Melee's "Glitches" (that aren't really glitches)

[@turndownforwalt]

ASUMWALT Thanks for having me on friend!

[@gibraltar4841]

Hi

[@dtoskar]

Hi

[@jav2766]

Walt what was the song playing during your breakdown

[@thegoodgeneral]

Love you, Walt!

[@turndownforwalt]

@@jav2766 darude sandstorm

[@PracticalTAS]

Fun fact, melee nerds call the nameless in-game unit "Melee-meters" or Mm, and 1 Mm is equivalent to 0.1 meters (1 decimeter) as displayed in home run contest. So a phantom hit is an overlap of less than 1 millimeter.

[@You-fools]

1 millimeleemeter

[@Eon_TAS]

@@You-fools no, 1 centimeleemeter

[@Jotari]

Hold on, wouldnt 0.1 meters be 10 centimeters?

[@Ten_Thousand_Locusts]

@@Jotari 10 centimetres is a decimeter.

[@cetitanenthusiast776]

@@You-fools If a melee meter is Mm, and millimeter is mm, then mMm?

[@mxcascade]

I reckon V Cancelling is the devs throwing a bone for trying to airdodge but not making the input in time. Especially when you consider every requirement for it to come through making it closer to airdodges more than techs

[@flamingpaper7751]

That was exactly my guess, too. Smooth Landing/L-Cancelling is confirmed to have been added to make landing and shielding easier (since there was effectively no buffer system until Brawl)

[@bonzjoe]

@@flamingpaper7751 That's just an assumption people make with l cancelling, It was just meant as a general lowering of landing lag

[@flamingpaper7751]

@@bonzjoe A lot of weird mechanics exist to make actions easier. Like Kara Cancelling from Street Fighter being added in SF2 to create more leeway for special moves, which were notoriously really hard to do in SF1. Or Attack Cancelling in Smash Ultimate being added to make more leeway for the Short Hop Aerial macro mechanic.

[@someeggplant]

Bayonetta bat dodge sounds similar but more broken, cause sm4sh Bayonetta.

[@bonzjoe]

​@@flamingpaper7751 l cancelling wasn't added to make shielding easier. why are you bringing those up. also they would not have to reduce the endlag that nearly that much for just that

[@tysonfontanez]

I think if we as a community actually called the mechanics "smooth landing" and "glancing blows", less people would think that they're glitches

[@dougiejones5719]

My friend doesn't L-cancel because he doesn't want to win "using glitches" lol... let 'em think whatever they want, I say!

[@violetchan6402]

I hate that you're right

[@leaffinite2001]

Those names are so "video gamey" that yeah i think so

[@bageltoo]

In name alone, “Phantom hits” definitely sounds like a glitch

[@Guitar-Dog]

@@dougiejones5719 imagine your friend played chess and didn't use his Queen becuase QWEEN OP!

[@MishKoz]

6:13 I've heard a theory that it was mainly meant to be used by computer opponents. Like on higher difficulties they'd just automatically V-cancel wherever possible.

[@icegod4849]

While I like the idea, I think the devs would have made the input window 1 or 2 frames instead of 3, as CPUs theoretically should be able to do one frame inputs. I could see that being the initial idea, however

[@lounowell4171]

Do high level CPUs v-cancel a lot though?

[@MishKoz]

@@lounowell4171 I don't actually know, and it'd be hard to tell for a casual like me when playing normally against CPUs (which like, how often do people really do that in current year?). But I'm sure somebody who knows their way around debug mode and stuff like that would be able to answer that question definitively.

[@ahorsewhocandrive]

@@lounowell4171 yep, level 9s v-cancel consistently. Which makes them awkward to practice your combos with

[@deathblowringo4168]

The Reason is that they are actually trying to attempt shielding an Attack Hitbox and mostly Projectiles.

[@SimpleFlips]

I feel like you phantom hit me when you left and never called again...

