MR. GAME & WATCH
DIFFICULTY: EVEN - 50:50
CHAINGRAB: NO
DIFFICULTY: EVEN - 50:50
CHAINGRAB: NO
Game & Watch is another fast, light character who can’t be chaingrabbed and can combo Dedede to hell and back. He also has extremely powerful smashes with little lag afterward that can kill you at very low percentages, often less than 100%. He has very good approaches and you really can’t afford to make any mistakes in this matchup. Fortunately, he’s the second lightest character in the game (after Jigglypuff) and very easy to tech chase, so all hope is not lost.
I mentioned the strength of Game & Watches approaches, but unless you play a Game & Watch on a daily basis you’ll probably only see one approach – the bair, aka. The Turtle. The Turtle is comparable to Metaknight’s tornado in the sense that it does multiple hits that are hard to DI out of and can end up doing a lot of damage if you don’t avoid it somehow. It does 5 hits of 3% each, making 15% total. Because of how long it stays out, spot dodging and air dodging are not good options and due to its fairly large hitbox it may not be easy to roll away. The best thing to do is to shield and then punish the lag. Make sure you shield all 5 hits (it helps me to count them out) before attempting a shield grab or other form of punishment.
If you do get hit, Game & Watch will most likely start juggling you. Dtilt, utilt, nair, uair, he has lots of tricks up his sleeve. He’ll probably finish all this off with a fresh smash attack to kill you at about 100%. As far as edgeguarding goes, G&W has many options in the form of dtilt, dsmash, fsmash, dair, usmash, and his dash attack which spikes if you approach the ledge from the bottom. As cliché as it sounds, the best thing to do is not get hit.
The best way to not get hit in this matchup is, you guessed it, spacing. Ftilt is so good that when you start practicing with the matchup you may want to spam it along with Waddle Dee toss to keep him at bay, though if you toss a Waddle Doo you should get rid of it since a bucket filled with eye beams can kill at around 100%. Staying on the ground is a good idea in this matchup since, as mentioned before, it’s better to shield the turtle than airdodge it. Game & Watch can also do a lot of nasty things to you if you’re above him in general. If you do get above him, your best hope is dair, which outprioritizes most things. If he’s above you though, you won’t have much to worry about since his dair is laggy and easy to see coming. As mentioned before, he’s the second lightest character in the game, so utilt should be able to kill him at under 90%.
I mentioned dthrow tech chasing above, but most good Game & Watches will see this coming and avoid it with their upB. For upB-happy Game & Watches, Fogo has devised a good strategy, so if you want to read it you should check out his post which I quoted below since I personally believe regurgitating what is used in quotes is bad writing (but that’s a different story altogether ). Ultimately though, you shouldn’t be dthrowing Game & Watch. Instead you should opt for bthrow -> Waddle Dee or ftilt/bair if you’re close enough. Even if he airdodges it, he’ll end up in a bad position and have to reset his spacing, giving you a window of opportunity.
A few other miscellaneous things: You can techroll out of Game & Watch’s dthrow -> dsmash combo or just avoid it by hitting left or right during the actual throw. If you grab Game & Watch out of his upB, don’t attack, and wait for him to break free, he will fall helpless. Inhale is not a good move to use in this matchup since it doesn’t break The Turtle and it’ll just pull the smash towards you. Many people have made the latter mistake and suffered the consequences. One new piece of information to keep in mind is Game & Watch's newly discovered AT, Bucket Braking. Bucket Braking allows Game & Watch to cancel all of his momentum, horizontal and vertical, when hit far offstage by an attack. Since Dedede's kill moves have enough knockback that they'll most likely die before getting to use this unless they have incredible DI, it doesn't change things that much, but try to keep in mind that it can happen when you're deciding whether to try and land a kill move or to keep racking damage.
You cant tech chase a good game and watch, or at least one that knows what up-b is. Trust me i've played against several of the best G-dubs in the nation and my brother plays a good one. If they do it right there's about 1-3 frames between them getting up and up-b'ing and gw is so weird that you can't even tell he's doing it. Not to mention the begining frames of the up-b are invincibility frames and he can just DI up after the Dthrow and up-b instantly.
That can be seen here at 0:50 and again at 1:54 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqdFEp6Id94
But on the bright side, there is a solution for up-b spammy Gdubs! ^_^
I found from my tournament matches against hylian and utd zac, two formidable Gdubs, that you can instantly footstool the up-b and do a Dair when you fly up, i call it the Hylian combo for obvious reasons lol
Also i've found that tech chasing IS NOT the best option against a good GW. If you find yourself landing a grab on a good GW it will most likely be seldom and you need to take advantage of it. I can count on two hands how many times i've landed a grab on Hylian from our whole set, and i'm really good at landing grabs, ask foursaken lol but what i'm saying is that you should Bthrow > jump > waddle throw. If it's fresh then they'll eat 23% and if they airdodge the waddle then the'yll fall into a bad position and you can control the map. You'll note that in the video above the majority of my throws are infact bthrows and for good reason too.
Now for racking up damage i like to use tilts and waddles when i can't get a grab off, but when a doo lands on the screen i quickly get rid of it because a bucket from a doo can kill at around 95-100%
Aside from that i can't think of much besides abusing lag from Dair and bair.
Good Stages:
Final Destination, Smashville, Halberd
Big stages to distance yourself from him and stages with not many platforms. Those are really the only criteria you need to think about. And of course, stay off the platforms or you’ll get nair’d like crazy. Small blast zones are also good ways to limit Bucket Braking, so if you're really worried about that then try taking them to Halberd.Final Destination, Smashville, Halberd
Bad Stages:
Battlefield, Norfair, Rainbow Cruise
Smaller stages and stages with lots of platforms. Game & Watch players like to juggle you on platforms with nair. Most Game & Watches will take you to Rainbow Cruise though, so I’d ban that if Norfair is not legal in your region.Battlefield, Norfair, Rainbow Cruise