Why Are 80% Of Melee Stages Banned?

Super Smash Bros. Melee has a total of 29 stages of which only 6 are used in competitive play.
The tournament-approved stages are limited to Final Destination, Battlefield, Yoshi’s Story, Dreamland 64, Pokemon Stadium, and Fountain of Dreams, but why?
Today, we’re going to look at what makes a good stage, what makes a bad stage, and how Melee’s ruleset has changed over time.
0:00 - Intro
0:37 - MBR Ruleset
2:05 - What is a "Bad Stage"?
3:36 - The "Walk-Off" Problem
5:25 - Stages That Were "Almost" Legal
10:30 - The Final 6
12:20 - Outro
Support us on Patreon: / akshonesports
Subscribe to our channel! goo.gl/OvCljl
Join our Discord community: / discord
Become a Member to support us: / @akshonesports
Follow us to stay up to date with our releases!
Website: www.akshonmedia.com/
Facebook: / akshonesports
Instagram: / akshonesports
Twitter: / akshonesports
#smashbros

[@Akshonesports]

Which banned Melee Stage would you want to see played for fun in a tournament?

[@illford6921]

Mushroom Kingdom 2, if it didn't have the side walls it'd be legal

[@flamepan]

@@illford6921 and birdo

[@tally6387]

Poke Floats

[@richardzapp8285]

Frozen Brinstar is probably as viable as Frozen Brinstar.

[@Yurio9001]

Mute City Cause fuck fastfallers

[@indigofenix00]

The thing about Poke Floats and Rainbow Cruise is that, while janky as heck, they have two properties that the earlier banned stages didn't have: They aren't random and because they keep moving around they don't have any permanent features that can be exploited infinitely.

[@chenclau]

thank you for explaining, i was confused why those stages didn't get axed earlier because they seemed like they would be really obviously problematic

[@MrFreakHeavy]

You see, pokefloats is the best stage because it's really bad for everyone. Not one character benefits from pokefloats. Therefore, this makes it a greatly balanced stage. I'd say, make it legal again.

[@mowrt620]

Rainbow cruise is honestly not that bad imo. Far from a nightmare. It moves, but at a slow enough pace, and the platform layouts aren't that crazy. I enjoy playing on it!

[@Fuges]

@@MrFreakHeavyI know you’re joking, but one of the bigger reasons the stage was banned was because Fox benefited TOO much from the stage. It got to the point that players would automatically win by choosing fox and playing on poke floats

[@FoulUnderworldCreature]

Poke floats is random

[@lChunkI]

what did Tingle do to you LMAO

[@joshuabrant3487]

molested him

[@noahr607]

He walked up slowly and Fsmashed

[@Gabriel64468]

Exist

[@por5215]

Great band, great album

[@TheRealZXXZ]

Too many wives

[@Mythicalmage]

Corneria was always one of my favorites for casual play.

[@Sly_Maverick_19]

Corneria's the top casual pick for everyone.

[@LiatKolink]

​@@Sly_Maverick_19 Temple is out there too.

[@Sly_Maverick_19]

@@LiatKolink How can I forget another classic stage like Temple? I'll go as far as to say, of all the stages introduced with each iteration of Smash, Melee's stages have to be the best of the bunch.

[@jaschabull2365]

Yep! I remember when my cousin introduced me to this game, whenever we'd start a match and it was time to select stages, I'd cry out, "The plane! The plane! Let's go on the plane!"

[@RighteousnessWillPrevail]

Corneria is actully the best stage for Profesional and casual play for multiple reasons. The Smash community just doesn't know what they're doing.

[@poleon2003]

also the fact about us being used to Pokemon Stadium being frozen was mainly due to the fact that on slippi Stadium NEEDED to be frozen in order for rollback to actually function properly because the transformations messes with the rollback the same reason for the music having to be turned off

[@apricot8301]

Can you elaborate on why the music effects rollback? That seems odd 🤔

[@poleon2003]

@@apricot8301 because Fizzi said that Music and Pokemon Stadium are the only 2 things that read from the disc while you're in game he said this on a video by Hold Back to Block that he had to disable them just so the rollback and savestates wouldn't break because what would happen is that while a rollback happens and when it tries to read from the disc and then the savestates will be all jumbled up and then it would crash

[@deadfr0g]

@@poleon2003 Oh wow, that is an extremely interesting piece of trivia! 😮

[@kevinb5417]

Slippi has only existed for a few years. Don't even try to pretend that's the reason that people are okay with it. The decision was made a decade and a half before Slippi ever existed.

[@jojivlogs_4255]

@@kevinb5417um no? nobody really played on frozen stadium before slippi

[@GarrytheIII.]

I'd bring back Pokéfloats for sure. Great map.

[@mitchelljohnson6106]

Never explained why it got banned 😢

[@jeremyabbott4537]

pokefloats should be 100% legal, but only if both players agree to it

[@harrylane4]

@@jeremyabbott4537 imo if both players agree to it any stage should be legal. Imagine seeing something as horrendous as big blue at genesis because both players said “yeah fuck it why not”

[@nickq8093]

​​​@@mitchelljohnson6106's too big which enables circle camping, has the "mobile stage" problem of making walling absurdly strong, and makes aerial mobility way too emphsised. It's a very rich get richer stage where characteristics that are already heavily emphasised with the current legal stages (aerial mobility, strong defensive hitboxes) become even stronger and pushing the top tier characters even further ahead of much of the rest of the cast. Also it's incredibly disruptive to wavedashes due to all the uneven terrain.

[@salmon_wine]

@@harrylane4 my point in favor of unfrozen stadium is that the jank that happens on that stage is magically, disproportionally hype. It adds just the right amount of crazy to be exciting. A gentlemen to a banned stage is the concentrated version of this. It makes the local tournaments sick af. Falcon players are also sick, this is why the true essence of melee is captured in the grandest phenomenon one can witness: Two Falcon's gentlemen to Mute City in bracket at the local tourney. It's like a sacrifice to Sakurai himself.

