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Q&A Captain Falcon FAQ and Training Guide

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
6,066
Location
Sunnyvale, CA
Stage Guide: Neutrals Finished

Neutral Stages
Fountain Of Dreams
This stage blows. Most CF players use their ban on this stage except Peaches and Jiggs who will certainly CP Mute City. G-Reg was very good on this stage, which is my only hope for it in general.

Pros: Nice blastboxes, plenty of room to recover from below and relatively small side room for low % knee kills. FoD is great vs characters that rely on chaingrabbing you, even vs Sheik's dthrow there is a possibility that you'll land on the lowest FoD platforms. Also dair on platform controls an incredible amount of space.

Cons: The really low platforms ruin many of your shffl attempts, and it's really small so you can't run around much.

Dreamland 64
Known as a great CF stage, for reasons that are pretty evident. CF has plenty of room to maneuver and combo, his weight makes him very hard to kill, and the platforms are great to recover on, CF really counters Marth here. Many people will ban this vs you so don't rely too heavily on it.
Pros: Very large with a nice platform layout. Large blastboxes both high and wide.

Cons: Annoying when knee doesn't kill at kill %s here.

Battlefield
Battlefield pisses everyone off, but CF is nonetheless pretty good here. The ledge is really weird and arbitrarily lets certain people live and forces others to die. CF relies on double-jump sweetspots often and Battlefield randomly doesn't allow his double jump to grab the ledge. But other than that the stage is large enough to do what you need to do. Get comfortable here, it comes up a lot.

Pros: Nice platform layout, big enough to run and camp. Stupid ledge hurts other characters more than it hurts you. Easier to edgeguard most recoveries here b/c the option or riding up a wall is eliminated. Blastboxes are a nice balance between your survivability and knee's killing ability.

Cons: Not as big as many of the other neutrals, CF doesn't grab the ledge with his double jump sometimes. Getting trapped under the stage is unpleasant but again not as bad as with most other characters.


Yoshi's Story
My honest advice is to choose Yoshi's when you're probably going to lose on other stages. It is a very small, random, chaotic stage where anything can happen. Throw out a knee here and there and if your opponent gets hit by it at 40% and misses the DI, they will certainly lose their stock. Dair>fsmash combos on spacies will kill at about 60%. Learn to repeatedly walljump to stall for the cloud and your survivability greatly increases, but basically this stage leaves much to luck relatively speaking.

Pros: Wall gives more recovery options, the cloud saves also help prevent you from getting gimped. Small blastboxes allow for fsmash/knee kills at very low %s. Despite its small size the platforms allow for a lot of maneuverability on the stage.

Cons: Very small stage with little room to run away. Very high bottom blastbox takes away from CF's recovery options. Survivability greatly decreased.


Pokemon Stadium
Stadium is a great CF stage in my opinion. Knee kills are very reliable thanks to the small sides of the stage, but the stage itself is huge. The transformations are really bad vs spacies but not a problem vs anyone else, usually you'll just camp eachother out. Very worthwhile stage to learn and CP.

Pros: Very large central platform, and no middle platform to tech on after stomp>knee. Small side blastboxes for low% knee kills. Great platform layout for both comboing and recovery.

Cons: Rock/Fire transformations are miserable. Weird ledge mechanics in transformations limit defensive options.

Final Destination
FD is no joke. Very good stage for very experienced CFs, there is not much to get in the way of your combos and tech chases besides a good opponent.

Pros: No platforms, nowhere to run from CF. Very large. Good blastboxes.

Cons: No platforms to assist recovery, certain characters can chaingrab CF forever on FD.

Counterpick Stages
A quick note to everyone. I hate counterpick stages. I think you should stick to neutrals unless you're positive you cannot win on any of them. Counterpick stages HEAVILY rely on character matchups and generally you're assuming that the other player has no secondary characters, which is frequently false.

That said, comfortability on all of these stages can never hurt you in case you get CP'd on them, but in general no one wants to fight CF on CP stages because he is really good on them as a general rule. Peach/Jiggs on Mute is the only stage you will frequently be CP'd on.

Again cp stages suck and increase randomness. You are gay if you pick these stages but if you win on them it's all good.

Brinstar
Probably Falcon's best CP stage, he can maneuver the stage better than most and avoid the lava really well, and lava>knee combos are ****. Lava saves you more than it saves other characters (mostly because you should be kneeing them) but don't think you can just jump around, getting lava'd at 40 usually ends up with you getting burned a good 4 or 5 times before you get back to the stage.

