything. Not too much to say here, but I do like that this set to give Kingler a moveset to fill in the MYM Pokedex and bring MYM one step closer to giving every Gen 1 Pokemon a moveset. I for one would welcome more Pokemon sets from you if you were working towards this goal.

 

[n88]

Petra by FrozenRoy
Haha, meant to get here a Lot sooner. But here we are now, no reason to dwell on the past.

“Using this, you can figure out what any character's hunted range is!” - sure but does it work on my MYM11 character with a 15/10 weight stat? That glowing weakness aside, I do really like the core Hunted mechanic here (already have a WIP that takes a little inspiration from this even).

The adaptation choices are interesting here, and they feel sharp. This version of Hunter’s Boon kicks off when the foe is much nearer death than the OG ability in the source material, and there is a subtle shift in flavor there. It makes sense for Smash’s “actual human opponents” to not start blowing them away when they’re halfway down, of course. I think this set’s choice to keep “enemy marked” as a flat y/n binary check and just delay when it triggers is probably the simplest and most intuitive choice but I could see other takes on that ability.

Being able to mark the opponent early hit a little weird at first, but I was more cool with it as the set went on. I think it just felt like it was subverting the mechanic a bit instead of really playing with it, to be able to get the superstate off one attack without really earning it. At a certain point it started clicking a bit more that it was kind of out-of-place with the rest of what she was doing otherwise. Not much directly flows in or out of that move, so it’s kind of stuck as this big ranged hard punish that pushes her back into melee with the Mark. I think it works well, it just took a little turning over to get comfy with it.

I do wonder if she should aim diagonally downward with the bow attack when she uses it in the air: small thing, but that always makes a character feel more dynamic/kinetic to me. Plus it’d make her off-stage sniping game better at picking off opponents who are in a worse position, which jibes with Hunter’s Boon thematically. (I later learned that FSmash fills this role to an extent but I’m leaving it)

I’m also a big fan of the take on the assassin-flavored move. I know that’s been talked over a bit in some of the Petra conversation and I think “it’s cool” is the general consensus? Literal invisibility is not technically a thing for her, but implemented in a short-term way like this, it doesn’t register as a big deal at all. It mostly just feels like a flashy animation and pretty well-in-bounds of fighting game logic. Mechanically it feels like it serves a pretty cool purpose too.

I do wonder if it might be a little annoying to fight against in practice - even with a bit of start-up, if it’s still something she can reliably bust out as a combo-ender it’s not exactly impractical to toss out when you have breathing room, and it forces enemies in a pretty big area to react based on a guess. And it generally sounds pretty easy to make a safe getaway if the opponent just tosses their shield up. I dunno, I don’t think it’s crying out for changes (feels really cool conceptually), but I’d want to keep a careful eye on it in playtesting if I were implementing this.

It’s not always intuitive where the upgrades against Marked foes are and what they do? Like, “bow attacks and kill moves” is a decent rule of thumb but not exactly right. Most of them are pretty solid, grokkable “attack now stronger” type stuff, and there are some I quite like (the Assassination one is neat). The FTilt follow-up sending inward feels a little fiddly in a way I’m not hot on.

Clearly the name of Arrow Rain is some kind of translation error, since this is nothing like rain. The arrows never come back down!

Petra is solid, and she’s got a few real cool inputs. FSmash is one I think you’ve said you really liked and it’s neat! FThrow is another I found fun and even the simpler stuff like BAir is pretty solid. Petra's definitely a set that lays out a clear pitch for what the set is in the Specials and then just follows through on it in a pretty direct way. I doubt she'll end up being my favorite Froy set of the contest; she's strong but I didn't have as much fun with her as some of your others.

 

[wizfoot]

Better late than never!

I know, I know, I'm late. Cut me some slack, I've had a rough few months. Anyways, set time: new format, new fandom, all that jazz! Sorry if this is a bit sub-par, but I haven't had proper setwriting practice in a minute. Anyways, ahem. clap clap


"He... vanished?"

Kunikida paced around the ADA's office, unsure if the news he was getting was good or bad. Vanished? Vanished vanished? He hadn't planned for this at all.

"From what I can tell? Yes." Dazai's voice on the other end of the line was unreadable, and Kunikida grit his teeth in anxiety. Dazai was rarely serious, but when he was serious: well, he was serious. "He hasn't had any activity for the past few months, and the Port Mafia's activity has become nonexistent as well. I'm concerned, honestly. They might be planning something big."

"Keep me updated. We both know we can't underestimate him, especially with Atsushi's bounty."

In full honesty, he was as confused as Kunikida and Dazai: if he knew how confused they were, of course.

I mean, seriously. How did he get here, fighting a portly Italian, a blond guy totally not overcompensating for something, a cottagecore anime girl, and a box of freaking chicken tenders? If he wasn't punched in the face a few moments ago, he would've believed it to be one of those blond agent's illlusions: the one with the weird name starting with T. All of the training in the world couldn't have prepared him for this! Still -- he fought back the urge to cough -- a fight was a fight.

"Rashōmon..."

"Agito!"

Spoiler: Changelog (Last Updated 5/13)

RYŪNOSUKE AKUTAGAWA MAKES HIS DARK DEBUT!

5/9:
First posted
Small edits to Akutagawa's biography

5/10:
Slight formatting changes

5/11:
Retooled the knockback/description on Forward Throw (Delusion) and edited the description Back Throw (Strike to Kill) to focus on their potential as spacing throws

5/13:
Added a proper translation for Back Air (Kurohatō, Black Torrent)

5/31:
Added a "Brief Overview" section

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Man, I love seeing movesets for characters from animes that don’t get widespread attention in MYM. I watched the first 4 episodes of Bungo Stray Dogs a while back, but never got around to continuing it.

If I recall correctly, you have a fondness for emulating Sephiroth’s one-winged comeback mechanic and have used it in a number of your sets. I’m perfectly fine with comeback mechanics, but I feel that they lack a justification for why they’re there in your sets. Even with his personality defined in the intro write-ups, and knowing that getting comeback-based power-ups is a common trope in animes, I don’t get a sense for why Ryūnosuke should have a comeback mechanic from a flavour-based perspective. If Ryūnosuke frequently gets power boosts when he’s on the brink of defeat, then you could just say that. The comeback mechanic doesn’t have too much presence in Ryūnosuke’s moveset, but I get the impression that it might be difficult to talk about. I do like that the damage and knockback boosts are listed in yellow throughout the moves, anyway.

With the short playstyle write-ups, I can tell that this set knows what it wants in that Ryūnosuke is a projectile-less zoning character. I like that you omitted giving the man a projectile because he doesn’t use any canonically. While the Specials are conceptually basic, I thought the Standard attacks were quite solid for your skill level: each one plays a notable role in the moveset, like Jab being a keep-away + combo starter while Forward Tilt hits from a solid distance but is risky if it misses. There is also a solid attempt to mention what moves work with others in each attack. A notable sign of improvement over your MYM25 works! Writing and improving one’s movesets is not easy - I get how it’s easy to come up short when describing certain moves, like saying “there’s not much to say about this move,” but you’ve done a good job for what you have to work with.

Ryūnosuke’s ideas and concepts aren’t as strong as other sets in the “liked” tier of MYM26, so I can’t give him too many points compared to them, but it was enjoyable to get another set from you, especially an anime character. Having a picture or a GIF for every attack really helped to enhance the experience, which is exactly what I’d want for an action anime character with a slew of moves. Nice work here.

 

[wizfoot]

Spoiler: Ryūnosuke Akutagawa

Man, I love seeing movesets for characters from animes that don’t get widespread attention in MYM. I watched the first 4 episodes of Bungo Stray Dogs a while back, but never got around to continuing it.

If I recall correctly, you have a fondness for emulating Sephiroth’s one-winged comeback mechanic and have used it in a number of your sets. I’m perfectly fine with comeback mechanics, but I feel that they lack a justification for why they’re there in your sets. Even with his personality defined in the intro write-ups, and knowing that getting comeback-based power-ups is a common trope in animes, I don’t get a sense for why Ryūnosuke should have a comeback mechanic from a flavour-based perspective. If Ryūnosuke frequently gets power boosts when he’s on the brink of defeat, then you could just say that. The comeback mechanic doesn’t have too much presence in Ryūnosuke’s moveset, but I get the impression that it might be difficult to talk about. I do like that the damage and knockback boosts are listed in yellow throughout the moves, anyway.

With the short playstyle write-ups, I can tell that this set knows what it wants in that Ryūnosuke is a projectile-less zoning character. I like that you omitted giving the man a projectile because he doesn’t use any canonically. While the Specials are conceptually basic, I thought the Standard attacks were quite solid for your skill level: each one plays a notable role in the moveset, like Jab being a keep-away + combo starter while Forward Tilt hits from a solid distance but is risky if it misses. There is also a solid attempt to mention what moves work with others in each attack. A notable sign of improvement over your MYM25 works! Writing and improving one’s movesets is not easy - I get how it’s easy to come up short when describing certain moves, like saying “there’s not much to say about this move,” but you’ve done a good job for what you have to work with.

Ryūnosuke’s ideas and concepts aren’t as strong as other sets in the “liked” tier of MYM26, so I can’t give him too many points compared to them, but it was enjoyable to get another set from you, especially an anime character. Having a picture or a GIF for every attack really helped to enhance the experience, which is exactly what I’d want for an action anime character with a slew of moves. Nice work here.

Hah, thanks! Glad I'm starting strong for MYM26.

I touched on this in the Discord, but the reason I gave Akutagawa a comeback mechanic relates to his philosophy; something I probably should've touched on a bit more, honestly. (You did catch me red-handed, though: I like comeback mechanics.) Akutagawa is a social darwinist (which might just be an excuse to gain respect), and he's absolutely the type of person to overload his physical well-being -- which Tenma Tengai tends to do -- for a brief boost in battle. In-canon, he's shown to be tenacious enough to continue fighting even when vomiting blood and with very clearly broken bones. It was a bit tough to talk about it, and I tried to include a bit of extra potential with his FSmash: something I might edit into a few other moves.

I'm glad you liked it! It was definitely an improvement over my earlier sets, and I'm really liking the new formatting. I'm glad making a zoner without projectiles worked so well: it was really fun to write and envision!

Spoiler: Porky Minch (Arctic Tern)

Spankety, spankety, spankety!

/lh Okay, first off, you don't just namedrop the Masked Man like that. Maybe a minor nitpick, but come on, man! That reveal's one of the best in gaming!

Anyways, I've thought about how a Porky set would work a for a long time, especially given his inclusion as a boss in Brawl. I think that making Porky a surprisingly fast superheavyweight was definitely a good call: as someone who's partial to heavyweights myself, that alone would make me consider playing him.

