The Rise & Fall of Competitive Giga Bowser - Smash's BANNED Top-Tier

there is a character in Super Smash Brothers Melee that is so powerful so dangerous that he is forbidden from mainstream play this character is so powerful that his creators never even intended for him to be playable and yet through some horrible twist of fate he was [Music] [Music] in Super Smash Brothers Melee Gage Bowser is a final boss of sorts he's fought at the end of event mode and in the harder difficulties of Adventure Mode this more monstrous take on Bowser may seem to be the same character just with a bit more close but certain differences between him and Bowser make him a much better and stranger character gigabowser is nearly twice the size of Bowser and many of his attacks hit harder as well he has much higher knockback resistance and a greater weight than any character in the game his moveset on face value is the same as Bowser's even sharing similar Frame data and properties but there are key differences Bowser in ssbm is a character very much reliant on his upbeat whirling Fortress this one move offers Bowser four frames of invincibility during its startup also when used properly this move could not be Shield grab and it allows Bowser the ability to move much more quickly than with any of his other movement options it can be used to win neutral interactions Edge guard attack out of shield and even ledgehog in a character scene is the worst in the game this move is Bowser's main Saving Grace offering him range speed and protection and Giga Bowser's version of this move is exponentially better foreign never get smaller and his upbeat has complete invincibility for like almost half a second his upbeat has complete invincibility all you have to do if Giga Bowser is press upbeat that's all that's how you win with Giga Bowser from around 2007 to 2008 melee got Jason Mewtwo King Zimmerman would begin exploring the potential of gigabauzer as a competitive character one of the first things to stand out to him was whirling gigafortress an up special move that granted the character 26 frames of invincibility and which could be used more aggressively than Bowser's whirling Fortress this move was bigger faster stronger and extremely safe in most situations with this upbeat possibly being the best move in the game Mewtwo King soon found that Giga Bowser was dominant against just about every character except for one you can Bowser beats every character except for Jigglypuff so let me tell you something about puff against Giga Bowser um Jigglypuff if Jigglypuff hits gigabytes with pounds what happens gigabaza doesn't get knocked down on the grounds but what happens is gigabauzers put in landing lag you could pound rest and it's a true hit stunt combo in that matchup by hitting Giga Bowser with pound or other moves m2k found that he could then trigger the brute's Absurd 30 frames of Landing lag this unprecedented half second of immobilization made Giga Bowser a Sitting Duck for a Jigglypuff rest not only did this strategy work it was also extremely easy to execute it seemed like the meta had been solved giggle Bowser was broken but Jigglypuff was even more broken m2k would drop gigabowser and focus on more important things and for years the gigabytes are meta was stagnant gigabauzer was not even playable in base melee so even as the game grew into an enduring esport he would remain a footnote that is until one seismic event that would change melee throughout three months into the covid-19 lockdown project slippy was Unleashed onto the world this game-changing modification would allow ssbm to be played online with rollback netcode for the first time slippy gave a fast and responsive online infrastructure to the 20 year old game but some Mischief Makers soon learned how to exploit the program bringing unintended characters into the game's online matchmaking system known as unranked among these players was Justin dark Gen X Cohen a melee multi-hyphenate from New Jersey who I spoke to for this video here's him explaining what went down this was during the coveted era someone discovered that you could play as unintended characters on unranked so you could play as the Mario climbers which were basically Ice Climbers with two Marios instead of uh Nana and popo could play as the wireframes you could play as other characters and you could also play as Giga Bowser and it was really funny just loading into a game seeing gigabytes or t-pos onto the screen because he doesn't have an animation or uh when he loads in for because it's probably not intended to be played and you just load into the games like a Bowser and there's this giant like hulking Beast walking around the screen larger than half the stages and you just fight people and I thought it would be funny if I just went on ranked and played Giga Bowser into people because of the novelty of it dark Gen X was not the only player to toy with Giga Bowser at this time but his dedication to the character was especially serious he more or less became a gigabau's remain overnight Beyond using the character on unranked he would also send his Giga Bowser out to fight expert players in the melee online Discord server soon he was learning new things about the character and because I played the character for a couple of days non-stop I started like discovering things about the character and exploring how the character worked in certain matchups figuring out like intricacies of