I'd like to present an argument for picking PS1 over PS2 as a starter stage in standard stage striking. I'm using this video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLX5CdLU8uk for reference, if there's something about these stages that the video doesn't cover please let me know, I've already done additional testing myself.
The differences between PS1 and PS2 are the following:
PS2's main-platform is wider than PS1's:
This lets characters KO off the sides faster when standing on the edge of the stage
Wall-jumps do not work on the center-pillar of PS1, but do work on PS2:
This gives characters with wall-jumps a slight advantage on PS2
The edge-slopes of PS1 continue further downwards than PS2's, giving PS1 a Y-shape and PS2 a T-shape:
This can trap characters underneath the edges of PS2
The right-platform of PS1 has a slight downwards slope to the right:
This can cause jab-locks not to work when hitting to the right due to being hit downhill, along with other potential effects(I am not aware of what these could be, I will list these if people present them)
The camera boundary of PS1 is lower than PS2's:
This makes meteor-attacks KO earlier on PS2 than on PS1(if characters cross the camera boundary while in the launch-immobility of a meteor-attack they get KO'd, without having to cross the lower blastzone)
The blastzone of PS1 is lower than PS2:
This lets characters go deeper off-stage on PS1
The platforms of PS2 are slightly wider than PS1's:
I don't think this actually has any notable effect with how small of a difference it is
The platforms of PS2 are higher than PS1's:
This makes it impossible to full-hop on the platforms on PS2 for these characters:
Kirby
Ganondorf
Ryu
Ken
Little Mac
It also makes it impossible to hit characters standing on the platforms on PS2 with the following moves:
Mario's Up-tilt
Dr. Mario's Up-tilt
Luigi's Up-tilt
Sheik's Up-tilt
Greninja's Up-tilt
Zelda's Up-tilt
Inkling's Up-tilt
Piranha Plant's Up-tilt
Palutena's Up-tilt's last hit
Mii Swordfighter's Up-tilt, Up-smash also combos more reliably into the 2nd hit on PS1
Lucario's Up-tilt(very inconsistent on PS1)
Roy's Up-tilt's sweetspot(very inconsistent on PS1)
Roy/Chrom's Forward-tilt(semi-consistent)
Lucas's first hit of Up-smash(not entirely sure though)
Megaman's multihits of Up-smash(semi-consistent)
Peach/Daisy's down&forward-angled Forward-smash(semi-consistent)
Falco's 1st-hit of Up-smash (semi-consistent)
Young Link's last hit of Up-smash(inconsistent, unless foe is lying down)
Toon Link's Up-smash(inconsistent, unless foe is lying down)
Pikachu's Up-smash(tip only)
Incineroar's Up-smash(tip only)
Meta Knight's last hit of Up-smash, the 1st and 2nd hits inconsistently as well
Diddy Kong's 2nd-hit of Up-smash
Ness' Up-smash
Ryu's Up-smash
Ken's Up-smash
Marth/Lucina's Forward-smash(semi-consistent), they also get an improvement to their Forward-tilt
Cloud's Side-special (first hit)
The following moves get improved on PS1:
Olimar's Up-tilt and Up-smash (they hit very inconsistently on PS2, aside from Up-smash Y-pikmin)
Mii Brawler's Up-tilt and Up-smash (they're much easier to hit with)
Pit/Dark Pit's Up-tilt's 1st hit (it combos more reliably into the 2nd hit on PS1, though it's still slightly inconsistent)
Joker's Up-tilt's multihits hit more consistently
Yoshi's Up-tilt (it's much easier to hit with)
Mewtwo's multihits of Up-smash hit more consistently
Sonic's multihits of Up-smash hit more consistently
Little Mac's Up-smash (it's much easier to hit with)
Fox's Up-smash (it's much easier to hit with)
Mii Gunner's Up-smash (it's slightly easier to hit with)
Duck Hunt's Up-smash (it's slightly easier to hit with)
It also makes these characters land on PS1's platforms after using these moves:
Kirby's Forward-throw
Mega Man's Up-tilt
Players will spawn on the main-platform of PS1, and on the floating-platforms on PS2:
This might be advantageous for characters with higher air-speed/fast-fall-speed/ground-speed at the beginning of the match, but not that much probably?
The edges on PS1 obstruct the view more than PS2's
PS1's background screen is off at the start and changes every 10/15 seconds, then zooms in on one player for 10/15 seconds, then duplicates the main camera for 10/15 seconds, and then repeats this alternating between which character it zooms in on
PS2's background screen can start zoomed in on one player for 15/20 seconds, then zooms in on the other player for 15/20 seconds, and then turn off for 20/60 seconds
PS2's background screen zooms in further on players than PS1's
The differences in
italic are visual differences and do not affect practical gameplay, so I don't think that these should be taken into consideration for as long as there are practical differences between the stages.