I really appreciate the detail you've put into NSpec, but (this admittedly may just be a bit of personal bias) I wish it was a bit easier in the set overall to see the damage dealt and frame data. Purple on gray definitely works for Porky, but it hurts my eyes after a little bit. Even seemingly little things like bolding or underlining would go a really long way. The forward input on NSpec has to be my favorite for the visualization alone! You really have a knack for helping visualize attacks without the use of gifs or pictures, something that would definitely be a struggle to include given how Earthbound and Mother 3 play. Also, Porkycides for the win!

Side Special really wears its inspiration on its sleeve, which is hardly a bad thing: but for being a side special, I'm honestly not too keen on it being an AOE attack all around Porky. I do like your philosophy on making higher knockback counterintuitive, however! That's a really cool idea. Down Special's Mecha-Porkies being able to counter projectiles makes them a really neat mix between a counter and a minion, but in full honesty I'd switch Down Special and Side Special's inputs. Just feels a bit more natural for me. Up Special being taken from his Brawl boss fight is really cool, and it has a lot of potential! It's a pretty unique up special that I think is my favorite special in his kit.

There's not much to say for his Smash attacks, honestly. They all do their jobs very well, and I particularly like the focus on Forward Smash being able to completely trounce Porky if you whiff it. It makes him feel like a heavyweight despite his fast speed, which is a trend I've noticed in a lot of his moves. I'm not a fan of choosable jabs, but it definitely works for Porky's kit. There's not much else to say about his ground nor aerial game: every attack feels like it fits great, if not perfectly in some cases, and I can definitely tell you've put a lot of thought and care into this set. If I had to give a few criticisms, it's that some of his attacks kinda feel... samey, at least to me. I feel like there were a lot more possibilities to make use of the more spidery aspects of his spider mech.

His Final Smash feels very Porky-esque. I love that his alternate costume represents his mech from Earthbound, and all of the little comedic touches you put in his extras really add a lot of character to the set.

This is definitely a worthy Porky set and I can even imagine it almost plays like his Brawl fight. Well done!

Spoiler: Kingler (tunz)

The size visualization mockup is really inspired: something that I've been tempted to do with a few sets, honestly. I wish you'd list Kingler's actual stats, or at least a rough guideline, however. I'm imagining him being a medium-speed heavyweight, but I'm not sure if that's right. That's something that I shouldn't have doubts about.

I like that you touched on NSpec's gimp potential, but I'm a bit confused by "gravity-affected arch". Is it shot diagonally, or straight? I'm assuming it's shot straight forwards, but half the length of FD for something affected by gravity seems to be a bit generous. Side Special seems a bit too... well, forgive my lack of tact, but normal to really be a Side Special. It feels more like a Forward Smash kinda chosen to fill the space. I'd consider giving it another function, like maybe a windbox or a reversal function like Ganondorf and Captain Falcon's neutral specials. Maybe if Kingler is moving while this move is active, he'll keep moving (but at a slower pace)?

Down Special, though? Hooh, that's where this gets going. I like that it doesn't affect every move, and the little dance is really cute! A temporary special buff the likes of Wii Fit Trainer is something not a lot of fighters have in-game -- the only ones that come to mind are Wii Fit Trainer, Shulk, Cloud, and arguabgly Incineroar. This adds a really neat function to Kingler's set and fits in well with his playstyle.

Pincer Swipes is pretty strong for a jab: but you won't hear me complaining about that! Swords Dance boosts it by a bit too much I think, but given that it's a temporary buff I don't think it's a massive problem. Forward Tilt being weaker than Jab is certainly a design choice, but I get why you chose that. FTilt definitely has a purpose, and I like that it also can help set up Swords Dances.

I like your humor! It's few and far between but the jokes you do make, like the little comment on how using horsepower makes no sense, got a few chuckles out of me. Swords Dance affecting Kingler's Final Smash is honestly a really unique choice and makes Final Smash setups actually viable with Kingler's set in casual games.

Overall, there's definitely some work that needs to be done, but there's a lot of potential here! I really like your use of colors. Also, Tamatoa, my beloved! Hope to see you stick around: you're going places.

 

[ForwardArrow]

Nanashi Mumei
This set's one I've got a bit of an odd relationship with, as I did preview it, and it was certainly an interesting previewing process where I was maybe a bit harsher on the set than its final reception turned out to be. I do regret not saying that the tornadoes probably should not last five seconds, that's a ludicrously long time for the hitboxes to stay out, I would go so far as to cut it back to half a second or maybe even slightly less. Covering that much of the stage in a hitbox that lasts that long is just way too much to deal with. I actually quite like the idea of Mumei spreading hitboxes through her constructs though, its a really interesting ability and I think one of the cooler things added to the set late in production, honestly on me for not realizing how ridiculous the duration was and suggesting a change.

My initial statement was that I didn't think the set had a cohesive enough gameplan to really succeed on the same level as Emidius or even Omega/Bowstring, but its the clear 2nd favorite of your sets among people. I think where my issue lay, and still exists, is with the actual Rider attacks. The way the constructs set them up and buff them? That's a cool mechanic. But while the attacks aren't bad, it sort of feels like they're not really cohesive with anything else, just kind of feeling like attacks that thematically try to embody their particular horseman of the apocalypse without too much in terms of making them play off the rest of the actual set beyond "well it interacts with the Rising/Falling mechanic". The thing is, the Rising/Falling mechanic doesn't automatically create synergies and depth between attacks, its more of a neat resource management thing Mumei has to keep an eye on. So just because an attack adds Falling units doesn't mean its automatically relevant to the rest of what she's doing. Its a very elaborate attack that just feels like 4 effects that are relevant to themselves and not much else, which for a flashy centerpiece that's as lengthy and detailed as they are is a bit of a shame.

If nothing else though, the wonders are fun to play around with. The steel beam and tornado mechanics let her build off them to expand their effects and use them as hitboxes, and breaking them results in her being able to play with more potent sets of attacks. All while they're honestly pretty frail so you can easily end up overdoing it on the falling meter if you set up too many of them, causing it to blow up in your face in a pretty literal manner. And they all have their own little boosts even on their own Mumei can take advantage of. Its cool, but I still feel like a lot of these effects don't feel created with a coherent goal or gameplan in mind, and I think having a more "centralized" goal would have helped here, akin to Bowstring's focus on staying just out of reach like a coward or Omega's plan to absolutely dominate the stage with several powerful projectiles and constructs. Mumei's building stuff, but while its cooler than anything in those sets at its high points, I feel the lack of a particular "plan" drags the set down a bit for me.

If nothing else, this set had an incredibly difficult task with the characterization. Mumei's one of the weirder vtubers to work with because combining her theme and actual streaming personality would probably draw someone towards "yeah just give her a mode where she's basically satan lmao". This set is... smart enough not to do that, as it doesn't really feel right for the lore her design was made with or like an accurate representation of her streaming persona, but it doesn't ignore those elements. The decision to channel her horrifying drawings into an ink-based "fall of civilizations" aesthetic on the attack animations was genuinely really clever, and bringing in the world wonders as a neutral special felt like a really on brand thing. Also, I'm not gonna lie, seeing this anime girl summon the Statue of Jesus and the Roman Colosseum is inherently very funny.

Also I appreciate the random joke referencing my writing, even if it probably left most people as confused as the non-Captain Underpants fans of MYM reading Blue.

 

[BKupa666]

IRENE LANDRY:
To say I'm tickled that you actually went ahead and made a moveset for this character, after previously saying in chat that you were kicking around ideas for her, is an understatement. It's amazing to me that the Methverse has become enshrined with MYM franchise status on account of Walter White, Saul Goodman and...Irene Landry. Of course, that's not to say there aren't a whole number of issues and question marks I have around her moveset design — there are. But I respect the somewhat serious attempt, thanks to which MYM26 and its story mode now will be remembered, in part, as "the one with Irene Landry," and by me for what were some genuine laughs in the writing/references.

With time beyond what you had for a Jamcon submission, there are probably ways that Irene's settlement mechanic could be refined into something more workable, but as is, its structure limits a lot of the set's potential nuance. It's a little confusing, but as far as I can tell, Irene has as many as three variants on different attacks — when she's settled below and above $10k, and after she's lost her friends due to a potential settlement exceeding $10k. For starters, in your standard three-stock match, Irene is going to be hard-pressed to get to $10k beyond last-stock situations, as a lightweight who only passively earns $2k per minute (between her allowance and settlement), plus $1k -if- she can live to 100%. While she can call Jimmy to create wills, or attempt her amusingly animated D-Smash, but her default of losing all settlement progress after each stock, despite only getting to settle once per match, feels a little mismatched. Those accrual rates also limit her ability to access two potential variants on some moves, which is a shame when stuff like the different Side and Up Special options are begging to be woven in in different contexts. And when the benefits from $10k-tied moves aren't even that rewarding, I could see Irene players settling on their first stock, and then just using cash for modest boosts on different standards throughout the match.

Bingo, as the other overarching mechanic, also left me feeling underwhelmed. At a high level, I like the idea of filling up a bingo board, with some means of control, to achieve buffs of choice. With Irene, however, you get a literal interpretation of bingo's RNG, with a 25% chance that a relevant number appears on Irene's card at all. I'm no math whiz, but I'm pretty sure those odds, combined with her need to actually get bingo on a 3x3 grid, would keep her from ever getting rewards with any regularity, much less when she's not exactly equipped to flee and spam Down Special. Jimmy can give her some help in starting out a card, but the need to settle (for under $10k?) to actually choose where a bingo space is filled limits the sort of player control a concept like this desperately could use in some capacity. I guess it's not specified that Irene loses all bingo progress after each stock, so maybe there's some chance she fills up a card, but as with settlements, the rewards don't really live up to the effort needed to get them, especially when they're limited to just six seconds on the Chair Yoga package.

I hope this comment doesn't come off too harsh, as even in a bit of a muddled set like Irene, your skill at devising concept ideas and writing them in engaging fashion shines through. Hopefully my dissection of the mechanics here proves helpful as you consider how any similar future ideas take shape when there's more time to work on them WeirdChillFever .

IZ:
Another fresh take on item-based gameplay in Kat's repertoire, Neutral Special right off the bat gives Iz a lot of room to play around with her two bomb types. She's able to mirror Snake with distinct Special throws for the explosives; choose to throw them as regular items, at the Wonka-esque cost of some standards while she's holding them, it seems; and specifically even hold and throw two bombs in sequence this way (does this capability carry over to foes picking up bombs, I wonder?). From there, Iz brews up a whole host of possible bomb control tools in Down Special. The clear standout to me is Recycle, which nicely merges a time manipulation type tool with the quality-of-life function of letting her change the order of bomb types she's holding, though the return of MYMX-style invisible traps got a chuckle out of me as well. Side Special is comparatively simpler, but fills an important purpose for Iz, letting her deprive opponents of items they've picked up, in a similar fashion to how projectile-heavy characters often also have reflectors (something she also can do via Down Special!). The idea of slicing away a Super Mushroom-type buff at will strikes me as the sort of troll-y item nullification feature that would've come up during an early contest, serving as a neat tonal throwback of sorts.

