It’s time to reveal my own personal moveset ranking! I ranked these up and did the write-ups before the list was made, to make sure that the Top 50 didn’t influence my choices. And, likewise, I posted this after the votes were in, to ensure the converse as well. This includes all of my movesets, which are, in chronological order:
Make Your Move 5
- Magmortar
Make Your Move 6
- Daroach
- Saren
- Abomasnow
- Magnezone
- Darkrai
- BubbleMan.EXE
- ProtoMan.EXE
- Nanoha Takamachi
- Mewtwo Remix
Make Your Move 7
- Subaru Nakajima
- Saber
- Rider
- Abomasnow Remakes
- Probopass
- Harbinger
- VideoMan.EXE
- Mario & Luigi
That’s 18 sets in total! So without further ado, let’s start with the biggest turd I’ve yet to shovel onto this contest:
18. Daroach
Ah, Daroach. My first entry as a true member of the contest. Magmortar barely counts, as it was just slipped in on the last day as the last post on the same page as Raiden, Unown, and Mother Nature. So I’m more than a tad surprised that it ended up getting less comments than Magmortar did. Oh, the countless hours wasted hovering over the refresh button with this moveset, which at the time I thought was pretty dang good. And it was, by most accounts, considered a significant improvement and bought me my ticket into the chatroom.
So what puts Daroach under Magmortar on the totem pole? To put it simply, I actually put a lot of effort into Daroach. It may not look it, but I spent significantly more time on him than I did on either the set before or after it, despite its more or less meager increase in quality. I spent a great deal of time poring over each input and different Kirby references in each move, tacking on props and magic syndrome in ignorant bliss.
The moveset in the end was full of half-improvements. I’d made the organization in better, but in exchange added in unreadable, random bolding. I’d improved the detail and creativity, by adding in props. I’d added in a playstyle section, and removed any sort of playstyle. I seriously put forward a playstyle of ‘versatility’ and thought it was an interesting, engaging idea!
In the end, I really can’t look back at Daroach and find much I like. If there’s one thing I can like about it, it was that it brought me into the chat where I finally started straightening out what I needed to do for my next few movesets. And if I was in charge at the time I posted this set, I certainly wouldn’t have let me into the chat. Daroach is the only set I’ve made that I just can’t like.
17. Magmortar
Magmortar was actually my first one day Pokeset. Written up on a whim one summer afternoon, I sat cross-legged on my bed as I wrote each individual move one by one, with no regards for anything but the idea of how I thought Magmortar would play. After skimming through some movesets, I copied as best I could Junahu’s ‘Team Rocket’ organization as best I could, trying to make a decent first impression. The concept was actually not half-bad, especially for a newcomer. He was a floaty camper who lobbed projectiles over walls and was full of GTFO moves. At the end of the day, he had more playstyle than Daroach ever had.
Now of course, what I regret about Magmortar was that I let a very stupid newcomer idea run away with the set. As I wrote moves, I went down the list of Pokemon moves he learned for ideas. Eventually, I had the brilliant thought of “Hey, why don’t I make EVERY move a Pokemon move? Wouldn’t that be AWESOME?” Alas, the actually creative Up Special I had imagined up was scrapped for a generic as can be Heat Wave, which I still managed to actually put some element of playstyle into, believe it or not.
And Pokemon Syndrome did he have out the wazoo. Focus Punch, Rock Slide, Mud Slap, Iron Tail, Mega Punch, Frustration… It’s not something I’m proud of. And his aerials were as boring as I’ve ever made them. The Nair especially strikes out to me. I didn’t know what to put there, so I just settled for making the move Fire Spin, slapping on a vague description and hoping that someone else would come up with an idea of how it actually worked. Most egregious on his list of unexpected moves was Thunderbolt. As a former smogonite, I remembered that Magmortar was one of the only Fire-types to learn the move, and it was one of the things that differentiated it from others such as Infernape and Heatran. To me, it was a perfectly legitimate move choice, and to be honest, I still think that Thunderbolt fits fairly well on Magmortar, done right. Hell, after enough Shoddybattle an Infernape with Stealth Rock, Hidden Power, Endeavor, Nasty Plot and Grass Knot wouldn’t make me so much as bat an eye.
As Rool mentioned in his MYMer review, Magmortar was the first of many sets of mine to have lackluster aerials and throws. I regret to say that it has become somewhat of a trademark for my movesets, and I believe (possibly in spite of all the evidence) that I’ve shaken it off by now. But regardless, that signature of mine was first embossed on Magmortar.
So I feel a bit of remorse looking back at him. Especially facepalm worthy was when I realized I had neglected to add in a Final Smash, and, failing to think of anything brilliant, hastily put GIGA IMPACT in there at the bottom of the Smashes sections. Oye. I see a lot of lost potential in this set, and I’ve still got all sorts of ideas I never put into him still bouncing around inside my head. Maybe part of it is nostalgia, but my first set remains dear to my heart.
