Trouble maintaining control of my character

[GameBird]

Am I the only one who has problems with this? Melee consistently is the only Smash game in which I frequently feel that I've lost control of my character. Maybe it's just because I play Samus, but there have been many, many, many times when I try to dash only to leisurely walk, or I just have the hardest time turning around and attacking the other direction (I cannot simply face left/right after doing an attack in the other direction). Or I hit the Z button to grab but 7 times out of 10 I just light shield instead. I thought that it would go away with time and practice, but ever since day 1 of playing melee back in 2001 I have always had this problem and it's never changed, no matter how much I play.

I sometimes have this problem in Smash64, but I haven't played it competitively so it's never stood out to me. Project M and Smash4 are the first games where I've really felt to be in control of my character, and I don't have ANY of the problems listed above at all. Again I'm not sure if it's a Samus issue (since in Melee I really only play Samus or G&W) or if it's just me, but even the people I smash with could see me struggling to simply turn around and had no clue as to why.

Am I the only one who's had this issue? And if not, is there any advice for how to improve?

 

[Narpas_sword]

i'm with you, when i go back to melee after PM my samus feels stuck in mud.

Probably something to do with the melee crap control stick dead-zones. the differences in dashing. no crawl.

 

[Dolla Pills]

The number one thing to do is to make sure it's not the controller/lag on the TV, but since you're fine in other games that's probably not it. You're probably doing your inputs while still in lag from a move which is why you would miss dashes or grabs after attacking/landing. Just practice and learn the timings.

 

[ChaosSnake29]

The problems I have with controlling my character usually come from playing on an HDTV. CRT's are best for Melee, obviously, and once I ditched my HDTV for a CRT for Melee, I noticed the buttons I pressed started doing what I wanted them to do instead of one of them not responding every few presses due to input lag. And yes, I had the same issue with Smash 64. It even happened on the Virtual Console version.

 

[GameBird]

Yeah it's not so much a HDTV lag issue... I do game on HDTVs, but I was very particular about getting ones with little to no lag at all, but even when playing at someone's house on a CRT I still have the issues.

@ Narpas_sword It's interesting to hear you say that, maybe it is a Samus issue? How would you define the control stick dead zones?

@ Dolla Pills I think this is probably the case... I don't know every character's move and end lag and such so I sometimes mash A when I should be more deliberate. It's tricky practicing against CPUs because I find practicing moves in a 'vacuum' doesn't really prepare me to deal with high pressure situations, and when I play at a smash group I don't want to grind the event to a halt and be like "Let me practice something on you!" So it can be tricky...

@ ChaosSnake29 I haaaaaate laggy HDTVs. The worst was trying to play Super Mario bros on a display at a store in front of my at-the-time friend and gf and they made fun of me for dying so much and wouldn't believe that the TV just had terrible lag.