Up Special, to me, is where things really started getting wild with Iz, in a good way. She's got seven distinct cube trap types, all dependent on where she's located on the ground or in the air, in what proximity to her opponent, and yet, I never felt like any of them faded from relevance. Some highlights to me were Iz's potential to give chase to opponents with well-situated teleport cubes; drop bricks on them in Thwomp-like fashion; and even speed up attack charges via a time trap at opportune moments. Beyond that, Smashes stood out as the most well-realized input section, as Iz accesses a different weapon on each move, with its own distinct interactions with her bombs and cubes — my favorites being the potential for a barrage of cannon shots and to send the U-Smash stakes flying in rocket-esque fashion. Later on, D-Air came as a pleasant surprise, as one of those really intricate aerials that, while superficially unusual within that input section, fits in sensibly with the rest of her kit, as she can teleport up higher to produce larger rocks and more catapult fodder. At this point, I find myself ever-so-slightly preferring Iroha to Iz, by virtue of arguably more coherence in the former's creativity, and a greater breadth of interactions around her central tank vs. multiple more disparate elements. Even still, the latter stands as an impressive iteration on the overall feel I enjoyed in Kanade, and finds herself perched comfortably near the top of my MYM26 favorites so far Katapultar .

PORKY MINCH:
I've never played a Mother game, but have become pretty familiar with Porky's character over the years, not the least of which from semi-regularly playing him in Smash Crusade back in the day. With Porky's villain status and prominence in Brawl, it's surprising that this is only the second time he's gotten a MYM set. On the whole, I'd say he's done justice here, if not in too overly elaborate a fashion. Porky's gameplay primarily revolves around bullying opponents with relation to the status effects he can levy against them, in his downward Neutral Special option and Side Special. On the latter, I quite enjoy how Porky inflicts a variable status effect, depending on the damage output of his foe's attacks. There's good strategy to be had in when Porky creates a gas cloud — sure, increasing knockback on sub-10% enemy moves helps him more easily evade combos starting out, but past higher percentages, some such moves could become even more lethal KO tools. Meanwhile, temporarily worsening opponents' shields makes Porky's stronger attacks that much more dangerous, and lets him more easily pressure them into maneuvers he can better punish.

There's also a lot of potential in Neutral Special's crying status effect, though it feels somewhat undercut with how it's incorporated. Porky has to land his relatively challenging Neutral Special to inflict it, after which his foe is only left crying for five seconds. It's often better to err on the cautious side with duration-based effects like this, but in this case, I think the function of Porky's status most often would go to waste — most fighters probably are not going to throw out -and- connect with four attacks within five seconds. You definitely recognize the great offensive and defensive potential to be had with something like this, as Porky and his opponent are left counting down attacks and then positioning themselves around the one they know will miss. Some combination of a longer base duration, maybe letting attacks still count toward the whiff upon hitting shields, could give crying more utility, while also freeing up time for Porky to make use of his other three Neutral Special throws.

Beyond that, I have little in the way of critiques about Porky. His mech is incorporated brilliantly in with his melee, with leg sweetspots on appropriate attacks in D-Tilt and D-Air; appropriately brutal moves in F-Tilt and U-Throw; and a big heavy F-Smash that, with forethought, gives players ways to circumvent its lag with the landing hitbox or by leaping offstage. This is a set I could easily see translated into a real Smash game, in a spankety spanking good way Arctic Tern .

 

[Arkhalis7]

Here we have Faraday CM-077, an exception to the Blinks (because he is a robot) though still considered a Conduit, and Sergio Amorim, an infamous pirate king from the Twenty-One Isles, a massive trading empire that is essentially Portugal if it was the size of the Roman Empire.

The Explosive Space Drone (TB-013) -- Notable differences: Successful implementation of the Strategic Defense Initiative during Reagan's terms. It was greatly improved upon and massively boosted the development of space technology.

The Faithful and Fearless Captain (TO-114) -- Notable differences: Massive trading empire known as the Twenty-One Isles, as well as many different geological differences and a lack of any Eastern Asiatic presence.


If you wanna know more about my Traditional Fighter, here are some lore-related terms. I'll write more that are associated with each set(s) I post.

Blinks

Blinks are a side-effect of gaining powers through the machine where the victim simultaneously experiences extreme psychological and physical pain. They suffer from high pressures exerted on their body, and during it, they may feel as if limbs are being violently torn off their body, organs being shifted around, skin being seared or sloughing off their body, or bones breaking and dislocating. In addition, they also are flooded with memories of every other person affected by this phenomenon, causing many of them to die simply due to an information overload.


Conduits

Conduits are the fighters that got their powers from a multi-dimensional disaster caused by engineers issued by the government to revert the effects of a global nuclear winter after the Cold War turned hot in TB-100. Many of the characters experienced near-death situations before being 'saved' by the activation of the machine, which allowed them to be mostly unaffected by the excruciating pain of Blinks. The turnover of Conduits is very low, mostly due to the Blinks, but also because many of them are warped from their relative position in their universe to TB-100's universe, and many appear stuck inside the vast infrastructure, fall from great heights or are crushed by falling structures from other universes.


Reading Timelines

The Coalition separates the multiverses into three categories: Alpha (A), Beta (B), and Omega (O). These sections describe the timeline the Conduits came from, and the number associated ranges from 1-100. The letter describes how close the timeline is to the Origin timeline (in this case, the timeline in which the game takes place), and the number simply designates how far each letter is from the other. Alpha (A) is the closest to the Origin. Therefore, most of Alpha's events are quite similar to the Origin's. However, there are slight variations, such as large corporations being replaced with others or the like. Beta (B) timelines have major variations, such as different war outcomes, but despite those, they still lead to major events that occurred in the Origin timeline. The Omega (O) timeline's defining trait is that they are absolutely nothing like the Origin timeline, deviating majorly at more early parts of history. For example, the closest timeline to the Origin is TA-001, and the furthest is TC-100. The game takes place in TA-000.

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Sergio Amorim

Good job for finally releasing your first moveset! Not too many people start out with an Original Character.

• This set’s presentation is surprisingly nice and refreshing for a black and white document. I like the text font and use of arrows in the place of bullet points.
• I like the fact that Sergio is marked as an “Original Creation” right off the bat, so you avoid confusing readers that Sergio might be an existing fictional character (or even an actual historical figure, given he’s a pirate). This character’s backstory gives me Pirates of the Caribbean vibes.
• (I like how the set puts taunts before the Specials and marks them as being important, even though the taunts don’t seem to serve a gameplay purpose. You could say that taunts are important for characterization!)

This moveset makes some surprisingly bold and unorthodox choices with its myriad of mechanics. The dash having 15 frames of end lag if you don’t shield or jump, 5 frames of jumpsquat and the ability to cancel some normals on hit by jumping or dashing, but you can’t attack for a moment afterwards. There’s also the float, and of course the interesting choice to give Sergio extra normals that specialize in shield-poking instead of a regular grab, as well as having an easier time getting shield breaks. I like how both of these options work together, where you can use your float to cross-up shielding opponents. If anything, the stats and the mechanics can be a bit vague when there aren’t any specific numbers behind them:

• How fast does Sergio’s initial dash travel?
• How high does his midair jump go?
• Is there a specific time where Sergio can’t attack after canceling a normal? Maybe something like 20 frames?
• Gown of the Iron Maiden might be the most vague mechanic: I get the impression that it delays your fall for a moment, then you fall more slowly as you hold it out, but can otherwise hold it out indefinitely.
• I’m glad this set mentions that Sergio’s cannons don’t block projectiles: a number of construct and minion-based sets normally forget to mention that they can block these.

The vague details on the stats tells me that you might not be entirely certain on balance numbers-wise. If you haven’t seen it yet, https://ultimateframedata.com/ is a great site for checking frame data and looking at the stats of existing Smash characters.

• Sergio’s aerial kill percents feel kind of underpowered (D-air is slow and deals damage, but doesn’t KO until 250%), but I suspect that this was done to balance out the fact that these are aerial moves since kill percents assume the foe is hit at the centre of the stage. It doesn’t really bother me, anyway.
• There is probably no reason to make D-Smash non-chargeable like any other Smash. Perhaps charging the attack gives you more hitstun or simply raw damage to make combos better?
• Very, very smart choice to give Sergio a command grab on his Specials to make up for him not having a regular grab. Not giving him a grab at all would give him some very, very awkward match-ups, especially against someone like Yoshi whose egg shield can’t be shield-poked. (frame 32 start-up for a close-ranged Side Special grab might be too slow, even if Serigo isn’t meant to have a proper grab and its end lag is very forgiving)
• How far do Sergio’s hook option go? I imagine that the hooked rope would travel quite far when the “grabs” have notable start-up and don’t go through shields, though they do have low end lag so they’re not particularly punishable.

One thing I think would improve the grab game: talking about Sergio’s tech chasing options. All his grab options leave his opponent in a tech situation, so Sergio doesn’t have the same utility as other fighters with throws. His Forward Tilt is essentially a Forward Smash, so I could see that being a notable read option from a tech chase, as well as his actual Forward Smash since that involves firing out a projectile. Perhaps Sergio’s grab options could have his opponents in different positions for tech chases, like the down option leaving them in front of you while the forward option leaves them knocked down where your rope struck them. While it’s not the least detailed grab I’ve seen in a modern set, all 4 of your grab options just boiling down to a blanket tech-chase starting option does feel a bit redundant when you consider that grabs normally involve a pummel and 4 throws with different effects.

• The cannons are a cool concept, where you can place two of them on any part of the stage and then use any Special input again to fire them.
• I like rekka-based moves, but I think that Neutral Special could do with a lot more elaboration. I don’t get much of a sense of how or whether the 3 hits are meant to work/string together, or what individual uses each move has. There is also a lot of mix-up potential to be had: hit 1 could be safe on block, for instance, but hit 2 is not and you have to 50/50 into dropping the rekka to respond to your opponent’s shield or going into the second hit if you think they won’t shield.

All and all, Sergio has some room for polish, but he was quite good for your first MYM outing! His willingness to do some bold things in a moveset appealed to me more than I expected, as I value sets that go out and do crazy things.

EDIT: I didn't notice that you had another moveset, so my claim that Sergio is your first MYM set might not be true. Still one of your first movesets, though.

Spoiler: Faraday CM-077

I like the Countdown mechanic: it doubles as a balancing tool for Faraday’s stronger attacks and a Kamikaze projectile that can trigger after using an attack, so it has the potential to combo out of some moves that max out your stress at the cost of deleting your stock.