16. Saren
Saren was made in just two days, as opposed to the weeks I spent on Daroach, so it’s sad how much of an improvement he was. Saren was my first real attempt to approach a playstyle, although it was a weak attempt at best. I more or less just threw all of the powers available to a character in Mass Effect (to be fair, Saren COULD use them all) and deduced a debuffing playstyle out of it. The final result was a worse version of Spadefox 1.0 (HR: THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS WORSE SPADEFOX 1.0 SPADEFOX IS TERRIBAD WORST SET EVER NO APPROACH
), but instead of being unable to approach it had a fun projectile game, and instead of interesting but generally useless debuffs, it had random debuffs that didn’t make much sense and were scattered unintuitively.
One thing that definitely sticks out in my mind were the “quotes” scattered in front of each move. Not only were they great at totally breaking the pacing of the set, they weren’t even quotes at all; I’d put one actual quote at the top of the moveset, and scattered make-believe ones elsewhere (except for the Final Smash). Saren was just one of many ugly movesets I would make as I began to find my stride in movesetting. The images were inconsistent in size and the damage percentages were at the bottom, a dreadful habit I kept for far too long.
I still like Saren though. He was the first of several sets of mine to include another trademark of mine; the aerial ground game. Since my aerials were so consistently boring, I put my ground game into my aerial game instead! Although actually, Saren had a pretty creative aerial game for a character designed to be bad in the air, especially for one of my early sets. Saren was my first attempt at playstyle, and was the moveset that caught Smash Daddy’s attention. And more than anything else, I love Saren for these few words.
“Saren was a good read. I like how the shotgun was more powerful up close, just like a real one. The Up Special was also pretty clever.”
To think that I was actually so timid at that point that I graciously accepted that comment (the only comment on Saren, by the way) instead of telling Ridley to go back and make a comment that actually suggested he’d read the moveset! Those were the days. It cemented me into Make Your Move culture though, at least for a brief bit, and for that, I am grateful.
15. Magnezone
Stop crying about the low placing MT! I know you liked this set a lot. To be honest, Magnezone was one of my first decent sets. It didn’t have the terribad stench of newcomerhood some of my previous sets had reeked of. The organization was choppy, and so was the writing, but at least it was ledgible, unlike Daroach and Abomasnow. I’d made Magnezone during a weeklong retreat in New Mexico, mostly outside of internet access, giving me more time to work on the set than I had for Saren and Abomasnow. For Magnezone, I made move interactions galore, funneling everything into the simple idea of flipping Magnezone between ATTRACT and REPEL. It was a moveset that was truly made for Magnezone, combining its abilities as a Pokemon and the inherit traits of its magnetism. It also kept ideas fresh more or less throughout, introducing a Charging mechanic in it’s Down Smash halfway through the moveset.
In the end though, I’m a bit underwhelmed by the playstyle I made for him. While he had some interesting interactions, a lot of his attacks in the end stood alone, and mostly didn’t fit into anything really interesting or cohesive. His playstyle was ‘controlling the foe through magnetism’, but I never felt that I made the connection between moving the foe around with Magnet Pull and Magnet Push, and actually turning it into damage or KOs. And he was hard-pressed for them; I ended up making him drastically underpowered out of fear of Magnet Push being too strong for gimping opponents. Hyper_Ridley ended up pointing it out to me, and ever since I’ve kept my damage percents and move times a little closer to the edge of reason.
I like Magnezone; I really do. Again, this was a moveset where my ideas were a bit ahead of my capacity to express them. If I had understood some of the things I do now then, the base concepts behind this set could’ve made it a lot better.
14. Abomasnow
Abomasnow is a set that has always confused me, and that is why it got such a lukewarm response. He was such a huge improvement over Saren in terms of playstyle and move interaction, back in those days when move interactions was the coolest thing since match-ups. He was perfectly in character too, his two most important moves combining the most basic elements: that he was a tree that made it snow. The snow was a generic boost everything mechanic, that was coupled with the ability to gain long-term Super Armor and healing through Ingrain. Abomasnow was built to be a survivalist; surviving to high percentages while whittling away at the foe passively, then suddenly striking with ferocious strength with his smashes.
Maybe part of the reason I liked him a lot, and the reason why I ended up remaking him, is that he got such a lukewarm response. The juxtaposition of tranquility and abominable aspects were seen as jarring, not harmonic, and I got complaints for the few moves that weren’t perfectly in character. I seem to remember someone complaining that he wasn’t a Leafeon style plant grower even!
Anyways, I’m surprised at some of the ideas that I’d put in here. The knockback dampening effect that I had added as an afterthought in the list of snow’s effects was a huge aspect of his play in the remake, and snow flue was a brilliant move for gimping and recovery, sacrificing the long-term benefit of snow for the ability to get back to the stage or push a foe off. I was just too uncertain of myself to make it as powerful as it was, and the gimping became a footnote rather than a playstyle focus.
Abomasnow’s big problem, of course, was presentation. I turned the lack of detail in Daroach and Magmortar into an overbearing, droning style with Abomasnow, spending paragraphs trying to describe minutia of exactly how snowfall accumulated around Abomasnow in the most garrulous way imaginable. Cementing those difficulties was my gratuitous bolding and flagrant color tags. Compare the Neutral Special on Abomasnow and Abomasnow Remakes and see just how much better it is, despite being the same move with just a few tweaks. Abomasnow was another instance of the concepts getting away from me, and it was something I struggled with in my middle period of MYM6.