[@Electric0eye]

It's amazing the popularity melee has to this day when competitive players largely find 95% of it to be completely unplayable

[@EvilFuzzy9]

No kidding. Competitive Smash players sound like a bunch of babies with this nonsense.😊

[@WolfSaviorZX]

Cause Nintendo still haven't made a good sequel to it for multiplayer (Casual or competitive). Brawl and Ultimate are better or at least different for single player. Wii U/3DS is meh.

[@muselibarnless]

tbf tho this is what happens when a casual game is played competitively, sure it has some cool shit but like. the game is meant for little timmy's introduction to multiplayer games

[@kingstarscream3807]

@@muselibarnless And then, contrary to Sakurai's intentions, little Timmy didn't grow up and move on to real fighting games, but stuck with the same game forever.

[@muselibarnless]

@@kingstarscream3807 i mean, if people are still coming back to a what, 20 year old game. then you did an amazing job even if its accidental

[@Memecs20]

I remember playing on the '08 stage list, back then thought the list was severe, later on when I learned match-ups and counterpicks I got to understand the reason of those bans... Kinda remember that you could z-grab birdo's egg and throw it with the strenght of a stitch face.

[@mrosskne]

what's a stitch face?

[@Oakslee]

@@mrosskne highest damage peach turnip

[@tree2992]

The video cites hazards like bomb blocks and barrels, but they weren't actually seen as that big of an issue. A lot of those stages were banned due to camping with strong defender's advantages, such as the rock in Kongo Jungle. Competitors will tolerate some wackiness or randomness, but they won't tolerate non-interactive play, which those strong defender's advantages often create. Even with the wide stage list, over time the top players tended to prefer the more neutral stages, and it was seen as more "gentlemanly" or "honorable" to only pick neutrals as opposed to, say, Rainbow Cruise. As the game became more grassroots post-MLG, tournament organizers accordingly adjusted the ruleset to what they liked to play.

[@verde7595]

The mild resurgence of stages like Mute City in smaller tournaments lends a lot of credence to that last part, I think.

[@charles167]

It’s crazy to me that Rainbow Cruise and Mute City lasted longer than the Kongo Jungle maps.

[@chaoticembrace925]

they cheap af, Rainbow Cruise and Mute City a bit better

[@divagaciones1628]

You'd think the cars running over characters would be an instant reason to ban mute city. The stage is so dumb.

[@TitaniumDragon]

There's nothing actually wrong with Mute City, it was literally banned because TOs decided they didn't like it. It doesn't present any issues to competitive viability and by being a "changing stage" it forces people to move and fight. The passage of the cars is also predictable.

[@simanolastname2399]

Here are the current issues with the legal stages: Fountain of Dreams - Can be laggy. Often banned in doubles. Yoshi's Story - Slanted edges. Shyguys are random and can affect hitboxes and launch trajectories. Randall is technically very predictable but weird. Final Destination - Considered a counterpick stage, can give some characters (see: Marth) significant advantages due to lack of platforms. Dreamland - Whispy blows wind. Also has the biggest blastzones Battlefield - Ledges can be janky in a phenomenon known as "Getting Battlefielded". Frozen Pokemon Stadium - Pretty much nothing. Unfrozen Pokemon Stadium - god how did we put up with this

[@sylvisorex]

i'd say frozen stadium's issue is how the stage can block you from seeing exactly where characters who are under it are positioned sometimes. pretty minor in comparison but it's definitely still an issue

[@nearthe2nd]

If they can make Frozen Pokemon Stadium legal, the community should mod and legalize Frozen/Lavaless Brinstar, Frozen Green Greens, and Waterless Jungle Japes or something. Seems viable in concept to me.

[@simanolastname2399]

@@nearthe2nd Frozen Brinstar still has the problem of uneven terrain. Frozen Green Greens has the issue of the top blast zones being way too close. Waterless Jungle Japes still buffs characters with projectiles and good jumping abilities, and has a way-too-high ceiling. Intuition also tells me the l/r platforms are a problem. I also don't think we really need more stages. The stage list we have right now is fine.

[@BabzaiWWP]

@@simanolastname2399 could still be neat to see people try, even if its not used for anything

[@h3ck774]

@@simanolastname2399 Honestly anytime custom stages have been done and liked they are just variations of previous stages

[@TheMacroShow]

Yo calm down let Tingle be!!

[@coatrak1357]

Exactly! The tingle hate was so unwarranted Also, Iove the videos macro!

[@epicgaming11195]

didn't expect to see you here ya noob

[@isucc724]

my favorite moment regarding melee legal stage list was when ultimate was announced and people were bragging about all the legal stages they were gonna have for tournaments compared to melee (like, they do have 3-4 more stages than melee but they also banned a lot more stages than melee)

[@monchete9934]

And it didn't matter because 99% of players pick PS2

[@RadishAcceptable]

Yup, and honestly Ultimate and 4 have a fuck ton of stages that "should" be legal that are banned just due to jank ass rulesets and needing to have "a certain number of tri-plats so that striking a one tri-plat doesn't lead to them just picking another" and other nonsense. If Smashers did it like any other fighting game where the stage is either set for round one or random and let the loser either switch the character or the stage (winner is locked in to their character) then all this stage strike meta around the jank rulest nonsense would go away too. If you beat somebody and they pick a stage your character is bad at, then you can just switch the stage to one that your character is good at. Too simple for Smashers, I guess.

[@scooter9537]

@@RadishAcceptable saying "you should just do it like other fighting games" doesn't really make sense given that the game is in fact a platform fighter, the stage matters a lot and is a lot more central to the gameplay then 2d fighting games. I also just fundamentally disagree with your first point at least about Sm4sh. 4 had like 2 stages that were essentially just battlefield and were banned, (and one of them was unusable because of the art in the background anyway) , but a vast majority of the kinda okay stages in that game were banned for being really degenerate.