[@lambchu6459]

🥺

[@Reece8u]

So you only took half damage, and it barely touched you at all? Glad to hear you are getting along fine!

[@St1ckyGrape]

Bars??

[@stephendonovan9084]

@@Reece8u I think he means he couldn't process it at first but left him stunned and confused, with thoughts and arguments far exceeding the scope of the interaction

[@Iinneus]

This sounds like you're about to drop the fattest verse of 2022.

[@RoyalPear]

the editing IS JUST SO GOOD

[@TrueBruceTube]

R.I.P RoyalMelon

[@Daft0Cean968]

1m subs and only 34 likes 😂 that's new

[@Sadahiko312]

I’m not even that much into Smash anymore, but his editing skills are incredibly engaging and fun to watch

[@subtolyubthepro]

Here before this blows up

[@pimink]

Bro get out

[@DSmittie]

Petition to change L-canceling to smooth landing. It would be hilarious

[@astolfostrikesback4073]

Tbh it sounds cooler

[@Lampaluile]

@@astolfostrikesback4073 true smooth landing and wavedashing sounds casual enough

[@nicocchi]

If you wanna be pedantic, it's already called Smooth Landing. But in the same way that it's not Shine, but Reflector. It's not Tilt Attacks, but Strong Attacks. And for another example in the video, is not Phantom Hit, but Glancing Blow. And so on and so forth. Nintendo just uses its own terminology that doesn't necessarily align with the community's, which makes reading for Ultimate's patch notes a bit confusing. What we call "Hitlag" (or Freeze Frames, the small period of time where you hit an opponent and the animation gets stuck to sell the impact, most notably on strong or electric moves) they call "Hitstun" (what we normally call, y'know, when you've been sent flying from a hit and you can't act)

[@Deadgye]

Hop Short, Fall Fast, and Cancel your L's.

[@heyzeuscreestow9394]

@@MiiK_ ratio

[@mattchu2219]

Hi AsumSaus

[@handlol]

hi mattchu

[@pepelagarto8110]

Hi

[@bananaslamma4813]

Straight to the point. I like this guy.

[@sepplin]

@@handlol hi Handlol dev

[@handlol]

@@bananaslamma4813 I like your mom 😈

[@whoisanarnb]

Ice Climbers phasing within each other about to ascend beyond the mortal plain while AsumSaus calmly talks in the intro kills me

[@whoisanarnb]

@wow no, stop promoting

[@hockeyfreak896890]

Dr. Mario stepping outside and immediately getting yeeted with no warning took me tf out hahha

[@NeatNit]

@@whoisanarnb Just report it and move on, I've noticed that almost everyone in the comments just doesn't reply to this sort of spam.

[@whoisanarnb]

@@NeatNit yeah I did that

[@TheBlakeGG]

AsumSaus is the GOAT of melee content and it is not even close

[@lucalyons-sosa9843]

Bruh fr top players upload 2 minute clips of themselves reacting to Mang0 commenting in their chat and wonder why they get no views.

[@Lujeca]

Turn down for Walt is pretty close imo

[@MrLachapell]

Is not close to what ?

[@pedrobraga5153]

The 2 best melee content creators are in this video

[@faragaroruga3229]

What about scrumpy :(

[@ThePi314Man]

I actually really like phantom hits in any context other than competitive play. I remember finding a strat on the Japanese language home run context with peach way back in the day that let you get multiple consecutive phantom hits with her down smash, racking up a shit ton of damage without ever sending the bag flying. For years before I learned how to bat drop, it was my highest score in the game.

[@Hithere-uz6wd]

I dont think a bad game mechanic becomes good because of one random scenario

[@Ridlay_]

Nice!

[@SSJPENGUIN]

@@Hithere-uz6wd There can be good aspects & bad aspects, without it outright being one or the other :)

[@Hithere-uz6wd]

@@SSJPENGUIN Yeah but i dont know any good aspects of it :(

[@quibbloboy]

Do you have a link to that Peach strat? I've never heard of it - sounds really interesting!