13. Darkrai
Darkrai was a sleek, sexy set to read. My organization woes had been forgotten with the dull but alluring silvers, reds, and blacks of this moveset. Darkrai was my first real hit of a moveset, and despite being posted in one of the biggest backlogs of sets outside of the start or stop of a contest, it still managed to get read by most MYMers. It was my first moveset to earn any real positive commentary, garnering a cheerful, strong endorsement from Hyper_Ridley, who was then the most cheerful commentator you could ever hope would read your moveset.
It was also my first moveset to draw the attention of MasterWarlord, even if it only drew his ire. I still remember to this day the soul-crushing comment he slapped down on the thread. Perhaps most scarring was how he apologized that he had commented a set of mine before, but he had attempted to read my earlier sets, and found them so painful that he wasn’t willing to put himself through it. Those words hurt back then, my friend.
So what was Darkrai anyways? He was definitely one of the more clever characters I’d made. Comboing against sleeping enemies, using sleep and his ability Bad Dreams to whittle away at the opponent, finally knocking them out with a sleep move and finishing them off with a Nightmare. Certainly the makings of a great playstyle. Unfortunately, I let myself get bogged down at a mechanical standpoint. The move Dark Void is to blame. I was never quite sure how to approach it. A highly accurate, effective sleep move? I had to nerf it if I wanted to make it balanced. And what of the animation, the dragging opponents down into the hole? Would it be some sort of portal recovery? Perhaps a move limited to ground-based usage? I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, and it showed. I ended up choosing to make it a generic sleep inducing projectile, and attempted to balance it with the much derided Nightmare Fuel, which was a shameless ammo bank mechanic that didn’t fit at all.
I ended up choosing to have this Nightmare Fuel power all of his Specials, changing their effects as he increased in power. As it turned out, the specials weren’t entirely great ideas in of themselves, and were a colossal let down to end the moveset on after all that build up. Further, he smacked of magic syndrome, especially to those unfamiliar with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. MasterWarlord left his vitriolic displeasure at his illusionary transformation into Cresselia unabated.
Darkrai also had an avant-garde approach to playstyle; attempting to harness all of the energy of one of HR’s do-it-yourself playstyles by splitting it into nice and neat short sections that were little more than brief summaries. It was far too brief, and didn’t get into much necessary detail at all; I ended up leaving far too much of the moveset in a vacuum in the end. I never even once mentioned a single aerial in Darkrai, and Darkrai had some of my better ones for the time.
Darkrai eventually fell into complete obscurity. At the time of his release, he was actually considered a contender. Like with Bleak, posted not too much before Darkrai, he was almost completely forgotten by all and practically dropped off the entire map. Such is movesetting.
12. ProtoMan.EXE
This is easily one of my most underrated movesets. He was pushed out just a little after Darkrai was released, and was nearly ignored by most make your movers. I’d easily say that this was one of my biggest sets for growth and ideas though. Rool suggests that he was the prototype for Subaru, and I wouldn’t say that’s quite right. However, he had a brilliant ground game, and a mindgame based playstyle that actually worked. From his jab that left the foe no indication which side you’d end up on, to his simple but brilliant StepSword and BackStepSword that let him play an offensive poking game with quick attacks without combos. His approach was full of options, and he had a fun projectile and defense game.
ProtoMan.EXE suffered after the standards though, which is a bad place to lose ground. The smashes were more or less self-contained, and the aerials and throws easily count among my worst, existing completely separate to everything else the moveset was doing. That said, my writing style did slowly improve starting with this set, and it was my first creation to include Match-Ups, and they weren’t half bad for my firsts.
The set had a lot of flaws, and wasn’t exactly the best received, but it was definitely important as a turning point for where I began to improve. He was perfectly fitting in smash while maintaining at least a decent semblance of a playstyle, and was the stepping stone that brought me up to my first Top 50 moveset.
11. BubbleMan.EXE
Specialization in irritation. That was the idea that brought me to this set. I still have scars from fighting that horrific boss in Mega Man Battle Network 3. He was frustratingly difficult to hit, comboed you to hell in a game where combos were both very difficult and very dangerous, and his bubbles were a constant danger. If you ever took more than a second to stop shooting them and try to actually hit the boss himself, you’d quickly be flanked by a stream of bubbles that would eat your HP alive. And then, just when you thought it was over, he busted out a regenerating shield and rapid-fire harpoons. Unbelievable.
As I myself am a virgin to the classic Mega Man, I had only recently learned that Bubble Man was considered a very weak boss in the regular series. I knew then what set I had to make. The concept was all there, and getting the confusing, annoying comboing trapster to work was much easier than I’d expected.