[@RadishAcceptable]

@@scooter9537 Stages in Tekken, Soul Calibur, and Virtua Fighter can flop a matchup 180. Some Tekken characters are so incredibly stupidly strong when they get you to the wall, and infinity stages with no walls are a thing. Bryan on a small stage is degenerate as fuck, and guess what the Tekken community didn't do? That's right. They didn't ban any stages. They didn't pull a jank ruleset out of their asses to make it possible to completely avoid small stages when facing Bryan. It's just a legitimate part of Fury's kit to be able to pick a stage that's good for him when he loses, and for him to be weaker if his opponent chooses to select an infinite stage instead. Likewise some characters gain very little from walls compared to most characters and as such tend to do better on infinite stages. Delfino Plaza was fine, a legitimately interesting stage. Did shenanigans happen sometimes? Sure, but it made the game more interesting, and again with a normal non-jank ruleset you'll never get stuck playing on it for more than a single round in a match. Duck Hunt was fine. Did the tree give some characters the ability to try and run/camp more than on a normal stage? Sure, but witnessing thousands of matches it was stupidly rare that this kind of gameplay actually worked even in matchups where people theory crafted that it was OP. There are more examples, but I think you get the idea. The game is better with more stage variety. Letting the losing player counterpick the stage on a loss with no striking means that to win you need to be a better player and more well-rounded, instead of hiding behind a sloppy and inferior metegame ruleset that protects you from playing on stages you don't want to learn how to play on. With a normal, no jank, no meta shifting, fighting game ruleset regarding stages, you'll get to play on your favorite stage every single match where you don't win every round. If you lose a round because your opponent switched to a stage you hate, you get to change it to a stage you think you have an advantage on. There's even less of an excuse for this shitty stage select system now that hazards can be turned off. Yeah, stages where you can circle camp, that's one thing, but banning a stage for being slightly annoying in a given matchup is all it takes for a stage ban these days.

[@scooter9537]

@Apple Cider if you think delfino is fine I think this conversation is over respectfully. In brawl you get sharked by meta knight the entire game and people camp the walk offs on opposite sides, it's just not interactive, fun engaging or balanced gameplay. Arguably the stage is even worse in smash 4, you can still get sharked for the entire air portions of the stage and people still will camp the walk offs, but then you get the even better jank of dying at 10% off the top when the stage shifts. (This happens on all moving stages in sm4sh and all of them can banned off of that alone). These stages aren't banned because we hate variety, I wish smash had more good stages, they are normally banned because they promote degenerate and unfun gameplay.

[@user-et3xn2jm1u]

Little known fact, the DK stages were banned so as to prevent confusion between the ruleset of Rishi's Jungle Jam and the similar tournament ruleset of Super Smash Bros Melee. Spectators couldn't tell the difference at a glance, although the advantages of Rishi's Jungle Jam become obvious after a few moments.

[@mrosskne]

tf is rishis jungle jam?

[@sequentially8083]

@@mrosskne it’s the greatest melee rule set ever devised

[@verguco6051]

wtf are you talking about?

[@MedK001]

What ever happened to Rishi's Jungle Jam anyway? I never heard about it ever again it was introduced to two tournaments 3 years ago.

[@simanolastname2399]

@@MedK001 It was a joke ruleset, so it has probably only been used at a few events for fun since.

[@baseballbat2280]

Honestly, I’d be interested in seeing Brinstar. I really wonder how anti-competitive stage hazards, especially ones as highly telegraphed as the lava in Brinstar. My biggest issue with it is actually the visibility lol.

[@thornangel16]

If they can mod Pokémon Stadium, they can mod Brinstar.

[@kirbyofthestarsfan]

There's also all the rampant parts of the stage that the players can break there, hitting the pillars or the blocks will turn some platforms useless or split the stage even more

[@duskpede5146]

@@kirbyofthestarsfan the blocks are janky for sure but i don't think the plats being disableable is that bad. especially since its all based on player interaction

[@baseballbat2280]

@@kirbyofthestarsfan while it's true that those are kinda janky, I always saw them as compelling gameplay options. Nullifying side plats can be an interesting options against characters reliant on platform play or shield drops like Yoshi. And taking the time to split the stage in half can promote defensive play on an otherwise claustrophobic stage. Obviously they're not perfectly designed for competition, but I think those serve as examples of how stage gimmicks can potentially add competitive depth and strategy.

[@tristandenijs1861]

Brinstar could honestly be legal. It benefits floaties (see Peach) and hinders the fast fallers, but overall I think it isn't all that much more janky than Unfrozen Pokemon Stadium. The lava is on a timer, and breaking the stage gives some cool strategic options.

[@Atlas-nf2gw]

Kongo Jungle 64 being banned is so funny to me. Like, the barrel with a set path that has the ability to save players? Sounds a bit like an always visible Randall to me. Sharking under the stage? This community banned planking they could just ban that strategy too lmao Melee's community is a bit strange.

[@sylvisorex]

Honestly the ease of camping is wayyy more of an issue than the barrel, competitive players will absolutely camp given the opportunity

[@Lilybun]

Reminds me of the competitive tf2 community a bit. They banned all the weapons and items that may have changed the top tier hierarchy so as a result half the roster is generally unplayable.

[@leaffinite3828]

Idk why he spent 1 second on the camping part when that was 90% of why it was banned. In general the video emphasizes the wrong parts of many bans, though it technically includes all the reasons for the bans the most impactful reason is often barely mentioned in favor of "lol fox op" or stupid shit like the sharking

[@Michael-hc2hp]

The stage was banned because of camping. The video that's always pointed to as the reason for why it was banned is Game 3 of Pink Shinobi vs RockCrock at Genesis

[@Skullhawk13]

@@Michael-hc2hp why not just ban camping?

