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Pikachu Social Thread

Anther

Smash Champion
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I need some help with the Kirby and Zelda matchup.
So... what parts of the matchups =P?

Zelda practically has to spam out moves with large cooldowns in order to deal with pika's pressure, so once you establish that you can go in really quickly before she can properly react she'll play a zoning game against you. Since she's a little slower than some other characters you can start mixing up your approaches. Instead of dash->nair, you can dash->rar->double jump->bair.. which in theory will catch out any of her responses to a dash nair that isn't a jab. She seems like she's the type of character that you have to punish while she's doing a move as opposed to taking a hit and punishing her afterwards, which is about the same as how she played in brawl also.

For Kirby it depends on whether he's being aggressive. I think pika outranges him in general, so if you think kirby's going in you can almost always counteract him with an in place bair or a retraiing bair. But if you mention what he does that gives you trouble maybe we can throw some suggestions at you =P.
 

EIiitti

Smash Cadet
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
29
Anther, you really seem like you know your Pika stuff. Do you have any means of recording/getting your Pika recorded? I'd love to see a Pikachu player who plays the PM Pikachu and not Melee Pikachu (like Axe does).
 

SpiderMad

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Anther, you really seem like you know your Pika stuff. Do you have any means of recording/getting your Pika recorded? I'd love to see a Pikachu player who plays the PM Pikachu and not Melee Pikachu (like Axe does).
Youtube his name
 

Sapphire Dragon

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Anther definitely knows his stuff, he used to be the best Pika player of all time in Brawl but kind of left after a while, and now ESAM is the next best in Brawl. But Anther and ESAM could probably tie if they had a serious match in Brawl imo :)

I'm really glad he's back, and moreso that he's helping contribute to P:M!
 

Anther

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Anther, you really seem like you know your Pika stuff. Do you have any means of recording/getting your Pika recorded? I'd love to see a Pikachu player who plays the PM Pikachu and not Melee Pikachu (like Axe does).
I've been attempting to start recording some of my friendlies that I play on netplay, I just need to figure out some proper settings and such. I do feel like melee pika is a good starting point for pm pika and it's definitely worthwhile to watch melee pika in action, since melee pika is practically a subset of pm pika's options! That might just be the Melee pika in me speaking though ;p. Axe also takes advantage of his pm specific traits such as b-reversed thunders, quick attack cancel, wavelanding out of quick attack and such.

Anther definitely knows his stuff, he used to be the best Pika player of all time in Brawl but kind of left after a while, and now ESAM is the next best in Brawl. But Anther and ESAM could probably tie if they had a serious match in Brawl imo :)

I'm really glad he's back, and moreso that he's helping contribute to P:M!
<3. It'd be some fraudulent ties =p.

Would it be a bad idea to play Pikachu in PM if I already play him in Melee? Would playing PM Chu mess up my Melee Pikachu?
The brain adjusts. Tech skill is pretty interchangable between the games too so I personally don't think it hurts if you want to play the same character in multiple games. Playing smash makes you better at smash ;]!
 

B.W.

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More than that SD, he was an awesome Pikachu player in Melee too. I don't know where AXE lives, but I'd say for Melee Anther was the best Pikachu in the midwest probably.
 

B.W.

Smash Champion
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I played some Pikachu casuals at a tournament and it was fun. After playing Anther for a few hours I managed find ways to make AGT quite useful on offense.
 

Paradoxium

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Are you able to Fair L-cancel into grab on someones shield?
And can someone show the auto cancel timing on pikachus fair?
It seems all the opponents ive faced have to resort to shield grabbing to win
 

Time2Play

Smash Cadet
Joined
Dec 29, 2007
Messages
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Can anyone explain me how to get consistent with the up air spike? I just don't understand why I spike somtetimes and sometimes put my oponnent behind me. I even tried it in 1/4 Speed and I still couldn't really figure out the reason for spiking or not spiking. I just want to know which parts of his tail do the spike during which part of its animation.

Thanks in advance!
 

Paradoxium

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The spikes are diagonal from pikachus body, so basically top left and top right. But be careful because his tail has multiple hit boxes that will send you in more directions. Practice by going into training mode and putting the CPU's on jump, just leave it at normal speed.
 

dRevan64

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Dec 1, 2010
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yo pikachu players
this character sucks
but he has the best taunt cancel in the game unambiguously
PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI
PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI PIKA PI

so he's cool
just felt like sharing that

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8l7Ip4YynH0

Critique please?

I know I need to work on techincal stuff such as consistently sweet-spotting the edge and utilising QAC's. My biggest problem is that I play very defensive and in-shield when it isn't necessary. Suggestions on fixing this?
Stop getting scared (that's what puts you in shield), make your movement better (doesn't mean QACing all over the damn place as cool as it looks). That means moving fluidly and aggressively (as in, threatening the opponent with your positioning) all the time, and not just dashdancing because that's what someone told you to do. In neutral, your goal is always to be threatening your opponent without committing to something he can punish.

as far as OOS stuff goes you WD, grab and roll OOS a lot and neither of those are great options for pikachu: wd is short, roll is obviously rolling and punishable/gives up ground, and grab isn't good for anyone unless it's guaranteed
use upair more it's amazing
 

Anther

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On top of dRevan's beautiful critique, another thing that can help you with making better decisions is to watch your video in slow motion. On youtube you can just keep clicking the play button over and over again. At each situation think about what you could've been doing better at that particular moment.