And it was a pretty cool set. In retrospect, I regret the lack of direct control you had over the movement of your bubbles, but it was hardly a deal-breaker. BubbleMan.EXE was able to pose a threat to almost any character. Projectiles? Eat razor fish. Close ranged attacks? Bombs and Anchors. Too cool to fight bubbles? Enjoy stunlock while BubbleMan.EXE blows you away with his Bubbler.
I soundly reject the claim that BubbleMan.EXE had bad aerials, although I can’t say that they were amazing either. What I do have to own up though is my distracting offstage game. I misconstrued his regenerating recovery as ultimate offstage fighter, and I let his ability as a gimper overshadow the interesting aspects of his playstyle, the bubble fountain.
BubbleMan.EXE was also a set where I continued to slowly improve my writing style, although it was still rather painful. I’m actually rather confused how I was so consistently bad at it in retrospect; I joined MYM in college, and I was an A student in high school and generally did fantastic on essays, even AP tests. It seriously boggles my mind how I was so painful to read early in the first half of my career. These things happen, I guess.
It was my first Top 50 placer, and garnered a respectable position at that, if not a great one. It was the indisputable set that cemented me as a regular here though, and where I began my rising career as a make your mover. It was also where MasterWarlord stopped despising my guts after the Darkrai debacle, and I value his friendship, despite his general lunacy, to this day.
10. Probopass
My first Make Your Move 7 set! Now to be clear, I like Probopass. I really do in fact! It was a clever idea I had dreamed up one day but knew I’d never actually make until MW and I proposed a one-day Pokeset movement to revitalize the thread. A few hours later, less than I’d even spent on Magmortar in fact, and this silly little magnetic Pokemon came out. He was a funny creature, entirely centered on his awkward non-movement and defensive projectile playstyle. He was in character, fun, and had one of my more refreshing experiments in writing.
So why so low? The answer is that I really felt like I didn’t fit him together as well as I should have. While the base idea of his projectiles were all well and good, when I look at those aerials, although for Probpass, they’d be better defined as projectile moves, I have to just sigh. They were mostly generic with a few twists, and changed just slightly for whatever way you happened to be using them, be it through Magnet Rise, Lock On, or Mini Noses. They certainly had good ideas for moves created in a few hours, but I know that it could have been better.
If there’s one thing that I don’t like to do when looking back at a moveset, it’s knowing that I messed up on something that I really could’ve done a better job at, especially when it’s something that I could’ve done better THEN, not something that I wouldn’t have known to do. Now, it’s not exactly fair for a moveset that was intentionally made in such a short period of time. Regardless, this cute fun set of mine clocks in as the first set in my personal Top 10.
9. Mewtwo Remix
And coming in at number nine is Mewtwo himself. It’s funny, now that I think about it, how my last set in both MYM6 and MYM7 were big impressive flashy projects. Mewtwo’s unabashed polish certainly was crucial in pulling him into the number 7 slot in the Top 50, a position that almost every Make Your Mover, including myself, doesn’t think he deserves.
Mewtwo was a big long process. JOE! and I were working and debating him for a great long while. If there’s one thing I can credit to JOE!, it’s that he never let us run out of steam. I’d almost groan every time I saw him in the chat because I knew, whether I liked it or not, we were going to be talking about Mewtwo. I’m really impressed by what we were actually able to come up with though; we bounced some great ideas off of each other, and every move of Mewtwo has a pretty nice sparkle to it. Once we came up with the concept of teleporting the foe around with you in his Up Special, we knew we were on to something golden.
So what went wrong? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. Part of it I’m chalking up to the simple problems of a joint set. We didn’t always catch all the changes either of us would make. While I would love to just say that it was all JOE!’s fault, it’s just not true. We both ended up lending to the balance nightmare that had occurred.
Although it’s not quite as bad as he’s been made out to be. Certainly, he was overpowered, but oral tradition has turned him into some sort of insurmountable deity of brawl in chat vernacular. Sure, his grab had insane range, but it had insane lag too. And his ‘really fast and strong’ aerials were partially due to the fact that we all overinflated start times for moves back then, talking about fifths of a seconds as if they were single frames.
Mewtwo Remix is certainly a moveset I won’t soon forget though. While he may have dulled to the modern outlook, he was still a great set no matter how you slice it, drawing from all of his material and creating a moveset that was just plain fun to go through.
8. Saber
Saber is the sleepy set of my Make Your Move 7 offerings. She didn’t do anything impressive, her throw game was self-admittedly weak, and her playstyle was little more than a remix of Marth’s. She’s a good set, I still stand, and plenty of her mindgames and tricks remain underappreciated. That’s not what I dislike about Saber though.
What makes me feel all squeamish when I look back at Saber is the realization that I let the concepts run the character. The invisible sword is certainly a major part of her style, and if you want a half hour lecture on spacing in swordfights, read the first battle between her and Assassin. But I turned it into a more slow paced set than I would have liked, and let the potential mindgames of where her sword is dominate the set.