• Short-Circuit is helpful as a means to remove Stress. It would help a lot if the set was more specific on the threshold for SC won’t remove stress with repeated uses. Maybe SC can only remove Stress once every 3.5 seconds or so?
• U-air is crazy powerful right now, even when you’ve highlighted a few weaknesses for it. Specifically, a frame 4 meteor smash U-air that KOs offstage at 40% is significantly more powerful than pretty much any spiking move in Smash, and its end lag isn’t even that bad compared to other D-airs either. Best suggestion would be to drop the KO percentage to something like 160%, maybe make the base knockback strong so it can still be used as a threat and for grounbounce comboing purposes.
• I kind of like F-air as a drag-down move that can go into combos.
• Much as I like Aerials and moves push how ridiculously laggy a move can be within reason, I think B-air could have its starting lag brought down to frame 25 or even 20 and still be very reasonable for the reward you get from it.
• How far do the rocks from D-air travel? I noticed in Sergio that your sets don’t really specify how far their projectiles and moves like tether grabs travel.

• I’d say it’s unnecessary for the Smashes to apply Stress, because they all feel slow enough not to need any negative mechanics to balance out their power.
• I like how the Pummel is tied to the Stress mechanic, and the potential to lose a lot of Stress if you used Short-Circuit.
• Down Throw might be one of the craziest throws I’ve seen in a while. It is absolutely extreme that Faraday has a “you die if you get grabbed by me,” button. Sure, Faraday suffers a massive amount of stress from this, and foes can escape early, but Short-Circuit lets you de-stress big-time and makes it a bit harder for foes to escape. The existence of this throw makes me wonder whether Short-Circuit should expire if Faraday doesn’t use a Stress move within a certain amount of time? Means that Faraday only has a limited time to land a grab and land that absurdly powerful D-throw without the threat of straight-up dying. Also, I like the idea of throwing animations that continue even if the foe escapes - I want to do that kind of thing myself in a set.

Something I didn’t mention with Sergio, but applies to both him and Faraday and a lot of newcomer sets in general. Most people in MYM mention Specials first, because they generally provide centrepieces for the rest of the moveset to play off of. Faraday’s Neutral Special would be a good example of this: the move mentions it being a good component in his general trap, zoning and combo game. This would be the type of move that would be good to bring up in the non-Special moves to spice them up, like saying that the spider could lock foes into your stronger moves like your Smashes. Mentioning a potent combo or two could help sell how useful a drone can be. Side Special is neat enough, I like command grabs that have multiple follow-up options, but the Specials don't feel too tied together with other parts of the moveset. Reading other movesets posted this contest might help you understand what I mean there, as well as comments from other people.

Overall, I did prefer Sergio to Faraday as the former has more crazy ideas, but these are both fun sets for a start.

 

[cashregister9]

My apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this, but for this thread, is there a database of all the characters that have ever been submitted for these threads? I've been working on a new moveset for this thread and I do not know if there is a rule against using a character someone else did a moveset for.

(I searched this character on the site, I saw them mentioned in one of these threads but I did not see a moveset, but I want to be safe)

 

[FrozenRoy]

My apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this, but for this thread, is there a database of all the characters that have ever been submitted for these threads? I've been working on a new moveset for this thread and I do not know if there is a rule against using a character someone else did a moveset for, so I want to double check to see if this character hasn't been done before, or if there is no rule against reusing a character.

Hey there, cashregister9 ! I can answer both of your questions.

1. There is no rule against duplicate characters over contests, or even in the SAME contest. In fact, we got multiple Nui Harime sets this very contest! So you don't need to worry about that.

2. We do, nonetheless, have a list of all characters ever made which is updated at the end of each contest. You can find that here: https://mymbunker.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/every-single-moveset-listed-by-franchise/

3. And just in case, here's a list of movesets from just this contest: https://chiefmendez.wordpress.com/mym26-movesets/

(Also BTW, based choice for Estelle Bright support)

 

[Kholdstare]

My apologies if this is the wrong place to ask this, but for this thread, is there a database of all the characters that have ever been submitted for these threads? I've been working on a new moveset for this thread and I do not know if there is a rule against using a character someone else did a moveset for.

(I searched this character on the site, I saw them mentioned in one of these threads but I did not see a moveset, but I want to be safe)

Here you go, enjoy: https://mymbunker.wordpress.com/movesets-2/

 

[cashregister9]

:::: )

Spoiler: Author Commentary + notices

So I last submitted a moveset for MYM 24 and it was not very in depth, I hope I was able to at least bring some more depth and detail with this moveset, It doesn't match the 40+ page long behemoths I sometimes see on here but I hope at least I can bring something fun with this moveset.

8's replace B's and also parts of words that rhyme with 8, It felt wrong not doing the typing quirk for a Homestuck thing. I can clarify things if you are having a hard time reading it.

I am not that great about balancing or proper competitive usefulness of moves and characters, So I tried to make it as balanced as I could and I deliberately kept it simple because, I just prefer to write simpler things. Same thing applies to terminology.

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Vriska Serket

Welcome to MYM, cashregistert9! Don’t worry about your set not being comparable to the 10k+ big boys of MYM - everyone has to start somewhere. And of course, you’re free to post as many movesets as you like.

MYM has a history with the Homestuck series, as we got sets for the franchise between MYMs9-13. We’ve had sets for Karkat, Doc Scratch, Rose Lalonde, Karkat and Sawtooth and Squarewave, the latter two by Majora who is currently active this contest. A link to every single moveset listed by franchise might interest you here:

https://mymbunker.wordpress.com/2014/08/30/every-single-moveset-listed-by-franchise/

• Replacing Bs with 8s is an interesting presentation choice that I haven’t really seen before. It’s a little weird, and get confusing with instances where 8 is meant to be used numerically rather than as a replacement for the letter “B” (like “her weight is 88” for instance, could have read that as BB), but I’m all for any kind of character-faithful writing or presentation.
• This set’s intro does give a little information on Vriska, but it is missing some details for those who are not familiar with Homestuck or this character like myself (beyond Doc Scratch and Lord English lore that ForwardArrow has brought up in the chat). Iirc, Homestuck takes place in some kind of video game? Who is Vriska character-wise? What is her personality like, and what are her goals?
• I don’t think any other set has been obsessed with a specific number quite like this one. I love how the number 8 and numbers that are multiples of 8 are used for all the stats, damage output and lag of the moves. It actually serves as an interesting form of characterization, and showcases how bizarre this character is.

“Vriska rolls a set of 8 dice that are 8 Sided; you have to roll them 8efore using them. This projectile acts as a charged projectile. The rolling acts as a charge. So you can charge it and use it later. Once unleashed Vriska throws all 8 dice in an arc, These dice act as one large segmented projectile.” The writing here is admittedly confusing, and redundant with its repeated mentions of being a chargeable projectile. It sounds like you have to charge the attack before you can use it - but long does it take to charge? Writing wise, the move would probably read better if it was structured something like: “Vriska rolls 8, 8-sided dice in a 1 second charge-and-store move that must be charged fully before it can be used.” You’re new and don’t have much exposure to MYM yet though. I started out with a really bad writing style when I joined MYM as a teenager, so I get where you’re coming from.

As for the attack itself, I do love dice-based attacks and want to try one myself in earnest. We had a Waluigi moveset that also had a dice-based Neutral Special, too.

• Are any of the die results canon results that Vriska can get in Homestuck? Some of them sound like they are, like Guillotine.
• “All shields are immediately 8roken, including Vriska’s, If no one is shielding then the shield acts as if it was just 8roken.” I don’t get what this second sentence means. Does it mean that fighters are treated as though they got their shield broken and get put into a shield jump + dizzy animation?
• Levitate’s buffs feel too small - should be 80% instead of 8%.
• Does 8ig fish actually summon a fish in canon? Vriska should probably use something from Homestuck instead of Goldeen.

• How far does the Side Special projectile fly? Bit of a common thing among newcomer sets, but it’s preferable when sets describe how far their projectiles travel, whether they’re using grids/training mode units as a measuring unit or comparing their travel distances to existing Smash projectiles.
• How long does the 8 ball’s remains trap last for? 1.8 seconds?
• It’s fun when sets embrace RNG-style moves like Green Missile where an attack has a 1/10 chance or so of being really powerful. The enhanced version doesn’t specifically mention knockback, but the last paragraph does mention that it’s not a kill move. I actually like that it can’t kill, as that balances out the extreme damage that a lucky cue ball can deal.
• Down Special’s ability to teleport opponents is a neat concept. I assume it is much faster than PK Flash, as that move is very, very slow and this version has no hitbox.
• Good to know Vriska doesn’t have much fighting experience, and that most of her moves are made up.

Vriska has a lot of room for improvement, but that will all come by learning over time. Main advice right now would be to elaborate on various details and move usages, and to sell the moves and the playstyle in such a way that it all works together cohesively. There are plenty of veteran sets you could look to to get an understanding of this, but shorter sets like Rumia and Margaret Moonlight posted this contest are simple but are aware of how each move in their set works towards their overall playstyle. Vriska’s Aerials all have the potential to play off of her float mentioned in her Up Special, while her more simple melee could have some basic usages described for them: for instance, Back Throw could be a spacing throw that gives you room to perform any of your Specials, whereas Up Throw could set up into Up Special or Up Air. Down Special also feels like a lot of missed potential: it’s the kind of move that could work really well if Vriska had some notable traps and could teleport her opponents directly into them.
Even so, this set was still an experience with some unique ideas! Even if Vriska isn’t as fleshed-out as other movesets, you still succeeded in bringing something fun with her. I like the concepts behind each of the Specials, and I kind of love the idea behind a character whose moves come out on specific number-themed frames (frame 8, or any number that’s a multiple of 8 like 16, 24 or 32). Saves the author the trouble of saying “this move comes out on frame X,” for each move, and lets you do fun things like having several moves that come out on the same frame, but they all have different properties that mean they each work for different situations.

 

[FazDude]

Hey, MYMers. It's, uh... been a minute. I didn't mean to fall off the whole commenting train, but school got in the way. Now that I'm on summer break, though, I can get back to paying a bit more attention here (and possibly making a second set based off what I've learned from Waluigi).

For now, how about two more comments for some sets I've had my eye on (and coincidentally are both reworks)?

HI I'M DAISY (Daisy Rework by Z Zakawer2 )
This was a pretty fun read - I like how that even though you can tie a lot back to Daisy's appearances in the Mario sports games, it still feels distinctly like a new vision specifically for Smash that fits Daisy really well. You capture the tomboy energy while also giving her a ton of fun concepts to use (I especially like the Side Special). Even if it doesn't rip too much from the source material, it still fits the character and makes for a fun set, which is more important anyway.

The only thing I don't really understand is Down Special - While I get the idea here, I feel like an aggressive character like Daisy shouldn't have traps as a major part of her gameplan, especially when she has other moves which do the exact same thing as her traps do. Maybe there's something I don't get here, and it doesn't hurt the set, but it doesn't exactly help it in my view.

Other than that, this is a really well-made set. Nice work!

"I'll make your face the greatest in Koridai!" (Ganondorf Rework by MaSpoofs )
First and foremost... "I think a pit that too many fan movesets fall into is this insatiable desire to make EVERY MOVE in a kit a reference, if not direct, at least to something. I want to avoid this." This is ultra-based; Like I mentioned with Daisy, I feel that a cohesive set is more important to go for rather than one that just tries to cram a ton of references into itself. This alone got me super excited to see what you did with the king of evil.