[@CoachJohnMcGuirk]

I just feel bad for that fully depressed shoulder button. I'm here for it if it needs to talk to someone.

[@Feliloler750]

You know the day becomes blessed when AsumSaus uploads a video

[@depotatolord3962]

i agree

[@lauraMartinez-hl3zf]

@wow When a bots in your comment section you know your big

[@IronPineapple]

I love these videos so much

[@mattguy1773]

I love that you love them so much

[@Jadinass]

ohboy what a crossover

[@shten22]

Oh its Iron Pinapple! Didn't think I'd find you here, pleasant surprise

[@BrotherManBilliam]

2:30 love how fox gets rested and jiggly still loses a stock lol

[@sleepytf2]

fox privilage at its finest

[@funnygamer.692]

LITERALLY the entire reason fox is so broken smh melee is such a glitchy game

[@tbtb66]

The fun thing about phantom hits/glancing blows is that is how the former seems more like a glitch because of the community name and visual effects The small sparks added Brawl onwards describe the situation of barely missing better than in Melee

[@MakoShiruba]

Well, Phantom Hits seem like a glitch because they apply half damage but not knockback, vs Glancing blows which do basically nothing besides the sparks.

[@adamspeiser6449]

The effects part is the weirdest. Also it seems like elements don't seem to register in a phantom hit either since jigglypuff's rest usually sets opponents on fire. The fact that it does a small freeze on the player getting hit is kind of weird too. There are many things about a phantom hit in melee compared to future games' glancing blows that show it as being unintentional, but we can never be 100% sure, at least not me.

[@Brawltendo]

@@MakoShiruba the fact that it applies half damage just makes it seem like even less of a glitch imo. At most that property could’ve been some debug code that they forgot to remove from when they were testing phantom hits’ functionality. The rest of the mechanic definitely seems 100% intentional though considering it’s returned in every subsequent game (and with an official name as well), minus the half damage property. Its behavior is way too specific and consistent for it to be a glitch that they thought would be a cool random thing to carry over to the next game.

[@xolotltolox7626]

​@@Brawltendoconsidering there is literally a value you can change in the in game files to make phantoms easier to occur...yeah, it is 100% intentional

[@indie.101]

4:02 "please subscribe i am begging you" over the player names caught me off guard 😭

[@GamersAtFault]

wow, the editing in this one was even more insane then other times. the part that REALLY caught me off guard was that intro, nice job asumsaus!

[@DeadweightLKS]

Hey, I've been really struggling with depression lately and feeling a lack of passion for most things, but rewatching a lot of these videos has been almost like an oasis to me. I love the weird obscure details of this game, even if I've only ever played it casually and watched tournaments online. Thank you for every one of these

[@DetectiveJones]

Its always surprising how crazy good editing for a video can be when talking about weird half bugs from a over 20 year old game

[@Yahiamice]

so... could you call a V-cancelling... a V-TEC?

[@lucalyons-sosa9843]

AYYY Clearly Intentional cuz hondas are japanese 😂

[@chairwood]

car

[@Calmtimer]

car

[@salti_killed_himself]

vsauce

[@joeybatmania9327]

“Car” -Charli XCX, inventor of cars

[@ShiNoNaiHasu]

KZbin knows that I will click and rewatch your videos over and over, I always get your videos in my recommendation. I've probably watched this video 4 times in 2 week

[@jaylenc6513]

Thank you for giving Walt the spotlight. I wanted more channels like yours and he is exactly what I was looking for

[@lf3boss]

The only content creator I know of who has never ever missed one time in their life. Another instant classic. You're the melee content goat Saus.

[@user-fe8gx3ie5v]

his life*

[@lf3boss]

@@user-fe8gx3ie5v don’t be cringe in my mentions

[@user-fe8gx3ie5v]

@@lf3boss Thankfully, that is impossible for me.

[@ikeneats]

Just wanted to say your incorporation of the Dragon Quest soundtrack in your videos is amazing! Thanks for the interesting content, and keep up the good work!