Saber, meanwhile, was launching herself into the air like a rocket, running up skyscrapers and hitting with the force of a shotgun with every swing. And that is where I feel that I failed in this set. I let the wind hitboxes (which are not nearly as important in her fighting style as they are in the set) and slow pacing required for the opponent to react or misreact to the invisible sword take over, and the end result was more boring than Saber was herself. And it wasn’t like I couldn’t have put more into her playstyle to begin with. I look at those bite-sized playstyle sections in her set and think to myself, “Wow. I didn’t really have all that much to say.”
Also, after the exciting, image-loaded set of Subaru, Saber was rather dull. The font I feel worked wonderfully in this case and the color scheme was great, but she certainly could have used some better images to spruce it up. You know, like say a single taste of what an unveiled Excaliber looked like.
Saber wasn’t bad, I’ll stick to this. I like the character, and like the set. I just wish I’d done her a better justice than I did with this moveset.
7. Nanoha Takamachi
Why on earth she didn’t make Top 50 I’ll never understand. I fully believe that I broke through many of my previous weaknesses in Nanoha. Organization was clever, clean, and inticing. My writing style finally burst out of the seams, permeating as an asset rather than a liability. Maybe I’d finally figured out how people want to read a moveset, or maybe doing a set for a character I really liked was the difference. Nanoha was full of creativity and, I feel, perfectly exhibited the carefree yet action packed atmosphere of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha.
Nanoha was one of the sets I most enjoyed writing, and I feel that it really came out. Every move was delivered in exuberance, and was perfectly true to character. The only attacks she used that I actually missed were just minor alterations on ones that she already had, and just read the quote above the playstyle section if you doubt her authenticity in style.
She may have been a touch too creative. Divine Buster strikes me as an overdetailed move, what with the unnecessary extension reference. And there were some balance questions, primarily revolving around Restrict Lock, which was a very strong lockdown move. When you consider just how slow her finishing attacks were though, she really did need it though. And really, none of her balance problems were conceptual; everything could have been fixed through simple numbers tweaking.
And more than anything else she’d be a fun character to play as. Choosing when to prepare a cartridge, brilliantly fun moves in Divine Shooter, Axel Shooter, and other attacks, and what I would hope would be the most satisfying smashes you could ever hope to pull off. Nanoha created another meanie trademark, the giant unnecessary super beam attack. She also continued another one, aerial smashes, and did it in a deliciously in character way through her Magic Circles.
Her playstyle got the shaft from MasterWarlord, and that was pretty much the end of it. While she maintained a few supporters, in the end she just tied for the 40th spot, was beaten out by Bleak, and didn’t get picked. A sad tale for poor Nanoha. I had fun with Nanoha though, I still love the set, and she is one of the movesets I most look forward to eventually remaking.
6. Abomasnow Remakes
Abomasnow Remakes is a statement of where I’ve come from and how far I’ve come. It’s telling that I didn’t have to change all that much that was central to the original moveset. Three of the specials remained almost unchanged, just tweaked, and most of the base concepts stayed. What changed was how I implemented them and how they flowed together. Abomasnow Remakes flows, it flows like nobody’s business. From the simple organization to the concepts introduced one by one in as unobtrusive a manner as possible, Abomasnow is a treat to read.
As I had said, Abomasnow was a moveset that I had liked a lot, partially because it was so overlooked when I first posted him. So when I’d gotten much better at displaying my ideas, I took those good, solid ideas out of Abomasnow and put them into the new set. I was surprised to see how good some of the concepts had been. The knockback dampening effect of snow, originally an afterthought on Abomasnow, became a central part of the new set’s defensive game. The gimping options were expanded, and options to freeze, snowfall, and snowball opponents created a character that took a new twist on the old concept of ‘stun foe then get big hit in’.
Abomasnow got a fairly lukewarm reception though, and that was when I knew I’d made it as a MYMer. I’d made a good set, and people glossed over it more or less, because it was yet another good set I’d made. That of course, is a blessing and a curse. I wouldn’t be surprised if this set didn’t make it to the Top 50, in fact. I’d be disappointed, certainly, but not all that surprised. MW noted this as a mark of my establishment as one of the most consistent members of the community in terms of quality and quantity, which is something that I do wear with pride, even if it means I’m vote split right down the middle.
5. Harbinger
I find it funny that the only Mass Effect movesets I’ve made are the main villains from each game, especially considering just how little character Harbinger actually has. Rool commented though that Harbinger feels more like a set for the Collectors as a whole. Seeing as the entire species was genetically engineered to serve Harbinger, I can say with pride that I succeeded at getting the character across.
May I just say that Mass Effect is not a series that lends itself to filling button inputs? The games tend to prefer giving you a few good, versatile abilities and letting you use them in combinations to make them most effective. Factor in that it’s a cover shooter, and making aerials becomes much more problematic, especially with my tendencies to make mediocre ones. Harbinger himself only had two attacks in Mass Effect 2; his Forward Tilt and Forward Smash. The rest I had to borrow from other Collectors, use for husks, or other ideas and concepts in Mass Effect.