And oh boy, you did not disappoint! While I think Ganondorf could serve to be decloned, I still want him to have the same sense of power that his Ult incarnation has, since that's something it's really good at. Practically every move here feels powerful - Even the small stuff like tilts, which is really saying something. Of course, it all flows very well too, which is very important. I also appreciate all the creative liberties to include a lot of Ganondorf's more iconic moves without sacrificing his playstyle (special shoutout to Up Tilt).

Overall, Ganondorf feels fun and empowering to control, which is the one thing I'd want him to be. Splendid work!

 

[SaltySuicune]

¡Cállate ya hijo de la gran puta, que eres tontísimo!

​

 

[Arctic Tern]

FARADAY CM-077 (Arkhalis)

This is a particularly interesting choice for a first set, Ark. Not just for being an OC, but for being a robot with an extremely unconventional body type! I don’t really know how some of its attacks work since you don’t really describe how Faraday looks, but I do like the overall feel, with it using robot arms, drones, and space rocks in combat. I am kind of mixed on the fact it just doesn’t have a dash; while its movement speed is fast enough to avoid any issues from that and the idea of mixups involving tilts sounds cool, they’re not really elaborated upon enough for me to really like them. The actual dash attack just being a faster dash just really irks me, since it isn’t an attack, is redundant with USpec (which the set itself admits is just dash attack in the air - all of Faraday’s other Specials have air/ground differences, why can’t this), and the input (holding backwards for two seconds) taking too long to process for the combo extensions suggested to actually work as intended. Attacks with a backwards input do exist, but only on characters with autoturn, which Faraday isn’t stated to have.

The Stress mechanic serves as a neat way to counterbalance particularly strong moves, where using them too much results in a heavy punishment. I do believe that the rocket that fires is a bit too strong in its current state: you say that it isn’t a consistent kill option despite its power since it only travels forward, but it also travels at a high speed and - more importantly - does not have startlag specified. From the way the sentence is worded, I’m led to believe that the missile comes out the second Faraday reaches 100% Stress, meaning that it's an unreactable OHKO move. Faraday does lose a stock as well, but this seems like something that just wouldn’t be fun to play against since it essentially punishes you with death for playing the game normally. The base idea, however, does have potential - personally, I’d like to see a move that actively increases Stress at a slow rate to more passively threaten the missile.

On a more positive note, there are some cool ideas in play! The NSpec, a small drone that moves whenever the B button is held, seems like a really neat basis for a set on its own, and the possible combo extensions seem very in-line with my tastes. USmash also tickles me, a move that kills at 50% uncharged at the cost of absurd startup speed. Lastly, the UAir is the classic MYM UAir that hits downwards, though I second Kat’s notions that it kills way too early in its current state.

Faraday definitely has some neat ideas going for it, but the ways that it actively defies conventional Smash play seem more impractical than actually cool. With a bit of work done I could certainly see myself liking it, but as it is now it’s kinda meh.

SERGIO AMORIM (Ark)

Sergio is kind of a mixed bag for me. I do really like the idea of a pirate captain who’s merged with his ship, and the attack animations do a great job of selling this idea. The overall focus of extreme shield pressure is also appealing, and Sergio’s blockstring mixups are decently elaborated upon. There’s a notable theme of Sergio’s moves actually being unsafe on block unless they are either canceled or placed right, a neat dichotomy that I played with in one of my sets in this contest. Last, the Pearls of the Iron Maiden are easily the neatest Special, another example of remotely triggered hitboxes that I approved of in the earlier comment.

What I’m not really a fan of is the fact that Sergio doesn’t have a grab. A command grab, yes, but in lieu of a standard grab he has a set of attacks meant to shieldpoke at different angles. That’s a neat idea, but grabs are an integral part of Smash gameplay and especially neutral, and it just doesn’t feel right for any character to just not have one (unless this is true to the fake fighting game Sergio hails from, then I’d be more OK with it). The intent is for Sergio to have a really bad disadvantage state, but he could just have a slow grab instead of none at all and the effect would still be there. He doesn’t have to lose the extra attacks, too; since this is a fighting game, the grab attacks could easily be repurposed into tap/hold variants of his standards (as well as his Sealegs special, but I digress)

Additionally, I don’t really see anything in the set that encourages the foe to block, which is fairly important considering that’s his main shtick. This could be done through either an easy combo starter that is unsafe on shield, or tools that restrict rolls, which is kind of in the set through his standing DSpec. In general, the set seems to assume that the opponent will always use their shield and doesn’t take rolls into account at all, despite a depleted shield naturally encouraging them. Something I thought of while reading is to give Sergio a really long ranged tether grab that has very high start lag, but can be decreased through cancels, thus giving him a means of punishing attempts to roll away from him. Overall, I did like this set more than Faraday, but issues with execution and mechanics still hold it back a lot for me.

VRISKA SERKET (cashregister)

Vriska is one of the rare sets to actively embrace RNG, with her NSpec having her roll dice in order to achieve 8 random effects. While I would not call myself a Homestuck fan, from what I do know most of the effects aren’t actually canonical but could very well happen, since the dice have thousands of effects based on the specific numbers rolled - leeway is very acceptable. Besides that, the DSpec is an actually pretty cool move where Vriska makes a destination to teleport her opponent to, and could easily work on a character with more traps. As well as this, I did appreciate the consistency in making every number something that either multiplies or can be multiplied into 8, which is a very important number to the character. Other than that, though, there’s not really a lot to say; it’s a short, not that descriptive set with some neat ideas, neat enough to overall get my approval.

ANNIHILAPE (Salty)

Annihilape has a very fitting rushdown playstyle, with some neat tricks added to it. For one, he’s actually got a fair bit of slow moves, mainly meant to be alternatives to his DSmash’s ability to pitfall foes if he manages to hit a sweetspot. Another is his Rage Fist, which gets stronger the more damage he takes, which seems like something really interesting to play with. Other moves I liked included DTilt with its ability to potentially insta-break shields (though you don’t specify at which point in the attack this happens) and the side throws, which have Annihilape slam the foe side to side in a very fun animation to see play out. Overall, though, the set stays in the realm of “fun to imagine in a game but not really that exciting to read” area, so I don’t really have much to say about it.

Comment block link here!

 

[n88]

JAMCON 26-2​

Welcome, folks, to the second jamcon of MYM26! We've all had a while to cool our heels, so it's about time for some excitement around here, eh?

The vets can feel free to skip this bit, but for anyone who’s joined us lately, here’s a quick rundown of just what a “jamcon” is:

• Someone posts a theme.
• Everyone gets the weekend (~4 days) to write and post a quick moveset that fits the theme.
• Readers get some time (~2 weeks) to read all the posted sets, comment, and vote for their favorite.
• The set that gets the most votes is the winner of the jamcon! They receive infinite feel-goods and also they get to pick the next jamcon theme.

“That sounds exciting!” you might be saying.

“But what’d really be exciting is hearing more of the nitty-gritty of the rules!” you very well could be continuing.

“Please post a longer list with more specifics!” I imagine you possibly screaming at this point.

I’m a people pleaser, so here are those specifics:

Spoiler: jamcon rules deep dive for the hardcore fans

• MYM’s rules and Smashboards’ rules (including those ever-so-important Terms of Service) still apply to the jamcon and sets submitted to the jamcon. Behave!
• The deadline for submissions to this particular jamcon is the end of Tuesday, mountain time. But we’ll be nice and hold it open a little if you’re close to finishing up.
• No submitting movesets you had laying around! Even a start on a moveset (beyond extras or generic templates) disqualifies it. Please do finish that moveset and submit it to MYM, it just won’t count for the jamcon. The stats and mechanics and moves all have to be written during the con in order to achieve 100% jam.
• In order to vote, a reader must read and comment EVERY set submitted to the jamcon. Except their own, if they submitted one. Find a private space to give yourself feedback.
• Anyone who submits and votes gets an extra 0.5 votes for their set, as a reward for going the extra mile.
• A tied win is a tie. No breaking it, everyone is a winner. Fight to the death to pick the next jamcon theme. Or just agree on one.
• You can submit joint sets or submit multiple sets to the jamcon! Writing multiple sets in a jamcon is… ambitious! Please make sure you are staying hydrated and getting plenty of sleep.
• Jamcon submission can be silly but shouldn’t be straight jokesets. Don’t get me wrong, if something possesses you to write a jokeset this weekend, godspeed. But if your set’s BThrow permanently patches Sonic out of the game, it’s probably not a “serious” design pitch.
• Sets can be freely edited during the submission period. Once the deadline hits and we’re into the reading period, major edits are no longer allowed. Minor edits (proofreading, number fixes, presentation, extras) are totally fine. But if you want to replace a move or something, that’s gonna have to wait until after the reading and voting happens. Feel free to edit to your heart’s content once reading period is past!
• Oh, and this is a real simple one, but do let us know if a set is a jamcon submission. Just label it in the post or in the set itself, if the set’s in a google doc (as it probably is). If for some reason you can’t put the information there, you could also let me know by simply wandering the Denver metro and screaming real loud.

Now your mad rules-lust should be temporarily sated, which is good because the theme of this jamcon is:

CRIME​

Looking for some examples of things that’d fit the theme? No problem, we’ve got that in spades. But I do want to break it to you gently that these aren’t more rules. I know how much you love those, but this isn’t a comprehensive list of how things can tie into the jamcon theme. These are just some ideas about how one might do it. You, dear reader, are free to interpret the theme however you like.

• Much like the purge, all moveset crime is legal during this jamcon. It’s hard to nail down exactly what constitutes a moveset crime, but you know it when you see it. Giganotosaurus. Fire Bar. Those chicken tenders everyone is talking about. These are moveset crimes.
  • Crimes against Smashboards’ ToS are not moveset crimes.
• This may come as a shock, but criminals are frequently associated with crime. Ne’er-do-wells like Walter White and Waluigi would easily wedge their way into this jamcon.
• On the other hand, those who fight crime could also find themselves fitting in. Dapper detectives, courageous cops, and valiant vigilantes are all equally qualified.
• And of course you have folks involved in the litigative and adjudicative processes of it all. Senator Armstrong? Saul Goodman? Very welcome at the crime party and it’s because of their choice of profession, not for other alleged reasons.
• War crimes are of course crimes, so feel free to bring your favorite Gundam villain, like Dozle Zabi, to the jamcon.
• I have it from a very reliable source that it’s time for Ojama Lime to do Ojama Crime, so maybe do something with that.

 

[tunz]

Man, this is probably the quickest set I've ever written! It's one that I've been thinking about doing anyways for quite some time, but never really had the playstyle locked down in my head. But this prompt made me realize I have to do it, so I did. Without further ado, I present: Junkrat!!!