how to play the character over time dark Gen X found three elements in the character that made him especially hard to beat when played correctly the first element was that Giga Bowser could not be grabbed this in turn made his shield game much stronger there's the entire idea in any fighting game where grab beats shield shield beats move and then move beats crab like The the triangle the rock paper scissors time Giga Bowser cannot be graphed by nature of him being very big and thus having a giant Shield if he just holds Shield there are very few things you can do to actually hit him out of Shield unless you Whittle it down very heavily and hit him with moves if Giga Bowser's Shield was attacked dark Genex could then use giggle whirling fortress out of Shield as a nearly unpunishable way to hit back this move could even be used to go straight to ledge and then linked into gigabauzer's massive ledge get up attack and you basically get a guaranteed hit or a guarantee like Escape option off of just being hit in Shield end up being out of Shield finally dark Genex found that Giga Bowser's up smash could reach all the way up to the top platform on most stages giving Giga the ability to juggle characters easily and get early kills for maybe the first time dark Genex was helping to build a modern meta for one of melee's most forgotten Fighters this new approach to the character even worked relatively well as an answer to Jigglypuff while the Jigglypuff matchup was by no means easy it was a different pink floaty who would be giga's greatest threat don't be wrong I think puff does very well against Bowser and beats gigabauzer but I don't think it is the 100 zero that most people who watch the Mewtwo King video and have only that frame of reference to go on think it is like I would be more concerned if someone were to counter pick me with peach than with oh Peach was one of the few characters who could really challenge Giga Bowser's shield and take advantage of his massive hurt boxes and all she had to do was press down on the c-stick the basic like top-down idea is this you as a Giga Bowser want to be underneath the opponent the only exception to this rule is peach because as most people know Peach's down smash is a multi-hit move and you know how like as a newer player newer players uh will sometimes like narrow into a peaches down smash at zero as Fox and they get hit for like 80 in the blender Giga Bowser if if you just picture you're like gigabal is just massive if you get hit by a peach and you are underneath the side platform as Giga Bowser you are taking a stupid amount of damage every single time it's bad it's really really bad while dark Gen X was building a new Giga Bowser meta game hundreds of miles away another player would break new ground for the character as well there's a saying in Pittsburgh melee if you can find a way to access the character then they are legal it was under this philosophy that pghto and player Gumball would do something no player has done before in ssbm's recorded history enter gigabowser into a tournament it was July and while gigabowser was set to be removed from unranked he was and remains playable in direct connect matches the same kind of matches used in 1v1 online tournaments Gumball gave no advance notice that he would be using the character but entered it into pgh's Man on a Ledge 322 on July 17 2020. [Music] all right [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] oh yeah ready go [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] for the first time ever gigabowser had competed in a tournament set of Super Smash Brothers Melee and he'd lost w a Matt had proven that characters like Falco still do very well versus gigabowser when played properly it was it was heartbreaking I never thought my emotion or my composure would be able to get back but this was a double elimination tournament and Gumball still had one more chance to redeem the banished Beast after going up 1-0 versus Peach main John Gumball would find himself downed One stock to three against a character that many Giga Bowser theorists believe beat gigabows are harder than pop he would need to make a reverse three stock in order to win the game [Music] [Applause] foreign [Music] Gumball would run through three Martha players TGs Wolfram Rodney and alternative before going head-to-head against Jada in losers round five [Music] he would lose as the 12th seed he placed fifth it was a promising showing but this would be Gumball's last Giga Bowser tournament either like a week from then or like not long after that they patched out Giga Bowser in as I understand in the um in unranked yeah and so it was like I couldn't I couldn't grind I couldn't go on there and play Giga Bowser normally so I was like okay I'm not gonna I'm not gonna keep making issues for my own tournament on Thursday July 23 2020 dark genics would release the second ever Giga Bowser combo video so long G Bowser to commemorate the character's removal from unranked it felt like after a summer of fun people were saying goodbye to the beast but Giga Bowser would get one more chance to shine on the big stage during the early months of the pandemic one of the most prominent east coast online weeklies for melee was East Coast smashed Sundays hosted by T.O Bender hoping to get the New Jersey native in his event Bender asked dark Gen X on one August day what he could do to get him to enter he'd always asked me to enter