Harbinger however became a very good representation of what a fight with the Collectors was like in Mass Effect 2. Husks are crawling out of the woodwork, reinforcements are flying in, and no matter how many times you hit them, the leader of the bunch keeps coming back to draw you out for his minions to finish you off. The final result is one of the movesets I’m most proud of; it’s quite good, quite in character, and pretty deep in terms of strategy and playstyle. While he doesn’t have too much DIRECT CONTROL over his minions, they were all built for specific purposes and do good enough jobs of them that Harbinger doesn’t need to micromanage them. He just needs to focus on protecting his drones and locking down or KOing the foe.
And of course, he had the reincarnation mechanic on top of it. I can say with some degree of smugness though that I feel that Harbinger’s works very well because it makes it harder to maintain resurrection after resurrection through the use of minions as fuel, without making it seem forced. In addition, it takes the concept of using minions as a supply to maintain the character from Kel and runs with it, making it more important that they survive than Harbinger himself.
Harbinger was also where I finally started to shake off the old burden of uninteresting aerials and throws. All of Harbinger’s aerials had their uses, and his grab was one of my favorites I’d ever made. How MasterWarlord found his throw game boring with his unique grab, introduction of biotic fields, and the different uses of each individual throw, I can’t be quite sure.
I fully intend to put more Mass Effect stuff into Make Your Move, and I can guarantee that you’ll all be seeing more of Harbinger, perhaps even in a SSE mission or mode. The potential he has as an ingame miniboss through endless waves of Collector Drones is fantastic. Harbinger is a set that I feel has staying power as a memorably good moveset, from its complex but beautiful playstyle to his actual extras from the normally extra-less Darth Meanie. It’s definitely something I’m proud of.
4. Subaru
Subaru is a set that was in development for a long time. I first began brainstorming for her while watching the first episode of Nanoha StrikerS, where she was introduced. Her rollerblading, shield smashing, power fisting style was over the top and incredibly fun, and I knew there was potential here. Then she used Wing Road, and the first thought that came to me was, “That’ll be awesome in MYM.” She floated in stasis while I worked on Nanoha, and when JOE! and I started Mewtwo, the Genetic Pokemon absorbed all of my movesetting attention. Believe it or not though, I could have released her in Make Your Move 6 rather than Make Your Move 7, and if I had, there would have been quite a different reaction, I’m sure.
When I first posted her though, she had been in my head so long that I didn’t think all that much of the new stuff she was doing. In my mind, it would be a set that would be not as good as Mewtwo, but good enough that people wouldn’t think the set was just a fluke. I clicked post, and the thread exploded with excitement at the ground-breaking set. MasterWarlord was in the thread, hailing her as the messiah of movesetting, the ultimate in offensive genius. Of course, he would then go on to realize that the moveset wasn’t actually perfect, and spent the rest of the contest deriding her in an attempt to undo his original overstatement.
And indeed, Subaru suffered for it. Super Macho Man had been posted a moveset earlier, and though the two were completely different on just about everything, the fact that they both broke shields in two completely different ways became a focus of derision. I believe I’ve already made this clear, but I’ll say it again. Super Macho Man wants the foe to shield so he can wear them down with lingering hitbox moves, and is designed to be able to hit the opponent hard after having broken their shield. Subaru on the other hand lost all her momentum when the opponent shield, so she needed to discourage the opponent from shielding to maintain her offense. She needed to hit the foe with a grab to break the shield, and grabs ignore shields to begin with, and she still had a significant period of lag and only had one move that could really effectively follow it up, making it essentially a really powerful, but situationally activated throw.
I was asking for that controversy, what with my horrible match-up I wrote between her and Super Macho Man. My match-ups back then were simply horrible, extras that I spent a few minutes of thought on and clearly had barely any effort put into them. It wasn’t until Rider that I finally got them together.
Anways, as for the set itself, I full-heartedly believe that she was fantastic. Her constant movement made her constantly approaching the enemy, turning the combos that were standard in the regular offensive moveset and turning them into a constant rushdown that was actually fresh. With Protection, Gear Shift, and Wing Road, she was a character based around momentum; while she was vulnerable from behind, and had some weak spots, when she was moving forward, she was designed to be practically unstoppable. She had so many different ways to play her too; you could turn around and hit with fast quick standards, or Wing Road offstage, fly up upside down, and slam down onto the foe from above with a power fist. You could make a complete loop underneath Final Destination or enclose the entire stage in your magical highways.
She had basically everything anyone could ask for. Creativity? I’ll admit, my throws and aerials weren’t as good as I can do, but the aerials were all there for a reason, and her grab game already had a lot of depth to it in her shield breaking ability. Playstyle? She’s the most unique, most creative, in-depth rushdown character I know of, and her style made it so that she literally had to be constantly on offense to succeed. Beyond all of this, she was still more or less intuitive, and would be fun to play as. Subaru is a moveset that I loved making, and is one of my absolute favorites.
3. VideoMan.EXE
So now we get to one of my most controversial movesets. I may be wrong, but as far as I know, VideoMan.EXE is the only moveset for which “too brilliant” has been levied as a serious complaint. When you think about what that means, it’s definitely a complaint that I’m okay with.