Even starting from the beginning of the video at your first dash dance, StinrgX was too close for you to be able to react in time if he did go in, so when he did go in you were still dash dancing since you know.. fox is really fast ;).

But yeah, you should take heed of the better options dRevan mentioned and at every point of your play that you didn't like you should just suggest to yourself what you could've done better to either prevent those situations or pick an alternative thing you could've done to put pressure on your foxy friend. And then practice it a little bit so that it sticks to you!
 

dkuo

Smash Lord
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so i heard from some sources pm uthrow goes farther now, i can still cg ff'ers to usmash ko right?

just making sure lol
 

Cassio

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lol, you should read the thread below/above this one.

But to answer quickly the answer is kind of not really, but I dare not speak the truth in public.
 
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Player -0

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Just a note - I made a Q/A thread just for a bit of clarification on where to post. I probably won't be able to answer a lot of the questions but meh.


Thoughts of wavebounced Jolt? I think it's a nice fake out, I haven't played against many players but I like the FH. I haven't messed with the SH but you'll probably hit the ground before moving back too much. Turn around B is also a nice mixup to this if your opponent starts punishing you.
 

Paradoxium

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Well who does that?!
I'm just trying to protect my identity's identity, because when things don't make sense they usually end up working out for me. My ways can't be explained, it's just how I spin. I treat life like a pair of super hover skates, I just treat them like how I would treat normal skates.

So is the chat only for Dolphin? It seems like a lot of people were talking about it.
It's primarily for finding matches on Dolphin but you can just go there to talk if you want.
 
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Arrow (Kyle)

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Jan 8, 2014
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Brooklyn, NYC
Okay so I recently started playing Pika in friendlies and stuff cause you know, childhood memories and all that other nostalgia stuff. And I learned he's actually a really fun character to use in PM, and way better than the Brawl Version. Are there any Techs that I should get accustomed to for Pikachu's game, like anything that is useful that can up my game with this new presumable side main?
 

Arrow (Kyle)

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Pika in Brawl is in no way bad.

Some techs you should get used to is SHFFLing, QACing, B-Reversing, and getting used to the distance and angles of QA.
I just personally didn't like Brawl Chu, thought he was still a good character.
I've been working on B-reversing, though I can't get it down packed with Thunder, just inputting it wrong, gotta work on my timing better.
I'm pretty used to the capabilities of QA and it's Angles/Distances, though I've always had issues doing QAC, if you got any tips for that, that would be nice.
And Explain SHFFLing? I'm not familiar with this tech... unless I know it by a different name.
 

dkuo

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shffling stands for shorthop [aerial] fastfall lcancel, comes from melee

http://www.ssbwiki.com/Short_hop_fast_fall_L-cancel

in pm if you do a successful l-cancel you should see your character blink white on landing

pika in melee employs heavy use of shffl nair crossup so make sure you can do that (plus its the hardest aerial to shffl imo). idk about the other aerials in pm though but shffl fair/bair seem more applicable now

also on a side note, if you take out the fastfall of a shffl you'll hang in the air longer and jump farther. useful for timing adjustments
 
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Arrow (Kyle)

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I didn't know there was a name for that, though it's something I do with other characters frequently. Looking it up, it looks like a pretty major part of Pika's game.

What would you say is Pikachu's worst MUs?
 

Arrow (Kyle)

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Marth isn't too hard to me, from experience, though I've yet to play a Marth that plays on that high of a level, so I'm biased in this. However wouldn't keeping your distance and using Pika' Neutral B (BTW is this Thundershock or Thunderbolt? I never was sure lol) to space really shift the match into your favor? Plus uair's priority is only beat by Marth's Dair and Fair iirc. Though it's still one of the harder MU's for Pika, it should still be winnable and if you play well can make it a pretty even match, maybe 60-40.

Sheik is ****ing impossible though, Pika gotta take a seat for that.
 

Fish&Herbs19

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I know that Axe thinks that Marth is a good matchup for Pikachu in Melee. Sheik and Peach are two of the most difficult matchups in Melee for Sheik as far as I know, so I'm going to assume that both of those are also very difficult for Pikachu in PM
 

Arrow (Kyle)

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I know that Axe thinks that Marth is a good matchup for Pikachu in Melee. Sheik and Peach are two of the most difficult matchups in Melee for Sheik as far as I know, so I'm going to assume that both of those are also very difficult for Pikachu in PM
Assuming the second time you said Sheik you meant Pikachu lol.

Haven't played peach yet but I can see why it would be a hard MU.
 
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Sapphire Dragon

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The official Melee manual called his neutral B Thunder Jolt. I'd imagine it's the equivalent of Electro Ball in Pokemon (http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Electro_Ball).

As for Marth, I think his sword can cut through Jolt (not entirely sure) and if they play well it might get pretty tough for Pika. It's definitely not his worst though now that I think about it. If Axe thinks it's a good MU, then it probably is, so Marth isn't that bad. Sheik is probably the definitive one of the worst right now. Peach too for that matter, good floaters can pretty much stuff about anything
 
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B.W.

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Its called thunder jolt in the manual but that's probably a mistranslation of thunder bolt.
 
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