The alternate reality: No Marth in Melee

[Victory.IsMyDestinySSB4]

As many know, Sakurai considered not including Marth (and Roy) in Melee in the states, due to these characters not being very recognizable in Europe and NA. Now, I watch melee for fun, and I don't play it a lot. But, I'm just curious. How do you think the meta would change with no Marth in NTSC?

 

[Pumpk1n]

Foxes and falcos would have much less trouble with certain stages that marth dominates them on such as FD because of chain grabs. Low tier characters worst MUs (even though it was pretty much all the cast) were sheik and Marth so they would have a slightly easier time in the meta. Some characters that get invalidated by marth if played right such as peach would also have a much easier time in the meta. I can’t perfectly predict the changing in meta but basically yes the meta would be different but not a humongous difference because the low tiers and other bad MUs with marth also have tons of bad MUs in top 10.

 

[RetrogamerMax]

The title of the post is kind of misleading as it should be "The alternate reality: No Marth and Roy in the NTSC and PAL versions of Melee. If cut entirely? I think Fire Emblem would have never gotten big in the west without Smash's support.

 

[GhostM]

The reality of Melee without Marth would benefit the spacies, especially on stages like Final Destination because Marth overall has great ground dominance and an excellent punish game. Marth's chaingrabs are especially deadly against the spacies on Final Destination since the large amount of space and lack of platforms on Final Destination exposes the fact that the spacies lack options to escape the chaingrabs, and it doesn't help the fact that their weight makes them combo food to the entire cast. It would definitely help brush off a matchup for the spacies, and especially other top characters who lose the neutral game to Marth, and characters considered to have a 50:50 match up against him, like Captain Falcon.

Not only would it help the spacies, but it will also help many characters especially the mid-tier and low-tier characters who do not have the tools and options to keep up with Marth's speed and range near the ground. At high levels of play, these mid-tier and low-tier characters have a difficult time to punish and create openings, especially since they can't utilize poor matchup knowledge from the Marth player, and bad execution...well sometimes. Even though it brushes off one bad matchup, there are still many other matchups that they have to focus on since Marth isn't the only bad matchup for them.

As a Doctor Mario main, no Marth in Melee would definitely help alleviate a bad matchup, especially since Doc does poorly against characters who outrange him.

 

[kohake]

Out of all the high/top tiers in Melee, Marth probably has the least impact on the meta. Acording to M2K he's got somthing like a 50/50 matchup against Fox, Falco, Puff, Sheik, CF, Pikachu & Yoshi. He gives Peach, IC and Samus some trouble, but those characters all have worse matchups (Peach v Puff, IC v Fox, IC v Peach, Samus v Puff & Samus v CF). The characters who'd benefit the most are probably the character who struggle with range, (Dr.) Mario & Luigi. But I don't think it would lift them out of mid tier.