events and I normally don't enter and I play tournaments I had a little stint for a couple of months where I would enter stuff like uh I'd do all right I qualify for lscs3 uh when I was actually active playing but um I didn't really enter a lot to play tournaments but Bender said you know to dark Gen X Justin like can you enter an eplay Tournament of mine enter an apple Tournament of mine and I'm like I'll think about it I'll think about it and he was like okay here's the deal you enter the step a tournament of mine and I will either unban wobbling or I will allow gigabauzer for one event they're already we're wobbling legal tournaments but gigabytics illegal tournaments unheard of so I was like you know what sure I'll under East Coast smash Sundays if you like Giga Bowser uh the second ever Giga enabled tournament was about to begin [Music] dark genex's first opponent would be Falcon main G regulate the two would spend much of game one trading stocks but dark Genex would secure the win with a reversed f-smash Edge card [Music] g-regulate would then take dark Gen X to Final Destination where he would be promptly zeroed to death at the beginning of the game even Landing a falcon punch Edge guard afterwards was not enough for g-regulate to take the game for the set gigabowser would go on round two would put dark genex's theory about gigabows your matchups to the test though Faust was the event's third seed and they played Jigglypuff the character that supposedly beat gigabowser harder than anyone there were definitely some people who said different things such as I think Faust dq'd after the first game or two stocks of the first game because the character was fundamentally broken when I reached out to Faust for this video they said that puff couldn't beat gigabowser at all due to her lack of Shield pressure options and that it was silly of Bender to allow the character into the tournament in the first place Faust would refuse to fight altogether and darkenex's gigabowser would go on foreign [Music] dark gen X's Giga Bowser dropped game 2 against majersk's Captain Falcon the Falcon player would not take another game [Music] for the first time ever a Giga Bowser was in winners finals here dark genex's Giga Bowser would face another New Jersey player a Chic main named Tommy [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] feet first time [Music] after losing game one Tommy would make an unusual character counterfeit Ness Texas [Music] to the beach [Music] years ago Tommy had played casual Project M games against a friend of his who would play as that game's version of Giga Bowser back in those days Tommy found that NASA's PK Fire could be used to quickly rack up damage against Giga Bowser but attempting the same trick in melee years later he did not see the same success after I regret doing it afterwards but I'm like hey it worked in a PM all those years ago let me just try it out um and it did not pan out well dark gen X's Giga Bowser now had a two-game lead Tommy would need to win the next three games straight to keep his winners run alive [Music] Tommy's Nest Gambit had not paid off but his trusty Chic came in clutch for the next two games it was now game five and whoever would take this last game would be most likely to win the tournament sitting on Winner's side of grand finals [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] Bowser was now in Grand finals and what had begun is a joke would end in a massacre in Grands dark Genex would quickly dispense of Falco main FMB 5K and for one of the world's only and greatest gigabows remains this was a joyful moment little fulfillment from that one I think I think I proved my character's strengths even though I was the sixth seed winning that tournament playing against some strong players um happy with how it went and uh overall I think that East Coast specialist was a good demonstration of what the character can do FMB 5K Jesse definitely said things that I probably will not repeat uh on this video so you're not gonna demonetized but he had some very uh aggressive remarks in regards to my character and the set that was played in Grand finals Giga Bowser would get one more chance to compete in a tournament when the organizers of the New England online Arcadian enlisted dark Gen X to enter the event calvar a number one in New Hampshire at the time and uh former top 100 player also another gigabauzer Enthusiast he messaged me asking if I wanted to enter the New England online Arcadian I was like sure if you're looking at Bowser into the tournament I'll enter two dark gen X's wish was granted however he was only allowed to play Giga Bowser if the other player consented nobody did Dark Gen X would get to top eight in that event without playing Giga Bowser a single time every single match during that event I asked would you like the gentleman to be playing Giga Bowser every single person who I asked said no me and Justin were supposed to play and he types in the chat I believe hey can I go Giga Bowser game one and I said I I had to pause I was in a phase where I was seeking every netplay tournament like super seriously everything mattered to me this tournament in particular because I paid entry it was a lot of money to be played for at this tournament and then I paused and I thought okay if I win this set game five with a Giga Bowser when is my game one I will feel empty inside it was almost as if people didn't want to bother with