Mario (SSF2)

Mario is a veteran starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. He is one of the first four characters, alongside, , and , to be confirmed and first incorporated into the game. His sprites are custom-made and based on his appearance in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but with his bright colors from Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. His voice-clips are directly taken from Brawl, and his moveset is a combination of his movesets in Melee and Brawl.

Mario is currently ranked 17th of A tier on the current tier list, one spot higher of his last position on the previous tier list, 18th of B tier. Mario has fast, low-laggy attacks, good combo ability, a good grab and throw game, and strong finishers in all of his smash attacks, neutral aerial, forward aerial, back aerial, and his back throw and up throw. He has a projectile, a Fireball, which he can use to hinder his opponents' approach, zoning, edgeguarding situations, or bait out a shield. He has a strong edgeguarding game with his Fireball, Cape, and strong aerial attacks. He also has an average recovery with Mario Tornado and Super Jump Punch, covering good vertical distance while Cape stalls him in midair for a short moment.

However, Mario most critical flaw is his lack of range: his poor attacking reach prevents him from fighting at a safe distance and consistently forces him to approach characters in close-quarters combat. This can give players difficulty when fighting against characters with large or disjointed hitboxes, like, and , or characters with large hitboxes, like. Additionally, his recovery is very predictable, as Super Jump Punch is a little on the slow side, despite its quick startup and he might encounter problems with recovering abilities when he is up against a good edgeguarder. His Fireballs possess low priority, which allows them to be canceled out easily by many other attacks, while Mario Tornado can only serve as a close-range interceptor, not KOing until very high percents. Additionally, Cape has little hitstun and moderate ending lag, making Mario open if the reversed opponent bounces back towards Mario. Mario has blatant problems with his range, which leaves him highly vulnerable to characters with disjointed range, especially swordfighters, like and. His recovery is linear and predictable, especially after he uses his double-jump and Mario Tornado, making him somewhat easy to gimp and edgeguard against. His zoning game is not great, as his projectile is weak, slow, and can be reflected or absorbed.

Mario appears to have a small playerbase, and has decent representation in online tournaments. Of those, Mario's placements in tournaments are shown to be high, and Mario appears to have a superior neutral game; in comparison to the other characters like, and. Although he possesses apparent weaknesses, his strengths drastically outweigh the aformentioned weaknesses, causing him to reside at high-tier.