[@sithlordmikeyp]

I didn't realize people hate Big Blue. My best friend and his brothers and I always played on this stage (not solely, but it was always a contender)

[@nizzwarb764]

Big blue gang rise up

[@REAL2222ful]

​@@nizzwarb764tah tada

[@divagaciones1628]

I used to go to training mode and see which character could keep up running for the most time with the bunny earns on the F-zero track before getting pushed to the death zone.

[@TitaniumDragon]

Big Blue is great, but I love how much that stage griefs people.

[@kefalos7134]

All the stages are fun in their own way, including Big Blue, which is chaotic fun especially with items

[@divagaciones1628]

yeah, all the stages are super fun, and their variety is one of the reasons why melee is so fun at a casual level, though for competitive they're just lol

[@Yipper64]

4:48 I like it in a non-competitive setting.

[@Memecs20]

Big blue is my favorite casual stage to play... Crossed off my bucket list to play Melee, on big blue while riding a moving travel van on the way back from a major.

[@thelastgogeta]

More or less true for all Smash stages. A lot of the banned stages can be learned as well even if they may not be as good as Yoshi's Story on a good day.

[@benjamingesinski9170]

I think looking over the competitive stages in Ultimate should be interesting, especially because of the hazards toggle. It could explain why certain stages got banned, even with hazards off.

[@jmurray1110]

Yeah the ultimate stage list is really conservative A single slant can get you banned as can being too similar to either FD or battlefield It’s weirding knowing brawl could have had the most legal stages given it’s knockback features but slowly got more conservative because metaknight was too good at exploiting shit

[@julianlamonica9450]

I still a hazards on ruleset for ultimate would be better than what we have now. They could finally legalize dream land, Fountain of dreams, and Yoshi’s story

[@Adam_U]

I like that Melee community at least gave stages a fair try. But Smash 4 and Ult community is like "this stage has blue in it, unfair to color blind people. Banned. That stage has annoying music, banned." But then when it comes to CHARACTERS, it's "getting a free kill from 0% by comboing off the top after landing one easy hit is fair and balanced, no ban needed." Looking at you Bayonetta

[@jmurray1110]

@@Adam_U Chat yers in fairness are a lot harder to ban given they have baked in fans they boycott events Brawl metaknight for example when TO’s attempted to ban him in bigger tournaments states with top players andJapan both threatened to boycott because the hours put into learning the character made it near impossible to switch with any success especially given how expressive he is Though Steve has recently been banned in ultimate after phantomMLG’s inputs made it impossible to ban the technique itself and him being a relatively new character made it so less people were so intertwined with the character that they could switch off

[@eragon78]

@@julianlamonica9450 YS isnt banned because its too similar to BF, its banned because people cry about slants. The stage is quite a bit different from BF, its a good stage, people just dont like playing with anything that is different than a perfectly flat stage with some plats. Thats why some rulesets have stuff like hollow Bastion and SmashVile legal at the same time, despite being nearly identical stages, or sBF and PS2 being legal despite being very similar flat bi-platform stages. Those stages are more similar to each other than BF and YS, but are still legal in various rulesets. So yea, YS is ONLY banned because people cry about slants, even though imo, slants are prefectly fine, and its just a matter of get good and practice the stage instead of complain because something is slightly different. They arent random or janky at all, just different.

[@nlb137]

One thought is that if we're happy with freezing stadium, aren't there other maps that'd be viable if they were frozen in their initial state?

[@NinjaLobsterStudios]

I think Brinstar is the only candidate here. Freeze the lava and make the destructible elements un-interactible

[@NinjaLobsterStudios]

Honestly there's no real justification for why we froze Stadium and are not willing to extend the decision to other stages. The main concern around modding the game is Nintendo being able to prove from looking at footage that a mod is being used, which frozen Stadium clearly violates. I don't think there's any other stage where simply disabling the hazard stands a chance of making the stage competitively viable, the remaining problems tend to be geometry-related. But if we were also okay with changing stage geometry (such as moving and removing platforms, while still retaining the same general shape or spirit) then there are definitely some options. Green Greens, Peach's Castle, and Jungle Japes seem most suited to this kind of change.

[@AllUpOns]

@@NinjaLobsterStudios The justification is that it wasn't done for balance. It was done because it caused problems with the rollback netcode in slippi.

[@hennyzhi2261]

Seeing Brinstar return would be fun for the fact that, at least from my dumb casual understanding, it forces an engagement on the top platform when the lava rises. I just think that's a cool, dynamic way to prevent stalling. I would however be open to a mod version that removes the component where you can split the stage in half by attacking that segment of ground. I'm sort of half-n-half wondering what removing the tiltable platforms would do to matchups. So, at least for now, I'd say legal but just remove the stage split.

[@bobboberson8297]

Many characters can actually stall in the acid due to the invincibility you get from grabbing the ledge. Most notably sheik since she gets a lot of invincibility on her up-b. So if you get a lead on your opponent, you can hide in the acid to play for a time out

[@hennyzhi2261]

@@bobboberson8297 That makes more sense to me why it was banned. It's a shame, but thems the breaks.

[@duskpede5146]

@@bobboberson8297 that said sheik can still stall just as long on any other stage

[@Stefinater]

11:14 "When the Jumbotron starts flashing, the competitive viability of this stage *goes out, the window."* Idk why I liked that so much, your delivery on stuff is so funny sometimes haha Also MARCO YOU LEFT ME ALL ALOOONE

[@Werewolfwrath]

I also liked 11:29 "On the fire transformation, the floor turns into NOT floor."

[@FriedChckn13]

I think the future of melee is interesting if we start including more stages, but maybe certain stage picks are only allowed if the chooser is *not* playing a specific character. Like for example, don’t let a Peach player pick Kongo Jungle 64, but an IC player totally could if they wanted to or something. It could allow for more dynamic stage picks and upsets, and adds a new factor of expertise to the top level, changing the playing field. We might see a player or two who are technically less impressive but know how to play more characters on more stages to their advantage.