So to summarize:
Characters can KO off the sides sooner when standing on the edge of PS2
Characters can wall-jump on PS2's center-pillar
Characters can get trapped underneath the edges of PS2
Characters cannot be Jab-locked by attacks that send them to the right, on the right-platform of PS1
Meteor-attacks KO earlier on PS2
Characters can go deeper off-stage on PS1
Certain actions can or cannot be done due to the difference in platform height
Characters spawn in different positions at the start of a match
I'll now begin my argument for PS1>PS2.
Currently, PS1/PS2 is on pretty much every stagelist as a starter-pick.
Starter-pick stages are considered to be the most neutral stages in the game, i.e. the stages that give the least advantage to any character, regardless of which character is fighting who.
This means that the primary factor that determines whether PS1 or PS2 should be used is neutrality, i.e. which one is more neutral, i.e. which one is better suited to be a starter-stage.
The differences between the stages can either affect all characters equally or some individually.
Differences that affect characters equally do not actually matter in this case because they affect everyone, giving no character an advantage and are therefore neutral.
For example, the fact that characters cannot be jab-locked by attacks that send them to the right, on the right-platform of PS1, does not actually give an advantage to any individual character, because none of the characters can do it. It could be argued that characters who are highly dependent on getting jab-locks are put at a disadvantage, however I don't think that this is the case for any character that I know of (if this is the case for any character then let me know) as teching would do the same thing.
Characters spawning on the main-platform or on the floating-platforms also doesn't seem to have much effect as characters can get down before the opponent can get to them. Though characters that have charging moves(e.g. Samus' neutral-special) might be at a slight disadvantage due to not being able charge right away without giving advantageous positioning to the opponent.
The fact that some characters can wall-jump off the center-pillar on PS2 also doesn't seem to have much effect, as there really isn't any reason to go that far underneath the stage, and if a character gets there because they got launched they would be able to tech-jump which every character can do. Even with the wall-jump only characters like Pikachu could realistically make use of it and still make it back to the stage, and even then it would be largely inpractical in comparison to other options.
The fact that it's possible to get trapped underneath PS2 is disadvantageous for characters with linear recoveries, though I think most of the discussion on this has already been done in past discussions on Lylat cruise so I'm not going into much depth about this.
The fact that it's possible to go deeper off-stage on PS1 than on PS2 also doesn't make much difference; I think it's reasonable to say that characters who can go that deep and still recover would be able to make it back anyway, and aside from air-dodges I can't really think of any moves that would force characters that far down, so while it does give characters with really good recoveries a slight advantage I don't think it makes much difference.
Meteor-attacks KOing earlier(about 3%) on PS2 does give an advantage to characters with meteor-attacks, but characters would be pretty low at this point and I don't think most would be able to recover anyway.
Characters being able to KO earlier off the sides due to the edges of PS2 being closer to the blast-zone gives an advantage to characters that KO off the sides more, but it also makes it easier to recover due to the edges being further out, making it so that getting launched from the other end of the stage is easier to recover from.
The fact that some characters cannot reach the platforms on PS2 with a full-hop puts them at a fairly big disadvantage towards characters who can, and the fact that most of the match-time will be spend on-stage makes this a pretty significant difference.
The fact that quite a few attacks will not hit opponents on PS2's platforms puts these characters at a fairly big disadvantage.
There are 2 characters that can land on PS1's platforms but not on PS2's after using an attack, Megaman with up-tilt and Kirby with forward-throw.
For Megaman PS1 seems better as landing on the platform reduces Up-tilt's end-lag from 70-frames to 54-frames, but it's less safe to use on opponents who are standing on the platforms, so Megaman players will have to say which is better.
For Kirby PS2 seems better as PS1's platforms make it impossible to combo with Forward-throw, even though Kirby cannot full-hop onto PS2's platforms.
Going off all of this I think it's safe to assume that the following differences are mostly irrelevant when deciding which one to go to, as these do not give any significant advantage to any individual character:
-Characters spawn in different positions at the start of a match
-Characters can wall-jump on PS2's center-pillar
-Characters cannot be Jab-locked by attacks that send them to the right, on the right-platform of PS1
-Characters can get trapped underneath the edges of PS2
I would argue that this difference:
-Characters can KO off the sides sooner when standing on the edge of PS2
also belongs here because every character has attacks that would be affected by this, though some(e.g. Ness and Incineroar's Back-throw) might benefit more than others.