 

[majora_787]

I have my jamcon submission. I'll probably be in jail for making this moveset until it's already over, but I hope it goes well.

​

 

[tunz]

JAMCON COMMENT

Bandit by majora

-Bandit has a lot of cool, unique and interesting mechanics. At first I was worried about the 1.25x from Serrated Shiv being maybe too high, especially along with all the other damage ramping he can get from Backstab and Hit List. But as I kept reading, I noticed that his base damage output was kind of lacking, which perfectly makes up for that in my mind.
-I like a bit of RNG, so the Final Smash had me smirking.
-I like the unique grab effect of a tether keeping the opponent at a distance and the Back Throw input being used to pull them closer to set up for combos. Just a bit of a shame that a spacing or kill throw option had to be consumed for it.
-I like the Forward Throw frame reduction for gun attacks mechanic and where it applies to, same as I do Backstab. Each move it applies and doesn't apply to feels very thought out and considered.
-Down Air giving you air time and being able to double tap it is very fun, my only question is: does it give you air time every time or only the first two?
-I like that the attacks that use the guns as bludgeoning weapons have more shield damage, as if he's beating down the opponents' shields.
-Forward Air, Back Air and Down Air having secondary uses of movement seems like it would be very fun to play around with.
-Neutral Air is a very interesting move, my only wish is to hear more about the exact intended combos you could get with each version of the pull. Labbing is definitely necessary for this character.
-I almost wonder if the Forward Smash charge extends the distance of the dynamite by too little? But that might just be me not being used to measuring in grids.
-Down Tilt's tripping is a very fun mechanic, and it's a move that works well and intuitively with both the frame reduction mechanic and Backstab.

Overall, a good fun light read! I don't usually give out scores due to my inexperience and lack of comparisons, but if I had to give a personal score this would be a solid 7.8/10 for me.

 

[Katapultar]

Got no timely inspiration for this Jamcon, so I’ll just get a headstart on reading instead.

Spoiler: Annihilape

I echo Tern in that Annihilape is a pretty basic set: you have the right idea of starting out with the Specials for your next entry, as they’ll give your basic attacks more to work with. Some thoughts on specific moves:

• Down Tilt mentions that it can instantly break shields if it’s timed well. I suspect that it is meant to have a sweetspot, perhaps on Annihilape’s hand? The move also mentions being quick enough to slot into combos, which would make it very powerful against shields if it’s that fast, even if the vague sweetspot was very small. I like the idea of a move that’s risky but rewarding against shields, but it might be better to drop the insta shield breaking properties altogether - Annihilape already has its Down Smash for that, which works there because the input is slower and harder to land. Maybe Down Tilt could just deal a good chunk of shield damage, but is unsafe if it doesn’t break the foe’s shield? Brick Break notably doesn’t seem to be able to shield poke, which you could say is a weakness in Annihilape’s gameplan.

• The idea behind the Side Throw is cool, being able to slam the foe back and forth against the ground by inputting the control stick in one direction and then again in the other. Each slam deals 6% and you can land up to 4 of them and still get a combo out of the throw. Just one problem: the throw doesn’t mention any limitations or reasons not to go for the full 24% every time, which is pretty powerful for a throw! Can the foe escape from your grab if you attempt to go for more than one slam?
• Personally, I think Side Throw’s end lag should scale relative to how many slams you throw out. With one slam, you can combo from it. With two slams, the knockback increases a bit and you have to chase after the foe to get your combo, to compensate for the extra 6%. With 3 or 4 slams, Annihilape undergoes considerable end lag as it trembles in rage and takes a while to calm down, long enough that foes can act before it! That would only be fair on a throw that gives you 24% for free.
• Down Throw’s K. Rool bury could make use of knockback storage, though that’s a bit of an advanced MYM’ing technique.

• Close Combat admittedly feels unsubstantial for a Special. It probably comes down to a clear lack of purpose in Annihilape’s kit, and missing various details that could sell the move a lot more. The move sounds comparable to Raptor Boost, where Annihilape charges ahead and performs the attack IF it comes across an enemy. What happens if Annihilape doesn’t rush into an enemy? Does it fall over and suffer notable end lag? Can the move be used as a secondary recovery? The knockback also doesn’t get talked upon much - it sounds like it deals pretty solid horizontal knockback, which would make the move a nasty semi-spiking option since horizontal knockback is very powerful in Smash. Stuff like how a move fares in neutral and ways an opponent can counterplay a given attack you have help to sell those moves and instill a sense of hypothetical balance in them.

Overall, these are the most prominent moves that I think could do with a little or a lot more added detail to help spice them up.

Spoiler: Junkrat

Nice work for getting this Jamcon entry out so quick! This is another Overwatch character we got in the past, so MYM has a degree of familiarity with this character.

• Total Mayhem is actually a unique concept in how it triggers when you respawn, something that rarely gets touched upon in MYM. Not a big, moveset-defining idea, but it feels nice and balanced, I’m glad that it exists idea-wise.
• Neutral Special’s numbers feel right; low end lag on basic projectile is balanced out by a notable reloading period after firing enough projectiles.
• Side Special’s payload acting as a (floating?) platform after it flies out is a pretty cool idea that has a lot of potential (bounce your grenades off of the platform?). The payload’s travel distance means that Junkrat probably can’t spawn it offstage and then chase after it to recovery, as it would travel too far for that. I’m guessing you can only have 1 payload out at a time, and you can’t use Side Special again until the current payload explodes? That would be great for balance, and forces the Junkrat player to be careful where they place the platform. The move is called “The Plan,” after all.
• Up Special’s mines sound like they’re only used to recover. You’d think that they could be placed on the ground like a trap, since later parts of the move mention Junkrat getting a lot from set-up time and having explosives set around the place.
• Getting stuck in place by the steel trap for 3.5 seconds isn’t too bad since opponents can shield and attack. Has some decent synergy with the payload, where you could place the steel trap over the payload so foes are locked into the explosion. Only thing I’d like changed is how foes apparently get locked into their shield if they shield while they’re caught in the trap - they should still be able to drop their shield or spot dodge while they’re in the trap.

• “(Yes, the peg leg is a disjoint because screw you and your swords. Now that's what I call a crime against Smash.) ” Nice, embracing the abstract crime aspect of this Jamcon. It makes sense for the peg leg to be disjointed anyway since it is not a part of Junkrat’s actual body. You could also say that the peg leg has intangibility frames so it’s easier to trades with other hitboxes, a trait that moves like Terry’s Forward Tilt have.
• Down Smash is a unique design choice where the move is intentionally bad/borderline useless in the character’s kit, which makes sense given its comical animation. Reminds me of Palutena’s Smash 4 kit, where she had a few useful moves but a lot of really weak ones. Ideally, Down Smash could even serve a niche role in the set, maybe deal horizontal knockback so you can knock foes towards your traps and gimp them near the ledge. It’s the type of move that Junkrat could have an easier time landing with his Down Special trap.
• Forward Throw is surprisingly good for your skill level, as it straight-up describes uses like tech chasing and remembers Junkrat’s other Specials that it can set up for.

Junkrat is actually my favourite set of yours so far. His Specials and ideas feel notably more unique and interesting than those on your previous sets, and his melee is relatively solid in some areas for your skill level and for what little time you had to work with. I think Junkrat could be a lot stronger if he played off of his directional Specials more - the platform-based nature of a payload, perhaps setting down mines with Up Special, and playing off of the steel trap’s ability to pin opponents in place (and land stronger moves?) - but that would depend on whether you wanted to go back and edit this set. Either way, it’s impressive that you were able to put this all together so quickly! Here’s hoping we’ll get in a good slew of commenters this Jamcon so people other than Tern and myself can give you some acknowledgement.

Also good to see that you’re reading and commenting Jamcon sets. That will help you improve a lot.

Spoiler: Bandit

• Bandit has a series of clean and simple mechanics that allow his Neutral Special to grow stronger over time. I like how this references the mentioned gameplay aspect of Risk of Rain where time works against you, only it’s for Bandit’s opponents in Smash.
• The Backstab mechanic reminds me of a Thief moveset we got in MYM13, even though there have been a lot of backstabbing mechanics since then. The way Side Special’s two variants work is neat: the guaranteed back hit if you attack an incapacitated opponent, and the knife projectile causing a bleed effect if Bandit gets close enough to tear it out.
• We’ve had a lot of smokescreen movesets this contest, but Bandit has a unique twist where he gets a speed boost and backstab bonus for a moment after he leaves his smokescreen.

• Neutral Aerial is actually very cool with its pull-in effect - it reminds me of Omega with its unique aerials. It shouldn’t go through shields though, and should probably have slower start-up so Bandit can’t just use it again after he’s pulled an opponent in and spam the move annoyingly.
• How far does the mechanical spider from Up Air descend? The “projectile” aspect of the move does sound a bit strong when it is described as having low end lag, and allowing Bandit to shoot his own spider to blow it up for a stronger hitbox. Could be fun if he could do the same thing with his Down Special spider.
• The alluded-to Forward Throw is fun for the start-up reduction it gives on Bandit’s gun-based moves. I do like the twist of it being stuck on a throw, so it’s a move that you actually have to land on opponents to make use of.
• Down Throw is very interesting for applying different effects on opponents, relative to the terrain they’re standing on.

Bandit is a considerable improvement over Ne-Gok-Sa as a Jamcon entry from you. In fact, he is up there as one of my favourite sets of yours, behind Emidius and Mumei only because I really like the ideas behind those sets. On the other hand, Bandit might be your cleanest moveset - maybe because his concepts are more simple and easier to digest. Bandit also has my favourite writing in your movesets so far: “In a quick one-two-three motion, he twirls the revolver in his grip, takes aim straight ahead, and fires with confidence.” and “Dynamite thrown from Bandit’s up throw can’t be reflected. He’s not the sucker here, you are.” are some notable lines that I enjoyed.

Overall, a nice and genuinely enjoyable read that comes pretty close to the Jamcon quality seen from veteran setmakers. Good work!

 

[n88]

Case closed.
This is how your 'justice' ends.

// Akechi [II]​

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Goro Akechi II

The long-awaited sequel to Akechi turns out to be comparable to Alex in length! How criminal of you to throw this out in the middle of a Jamcon, the one you’re hosting no less. Much like the original Akechi, it’s clear that you put a lot of care into every facet of this set, even on stuff that’s not as significant to MYM like movement-based animations and voice clips.