[@wolfgod6443]

Agreed. Stages are a part of Smash's identity. It's just so hard to hit the right balance, and I don't think anyone wants to rock the boat. On the other hand, a change to allow "more" in the competitive scene can increase/retain interest.

[@AllUpOns]

The future of melee is already interesting with the current ruleset. The game's potential is basically infinite. Adding more stages just means more work for the players without actually increasing the entertainment value or depth of play. Don't get me wrong... crazy stages, characters, and items are all great things for the game because that's what lets new players have fun and learn the game without getting bored. This is one of the major factors that puts Smash and especially Melee above the rest of the fighting genre.

[@Brob2nd]

If that happens, i would be very, very happy, in my opinion N64 Kongo Jungle really deserves to be a counterpick, and if tournaments start to have that rule, then it would be legal and so i would be happy lol

[@SGTsiete]

Maybe I'm a sadist but I kinda want at least 1 stage with Walk offs and I kinda want it to be the goofy ass Mario Stage with the Scale Platforms. It's genuinely just always been a favorite.

[@Quickhand413]

Clearly what Melee needs is a Pokefloats-only tournament

[@Hakokoro]

This non ironically.

[@BlurbyDestroyerOfWorlds]

Bring back unfrozen pokemon Stadium!! It was just the perfect match of jank and comfortable. It was awesome to see people use the terrain to gain a competitive edge, while it is also a normal and fairly viable stage in it's normal form

[@eliotfatovich-luckey4070]

at some point there will only be one competitively viable map left. and I can't wait to see what it will be.

[@smartestmoronx19]

Final destination

[@sauzeefy]

@@smartestmoronx19 FD is a counter-pick stage, as in, it gives a significant advantage to some characters over others. In fact that stage is next-up on the chopping block to potentially be banned next due to the oppressive prominence of chaingrabs and combos that get extended due to there being no platforms to catch you.

[@Not_Astrocat]

@@smartestmoronx19 Nah, current rules have FD as a counter pick. So it is most likely the 1 stage would be Battlefield.

[@FamilyTeamGaming]

Probably won't happen. Also it wouldn't be Battlefield since it's a very glitchy stage with ledge interactions. It's absolutely not enough of a sticking point to ever get it banned, not by any stretch of the imagination, but if we're entertaining the thought of there being only one legal stage in the game, BF has no chance.

[@truluverful]

A NEW stage thats a combination of battlefield platform heights and fd's ledges

[@lounowell4171]

List of things that left me unsatisfied in this video: • Great Bay was banned for circle camping • Peach's Castle was banned at the same time as the other perma-wall/walk-off stages, due to Fox's shine infinite - it only stuck around for longer as a double stage • You can't infinite against the wall on Corneria, the slope messes with it. The big gun can only really be abused by like... Ness, lol, it does make recovering on the left side pretty dumb though. • Ness and Pikachu cannot infinite against walls, the game pushes you back, it's an in-built anti-infinite mechanic. It only works if you're sandwiched between two walls (or you're Fox lol) • Jungle Japes was banned for camping the side platforms as much as it was banned for the water/klap trap • Kongo Jungle isn't historically "close to viable", it's been banned for ages mostly because of hypothetical rock camping • Poke Floats was universally banned before KJ64

[@U1TR4F0RCE]

With stuff like Fox’s infinite is there any reason tournaments don’t just ban fox? Especially since while there’s a bunch of technical stuff he’s both considered the strongest and has infinites. In a card game that usually would be a ban recipe.

[@lounowell4171]

​@@U1TR4F0RCE Mostly, people were more willing to ban stages than a character. But as time's gone on, Fox has proven a really healthy part of the metagame. People have gotten better and better with him, but we still have other characters winning major tournaments. Even if we do end up with Fox being the only viable character one day, I'd say the 20+ years spent advancing our strategies both as and against Fox were well spent. If any 1 character has to be the best in the game, it's kinda fortunate it'd be one of the hardest characters to play and one of the most susceptible to fun combos :)

[@AllUpOns]

@@U1TR4F0RCE Because the real goal of these rules is to have a game that's fun to play and exciting to watch. Fox is both of those things. Whereas the benefit of having an extra playable stage is pretty much nil. Don't get me wrong, goofy stages can be fun and exciting as a side event, but the novelty wears off quickly. Believe me, if it was actually fun to play on these stages, they would be legal.

[@PandaVsGames]

I would bring back Big Blue so we could get a hilarious 3min angry rant vid by you on this psycho decision for that map to somehow be considered tourny viable. Great vid btw!

[@AWearyExile]

I don't get why they just don't play on more community made maps instead of using the six unbanned ones. Obviously the developers of melee didn't make the stages with the intent of high-level tournament play and they changed stadium, so why not just make more maps following the competitive rules?

[@arpeggi14]

those mods do exist, and this was actually a solution that was considered somewhat recently with the release of Slippi making Melee mods more popular among most of the community. there were a few hitches though. i remember some people reporting that the way Melees camera moves makes can cause some weirdness when using custom stages. additionally, a large chunk of the community sorta adopted an “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” mentality in the face of Nintendo’s distain for Melee emulation/modding. it was thought that changing the stages via mods, would add extra risk to all melee events that adopted it. Radar made a great video arguing in favor of custom stages a year or so ago, and i’d def recommend checking it out if you’re interested in the topic.

[@katfrog1]

Then play rivals of aether

[@scaryjack8702]

Nintendo really doesnt like people modding their game. If we were to play with an obvious mod like that nintendo would probably copyright strike most big melee tourneys so they cant stream to twitch

[@nahometesfay1112]

Nintendo is very protective of their IP. They shut down online tourneys (since online netplay is a mod) and wouldn't allow UCF (a very subtle mod that reduces the effect of bad controllers) in Panda Cup tournaments.

[@IncoisaRadio87]

Honestly if we just gave the "Modded No-Hazards" treatment to more stages, I could see some of them being competitively viable, such as Dreamland or Jungle Japes.

