Why Are 80% Of Melee Stages Banned?

foreign Super Smash Bros melee has a total of 29 stages today six are used in competitive play Final Destination Battlefield Yoshi's story Dreamland 64 Pokemon Stadium and Fountain of dreams so why did 80 of the game's content get removed from competitive play today we're going to look at what makes a good stage what makes a bad stage and how melee's rule set has changed over time you might be surprised which stages were considered tournament legal and how long they survived for thank you early tournaments were Lawless items on five stocks every single stage in play that was the rule set for tournament go 3 in 2002 by today's standards it's almost another game entirely so let's fast forward and set our start date in 2004 when the melee back rooms or MBR rule set was first set in stone of the 29 available stages eight were banned right out of the gate first on the chopping block is Hyrule Temple which is just huge and easy to Camp Yoshi's Island 64 is next for the same reason it's big and certain characters literally cannot recover from parts of it flat zone is Tiny has falling projectiles and actually makes all characters two-dimensional which causes hitboxes to behave differently than they would on other stages Venom slows the game down has all sorts of janky walls and R Wings shoot you full of lasers Force hide is pretty much all walls has no real flat area to fight and has a giant UFO that comes down and messes things up Great Bay is Tiny has disappearing Turtle the Blast Zone on the left side is like three feet from the stage and also this guy freak little Gremlin little baby man I used to go mountain is banned because of the fact that half the time you're more focused on navigating the stage than fighting your opponent and brinstar depths because I mean just just look at it Jesus Christ that leaves us with 21 tournament legal stages as of 2004. so how did we shorten that list to just six first let's define what constitutes a quote-unquote bad stage we can consider a bad stage to be anything that introduces excessive Randomness compromises the competitive Integrity of the game by putting certain characters at a considerable advantage over others or contains exploitable terrain let's look at the last one first temple is a great example of a stage that's just way too big if a player were using Fox they could shoot a couple of lasers get a percent lead and then run around for 8 minutes until the timer winds down and they win by default same goes for Yoshi 64. so obviously large stages are out at the same time small stages like Great Bay are also out ice skull mountain and brinstar depths are just way too weird in terms of map geometry and they're pretty much unplayable in a serious setting so weird or exploitable terrain are out the next thing is stage hazards which includes things like falling objects flat zone out walls are also a No-No so Venom and four-sider band because you can perform infinites with characters like Fox Pikachu and S young Link Etc we also have to be wary of the cave of life which is a closed off section of the map where characters can live to insane percentages think the lower half of Temple yeah these were the main things taken into consideration when Banning stages however over the years it became apparent that there were more problems with stages and as players became more technically proficient more stages had to be banned to avoid them being exploited the first thing we're going to look at is called a walk-off it's exactly what it sounds like it's a part of the stage where you can walk off to the blast zone of the tournament legal stages under the MBR 2004 rule set five of them had walk-offs Mushroom Kingdom one and two Yoshi's Island onet and big blue in the early days of melee these stage design flaws weren't a huge issue sure you could camp in the blast zone wait for your opponent to an airplane and then back throw them into Oblivion but only an idiot would fall for these kinds of the general tactics instead walk-offs became a problem when Fox Mains started getting more and more technical for example footage of this tournament set surfaced where Fox Mains elgaris put Eddie's Ganon in a blender and wave shined him up the hill on Yoshi's Island three times to win the game with ease against characters like Chic and Peach all fox has to do is land one shine near a walk-off and it's basically a guaranteed kill but there were other reasons why these five stages got banned let's start with the obvious big blue which got itself banned by being a terrible stupid stage that no one likes from the Cars to the weird terrain to the fact that if you land on the road you get sucked into the blast zone big blue is an Abomination and anyone who says they like this stage is lying to your face there I said it I have spoken okay let's move on Mushroom Kingdom and Yoshi's Island have blocks that you can fall through or use as a cave of Life Mushroom Kingdom 2 features Birdo who comes in shoots what looks like eggs and then runs away onet has tons of weird geometry no bottom Blast Zone and random cars doing 90 in a school zone dealing 30 to any children playing in the street kids so yeah these stages were banned pretty quickly now we're moving into stages that are almost legal like just on the edge of being playable but not quite these stages were legal under the 2008 rule set but were banned shortly after let's start with Princess Peach's castle which is probably the least tournament viable in this section the giant Tower in the middle splits the map in two there are platforms that appear when you step on switches Bonsai Bill blowing up the map is understandably problematic but most importantly the stage has walls similar to zelgadis running up that hill like Kate Bush on Yoshi's Island walls are problematic because if a fox player is technical enough they can trap their opponent against the wall and perform an infinite for this reason corneria was also banned although it has other issues like arrowing that come in and shoot you mid-match and the giant Laser cannon under the nose of the ship thankfully we got some sick combos before we said goodbye [Music] brinstar is a weird one the asymmetrical platforms wouldn't necessarily be a problem except for the fact that the floor is uneven also this stage