• Blade Runner is well-explored in its movement-based mix-ups via DI and how many hits you throw out, and interesting for last hit crumple being more potent the more of the 3 hits that landed.
• I quite like Akechi II being a Meta Knight 0.2 where all his Specials can serve as recovery or movement options, and all of them being risky and leaving him in helpless unless he lands them. A neat take on his feral characterization in this variant.
• The Burn status effect displaying an icon on the opponent’s HUD and changing it up visually is a cool touch. The little brown text also helps to separate important set notes from less important, normally more aesthetic-based notes.
• Berserk is a very cool and well-designed move/mechanic beyond a simple damage buff! It functions as a pseudo-counter with effectiveness based on how many times it was among your 6 most recently-used attacks. This gives Akechi an incentive to conserve Berserk… but he can also use it to cancel out other attacks! It’s not free though, as going berserk makes you lose shield and adds a ton of end lag to a chosen attack if you get 3 stacks of it - and it can’t be cancelled, which includes landing. It reminds me of my Izuna set, and is honestly a type of melee mechanic that I love in movesets.
• This is also one of the rare sets that plays around with attack buffering like Berkerley and Cartwright, specifically banning Akechi from buffering his other Specials in exchange for it being more intuitive to cancel attacks into Desperation (since you’ll likely be holding the control stick in a given direction when an attack lands, meaning you won’t accidentally buffer a Special). That you’ve taken pretty much everything into consideration when designing Akechi as a whole is honestly pretty amazing.

• Yep, Akechi was going to have a way to make his opponent go Berserk! Reminds me of Alcohol Witch Daniella in a moveset that plays around with a double-edged effect that you can apply to yourself or opponents.
• I see where this moveset gets its extreme length from… a huge amount of Specials at Loki’s disposal through various tiers - from I to III. Cycling between various Specials is really cool, and refreshing compared to if you had simply recycled Persona-based Smashes and throws from the original Akechi moveset.
• Akechi’s Aerials get a surprising amount of mileage from being canceled with Desperation, thanks to many of them being multi-hits. The directional Aerials all getting a burst option when they’re used while you’re Berserk is funky, especially when you factor in Desperation’s cancel options.

• “Landing the main hitbox is more apt to ” Sentence cuts off here on Loki Neutral Special II. Wouldn’t normally point this out, don’t want to nitpick here unnecessarily, but I thought you’d appreciate it since this set was a massive passion project for you, and you’d want it to be as perfect as possible.
• Filling up those black stars more or less during Akechi’s Awakened state doesn’t sound hyper realistic, but it’s probably not meant to be - it helps that all the buffs he gets on his Persona Specials aren’t game-changing.
• Eigaon is one of those funky moves lag-wise that reminds me of Barbatos - has very low end lag that lets Akechi play off of the projectile, but if the attack whiffs then Akechi has to go into Desperation. It helps that Eigaon isn’t super spammable since it’s a Special II attack.
• Even after reading Barbatos, I still wasn’t expecting Loki’s sword to come into play as a wall that Akechi can use with his B-air and U-air.
• The Beastball item was just waiting to be exploited for a moveset idea. Very unique counter here, using your main “set-up/cancel” move (Desperation) as the trigger for firing these projectiles! This is normally the type of move that you’d have to be care about implementing, but using Desperation to fire out a stored attack that acts as a combo extender in tandem with its canceling capabilities is honestly brilliant. My favourite part of the set I’ve read so far.

• “deals 1% damage and I Can’t Believe It’s Knockback®.” Pfft
• I like Up Tilt being an anti-cross-up that plays off of Akechi’s countless movement options.
• Heat Riser’s one-star buff is surprisingly clever; connecting the Akechi recovery buffs with Loki’s Eruption-style ledge trap so it gives Akechi a means to go offstage more safely.
• “Oh, it is probably worth mentioning that this move creates a dome on the stage, but a spherical blast in the air. Both are equal in area, but the aerial version has slightly different coverage. The grounded version also doesn’t hit below the stage so it won’t gimp opponents, but you can remedy that alright by just jumping and doing one slightly off-stage. Just be mindful that Akechi will continue to fall until he frees up” I like this a lot - when people are conscious about their big/lingering hitboxes hitting at the ledge.
• “// First Star
• The energy blast is three times the size of Bowser.
• // Second Star
• The energy blast is four times the size of Bowser.” I also like this.

• Grab game is refreshingly simple after all the very involved inputs before it. Throws are pretty basic for a high-end set, but the set’s mechanics and “has a hard time KO’ing,” approach make that more fair here, not to mention Akechi has a ridiculous amount of options at his disposal.
• Berserk Forward Smash is surprisingly cool on platforms when Akechi can fall off of them and bounce enemies down to do fun stuff with his combos.
• Up Smash’s landing hitbox is really cool: it plays off of Akechi’s D-air and Z-air surprisingly well, as well as Akechi’s Specials. Absolutely not expecting such a unique move, it’s one of my favourites in the set.
• Up Special II keeping Loki as a hitbox even if you Desperation cancel the move so Akechi can capitalize on his spiking hitbox is another cool trick.

All things considered, Akechi is now my favourite set of yours. Rather than having a single big mind-blowing concept or construct(s), the set has many, many small parts to it and manages to make them all work extremely well, with Desperation being a fantastically executed move. There’s Berserk, which changes up many of Akechi’s moves to give them movement and make them offensive-based, with some of these changes being fun and being reminiscent of Gundam Barbatos. But you don’t neglect to give him some good defensive options in the form of moves like Up Tilt and out-of-shield options. Akechi also has low KO power, which balances out some of the crazy options he has. Some of his moves are bad against shields, but that’s where Debilitate comes in with Persona Specials, plus fun moves like Berserk Down Tilt being a quick threat against shields and Akechi having a good regular grab and Berserk Grab, yet his throws aren’t particularly lethal. The set also manages to stay entertaining throughout its entire run. You put a ton of thought and effort into this set, and it shows!

Akechi is currently my favourite set in MYM26, which is really saying a lot when he has to compete with Randall Flagg. In fact, with this set’s more “melee” approach, I dare say this set has a legitimate shot at winning the contest, especially if we don’t get a ton of high-end competitors before July the 17th. Phenomenal work n88 - you absolutely outdid yourself on this set!

 

[n88]

Just notifying the thread here that we're pushing back the jamcon submission deadline by one day! (Now EOD Wednesday, Mountain Time) Shameful that so many of y'all are "busy" and "doing your best". You wouldn't catch me focusing on anything else over a jamcon, no siree (please do not fact-check this claim by scrolling up).

 

[Arctic Tern]

BLACK MASK (n88)

While usually I comment Jamcon sets in one block and this is technically an entry since it was posted in the same timeframe and fits the theme, it obviously is not a proper entry and thus is placed in a separate section. Plus, we’ve been waiting for this set for over a year.

Anyhoo, Black Mask is an absurdly long set - reading it took about 3 hours, not counting breaks or extras - but it actually manages to remain fairly digestible throughout. This is mainly because the set is organized so that the most frontloaded part, the Persona Specials, are placed in sections after the normal moves, thus meaning the reader isn’t bombarded with info about a single section at the start of the set. Akechi’s actual gameplan leans hard into the bait-and-punish gameplan, inflicting himself with a stackable berserk status effect that progressively increases the damage output and knockback of his moves at the cost of depleting his shield health and making the attack he uses at the last stage have 40 more endlag frames. There’s also another, just as important mechanic where using a Persona Special unlocks progressively higher tiers that get increasingly powerful. The actual attacks Loki has are very cool: the first tier’s only move fills a necessary role as a combo breaker, tier 2 has more unique, yet risky moves like a command grab that Akechi is desynced from and a variation of Joker’s DSpec where attacks turn into projectiles that extend his combo game, and the final tier has even flashier moves like a rush move that is nearly impossible to dodge due to sheer number of hitboxes and a move that just hits straight through shields. And on top of that, all of those moves have upgrades that Akechi can unlock by dealing enough damage; my favorite is the Tier 3 NPSpec buff, which normally creates a long-duration trap but with upgrades makes him able to use his normal Specials in the air without entering helpless and gain shield health upon stacking berserk instead of losing it. All extremely complicated, but due to how it’s laid out surprisingly easy to understand!

Akechi himself is a rushdown combo character overall, but goes about it in a very interesting manner. He’s capable of canceling his attacks into a berserk buff, both giving him a means to make his combos more damaging and allowing him to actually sustain them beyond a single hit. There’s a lot of read options in the set, and Akechi goes about downloading the foe’s habits to better exploit them in a very unique fashion; he doesn’t use poking moves, he just forces panic situations that encourage a defensive option. His actual Specials fit into both themes: DSpec fires projectiles that automatically teleport him to the foe on hit, USpec is an omnidirectional rush that’s great for tech chasing, and FSpec is a series of rushes that can be used as combo filler, a quick command dash to chase opponents, or a crumpling tool that sets up for a kill. All of these options naturally make Akechi extremely overwhelming, but it actually feels pretty balanced; not only does going berserk come at the cost of his shield and endlag, but almost all of his moves lose hard to shields and he lacks reliable kill options without berserk buffs or Loki. The shield weakness also has an interesting counter, in that the Debilitate debuff from the first Akechi set indirectly makes many of his moves safer than they otherwise would be and allows him to play more aggressively.

Honestly, there’s a lot of cool things about the set. NAir is a standout move, for being a super versatile combo tool that actually punishes you for relying on it too often. The grab aerial he has is a really cool visual, and actually plays an interesting role in his prone/shield punish game. Characterization is top notch, not just in terms of playstyle but in how Black Mask very deliberately plays with the Detective Prince’s set - his sword has a sweetspot at close range instead of a tipper, and several of the moves are oblique nods to the prior set (BAir is a kick instead of a sword slash in both sets, and Black Mask’s UAir and DAir are essentially inversions of Detective Prince’s). And as one final, minor note, I like the little things that encourage newcomers to use the berserk status, like how his DTilt drastically changes to teach players how it changes Akechi’s moves.

I can definitely see why this took over a year to make - you were trying to make the best possible set for Black Mask that you possibly could. And if all that I wrote was any indication, I think it’s safe to say you succeeded.

Comment block link here!

 

[ForwardArrow]

Akechi II/Black Mask/Loki Akechi/Akechi After The Traumatic Breakfast Incident
So, maybe this is me being conditioned to accept madness after some of the sets I read in MYM25, but is it just me or is Akechi II really not that ridiculous of a moveset. Usually when I get hit with a 40k monstrosity I expect the game engine to be turned into a pretzel and for god himself to descend upon the stage in the Up Smash, but this set really isn't like that at all. That's not to say the set doesn't have a lot going on mechanically, but its stuff like "here's the unconventional pattern to determine which Persona moves are available at a given time" or "here's some small desync shenanigans you can do with the Persona" or "here's a status effect that is also a lag cancel". I'm not saying these concepts aren't cool or the approach isn't innovative, but its definitely the least wacky set on my current SV list.