[@FranciscoBrostantino]

Nintendo would sue your ass for using a modded game 😂

[@keithg460]

Big Blue is an awesome stage with a great idea that is just plain cool for casual play.

[@syylvia]

Thanks for the satisfying explanation! ive been thinking about this for the longest time

[@fredriddles1763]

I like competitive maps, but I also like the sillier ones too. My favorite is the ice climber map - I like how it tests both your navigation and your combat skills. I also like Poke Floats, and the F Zero Big Blue Map. It kills me that all my closest friends prefer tournament legal maps, even though I inevitably wipe the floor with them.

[@billieeyelash7015]

I remember being a peach main and ALWAYS picking pokefloats, much to the dismay of my friends.

[@maskedmessenger1499]

This is the first time someone actually explained how broken some characters are on certain stages. My opinion was always that competitive smash players are just allergic to fun since I only play casually I find that playing around a changing stage or stage hazard is part of the fun same with items. But no one ever mentioned just how exploitable some of these things were.

[@AllUpOns]

No offense, but this information is nothing new. You just weren't paying attention or chose not to listen to the reasonable explanations given by the competitive scene. It's obvious if you've ever seen good players play with banned stuff that like all of it was removed because it makes Fox super busted and toxic.

[@shooby9496]

@@AllUpOns No he's definitely right. I'm not in the competitive scene but have watched plenty of videos and none of them have ever talked about this in any great detail... they just kind of give vague reasons like randomness. No one not involved is going to do comprehensive research and that's just a silly expectation to have of people.

[@MedK001]

@@AllUpOns It's also very clear that people who thought just like OP did are everywhere in the competitive scene. Just look at Ultimate's stage list and how some stages like Lylat are banned for 0 reason.

[@MrVariant]

Allergic to deodorant but yes 😂 You should see the final fantasy tactics (pvp tactics league/live) iaido teleport cheese. Competitive play is more about knowing how to stun lock or have first turn advantage wins (like yugioh).

[@HypercatZ]

Competitive players when they play Super Smash Bros.: "Please! No broken characters, not broken stages, no items, no final smash, just a fair competition purely based on skills without any casuality!" Competitive players when they talk about the next Super Smash Bros.: "Ugah! Ugah! Me want Goku! Me want Shrek! Me want Spongebob! They be videogame chars cuz they got videogame!"

[@clearandsweet]

Pokefloats is perfect, how dare you. Saddest thing in the world when Sakurai cut it from Ultimate

[@vegetarblessb]

Big blue and pokefloats are fun in the same way items can be fun.

[@M0NK3Y42]

The thumbnail of this video reminded me of a tournament when my friend beat someone pretty badly game 1 (like 3-stock low % no - low diff) so his opponent asks what he bans, and my friend just goes "... I unban poke floats."

[@EnergyBurst2]

My older brother claims Big Blue is his favorite stage in all of smash and I'm convinced he only says that because he knows I hate playing on it.

[@WhatsWrongBuddy]

lmfao i never spit out water before 💀💀💀💀 i chuckled at first but then you kept goinggggg

[@regulusfusionai2050]

I would bring back frozen rainbow ride. It has a wall, sure, but ultimately if it was added in a frozen state, it would be the only tournament legal stage with a wall, and it’s a small one at that, so I think it’d be reasonable as a counterpick option.

[@jheymann69]

You guys make amazing content. I am always confident when I click one of your videos that I will enjoy it!! Great job❤

[@Logic-ys7rw]

I want to bring back f zero, but frozen. Also I think that non frozen pokemon stadium would be a cool counterpick (with frozen still being a starter)

[@KennethDSilva]

Can Green Greens be 'frozen' so that blocks don't fall or the tree doesn't spit apples?

[@ferxxo20xx]

I agree with you, an evened out Green Greens would be perfectly legal

Nice video! 😀 In my experience, the last 3 stages that were banned in tournaments around 2010-2012 were: Rainbow Cruise Brinstar Kongo Jungle 64 Mute City and Pokefloats were legal until 2009 All of this 5 stages were legal in the first Genesis in July 2009

[@lwi_sandwich]

Last month I went to a melee local tournament and me and my opponent decided to gentlemen to poké float. We did not care about the ruleset, we just did it and had fun. I lost to a sad sd during a last stock situation but I didn't care, it was one of the best games of smash bros I ever played.

[@Snidbert]

#LegalizePokeFloats

[@cookster69]

On Green Greens, you forgot to mention that Fox kills about half the cast at 30% (the top blastzone is insanely low. like twice as low as yoshi's)

[@cookster69]

Also, I'd argue the barrel is not a real issue on Kongo Jungle 64 at all, it's predictable just like Randall on Yoshi's Story. It's banned mainly because of how easy it is to timeout, as you mentioned.

[@thesistersofbattle]

I thought this was dumb until I went back and played recently. Most lost stocks, by an absurd percentage, were from stupid stage shenanigans. I get it now.

[@Blundabus1337]

0:04 whats the version of melee's menu theme used here?

[@jksanrio]

The script of this video feels super personal lol

[@KokiriKidLink]

We should all just play Rishi's Jungle Jam

[@biggrayalien4791]

This is the only thing I don't like about competitive smash, it's carried over even into Ultimate. There's so little variety to stages, the most interesting is Pokemon Stadium but it's still just 75% of Battlefield most of the time.

[@PathwayPictures]

Don't let a Melee player drive a car. They'll call for intersections to be banned because cars passing through is "competitively inviable"

[@Hugo_Prolovski]

Thank you for the melee content :)

[@console6010]

this video is too chaotic

[@HarmonicVector]

"60-40 matchup revenge" Yeah bro Leffen is never living that down.

[@connormcnulty6377]

I’m glad Fountain of Dreams is legal, because it was my favorite looking stage in Melee.

