Needles Turning People Around

[Rainbladez]

Hello everyone. I'd to share my thoughts and observations on what I've been noticing. I was watching two sheik videos and noticed that Sheik's needles turned her opponent around (or turned her opponent in the opposite direction, if you will), but not in a way that the needles actually have a property that can do that.

1:14 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QX65n-h8JFk

and

2:12 and 4:20 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAgOL_OGjWQ

From the first video, Marth is off stage and trying to return back to the platform. Sheik jumps and shoots out a needle (diagonally of course) and, as Marth jumps, Marth's back or back of his head hits the needle (or the needle hits his back, whichever you prefer). This, in turn, causes Marth to turn to the opposite direction and, from what we know, hitting someone in front of you makes the toward you. When the needle was in front of Marth, the needle was facing the front of him. When the needle continued a little behind him, the needle was facing the back of him, so when it hit his back, Marth faced toward the needle. As this happens unexpectedly for Marth, he uses his recovery move, misses the ledge, falls, and dies.


In the second video of 2:12, Meta Knight is off stage in the air. Sheik shoots out his needles and Meta Knight (getting hit) turns to the opposite direction. The thing that is different here is that the needles seem to hit either the bottom of him or perhaps behind him near the bottom (meaning probably behind his feet or legs)

Continuing from the second video of 4:20, the same situation happens, but instead Meta Knight is in the air on stage.

From my own testing, I went to practice mode and set my opponent (Sonic) to "Jump" mode. When I was on the ground, I shot needles at the times Sonic was coming down from a jump so that if his feet or the back of his feet hit the needles, it would possibly turn him around. With continous attempts, he turned around. The next idea was to jump and shoot needles at Sonic while he was jumping to see if I can hit the back of his head (or the back of him) to get the same result. Once again, with continous attempts, he turned around.

In summary, I was thinking if there could be possibly "strategies" with this unless the observations are proven false (in other words, I could be overanalyzing or crazy lol); furthermore, if all of this is true, then maybe this is not restricted to the needles projectile.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to seeing your thoughts.

 

[J4pu]

Wow, an intelligent and useful first post after doing testing on your own
I like you
welcome to smashboards

as far as I can see this will be very situational as far as it being useful, and I mean other than just the situation needed to turn them around, you also need to have a large chance of getting some kind of benefit from doing it, if you do it across the stage while they are landing and they turn around, no big woop, they just turn back around.
So, my initial analysis would be this won't be any more useful than just using needles to eat 2nd jumps and gimp in the first place.

 

[saviorslegacy]

I didn't read tho whole post.......

I tested this a long time ago and found that if the needle hits their head or feet it has a high chance of turning them around.
From what I found, if you barely hit their head it will always turn them around.

When the foe is struck they go into some crazy positions and their head/feet get struck.


This can be useful for gimping on some characters if they do not expect it.
My personal favorite use of turning them around is following up with a grab or DA..... again, don't abuse it.

 

[Kewkky]

Some characters would pretty much die if you would turn them around in midair. I can't think of any examples off the top of my head, but if you were to hit someone offstage with a needle, who happens to have a risky bair when recovering (like Bowser, or Pikachu, or Ness...), or less-than-optimum recovery-purpose fair (like Kirby, or Snake, or ZSS...), then edgeguarding them would get considerably safer.

Nice to know you can do this with sheik's needles, though! Seems like a very strict aiming window too, since you have to hit specific parts of their body with tiny projectiles.


But, the fact that characters turn around when you hit their backsides isn't new. You can see this while on-stage too, just put a character facing away from you, jab them, and now they're looking at you. Same thing with projectiles: if you take Wario's wheels, bounce them off a wall and it hits your opponents' back, they turn around. Usually it's just done literaly hitting their back, so naturally Id've thought Sheik's needles couldn't be able to do this.

And yes, very nice, structured, tested and researched first post. Welcome to SWF!

 

[Zankoku]

Yeah, needles travel so fast that multiples of them can end up traveling past the character's center of gravity before hitting. It works especially well in multiples due to the player DIing the first few needles forward, which might move him partly past one of the other needles as a result.

 

[East]

I did this quite a while back, testing needle turns and such. Unless something else new has been discovered, this will probably lead you to the same conclusion I came to: Useless. It's about as random as tripping, and doing it intentionally on an opponent assumes that you have sniper precision while predicting where they are moving. Other than that ankoku's post seems like a good idea. So throw fully charged needles and hope for the best, but never rely on them turning around.

Gimping potential? Ehhhh....

 

[Judo777]

I mean it has minor gimping potential but not to the extent of it being intentional really lol. Imo one of the best ways to edge guard peach is to throw b reversed needles at her offstage and knock her out of float. If they panic up b and they are turned around they wont grab the ledge. Most good players will do turn around up bs but its worth a shot plus its necessary to knock peach out of float. The same could work for kirby (who also cant reverse grab the ledge) and maybe even marth. But yea like u said throw em and hope for the best.