[@ZoYatic]

9:55 STANDING HERE I REALISE YOU WERE JUST LIKE ME TRYING TO MAKE HISTORY

[@vortex5405]

When i tought there was nothing else to be discovered about meele,you come and surprise me with your videos

[@Tom-jw7ii]

I never understood how people considered L-cancelling a glitch. How could “hit shield just before landing to recover faster” not be intentional? Especially when that’s basically how the fall-break mechanic works as well.

[@ThePortalDark]

Afaik, L-Cancel was inplemented to make the process of shielding after landing a "seemless experience" They were 100% aware of it since jt is 50% less landing lag compared to Smash 64. They even implemented it on smash 4 as a skill on custom smash

[@JAMllostthegame]

It's because it's not "officially mentioned" despite there obviously being proof that it has been on multiple occasions,

[@Hobokip]

Probably just because it’s such a strange mechanic. Why have the player time an input to reduce landing lag rather than just making landing lag shorter overall? Why not ever explain this extremely useful mechanic to the player?

[@Tom-jw7ii]

@@Hobokip Timing a button press makes it take skill to do. And you can’t just count on always having reduced recovery time (unless you’re really good). Perhaps it’s not mentioned in the manual because it’s really not that useful unless both you and your opponent are very good at the game.

[@louismalardon3363]

Because it is,dumbass -_- Don't take serious the "dumbass" of my comment,just it is man,a Glitch,Melee is fucking broken dude.

[@locke5078]

I am really appreciating the DQ music lately, these themes are severely under used! Also amazing video as always

[@Odima16]

Thank you for addressing the whole "pixels" thing. As a game developer, it triggers me so much when people talk about pixels in 3D games like they're equivalent to units.

[@dougiejones5719]

Seems like people weren't wrong about phantoms, just describing it with a less than perfectly accurate term. So we swap out the word "pixel" for "unit" in our vocabulary, but our understanding of the mechanic is unchanged.

[@trueblueryu5713]

Y’all remember when the whole internet used to use the phrase “pixel perfect” for basically every tricky movement in gaming and now basically nobody uses that phrase? The Wild West

[@NeatNit]

@@trueblueryu5713 What do people call it now?

[@nahometesfay1112]

@@dougiejones5719 as mentioned in the video, many people think phantoms occur when the boxes are tangential which isn't true, they have to overlap. So there is a misconception, but you don't need to know about Melee units to understand how phantom hits work

[@trueblueryu5713]

@@NeatNit most people now just say “frame perfect”, which is more technically correct given the way hitboxes and animations work

[@Acquiescense]

this man can talk about melee untill the end of time.

[@eatfruitsalad345]

as glitchy as melee is, i find tidbits like v canceling pretty indicative of how trailblazing this style of fighting games was. seems like sakurai and team introduced/tested a lot of novel ideas and features just to see what would work for the game

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

On the topic of things that people think are glitches but aren't: starting in Brawl certain up specials were introduced which are programmed so they can only be used once in the air, but don't cause freefall (fallspecial). These can be refreshed by landing, or by being hit by an attack that causes hitstun. This leads to an interesting interaction when players are grabbed at the edge, such that their feet don't touch the ground, and they are air released without being pummelled. Because they never landed, and were never hit by an attack that causes hitstun, the game doesn't give them their up special back. This has been interpreted by some as a glitch, and even SmashWiki calls it a glitch ("Grab release glitch"), but in reality this is simply how those up specials are programmed to work. They don't get refreshed by the user being grabbed.

[@esthersmith3056]

eh, not really, but this is complicated. literally everything in any game operates "how it was programmed to work", they dont have a mind of their own. when we describe something as a glitch, we're really making an assumption about intent, we're saying "the code unintentionally describes behaviours which the developer would consider 'wrong' in some abstract way". the question here is, if you asked the developer what the behaviour should be when a character is air-released unpummelled, what answer do we think they would give -- how do you think they would want it to work, if the question were consciously brought to their attention? it intuitively seems pretty clear that it 'should' refresh here, which is why it's often called a glitch; and, we cant actually prove this without a developer weighing in (and it is often impossible to truly prove that anything is a glitch), but the categorization seems reasonable in this case.