So let me tell you how I came to making VideoMan.EXE. I wanted to make another Battle Network set, and mentioned in the chat. Plorf suggested on a whim VideoMan.EXE. At first I dismissed him, but then thought of how he used recordings of MegaMan.EXE in his fight. I saw the potential, and started the set. It only took me about two days to make, the ideas all just came bubbling out.
I say this in order to dismiss some of the claims that VideoMan.EXE wasn’t a character-driven moveset, or that I was fitting an idea onto a character that could support it. All of his attacks were implemented in some way in the set. The control-reversing video was a direct reference to his mission in the game. I literally squeezed every drop of character out of the guy; if you found the character unmemorable, it wasn’t because I was jamming ideas where they didn’t fit, but because he was just a very dry character.
I’ll admit, VideoMan.EXE would have an insane learning curve. Getting used to how to put everything together would take a while, and even if you were good enough to fight as him at the competitive level, you always could have much to improve on. That said though, he’s still playable even if you don’t quite know what you’re doing. With enough knowledge about different moves such as pause, and proper use of his barrier creations, you can definitely get enough room to make your edits. I would actually argue that Team Rocket Grunt is far more difficult for a new player to use; the in-depth move interactions and techniques such as echolocation are very complex, and the nature of the poison mechanic means that if you can’t play hyper-aggressive with your poison and hit them with poison moves constantly every three seconds, you lose practically all your advancement.
That’s not to say that Team Rocket Grunt is a bad moveset, I truly enjoyed it, even if I didn’t like the poison mechanic. It’s too say that just because there is a lot of depth to VideoMan.EXE doesn’t mean that he’s unapproachable for a new player. Even if you’re not a god at video editing, the video is always going to be useful, if not as useful as it is in the hands of a better player. And the fact is, VideoMan.EXE isn’t designed to be balanced in the hands of a perfect player, the nature of the mechanic means that if you were somehow perfect at the character and brawl, you’d be hideously broken. VideoMan.EXE is supposed to be balanced at the level of practice and skill that people reach with other characters as well.
Now that that’s out of my system, I have to say that while VideoMan.EXE may be my most brilliant moveset, he’s still not my favorite. He was fun to make, partially because he was so short, but at the same time I never really got attached to the character or the idea. I really like the moveset, but I’m not so enamored by the concepts as others may have been. I just made them. It’s funny that way, how you think of your own creations.
And the weird thing is, I’m still not completely sure what people in general think of him. Comments on VideoMan.EXE were fairly scarce, and most of what I know about what people think of him is just vague statements of approval or apathy in the chat. This is why I really want to say that everyone really needs to start actually commenting what they read; simple acknowledgement, and the ability to catalogue opinions on your set, is pretty satisfying as a moveset maker. I know plenty of you Make Your Movers who read most of the sets and comment very sparsely. The thread gets dead enough as it is; we had probably 2 movesets a page on average this contest. So let me just get up here on my little soapbox and say you need to comment droogys!
2. Rider
Ah, Rider. I feel that Rider was rather underrated as a moveset, and I definitely think she was one of my best; if I didn’t, she wouldn’t be at the number 2 spot!
So let me tell you how I went about making Rider. Rider was started at the same time I was working on Saber; I wanted to sort of introduce the ‘main’ Servant of the novel before moving on to others. She drew inspiration from a good deal of other movesets, primarily Sloth, who I appreciated much more after reading a few more times. As I began to build concept after concept, and layer after layer of ideas, I got an idea after reading The Elves. What if I made a moveset that did the opposite of what they did? Instead of telling a story like it was a moveset, I’ll tell a moveset like it’s a story, with the moves scattered through as I weave the playstyle bit by bit.
And so began the most painful moveset I ever had to make. Rider was hard to write. First of all, simply deciding where to start and what moves would go where was a bit of a nightmare; I tried graphing it out like Agi does with his move interactions, but quickly found the whole thing to circuitous for me to find a good starting point. And I believe that is why, to a great deal, her writing style suffered. If I wanted to alter a move, or god forbid, put it somewhere else, I had to completely rip apart the entire moveset and rewrite it. Copying and pasting things around destroyed my transitions, and I ended up destroying a great deal of the flow I wanted to make. Getting those last two videos out of GIFsoup was pretty painful too, the website has apparently stopped working for me; I had to trick it to let me even make those two, and now it won’t even let me do that trick. It took me hours easily just to get that done.
And Rider eventually got a lukewarm reception. My choice of organization made all of the individual moves seem unmemorable, and in the end, people preferred to have their playstyle explained to them at the end of a set rather than built up from the ground in front of them. Rider also had some of my most brilliant moves, but also some of my generic. There were a total of four different moves that were different types of kicks.