can be broken in half the platforms cut loose and the stage floods with acid completely stopping gameplay my favorite thing about this stage is if you jump into the acid right from the angel platform your invulnerability makes you tank the hits and you just fall to your death what a goofy stage green greens would have been a cool stage sort of like small Battlefield if the floor of the stage was continuous unfortunately instead of a floor the stage is broken up by two sets of falling destructible blocks which are sometimes actually not blocks but bombs which explode and kill you also the tree shoots out apples which you can throw like projectiles Bonk band funnily enough three of the most borderline legal stages in the game all come from the same franchise Donkey Kong please these are Congo jungle Congo jungle 64 and Jungle Japes all three of these stages have one thing in common it's what happens under the stage that makes them unfit for tournament play Jungle Japes has a river that flows under it which is home to one of the deadliest Predators known to man The claptrap who comes out of nowhere to drag you to the depths of the blossom Congo jungle and Congo jungle 64 both have big rotating barrels that go back and forth under the stage to catch anyone who falls into them Landing in the barrel lets you shoot out of it to recover but it's really really difficult to aim accurately to compensate both of these stages have permeable floors meaning you can fly up through the bottom at any point unfortunately permeable floors are not tournament viable and lead to stuff like this speaking of Peach vs Ganon the straw that broke the monkey's back for Congo jungle 64 was this game between Rock Croc and pink Shinobi where the height of the side platforms was abused to their fullest extent on top of this both Congo jungles have weird floor geometry and the newer of the two has logs that randomly appear a rock on the side that can easily be camped and you guessed it claptrap foreign so where does this leave us so far we've confidently banned 20 of melee's 29 stages that leaves us with three to go before we finally settle on a true competitive rule set so what are the last three if they've survived for this long they must be incredibly close to being tournament viable right what the f according to the script in front of me three of the last stages to be officially banned in melee were rainbow Crews mute City and pokefloats let's just get to it rainbow cruise is a side scroller the ship crashes the platforms move and tilt and disappear it's an absolute Nightmare and yet the stage was a legal counter pick until 2010. it wasn't until Dr PP laid the smackdown on Mewtwo King at ROM 3 that the stage was finally axed next mute City where to start the main platform has no grabbable Ledges and is fully permeable the floor of the track is also permeable you can bounce off it and get hit by cars there are walls that appear and block recovery and most notably fast fallers get absolutely trounced once they're off stage plus floaties like Peach are op as shown by Armada at Genesis 1 where he beat mango on the stage and we haven't seen it as a legal counterpick since finally Pokey floats I'm not gonna say anything about this stage I'm just gonna let the Montage play thank you [Music] are we serious no no no no okay he's dead he's trying to oh all right so that leaves us with six stages sure Fountain of Dreams is banned in doubles because if everyone selects Ice Climbers the game freezes and sure some of the stages have slanted angles moving platforms shy guys that affect your trajectory a tree that blows you sideways and a cute little Cloud named Randall but at the end of the day these offenses are benign compared to what came before in fact oh god oh Jesus what the hell is happening okay we should probably talk about this Pokemon Stadium is a great stage really great good platforms awesome length [Music] that's quite big no top platform to Camp there are just two issues with it you can't really see yourself while you're recovering and the Transformations when the Jumbotron starts flashing the competitive viability of this stage goes out the window there's the pit the cliff the windmill Jigglypuff's rollout goes Hyper Speed on the grass the tree of life I mean Cave of life on the fire transformation the floor turns into not floor and then this happens that was some and the melee Community put up with it for years all the way up until the pandemic hit and we all got used to playing on slippy now most tournaments use a modded version called Frozen Pokemon Stadium and for the most part everyone is really really happy so there you have it for real this time after 20 years of debate the melee Community has settled on these six stages Battlefield Yoshi's story Dreamland 64 Pokemon Stadium and Fountain of dreams as starters and Final Destination as a counter pick we hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and if you could bring one band stage back into competitive melee let us know in the comments which one you'd choose my name is Jonah thanks for watching this video is made possible thanks to our wonderful patrons massive thank you to everyone on this list and shout out to be Cloud kioustic shampoo Spartacus and yashichi for being Platinum supporters as well as an extra special shout out to Steph for being our Diamond supporter thanks guys we really appreciate it if you want to talk to us check out our Discord if you want to support our Channel and get info on unreleased videos check out our patreon if you want to help us out in a different way leaving a like subscribing and hitting the Bell to stay up to date is also appreciated my name is Jonah thanks for watching

Channel: Akshon Esports

Views: 156,232

Keywords: akshon, akshon esports, esports, gaming, video games, Smash bros, Ssbm, Smash melee, Smash ultimate, Ssbu, Nintendo, Smash esports, Fighting games, Fgc, Smash melee history, Smash melee stages, Smash bros stages, Smash bros banned stages, Ssbm tournament, Final destination, Poke float, Final Destination, Battlefield, Yoshi’s Story, Dreamland 64, Fountain of Dreams, Super smash bros, Super smash bros melee, Super smash bros ultimate, smash bros melee ban, smash melee guide

Id: 8r9VlXXpqec

Length: 12min 57sec (777 seconds)

Published: Sat May 13 2023