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

@@esthersmith3056 Everything in the game is behaving as it should when this happens. These up specials are only designed to be replenished by landing or being hit. Neither of these things occurred, so the move is not replenished. At no point has a glitch occurred. Calling it "unintuitive" doesn't suddenly make it unintended. Diddy Kong's Side B kick preventing him from using any special moves until he lands, despite not putting him in freefall or preventing him from using aerials is unintuitive, but this is how he is intended to work. Grabs themselves are not intended to replenish special moves.

[@TheLobsterCopter5000]

@@esthersmith3056 It's also worth noting that even if a specific interaction wasn't intentionally allowed to happen in a game, that doesn't make it a glitch, if all the mechanics involved in the interaction are behaving as intended. For example, in Melee, going from a grounded to an aerial state is intended to eliminate any lag the player might be in. Moving towards a ledge with momentum other than while sliding to a stop after walking or running is intended to cause players to go from a grounded to an aerial state. Landing with horizontal momentum is intended to transfer that momentum into the grounded state. However, edge cancelling was almost certainly NOT an intended interaction by the developers. They most likely never intended for players to be able to cancel landing lag by landing right next to a ledge and sliding off it, as evidenced by their quiet addition of extra rules that determine whether a character will slide off a ledge or not in later games. Does this make edge cancelling a glitch? Most Melee players would say it doesn't, because every mechanic that results in such interactions is behaving as intended, even if the overall outcome isn't intended.

[@lounowell4171]

It's strange to hear it being called a glitch, I don't think it was seen as such by the competitive Brawl community at the time - not that I remember. As you say, it was just an interesting interaction.

[@esthersmith3056]

@@TheLobsterCopter5000 do you actually have any reason to believe that "everything in the game is behaving as it should"? because it sounds like youre just making the circular argument that because it was coded that way, it must have been intended (and by this standard, there is literally no such thing as a glitch, because i re-iterate, literally all behaviour in all games works according to how it was coded). ofc unintuitive behaviour can be intended, but it's nonetheless one of many factors we use when determining developer intent. the only reason we're able to call even the most blatant examples of glitches (e.g., arbitrary code execution in pokemon blue) a "glitch" is because of our commonsense notion that no developer would ever want this for their game. the questions when looking at an unintuitive behaviour is "why might someone want this?" and "how easy would it be for someone to implement it this way by mistake?". i think that latter point is especially compelling here, the expected case for a grab is that someone is thrown, or mashes out of being pummelled, not an unpummelled release; i find it very easy to imagine that this latter case was overlooked. ledge-cancelling is a great example of where this gets complicated, sure, but i think we agree a little more than you think. to me, the fact that the outcome is unintended doesnt change the fact that the component mechanics are intended. the difficulty here is that defining the "component mechanics" of a complex interaction can become subjective, but i think it's relatively clear in this case.

[@Malenrick]

I always wondered why people didn't like Phantom Hits due to the explanation given before. I always though "well you missed, at least you got SOMETHING out of it, without Phantom Hits you'd just miss and do nothing" but hearing that it's actually just barely hitting that causes it, meaning without it, every attack would have the slightest extra range, makes me understand why people would rather it just hits normally. I mean, in the end if they didn't have it, I wonder if they would have just reduced the range on all the attacks by that slight amount, if that's even possible. Either way, great video, always interesting to see the little minor mechanics that fighting games have, especially hearing the reason why they might have been added in.

[@homecomin]

Hey, just wanted to say that - even if I have never played a game of Melee - I really enjoy and appreciate your videos!

[@ShadowedKami]

Its nice to see that saus is back to uploading on a regular basis.