This leaves 3 differences that can affect characters individually:
+Characters can go deeper off-stage on PS1
+Meteor-attacks KO earlier on PS2
+Certain actions can or cannot be done due to the difference in platform height
Out of these I would argue that the first one is fairly insignificant for the following reasons:
The extra depth of PS1 is not enough to be beneficial for any characters with long-during moves(e.g. Ridley's Dair) as they cannot make it back to the stage, so while for example Ridley technically can use Dair off-stage from a shorthop on PS1 and survive, he would not be able to recover.
In the case of edge-guarding it doesn't make much difference either as most characters just can't go low enough to take advantage of the extra depth and still get back to the stage. The only time when this could make a difference is in matches where both characters have really good recoveries, but then they would both be able to take advantage of this.
After doing some testing it seems that Meteor-attacks KO about 3% earlier on PS2; in the video Bayonetta's Down-smash KO'd K.rool at 44.3% on PS2 while he lived on PS1 at 46.1%. From my own testing I've found that Ganondorf's Dair KO's Pichu hanging on the ledge from 8.2% but not at 8.1% on PS1, while on PS2 Pichu got KO'd at 5.3% but not at 5.1%, so almost exactly 3%. I also tested with Mario to see if he could make it back after getting Dair'd; he got KO'd at 13.8% but not at 11.3% on PS2, however he could not make it back on stage and would have needed an extra Jump to do so, which means that PS1's lower camera-boundary would not help him live any longer.
Something to keep in mind is that, out of the 78 currently playable characters, only 11 do not have Meteor-attacks, of which 6 would benefit from going to PS1 otherwise.
I did a lot of testing with every character to see which ones were affected by the platform height difference so here are some numbers:
There are 6 characters who are unaffected, who have no grounded options on either stage to hit opponents on platforms.
There are 30 characters who are unaffected, of which 4 do not have a Tilt-attack but do have a Smash-attack to hit opponents on platforms, the other 26 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms.
There are 5 characters who are affected, however these effects are insignificant to the point of being useless due to being inconsistent in practical application, or because they give no useful benefit.
There are 37 characters who are affected of which:
6 have no grounded options on PS2 to hit opponents on platforms, but gain a Smash-attack on PS1
3 have no grounded options on PS2 to hit opponents on platforms, but gain a Tilt-attack on PS1
3 have no Tilt-attack on PS2 to hit opponents on platforms but do have a Smash-attack to hit opponents on platforms, who get a significant improvement to their Smash-attacks on PS1
7 have no Tilt-attack on PS2 to hit opponents on platforms but do have a Smash-attack to hit opponents on platforms, who gain a Tilt-attack on PS1, and 1 gets an improvement to their Smash-attack
2 have a Tilt-attack on PS2 to hit opponents on platforms but do not have a Smash-attack to hit opponents on platforms, who gain a Smash-attack on PS1
4 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who get a significant improvement to their Smash-attacks on PS1
4 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who get a significant improvement to their Tilt-attacks PS1
2 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who get a significant improvement to both their Tilt-attacks and Smash-attacks on PS1
2 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who gain a Tilt-attack on PS1
2 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who gain a Smash-attack on PS1
2 have both Tilt and Smash-attacks to hit opponents on platforms, who gain a Smash-attack on PS1, and get a significant improvement to their Tilt-attack
The ability to platform-pressure from a grounded position, along with the ability to Jump onto platforms from a fullhop is very valuable and can affect the Neutral-game significantly; without these the opponent can run away and camp much more easily.
Keeping all of these differences in mind, I can think of the following reasons as to why you should pick either stage:
For PS2:
You are playing with a character that is unaffected by the platform height, against a character that is affected
You are playing with a character that has a Meteor-attack, against a character that has a really good recovery
For PS1:
You are playing with a character that has a really good recovery, against a character that has a Meteor-attack
You are playing with a character that is affected by the platform height
The only character that is at a disadvantage on both stages is Kirby who:
-Cannot fullhop onto PS2's platforms
-Cannot combo off Forward-throw underneath PS1's platforms
Though out of these 2 options, Kirby would likely prefer PS2 as this is the lesser of 2 evils.
Choosing PS2 instead of PS1 causes half the roster to lose an option; disregarding the viability of said option, it is important that all characters have the same amount of options, or are at least as close as possible to this ideal; from that point onward it is up to individual player-skill to determine when, where,
and how these options can be used to achieve victory over the opponent.
As PS1 gives the overall roster more options to use, bringing them closer to the ideal equal-state, PS1 is therefore more neutral.
![bg[1].jpg](https://smashboards.com/data/attachments/230/230407-a82794f0eae1eed7d91b529926b5e8ab.jpg "bg[1].jpg")