[@esthersmith3056]

"competitive viability" isnt some objective thing that exists, that you can just authoritatively state a stage does or does not have. most of the current top players played competitive sets on stadium with transformations; clearly in the most literal sense of the phrase, the stage was viable for the purposes of competition. like, i dont really have a strong opinion on whether or not frozen stadium should be the standard. just very weird to pretend that 2019 was some weird wild west where people didnt understand competition yet. the idea that it was unambiguously uncompetitive, without further discussion, is odd.

[@AllUpOns]

Stadium wasn't frozen because of balance. It was frozen cause it caused problems with rollback.

[@DarkKnightofHeaven]

Can we embrace madness and every so often have a tournament with only the banned stages and just go apeshit?

[@animegx45]

The Big Blue salt was real. Granted, Mute City was always my favorite.

[@ceulgai2817]

I honestly don't know why competitive Melee doesn't just say "You can only play on Battlefield" or "You can only play on Final Destination" and just remove the jank altogether.

[@seekthuth2817]

I want to watch a tournament played on the 7 least competitive stages. Where's my random Ness main from New Hampshire beating a top 20 player by surviving better on icicle mountain than him?

[@soggytoast111]

If the community is willing to have modded Pokémon Stadium as a tournament legal stage, then why not mod other stages to remove the issues with them?

[@paullambert5843]

Considering that a mod makes one stage viable, are there any other stages, in your opinion, that could be just slightly modded to make them legal? Brinstar sans acid? Green greens sans objects?

[@mizark3]

That's crazy that the community sees a blatant bug exploit and goes "yeah that's fine", then they have to tap up or press the jump button at least every 10s to prevent camping and think "unplayable remove pls". Never has the statement "optimize the fun out of the game" been more relevant than with the smash community.

[@OffTheRailGaming]

It almost seems like Smash bros wasn't designed to be a competitive game. 🤔

[@jeffreystone8974]

30 second intro? Where have you been all my life 🥰

[@andthentherewasbob]

The editing in this video was so good.

[@GanonAutumn777]

I want mute city back personally...i adore that stage to death And as much as i want pokefloat to come back....its easy to camp out the timer there sadly ;_;

[@AnArmyOfFish]

TBH I wonder if there are any ways to mod some of the other banned stages - Like if a smart modder removed the falling blocks & apple timer from Green greens Donkey Jungle 64 if modders standardized the floor, removed the barrel Since we're editing Poke Stadium anyways it feels strange the community hasn't considered this

[@Hugo_Prolovski]

the more you mod the more Nintendo wants to kill you

[@Eshyyyyy]

Green Greens has had a modded version packaged in with the 20XX training hack for years. Moving the side platforms to where the blocks normally fall, and removing the blocks and apples. It's a pretty good stage, but I imagine tournaments don't run it just because the changes are much more substantial than freezing Pokemon Stadium.

[@drakejoshofficialyoutubech5569]

I think people were fine with Stadium being frozen because it was done in order to remain consistent with how the stage plays on Slippi (I'm pretty sure Fizzi couldn't get the transformations to work with rollback). Plus we'd be risking a cease and desist from Nintendo everytime we change a stage. Modding the game in noticeable ways should be kept to a minimum imo and should only happen when it makes a ton of sense. I'm not entirely convinced that modding a stage to where it would be legal makes a ton of sense because of how much that would likely shake up the meta. As an example, if Green Greens was in a state where it could be legal, I can guarantee you that it would be one of Fox's strongest stages, and do we really need a stage where Fox destroys the rest of the characters more than he already does?

[@abicto]

honestly keep the barrel, its funny

[@bxtz9800]

2:41 Apex predator near by

[@gnardawgyt]

Never heard the term Cave of Life but it makes sense, living forever in there 😂

[@herowatcher8403]

Real question I should be asking is why 80-90% of stages banned in Smash bros in general? In other fighting games there were loads of colorful & moving backgrounds yet they get a free pass to what’s up with that?

[@vulcanmemes9770]

Because Smash isn't a real fighting game and they keep trying to jerry rig a 20 year old glitchy game made for toddlers with custom rules to prove otherwise when they're just lying to themselves about mastering a game that was never meant to be in depth in the first place

[@itloaf]

​@@vulcanmemes9770 why are you even here mate

[@Spleen2ween]

Corneria is my serious pick but you can’t do my boi big blue like that

[@Duffy_SSBM]

Love you guys talking about Melee!

[@sagacious03]

Okay analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

[@cjkmelee]

definitely Great Bay, the issues with the stage are purely symmetry. Outside of neutral start there is pretty much nothing uncompetitive about it.

[@JasonSmith-jv7wl]

Not covered in this vid, but the stage was banned because Fox could camp the stage. Just get a % lead and you could play ring around the rosie the rest of the match.

[@Michael-hc2hp]

@@JasonSmith-jv7wl Yeah, what are some characters gonna do when spacies just side b to the other side after laser camping

[@Skullhawk13]

@@Michael-hc2hp I see that as a fox issue not a stage issue

[@ikiry0830]

@@JasonSmith-jv7wl Man with how many stages are 'this was banned because Fox could fuck people up in it', I'm starting to think Fox might be an asshole.

[@AllUpOns]

@@Skullhawk13 Well it's only an issue on this and a few other banned stages, so... you're wrong?

[@tetros5265]

Jungle Japes is easily the closest stage to being viable. I'd argue its more viable than vanilla Pokemon Stadium

[@AllHailMe12431]

I love how Melee has all these fun stages to play on, then the competitive Smash community at the end of it all, only allow stages that amount to essentially a single flat platform, with a few smaller platforms on top, with some minor gusts of wind or other negligible inconveniences included in a few of them. Talk about optimizing the fun out of the game. It's possible they could have added a few more stages into the mix if they considered the conditions under which they could be exploited, and only excluded them under those conditions, instead of just banning them outright.

[@pugiaxe]

people playing a game in the manner they prefer doesn't prevent you from playing it in a different way that you prefer. good tip for life in general (doesnt only apply to video games!)