Pros: Lava has a ton of stun and combos into knee well and saves you from getting gimped. Nice blastboxes, really high top but tiny sides. Good vs campy low tiers. fB trixies are pretty cool

Cons: It's a counterpick stage, so it's random, stupid, weird, and anti-competitive by nature. Difficult to combo with the added hitboxes.

KJ64
KJ is well known as a good CF counterpick stage. It's very large, the rotating plats mess up other characters guaranteed combos but not yours so much. A good stage to get comfortable with but not extremely useful in my opinion.

Pros: Big stage, good blastboxes, and the barel can save you from gimps. Nice platform layout, below the stage recovery is possible.

Cons: Weird layout that takes getting used to, some problems with comboing because of uneven ground, ledge can be difficult to negotiate with.

Rainbow Cruise
Cruise is also a good CF stage, many players have had a lot of success here, namely Jiano. On the boat there is little risk teching to the right b/c there's no ledge there, and the blastboxes are pretty tiny towards the edges of the stage no matter where it is. Dedicate time to learning this stage and it can be a pretty powerful weapon.

Pros: Moving stage forces campy players to move, generally a good layout and CF can maneuver the harder parts better than the competition. Reliable knee kills.

Cons: Projectile campers suck, weird breaks in the stage, some platforms cannot be dropped through, difficult to navigate without experience.

Pokefloats
Floats is also supposed to be a good CF stage, there is again a ton of room to run around, and CF has more maneuverability than most characters in the game. Again, if you learn the stage then you know it better than most people.

Pros: Moving stage forces campy players to move. CF outmaneuvers almost every character on this stage.

Cons: Projectile campers suck, edges of the stage have odd mechanics, lots of places for opponents to tech your knee combos.

Green Greens
Green Greens is a really random stage. Again, if you are definitely losing the set b/c of a large skill gap and you're familiar with this stage it is a great one to get lucky on. Stomp anywhere leads to knee kills at VERY low %s, especially if you can reverse knee on command. Watch out for blocks when recovering under the stage.

Pros: Great stage width and tiny blastboxes for low% kills. Walls everywhere limit teching options for easy tech chases.

Cons: Many random elements, strong wind/bombs/exploding apples. Blocks gimp CF's recovery hardcore.

Jungle Japes
Japes is a really silly stage. CF is really hard to control here in my experience, and klaptrap usually ends up with a KO or two. Players who CP you here will almost always camp the sides. Remember that people who try to do tricky recoveries under the platforms can be KO'd by a stomp going down under/through the stage.

Pros: Large stage, nice platform layout for combos. Good recovery options.

Cons: Very easy to camp CF out on the side platforms. CF's speed makes it easy to run offstage, klaptrap can be a problem.

Mute City
Mute is a smart stage to CP vs a number of characters, but knowledge of the stage is key here. You can't play like you do on most other stages because it's so distincly unique. Learn a specific Mute City playstyle if you want to consider CPing this stage. One of the few stages CF is good on vs Falco.

Pros: Mostly a large stage, recovery from under the stage can be advantageous. Cars and the moving ground combo into knee. Knee ***** laggy recoveries.

Cons: Infrequently a VERY small stage. No ledges lead to easy gimps against you, and your recovery landing lag is predictable and easily punished.

Corneria
Corneria entirely depends on who you're fighting against. Characters that can camp the fin will time out on this stage with very little you can do to interrupt. But vs everyone else it's pretty good. Stage drift can get annoying, don't go for crazy gimps b/c you probably won't make it back. Be wary of the uneven ground, but the left side of the stage is great for you. The right side can be good too but you need to be smart, DI will not save you there and throw>knee often is interrupted by techs on the fin.

Pros: Very large stage with tiny blastboxes. An additional recovery option on the gun. Stomp/knee on the fin kills off the top at low %s. Uneven ground frequently leads to interesting consequences for your aerials. The stage drift hurts other characters' recovery more than it hurts yours.

Cons: Players that camp the fin. Uneven ground adds an additional challenge for l-canceling. Randomness of lasers.
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
6,066
Location
Sunnyvale, CA
Matchup Guide

A late edit, 1 year and nearly 3 months later.

Hello, lowly falcon apprentices. I am working on this guide to assist you in getting started in your hardest matchups.

Now I want all of you to know that I wish that I could just promote you all to Blood Falcon right now. But I can't. It's up to you to graduate from apprentice, to that kid who eventually becomes Captain Falcon, then to Blood Falcon status, and then to one of the few real men in Melee, those who can play and win as the champion of justice.

On a serious note, it's really important to realize that there are hundreds of different playstyles for each character, and that matchups drastically change at different levels of skill. Take what you can.