So, why did Rider get the number two spot here? Because, when you take a step back and look at what the finished project was, it was brilliant. Chaining opponents and using the guaranteed hit of the jab not for damage, but to ensure a window so you could get a stronger attack in? And chaining them lets you have all sorts of control, but makes KOs almost impossible? Rider had a brilliant, beautiful playstyle that was passive-aggressive. She could play keep away with a long chain, and build up her Blood Fort Andromeda. If an opponent broke through though, she could reel her chain in a bit, and her entire moveset changed. And if she managed to imbed her nail into someone, they were guaranteed to have a very bad time. From suicide KOs to self-damaging recoveries to her massive list of throw options, I really believe that Rider had one of the best playstyles I made. That’s not even getting into moving them around for her Breaker Gorgon, or getting her chains at half length to optimize some of her attacks, or…
I’d never want to tackle a project like Rider again. She was altogether a headache to make, and seeing her get more or less washed over is a crime to me. Well, that’s movesetting. You win some, you lose some.
1. Mario & Luigi
I’ll admit, personal biases probably came into play for the placement of this set. This was my big hairy audacious project, and the one I most wanted to be my best. That said, the top four sets here are all so good, that I really could see any one of them being my number one without much difficulty at all. These sets are my absolute best so far, and I can’t wait to see if I can surpass even them.
So, let me tell you a story, about how I made Mario & Luigi. The idea for this set can be set back to about half a year ago, making this my longest running set. I think I first started thinking about it around the time I posted BubbleMan.EXE, in fact. The concept instantly came to me; I would use the same button input style that the Mario & Luigi series of games would. A for Mario, B for Luigi. It was something I knew would have to be big, my biggest moveset yet. I wanted these guys to be a sort of finale; I’d planned to post them at the end of MYM6.
So I was working on them, and getting it done. It was a more or less standard moveset with a fairly standard organization; Special Moves first, then Mario, then Luigi. I was working on Luigi’s aerials when the unthinkable happened. My computer died, and with it, my progress on the set. It was the best thing that could’ve happened to the Mario brothers. What I was working on at the time was fairly mediocre. It would have been a good moveset, if only by the virtue of the brilliant concept, but I still had a great deal of work to do if I wanted it to be my best. So I put them on my back burner for a while, just letting thoughts creep in.
Eventually, I came up with the idea of the Down Special as the way to activate Bros. Moves, and I began to start drafting out ideas again. I decided that this time though, I was going to try something few had successfully tried before. I would make them an image moveset. So I came to Junahu, asking for help with GIMP, how to rip sprites and the like. Jun gave me some pointers at first, but once I got the hang of it early on, I handled the rest of it myself. Almost everything that was in that set I figured out how to do on my own.
I was moving through the moveset at a leisurely pace when the deadline for movesets was announced, far earlier than I was expecting. I could have just accepted it as too soon for the set to be ready, and left it at that. But I wanted this to be my finale set, more than VideoMan.EXE was, more than Mewtwo was. I’d failed to get them in in time for MYM6, I would not be doing the same in MYM7. So I burned through it, working as hard and as fast as I could, and putting up with parents who’d had a sudden, highly inconvenient urge to try to rein in my computer use for absolutely no reason.
In the end, I was able to finish the match-ups during a break between classes on the final day, uploaded everything to photobucket, and posted.
Mario & Luigi is a set I love, because it doesn’t try to do anything other than be a representation of the games and series themselves, and in doing so, succeeds in practically every aspect we want a moveset to have. Creativity abounds, even if the individual moves are simple (not boring, simple), the way they fit together has so much opportunity. From desynched aerial bombings to using Boost Lift to get Luigi to Action Command an enemy so Mario can hit them with a Hammer Slam, they’ve got all sorts of options that just fit who the Mario Brothers are. Their playstyle, while admittedly isn’t the most amazing ever created, is still one of the most unique ways to approach combos, and in a way that’s more than just using preparations or a power-up mechanic to allow you to perform them. And it’s perfectly in character, and it still has plenty of depth to it, from approaching to staggering them to risk/reward of desynching. And the Brothers Moves give them all sorts of options, from projectiles to desynching with Thunder Bros to KOing an opponent returning to the stage. Why MasterWarlord thinks they’re just flashy extras, I’ll never know.
Mario & Luigi is a great set, and I don’t think anyone can argue with that. Even if they don’t do amazingly at the Top 50, I trust that everyone who read the set was able to enjoy it at least, and that has some value to me too. I don’t know where they’ll end up, or even what the average MYMer thinks of them, but I can easily say that I feel proud of what I did in that set, of what I learned making it, and how I did justice to the set I wanted to make.
And finally, my ranking predictions! These are, of course, belated, so I’m liable to look like a fool posting these. These are what I expect my sets to get as of before the Top 50 was released, so here we go.
Saber: Token support from a few MYMers isn’t enough to push her into the Top 50. Rool is outraged, but neglects to pick her.
Probopass: Mid-high thirties or not on the list at all. Unlikely to be picked, but I'm not ruling it out.
VideoMan.EXE: Above 25. Probably not in the Top 10, but it’s possible. High chance of 11th place simply from MW bludgeoning a shift through the leadership.
Rider, Harbinger, and Abomasnow Remakes: All in the 16-21 zone, all within two spaces of each other. I expect these to vote split the hell out of themselves.
Subaru: 2nd-6th place. The set of mine most likely to be my highest ranking.
Mario & Luigi: Top 10. No idea where they’ll end up there.
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