[@jaundicedmisanthrope7817]

once a year is also a regular basis

[@Neogears1312]

Aged like milk.

[@RobertNobert97]

This is definitely among the highest quality melee content out there right now. Can’t wait to see more stuff from you.

[@tvcat5096]

0:04 drug store :)

[@noturboi909]

let’s go there! :D

[@shoggin]

Your editing style is so strangely entertaining, I love every second of it.

[@Ludvix]

Dude that thumbnail is DANK

[@EsperSpirit]

What an amazing collaboration. I've also learned about v-canceling for the first time

[@violetk2020]

Thanks! It was a ton of fun to do

[@8bitvelociraptor]

Absolutely fantastic. I love learning this kind of stuff about Melee.

[@flaviusarcadiusvibes]

This is a life saving upload. Thank you AsumSaus. Seriously, thank you

[@krunkusmunkus1681]

I know this is gonna sound weird but, this video started me on the path to being sober. I went to the fridge and grabbed a six pack of beer. Fully intending on drinking all of it within the hour. (probably the half hour) i put the six pack on the ground and checked my phone and saw you had posted a video. I knew i wouldnt enjoy the video if i were drinking beer the whole time. So i threw the beer away. I knew i had a problem so i addressed it. I know this sounds weird but, thank you AsumSaus. UPDATE: I'm gonna go to an AA meeting this Tuesday!

[@jakobkinz123456]

idk if you are being serious or not but, if so, congratulations my dude.

[@krunkusmunkus1681]

@@jakobkinz123456 👍

[@archivelibrarian6818]

always a treat to wake up in the morning, check my phone and see that youve posted. i dont even play melee anymore, but these videos are still so great

[@TheLemonyBard]

Actually, I think L-Cancelling gave you one of those adventure mode achievements (also called “Smooth Landing”) in Melee, but I could be wrong

[@plumebrisee6206]

Yeah you get it if you L-Cancelled everytime you landed with an aerial . Edit :And it's also in SSB64

[@LinkNinjaMaster]

Oh so THAT'S what it meant. I've never played Melee competitively but I clearly did L-canceling unintentionally a few times because I remember that bonus but never knowing what caused it to be awarded to me.

[@yohanbosu]

I didn't expect another video so soon but I am very happy about it

[@Artzaint]

Im not interested in competitive Melee, however, i find your videos really interesting. Keep it up!

[@bartholomewthundercatiii3484]

Your editing just gets better with every video. Such small touches really elevate them and make it all the more entertaining. Keep it up!

[@Mahagion]

Very well edited and entertaining video. You rock!

[@point6597]

My day becomes 10x better when AsumSaus drops a video.

[@goodasdead4303]

Whats funny is V Canceling is what has kept me in games of smash with friends. If I knew more techniques like they did I'd probably still be friends with them.

[@mineland8220]

And my day is now officially vetter by this upload. This editing style is one of my favorites

[@hypersnake7904]

It's a good day when asumsaus drops a 10 minute video

[@RW-Navigator]

i am pretty impressed how polished the editing is on your videos

[@sayainwilly240]

The goat of melee content is finally back

[@BlackTideLive]

Dang 2015?, went to a local tournament at my high school back in 2007 and was made aware of this mechanic, I think they just called it air canceling or something like that, too bad none of us were active in larger smash communities. Cool vid though man, still finding out new things about this game because of you. 👍

[@thisisfyne]

Today I learned that phantom hits were intentional, and not gonna lie, it kinda blew my mind. I always thought it was indeed a "glitch" of something that should've hit properly but didn't due to Melee being Melee.

[@christopherjobin-official7440]

Its kinda hard for a lot of things to be a glitch if you can pull it off consistently. Especially if it has something universal attached to it.

[@thisisfyne]

@@christopherjobin-official7440 I mean, considering how speedrunners abuse games when discovering+using their strats, aren't some (if not most) glitches inherently feasible to exploit consistently? Take wrong warping in OoT for example, or the flagpole gltch in SMB1. Consistent for many years now, but definitely unintended mess ups from the games' code turned into an advantage. Depends on your definition of "glitch" I guess..