Also, while this is all well and good, YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO CONTROL YOUR CHARACTER COMPLETELY before actually being good at Super Smash Brothers: Melee. I'm being serious. You are not good at the game if you cannot make your character do whatever you want him to do. Tech skill is the foundation of the game, and no matter how smart you are, you aren't going to **** anyone if you're missing l-cancels or jump-cancel grabs.

Top Tier
Fox:

Fox jacks you up, and we all know it. Let's examine why this is.

1) He ***** you out of your shield
2) He is just as fast as you and if you run away he can hit you with a ton of different things as you're on the retreat
3) All of his moves beat all of yours (basically)
4) He has hitboxes out all of the time
5) Shine comes out pretty fast
6) His edgeguard kills you whenever and is pretty easy to perform
7) He combos you really well

Anyways, what you've learned from all of this is that Fox beats you basically every which way you look at it, so the general gameplan and a good habit to get into in general is to try your absolute hardest to NOT GET HIT. Really difficult to actually do.

Falcon has superior horizontal mobility because he doesn't give a **** and just jumps forward, instead of Fox who jumps up. Falcon's nair also beats Fox in general if it's spaced properly, which again, is extremely difficult to do, but learn how to do it. The better the Fox, the closer he is to you, and the harder it is to nair him, so when you start playing those top-level Foxes, you'd better learn to pivot.

Falcon can obviously kill Fox from a grab, provided that you're brilliant and excellent and have incredible reaction time, or that you know your opponent through experience. This is really good, and it's generally true for all of Falcon's matchups.

To get better at the match, learn how to make the most of every offensive opportunity.

As you get more experience you'll also learn how to recover against Fox (just keep trying, you'll figure it out), how to smash DI out of waveshines, and how to land those grabs, but there isn't any real easy answer.

Also, as a general rule, pay specific attention to how you edgeguard. Getting kills is extremely important, and if you can turn opportunities when your opponent is offstage into kills, you're in good shape. Fox has so many recovery options though that it's hard to say that there's any good way to do it. Bair is the best edgeguard, though.

Marth:

Marth is gay, but the match is basically even. Some say that Marth has the advantage, and Marth players and their closest friends say Falcon has the advantage. Whatever.

The point is that Marth is really slippery and can evade a lot of your moves. His dashdance grab is probably better than yours since his grab range makes no sense at all, and his grabs are just about as deadly. Again, once you're offstage you're probably dead.

The good news though is that Marth doesn't really have a good approach, which is a welcome change from Fox, who can do whatever he wants.

Again, your to-do list is
1) Learn how to combo the **** out of Marth
2) Learn how to edgeguard Marth
3) Learn how to recover against Marth

There are, however, a few big things to be aware of. First, you should know where you are on the stage. Stay away from the ledge! If you get grabbed at the ledge you probably won't live. If he grabs you in the middle of the stage and throws you at the ground you'll probably end up at the ledge and he'll grab you again so that sucks, but at least you can tech in.

This matchup is really lame, just spend your entire Saturday afternoon pressing left and right on the stick until Marth messes up by either jumping or missing a grab or something. Then you murder him.

High Tier
Sheik:

FD/Dreamland/Stadium, Yoshi's/Battlefield, Fountain

Falco:

Dreamland, Battlefield, FD, Stadium, Yoshi's, Fountain

Jigglypuff:

Stadium, FD, Dreamland/Battlefield/Yoshi's, Fountain

Captain Falcon:

N/A

Peach:

Stadium, Dreamland/Battlefield/Yoshi's, FD, Fountain
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
6,066
Location
Sunnyvale, CA
Training Regimen: Coming Soon

This section will show you how to focus your individual practice and training sessions into something that will help you get better, rather than freestyling and not necessarily knowing what specific work you need to do.

Again, let's work together to complete this. If you have a category, or a guide you'd like to post, please post it in the thread, and PM me if you think I missed the suggestion.

Hax's Falcon Compendium

discrete stuff that i think is either critical to playing falcon at top level right now or will be in the future. will be updated occasionally

instant uair
solves falcon's biggest problem which is the lack of an aerial that comes out instantaneously (while he is rising during his jump) while having decent knockback. good for poking against falco, sheik, marth, peach, falcon, and fox (very difficult to land on fox, though). good for extending combos. good for denying certain aerials (beats spacies nairs if you hit at a very specific angle/frame!)

doublejump nair
your best option for when they miss a tech on a platform and you aren't in position for a stomp (or, you aren't in position to follow up with anything after you stomp them). goes into a knee at mid-high % in this case

also really good to use after a shffl'd nair if they DI/SDI up. doublejump so that you're exactly horizontal to them and nair them again. this is better than uairing them, which most people think is falcon's only option if they're at that height that isn't as close to the ground as falcon's shorthop while still being slightly lower than his fullhop.

