"Super Smash Bros. Melee often shortened to "SSBM" or "Melee", is a 2.5D fighting game for the Nintendo GameCube. It was released on November 21st, 2001 in Japan, and December 3rd, 2001 in North America, shortly after GameCube's launch, and then on the following year in Europe and Australia on May 24th, 2002 and May 31st, 2002 respectively. Melee features gameplay unique from that of other fighting games. Compared to characters in other fighting games, Melee characters have simple movesets and lack complicated button inputs and lengthy natural combos. Instead Melee emphasizes movement and ringouts. Indeed, edge-guarding in Melee takes on much more significance than it does in most other games due to copious mid-air jumps and other methods of reaching the edge unfettered. The game has sold over seven million copies and is the best-selling GameCube game." -SSBM Wiki

Mario

Mario sits at 15th on the current melee tier list. His clone/semi-clone Doc and Luigi sit at 11th and 13th respectively each bringing there own flair to the semi-viable list. Doc has a great neutral game and solid kill setups on a good amount of the cast, but has the worst movement of the trio. Luigi is melee's jankiest character, floaty, but with the longest wavedash in the game allowing for crazy movement with a crazier combo game. These strengths are what put these characters in a viable tier of the melee tier list. So what happened to Mario? Mario has better movement then Doc and higher priority, but lacks Doc's kill power and neutral projectile advantage. Mario's aerials have less landing lag when L-canceled and a lot more range on his powerful forward smash. The one major issue holding Mario behind these characters, a draw back that hurts any characters chance of being viable a serve lack of kill power. Mario has amazing fluid movement he struggles to finish his opponents. His Combo game is nice and fluid as well as boasting chain grabs on a lot of heavier top tiers, but most of the time you need a hard f-smash read to solidify a kill. This is what keeps mario out of the D tier with his clones. I think there is still room for mario to be developed, flowcharted, his various strengths taken advantage of, and his sublime and scary edge-guarding to be perfected.

Defining Viability

"Viable:capable of working successfully; feasible." In terms of the melee tier list, viability is defined as a characters ability or chance to win a major tournament. To me thats a very linear way to display viability in melee. It is widely agreed that any character lower then tier C has little no chance of winning a major event but melee is so much more then major events. Most events are run as grass roots style locals and every melee player starts somewhere. At that level of play there is a much more diverse cast of characters that can be considered viable. It is my personal believe that starting the this game by playing a lower tier character and rising through the ranks at your own locals builds amazing melee fundmentals. This is why I believe Mario is a viable.

This list will be comprised of legendary mario mains who have taken up the plummer on a crusade to conquer the best that melee have to offer. This all with the 15th ranked character. Other players included in this list are players who have shown amazing ability with Mario as a secondary character. While these players are not grinding through the ranks with mario they have a lot to offer in terms of learning match ups and new insight as to how mario can and could be played. This list will hopefully one day span a massive group of players f-smashing there way through the Melee ranks.

Mario Frame Data

Smash Boards the home of the Melee Communitity for so long has a list comprised of every characters moveset in Super Smash Bros. Melee broken down frame by frame. This is called a characters frame data. This information can be used to push the very edges of a character and push them to max potental. Mario's Frame Data is serverly underused, and the character is serverly underplayed and undiscovered. There is still tech out there being discovered today for this age old game and I don't think the Italian plummmer has show us all of his Melee potental just yet. I urge you to get out there and study this frame data and theory craft new and invovative ways for the plummer to conquer and topple the top tiers.

Mario Match Up Guides

There is no defined match up guides for Mario at the moment. I personally believe I am not good enough to create my own, and have them be any use. For now this link will link to the Melee Library, and the information they have available for Mario. There are a few solid guides to help any new player learn his way around.

This section will be purely for the apprecation of Mario and the already great content people have created. I hope this will become a source of insparation for future Mario players to join the crusade. I also hope this will be come a reference point for people learning how to play Mario. Mario videos are a great way to pick on what can be done in certain situations, and combos that can be pulled off.