a typically unplayable boss character I'm literally playing every day and Gumball goes bigger Bowser in a mole bracket that was Rodney speaking you might remember that he lost to Gumball's gigabowser at Man on a Ledge 322 back in July of 2020. he doesn't remember the details of the tournament perfectly but he's still mad all of this is to say that Giga Bowser might be a fun novelty for those fighting the character once or twice but even if the character is likely not the best in the game he's not a fun opponent and while we have seen two Giga Bowser tournament runs now both of these players chose to play Giga Bowser and gigabauzer alone throughout their bracket but gigabowser's true potential wouldn't really be reached until players started using the character as a counter pick I think that including a new character into a metagame who is essentially a giant execution test versus a bunch of players who have zero match of experience would lead to very funny results in that I think a bunch of them get destroyed cheater cheater but also it would start developing character counter picks because people would start saying okay it's much easier to play peach or it's much easier to play as Jigglypuff against Giga Bowser than it is to play as fox or Falco or sheep and then the Giga Bowser player might counter pick as fox or counterpick as like Marth or something like that like can you imagine a game five like nail biter set and then someone just counter picks king of Bowser like the controversy behind that if gigabasa was legal in Melee character counter picks are allowed after each match with the winning player of the previous match locking in a character before the losing player of the previous match picks their character this means that word gigabows are hypothetically to be legal players could pull out a surprise gigabauzer counter pick in a game 3 or game 5 tiebreaker scenario and thus get an easy win with gigabaster being an easy character to play relative to the rest of the cast with winning matchups on the game's most popular character characters this could absolutely upend the metagame permanently I think he's like I think he's a top three character but I think that the way that he is a good character is very extreme and would be meta centralizing despite this there are still some who dream of a day where Giga Bowser can roam free Zing should be legal in melee I love Giga Bowser I don't know what was I guess I started working on this video in August of 2022 I asked my Twitter followers and my YouTube subscribers if Giga Bowser should be legal in competitive play out of 37 votes on Twitter 73 said yes Giga Bowser should be legal afterwards I pulled my YouTube subscribers and received 322 votes where 69 of respondents said that gigabowsers should be legal in competitive melee so where do we go from here with Nintendo taking a more active role in the smash scene lately it seems less and less likely that any sort of modding or cheating is going to be something that can be done at least in major smash tournaments without using either cheats or hacks there's not really a consistent way to use gigabowser as a playable character still there might be some hope for Giga Bowser's future in the online space in what has become a new tradition in Super Smash Brothers Melee every April 1st unranked will go from featuring only six tournament legal stages to featuring additional stages that are traditionally banned in competitive play in this tradition dark Genex has asked fizzy that perhaps gigabowser could also be made legal during this single day of the year in his eyes this is one of the few things that may still be able to revitalize the character I think that if fizzy decides to making a Bowser legal for one day on unranked as in April 1st I think that he might get a chance at the spotlight he has not gotten a definitive answer back but dark Genex says there is a chance that come next year a Koopa kaju may be coming for you thank you to Johnny Gumball Campbell Joseph Mullen Gallatin ssbm and Justin dark Gen X Cohen for your help with this video there's a lot of other people who I have to thank their names on screen please like comment subscribe and hit the gig of Belzer this was a lot of work um so now I'd like to just wrap up some things that I did not get to in the video so we technically ended our narrative around October of 2020 but actually in September 2020 there was a video called developing a meta Giga Bowser which released and was made by Joseph Malin and the Forbidden characters Discord this video was a great resource for myself and for others I want to definitely shout out those folks they did an amazing job additionally I want to say that there was a tiny Giga Bowser Renaissance around 2021 when slippy team started really popping up and there was a brief period where people would be playing Giga Bowser in the game's team mode because he had not been patched out of it and he wasn't for a while if you want to host a gigabau's your legal tournament it's very doable the character is still able to be played on slippy with easy to access action replay codes [Music] thank you westones uh no I don't think that um Giga Bowser should be legal I have a hard time thinking that's a controversial opinion too [Music]

Channel: wusstunes

Views: 540,160

Keywords: ssbm, giga bowser, smash, ssb

Id: RxvHReso89k

Length: 30min 35sec (1835 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022