pivot grab
the best way to abuse falcon's ridiculously fast foxtrot (the initial burst a character makes upon dashing -- falcon's is the fastest in the game). great for dancing around them when you think they're going to whiff something that only hits in front of them. don't use this against fox or falco because shine is broken and will hit in back of them even when you correctly read that they're trying to hit what's in front of them. similarly, watch out for nairs/other aerials that have hitboxes on the character's back. i.e., pivot grabbing is better vs a sheik that tends to fair when she's suspended in the air rather than one who nairs.

kneegrabbing
a while ago M2K informed me that if you knee someone's shield as low to the ground as possible, Falcon has +2 frame advantage (with the L-cancel lag factored in). this means that your grab beats theirs if they try to shieldgrab you (which they will do a LOT given how shieldgrabable this looks). i haven't tested this much yet but i definitely will in the future

180 degree ledgehop wavelands/180 degree wavelands onto platforms
most characters safely ledgehop so that they're elevated a bit higher than the stage, then airdodge diagonally down to waveland. because of falcon's ball-shaped 2nd jump, its really easy to get the best waveland possible by airdodging 180 degrees horizontally. same goes for wavelanding onto platforms

spaced nairs/uairs vs crouchcancellers
CC'ing ***** falcon harder than any character because he has no fast moves that also have enough hitstun to give you frame advantage vs the CC'er. unless you hit them with a stomp or knee, they can hit you before you can combo them into anything. grabbing obviously beats CC'ing, but in falcon's case it is extremely obvious that he's going to grab if he dashes up to them because he has no other options to choose from. for these reasons i try to beat CC'ers by poking them with spaced nairs/uairs to make them leave their CC. stomp and knee are usually reacted to and punished in today's metagame which makes falcon's anti-CC game really weak. you shouldn't try to beat someone who's crouching; you should be giving them reasons to leave their crouch

juggling
with falcon you should seek to carry your opponent as [horizontally] far across the stage as you can during a combo. the reason a lot of people end their falcon combos prematurely is because they don't properly give themselves the frame advantage necessary to continue. what i mean is, you should be hitting them with your aerials (usually uairs) as close to the ground as possible as to give yourself as much time as possible to hit them with another aerial. take landing uair -> uair -> knee on a fox at ~60% for example (assume he DI's in because this combo is impossible if he DI's out). after the first uair, you shorthop towards fox as fast as possible to land the second uair. the mistakes lots of falcons make at this point are A. uairing fox before they reach the peak of their jump and/or B. not fastfalling

these are both counterproductive to juggling because:
-if you don't fastfall, you have about 10 frames before falcon reaches the floor. this is far too long and the knee afterwards won't connect
-you cannot fastfall before the peak of your jump

the lesson to be learned is that you must uair during the 2nd half of your jump, and you must fastfall it/go into your next attack as fast as possible. falcon has TIGHT links that you can't otherwise land because of how fast people wiggle out these days. when i uair during combos, you hardly see falcon's legs come out sometimes because of how close to the ground i use them.

fall off the ledge -> bair/uair
falcon can fall off the ledge, bair or uair to edgeguard, then 2nd jump -> up-b and make it back to the ledge. good for edgeguarding people at certain positions below you, but you risk your stock in attempting it

example:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHkT8T-jJjo#t=01m43s

more to come
Defensive Tips
How to play defensively?
How and when to use Smash DI?
Recovery tips?
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
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Location
Sunnyvale, CA
Captain Falcon FAQs: Coming Soon

This section will address questions that always come up, most importantly, "How do I gentleman?"
 

DtJ Jungle

Check out my character in #GranblueFantasy
BRoomer
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Grancypher
Scar this is going to be an awesome thread.

Way to take charge :)
 

Teczer0

Research Assistant
Premium
BRoomer
Joined
Mar 25, 2007
Messages
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Location
Convex Cone, Positive Orthant
This guide is meant to assist you in getting started vs your hardest matchups. It will not tell you exactly how to beat them but rather the things your character can exploit in the other character. It is up to you to decide how and when to apply what you learned.

Everyone develops their own style, these guides are simply the framework around which your style should develop.

Following the short writeup will be a ranking of the neutral stages in order from best to worst vs that specific character. Slashes indicate indifference.