Hell, you know what, I'll go a little further, this is one of the best movesets ever made, a decision I may regret if I end up hyping people up for this one and they get disappointed, but like, hear me out. I think the thing that might turn people away at a glance is the 40k word count, which is often the sign of a project that has ballooned beyond a reasonable scope, but that weirdly never feels like the case here. Even moreso than Alex, who I considered the gold standard for sets of that size up until this point, Akechi feels like a read where you don't need to memorize a ton of information to get the most out of it. The mechanics are complex, that's inevitable of a set this size, but the way they layer on each other the most is in a pure player expression way, its not a case where you need to think about 10,000 niche interactions. Nate's writing style has a good number of humorous lines and is incredibly clear at displaying information, Akechi's deranged personality is on full display in an immediately entertaining way through the whole set, and as hard as this is to believe, moves don't really outstay their welcome. There's just a LOT of thought put into the specifics of how these moves work mechanically, and there's a lot of extra ones, so the set ends up super long pretty much off the back of that alone.

"Shockingly easy to process for a 40k" is a decent selling point, but I promise you the set has more going for it than that. The specials provide 3 cool mobility/combo tools that have quite a high ceiling on their potential usage due to providing Akechi with ludicrous mobility and great combo potential, but his kit is designed in such a way I'd be shocked if he can do Bayonetta Ladder Combos barring some more niche situations of an Akechi reading the opponent like a book. And also every single one of them has a clear, usually intense punishment for failure. The NSpecial though, that's the real treat here, creating a stackable status effect that beefs up Akechi's damage and knockback and it can be used as a cancel that lets Akechi chain attacks together in ways previously not possible. This sounds absurd, except the effect hurts your neutral, damages your shield to make Akechi's defensive game worse, and if after the third one you get a pretty punishment if you don't connect with a move that gets the foe out of your face, limiting its combo potential as well to not go TOO insane.

Amplifying all of this is Loki, who's got 3 sets of extra attacks for Akechi to use that are a big part of why this set is so long. What attacks Loki has available occur in a pre-determined pattern(and the flaws of this whole system to keep it under control are really good characterization for Akechi, by the way), starting with a single, but quick and angleable move that evolves into the powerful andversatile Tier II options, and ends on the even more powerful but absurdly slow Tier III's. The way the tiers are designed is very clever too: it feels like Tier II is the "best" one to have available, but using it well to set up Debilitate makes the Tier III's go from "cool but often impractical" to "absolutely terrifying". A thing the set doesn't spend too much time dwelling on, but I love, is that the Tier III's are often quite hard to set up a situation for when the foe has the normal Smash options to respond, and your best bet is to rely on the more lingering ones in the hope you can pressure the foe into them after getting a second+ long opening. When debilitate is up, Akechi has a good advantage state already, or both, those margins get thinner and thinner, and not only do the actual attacks have huge payoffs, Akechi then gets to double dip with some pretty huge improvements on his Specials. I also think the star system is really cool: the upgrades aren't critical to Akechi's playstyle but reward good use of using Akechi's robust, high execution combo kit without Loki's help to turn what feels a bit like a mini-Super mechanic into some almost proper Super Attacks.

Honestly, there's more I could talk about with the Loki inputs, some of those are extremely cool(Side Special III, Down Special II. NSpecial III, USpecial II), but I'm not interested in keeping this comment up forever, so let's move onto the rest of the set. This is the part which made me kind of debate on where I was going to place it on my vote list as I think the core mechanics are undeniably sick, but there's the argument to be made that the standards aren't that interesting. A lot of them are pretty close to basic in-game Smash moves and don't lead in a necessarily obvious way to Akechi's more high impact material, which is a perfectly fine thing for a move to be, but I think a lot of MYM frontrunners tend to be a case where everything feels like some kind of lead-in/payoff to the really flashy stuff. Like, because of the nature of Akechi's mechanics, the stuff that sells the moveset is omnipresent on these mechanics and still matters(winning some of these trades and getting in that extra chip can mean an extra star, and a lot of these seemingly mediocre combo moves are a lot better if you're willing to start berserking yourself), but Down Smash is pretty content to "just" be a safety roll-catching DSmash with a small bonus to make it harder to shield on mid-low shield health.

I went on about DSmash like this because its one of those moves which, when you think about it, is really important to the set. Akechi has a horrible time against shields and his attacks often struggle with reliability, so just having a simple rollcatching DSmash that happens to serve double duty of at least helping out a fair bit against frontal shields is something he really appreciates for neutral play. And being Berserk actually screws with it by adding a mobility component that messes this up, meaning committing to Akechi's crazy combo game means this consistent tool is something you do have to sacrifice. Plus the little bit of "its good against rolls, its good against weakened shields, please do not let the foe roll into shield the back hit you will regret being born" adds a lot. And like. DSmash is not the only move like this. There are a LOT of moves with this kind of underlying depth in the set in how they integrate with his mechanics, and I think its worth mentioning this set does a very important job of covering Akechi's flaws.

Akechi has a lot of tools that mirror some of Smash's most broken characters. He's the kind of fast, hypermobile character Bayonetta and Meta Knight were in Smash 4 and Brawl, and on top of that he has Loki to give him the kind of potential kill power and stage control those characters never had. Obviously, there are limits on all these mechanics, but the set goes out of its way to emphasize that shields mess Akechi up bad. Despite being a sword user, he has to be in fairly close range to get real reward off his attacks due to the sourspot on the edge of the sword, which can be an okay consolation prize or even barely a downgrade on some moves, but on others he REALLY wants to be hitting very close. His damage output is quite low and his neutral has a ton of holes that are exploitable but not to the point of making him unviable. The set is committed to making all those options that are reminiscent of Smash's strongest characters fair, and makes the little openings he gets against his weaknesses like the excellent Berserk DTilt so much more exciting than they would be elsewhere. I'd say this kind of stuff is the least present on the grab, which while well-designed didn't carry the same impressive level of nuance the rest of the set did, but I think every set is going to have a weakest input section and I think there's still enough room to get satisfying payoffs on the usually weak throws if you play well that it hardly ends up holding the set back.

I always feel a little weird throwing out comments like these, knowing in the back of my mind its probably setting at least someone up for disappointment, but after all the stuff I said about Randall Flagg I'm getting hit with a new moveset that has dethroned it as my favorite in the contest. The amount of effort on display here feels almost unprecedented, I can only think of Mao when it comes to other sets with that long and in-depth a design period. Congrats on pulling this off, and good luck to anyone gunning for that SV+ slot from me now, its going to be very hard.

Oh and on a final note, when you said you were trying to keep this set shorter, I entirely believe you. The set leaves a lot of the actual combos you can pull off understated and isn't interested in describing every possible disadvantage state you can use to set up the laggy moves. This is for the best, because as much as I've praised this set's presentation, another 10k words would've taken a toll on my sanity.

 

[Arctic Tern]

"GET BACK TO YOUR CELL, INMATES!"

(Jamcon 2 entry)

 

[tunz]

JAMCON COMMENT

Dog With Caligo by Arctic Tern

-The lore segment is nice to read through, my only issue is I have a slight problem identifying her exact body type. Is she extremely buff, is she round and beefy, or just really tall with a Samus-type build? Might be a me issue though ngl.
-Tied for the second heaviest fighter and a fast faller? Combo-food supreme! You do show awareness of this though, so it’s not a knock against the set.
-Mentioning Bowser always gets a smile out of me
-Up Special is a very unique move, especially the hitgrab part from the grounded version. It’s implemented fairly well and fits in very well thematically with Caligo’s character as a Warden and all that. I tend to appreciate that kind of stuff, so bonus points there.
-I usually advocate for superheavies to have decent/good recoveries since they’re supposed to be hard to kill. This is a detail a lot of Smash heavies miss. Caligo doesn’t do this, with a short ranged, non-homing tether recovery with a chance to extend the recovery distance IF the opponent goes off for you. It’s perfectly fine to want this as an intended weakness of the character, but diminishes her survivability quite a lot, especially since she doesn’t get any recovery without this tether, aside from Side Special, which to be fair is pretty good for recovery if it still goes until she hits a wall or decides to stop when using it in the air.
-I like the option to juke out opponents mid-move with Side Special. It opens up for fun mind-games by making the opponent want to do a strong move to break her passive armor, by having to be careful not to get juked.
-The dog slashing gimmick is cool and I just know it would be all I fish for when playing Caligo.
-I like the clear awareness of what opponents are going to do to counter her playstyle, and mentioning what’s an intended weakness and what are the ways she can partially redeem these aspects of her kit.
-I don’t know if this was intentional, but Down Smash and Back Air being named the same thing, Electric Field, is a strange decision that stood out to me, but not a deal breaker by any means.
-I don’t know if Down Air’s name being Pound was supposed to be a joke about dogs and going to the pound but if it is, that was a stroke of genius if I do say so myself.
-I find it interesting that you incorporated a choice to have a fast but weak combo throw or a strong killing throw on Up Throw. As far as I’m aware, no throws in Smash do that via a button press like this at least.
-I almost wonder if the Final Smash only traveling 4 Units is maybe too little considering similar dash-forward single-target Final Smashes like Incineroar specifically travels 15 Units. But to be fair, that one doesn’t kill automatically above 100%. Also, it’s a Final Smash, it doesn’t really matter.
-The Extras give a great sense of personality, which is especially important for an OC. Good job on these!

Overall, a fun and consistently engaging read with a lot of unique mechanics. I didn’t mention Down Throw, but I do like that mechanic too. My only complaint in this area is that every now and then I had to redirect my attention and come back after a very short break. I suspect this is mostly due to a mix of me being inattentive and being ridden with ADHD, but also that there are no images anywhere in this set to distract or alleviate from the massive text blocks. This is understandable, as it’s an OC and getting images to be accurate to what you want to convey without making them yourself (which is hard and takes time and effort) is tricky. I totally get this, but maybe just a picture of a hellhound under the Neutral Special description or one of the cute dogs under the Down Taunt description, something along those lines you know. It would help my ADHD-ridden body focus a bit more is all. With all that said, my personal score for this set ended up being a solid 7.9/10 (subject to change). Pretty damn good! (Keep in mind I’m only keeping score for the sake of making the voting easier for me later, so don’t take this as some sort of holy grail or anything lol.)

 

[Katapultar]

Spoiler: Dog Witch Caligo

You know, I thought we might get a Witchverse OC from you or Goliso since a lot of your newer OCs have related to crime-fighters or criminals, so I’m glad we did get one!

• Neutral Special is a cool take on the once memed-upon “combo heavyweight” archetype, where your dogs can be used to turn your heavyweight attacks into combo starters. Can’t help but think of Black Masks’s counter since that’s the last set I read before this one.
• I do enjoy seeing tethers again, as they’re not that commonly used in modern MYM.
• Down Special is a simple counter, but one with an enjoyable and character-fitting twist where each counter is stronger than the last, something that more of in MYM would be welcome. Naturally works well with the tether.
• The oldie MYM’er in me loves the mention of boulders in the Up Smash, even if it’s just a cosmetic effect for the hitbox and not an actual MYM’ian boulder.
• U-throw’s air dodge baiting is neat in tandem with U-air.

I don’t have too much to say beyond all that, other than Caligo being a set with modest concepts and solid execution for what she has to work with. Always good to see a new Witchverse character officially canonized into MYM, especially with the increasing number of OCs that you and Goliso have been popping out.