[@AllHailMe12431]

@@pugiaxe I'm not really saying this as a player. I'm saying this from the pov of an audience member. Frankly, competitive Melee smash isn't exactly visually interesting to watch, big part of that being very little in the way of variety besides player tactics and character choices. There's only so many times I can watch people playing on a small collection of very simple, very similar stages before it gets dull.

[@AllUpOns]

​@@AllHailMe12431 So go make your own tournament. Or go watch a movie, play a game, or do literally anything else. The current Melee ruleset is clearly enjoyed by a massive number of people, and their enjoyment doesn't negatively affect you in any way.

[@Verdugo_Arulaq]

1:44 aight That felt personal

[@explosivenecklace8516]

I genuinely hate the smash tournament community. They disregard almost all of the game and get rid of most of what makes smash unique. I vote we go back to being lawless

[@HeDronHeDronHedron]

if they got rid of what makes smash unique then melee would die when the next installment comes out. clearly something is unique about melee for it not to be "just another smash game"

[@BraxtonMeyer]

Just ban fox instead of the walkoff maps. Also pokefloat should be legal. you can't change my mind.

[@PHNtM-rb2sf]

“Random cars doing 90 in a school zone”😂😂😂

[@andrew1435]

I'm not sure the order of those stages getting banned is correct. There was a long period where a lot of them were legal but then came Pound 4. In Pound 4, besides neutral 6, the only legal stages were Brinstar, Rainbow Cruise, and Japes 64. After that, I never remember seeing a different stage list until those 3 were inevitably banned.

[@SaltyCalhoun]

I really like how this video wasn't full of sarcasm and irony, you just kinda gave information outright. Really clear and concise.

[@Gutripperr]

Really disappointing to see that Pokemon Stadium was gutted after the switch to online play. As a casual viewer it was always one of my favorite maps to watch. I think competitive players need to remember that from a viewership perspective, there can be a lot of value in having a bit of randomness and variety. That's why viewers love mid and low tier players too. A person can only endure so many Fox mirrors on Final Destination before they move on to other games. Make Pokemon Stadium Great Again!

[@isgamer-8732]

Yes. Also mod in PS2 just for the fun of it. Make Hazards great again!

[@Hugo_Prolovski]

I think viewers need to remember these people dont play the game for their entertainment

[@leaffinite3828]

Where are you finding these fabled fox dittos on fd, nobody does that

[@Michael-hc2hp]

Unfrozen Stadium sucked. God forbid if the Fire or Rock transformations came up, because a lot of people would just wait 30 seconds on opposite sides of the stage for the transformation to end

[@noukan42]

​@@Hugo_Prolovskithey do actually. That is the entire reason competitive sports have prize money. A competitive scene need vievership to flourish exactly like sports do.

[@nadi6643]

i would try and make the community of melee to come out with competitive maps

[@MakeVarahHappen]

Pokemon stadium really is a stain on any comprehensive history of stage banlist. That's a testament to how good the best design is that people had put up with it. But if we can lock PS1, why not other almost legal stages?

[@HulkTheSurgeon]

I really don't see why a lot of these stages were banned. Bullet Bills, The Windy Tree, The Sinking Turtle, and pretty much almost all the stage hazards are incredibly easy to avoid and telegraphed. You just need to consider basic positioning and they are non factors. Especially Pokefloats. It's a linear sequence that is always the same, so all you need to do is memorize the order and timing while factoring in your speed and position along with the enemies move set and effective range. Kind of cringe watching professionals dying to Pokefloats, ngl, lmao.

[@nahometesfay1112]

The video is misleading the main issue with these stages is camping or over the top cheese

[@Teknanam]

The video over emphasizes the minor issues of banned stages and undermines the big issues that got stages banned. The general reason most of these stages were banned is because they ultimately favor defensive play, leading to stally matches. When people don't want to deal with janky bullshit on a stage, they stop engaging to try and goad the other player to jump into navigating the obstacle course. It leads to a lot of non-interactive play. If not for stage bans, this would result in an even more unbalanced tier list as these stages avor speedy camp play.

[@salmon_wine]

@@nahometesfay1112 it's also unfair to have your game winning combo get dropped by The Turtle

[@alt0248]

Imma be real. This just sounds like these pros need to get good, especially when I hear about map bans occuring after a major thrashing.

[@leaffinite3828]

Maybe dont get all your info on 20 years of a competitive scene from 20 minute youtube videos by a generic esports channel and youll get a better understanding

[@allnighter_boy8850]

Totally out of context: Can we get a Mario Hoops 3-3? Heard somebody in my school talk about it recently

[@beetletrading8643]

at the part with „doing 90 at a schoolzone“ i got an add from Hankook tires

[@pluss20XX]

Okay who actually hates Big Blue as a casual stage like *visible confusion*

[@leaffinite3828]

Ngl even playing casually stage hazards that are just bad luck instakills like the big blue floor going away or the clampers(?) From kongo stages suck

[@GoogleAccount-jn5qb]

Me with 6 hearts after beating 2 dungeons (but like max stamina), master sword, twilight princess armor unupgraded cuz idk where to find the fairies and a dream:

[@BurgerFred1]

Man, competitive play really does ruin everything good about a game

[@Jetz72]

Fingers crossed we get these last 6 stages banned soon. Then we can finally loop back around to complete and utter chaos with every stage available and items enabled.

[@Predator20357]

As a non Comp. Player, this was interesting to watch even though I played only Ultimate.

[@kevinb5417]

Melee players will ban stages for RNG but are perfectly fine with RNG characters like Peach. Remind me again why I should take them seriously?

[@JimMilton-ej6zi]

No one who isn't obsessed with melee takes melee players seriously, even smash ultimate is beating them out when it comes to what's popular with people younger than 25. Melee players are just pathetic whiners who hate when they can't use their cheats against other players but loves banning anything that's even slightly fun.