Top Tier
Fox:

Dreamland/FD, Battlefield, Yoshi's, Stadium, Fountain

Marth:

Dreamland, Stadium/FD, Battlefield, Yoshi's, Fountain

High Tier
Sheik:

FD/Dreamland/Stadium, Yoshi's/Battlefield, Fountain

Falco:

Dreamland, Battlefield, FD, Stadium, Yoshi's, Fountain

Jigglypuff:

Stadium, FD, Dreamland/Battlefield/Yoshi's, Fountain

Captain Falcon:

N/A

Peach:

Stadium, Dreamland/Battlefield/Yoshi's, FD, Fountain
Is there a single character in this game you would play on FoD? :laugh::laugh::laugh:

G-reg was actually very good on FoD. He would never miss an upthrow wait for tech into knee on the FoD platforms.

I mean I know most players do that anyway but are the platforms smaller on FoD to make it any easier?
 

ES Lite

The Real Slim Shady
Joined
May 23, 2008
Messages
627
Location
Easton, PA (ES)
nice job quintuple posting.
jk i hope this thread becomes successful.

-Lite (A.K.A. best melee player in the world)
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
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Sunnyvale, CA
yeah tec0 the first thing i wrote was that g-reg was always good on fountain. Otherwise no, most CF players will ban it vs every character besides ICs. And pikachu but that's only because FD blows.
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
6,066
Location
Sunnyvale, CA
the pikas you play, then, don't know that if they grab you at any % anywhere they can uthrow you over and over until you're at about 130 and then usmash kill you off the top, or until you DI offstage and then tailspike you if youre in a hurry
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
6,066
Location
Sunnyvale, CA
btw it wasn't a writing error, "blow" is vulgar/slang, it means the same thing as "suck" , as in "paying taxes blows," or "jigglypuff players blow"

...which is ironic b/c they are opposites
 

Skip2MaLoo

Smash Lord
Joined
Oct 31, 2008
Messages
1,293
good thread, this is going to be extremely useful to me personally since I don't have much match-up experience (casual player)
 

metashinryu

Smash Ace
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Republica Dominicana
btw it wasn't a writing error, "blow" is vulgar/slang, it means the same thing as "suck" , as in "paying taxes blows," or "jigglypuff players blow"

...which is ironic b/c they are opposites
i meant you put FD instead of FoD(or you really meant FD is bad???)

but i know what a word means when i see how its used though i dont speak english(the blow part i mean)
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Sunnyvale, CA
lol oh sorry. yeah when i put FD i mean FD, when i put Fountain i mean Fountain

FINAL DESTINATION IS THE WORST NEUTRAL VS PIKACHU and probably the worst stage in the game, CF ***** pika on CPs
 

metashinryu

Smash Ace
Joined
Mar 18, 2009
Messages
632
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Republica Dominicana
final destination is the worst stage for real? **** then where the hell i can start practicing combos? thats why i suck on platformed stages? TELL ME TT_TT
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
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Location
Sunnyvale, CA
meta do you even play vs any pikachus? don't worry about it. also yeah platform are great for combos what are you supposed to do after dair on pika at 90%? jump to a platform then dj knee RAAAPE
 

tubes

Smash Ace
Joined
Oct 30, 2008
Messages
528
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Atlanta, GA
lol but for real where should i start practiceing platforms combos? i will quit FD for good...
Don't, FD is a great stage for nair practice. I typically jump around stages. Play some on dreamland, and yoshi's, and battlefield, and FD for nair practice. you should probably practice on FoD too but that stage frustrates me so I tend to avoid it. I just ban it lol.
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
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Location
Sunnyvale, CA
FD is one of your best stages vs almost every character. Chaingrabbing is a problem but there are only a handful of characters who can cg you there.

Learn all of the neutrals as best you can. They are all important.
 

Skrah

Smash Ace
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Jan 12, 2009
Messages
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Cantinero, deme mas cermesaa!
How do you aim a Falcon Punch up? I've heard of this term before and I know it's important when attempting to falcon punch from offstage, but I've never been able to pull it off
 

ranmaru

Smash Legend
Joined
Feb 10, 2008
Messages
13,296
Switch FC
SW-0654 7794 0698
Nice Guide. ;3 Hrrrm I'll remember that, haha easier recovery when randomly falcon punching off stage! W00t. Pika can do that on FD? Wow. Nice to know. : D
 

Scar

#HarveyDent
Joined
Feb 11, 2007
Messages
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Sunnyvale, CA
starting training guide...

I'm starting work on the videos now.

My agenda is this:
Movement Training
Combo Training
Speed Training

so basically what do you need to get good at smash? tech ability and mindgames. mindgames will come from playing other people, so we will not focus on that in your at-home practice.

anything that you think i should cover would be appreciated, but this is what i'm going to do now.
 
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