[@christopherjobin-official7440]

@@thisisfyne I meant as in Phantom hits had a universal value attached to them, 0.01 mUnits. It had to be programmed that way

[@thisisfyne]

@@christopherjobin-official7440 Oh yeah, that for sure! That's what surprised me actually!

[@frogmeister2407]

Bro keep making mad melee content. All these years later and even tho I dont play melee anymore, I can watch all these videos like a historian. Its always interesting. Good work man.

[@DaScruffy0ne]

the pog at 9:38 killed me

[@jipufix]

dude, the production on these videos are absolutely insane!

[@burntcheeseproductions6573]

Just when I think he's found it all in melee, there's more, this game is deep

[@Mikalwatchingyt]

Your videos are sooo underrated, amazing quality. Fun and educational. Keep it up dawg

[@oasissharp]

given that the phantom is far from a random mechanic, and can lead to some pretty hype/funny situations i think its actually a great inclusion into the game honestly

[@gabrielrodela3884]

These are some of the most well edited videos on KZbin full stop

[@violetk2020]

Thanks!

[@tifawockhardt]

@@violetk2020 no problem

[@Telcontar86]

Phantom hits literally cost me a few games back when I was competitive. Not often, but as a Marth main it still happened quite a bit while spacing. This sounds unreasonable, but it was one of the top reasons I dropped Melee entirely, with the main reason being hand pain. I got tired of being punished for spacing too well sometimes lol. _Definitely_ V-Cancelled on accident more than once, and have seen others do it. Actually recognized the different knockback angle, but the guys in the crew always thought it was akin to the invisible ceiling glitch. Cool to know you can do it on purpose EDIT - guess I should've watched the whole video before commenting lol. That explanation for Phantoms is way more interesting than what I was told back in the day

[@Ten_Thousand_Locusts]

Except you weren't spacing too well. If you were spacing properly you would hit full blows. Cope

[@Brawltendo]

@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts I never got why people hate phantom hits so much when they’re basically like a learning experience telling you to space your moves a bit better. At least in Melee they give you half damage for missing to make it more obvious that you missed. Now they just taunt you with some sparks that you can barely even see (ESPECIALLY Ult with its microscopic hitboxes and particle effect diarrhea covering everything up).

[@Telcontar86]

@@Ten_Thousand_Locusts I did cope I started playing traditional fighters where learning combos and mixups is rewarded. Unfortunately my favorite fighting games in that style had some hilarious hitboxes and really bad matchups. Injustice is fun but sometimes it was way less balanced in its MUs than any smash game haha Also, as the edit implies, I was wrong in my thinking of Phantom Hits. But I think I kept the original complaint to show I was wrong, it's been 4 months I dk lol

[@Telcontar86]

@@Brawltendo so, you're playing a set as Marth against a Sheik on Battlefield. The person you're playing against is the best in your immediate region, but for once you're doing pretty good against them. You read that the sheik is going to drop through one of the side platforms that you've found yourself under, so you f-tilt to cover yourself so you can swing the situation back in your favor. Except, despite having the meaty tipper sfx and the visual cue, it's a phantom hit, and the sheik f-airs you in Marth's arm during the cool down of the tilt, costing you the match because of the awkward angle you get knocked into offstage. Sure, it phantomed because it was mis-spaced so the hitbox and hurtbox only barely touched, but in the heat of the moment the frustration is very real. As I mentioned in the reply above this one, this video lead me to realize that phantoms were my fault for missing some microspacing. But I don't have to now look back fondly on them lol

[@ethbeast395]

Asumsaus and turndownforwalt, the collab we all needed tbh

[@Shaeffen_]

11 minutes of unwatched AsumSaus content. This is a good day.

[@soopFPS]

Love the graphed trajectory on the stage with "d e d" and "not ded" labeled, god tier editing

[@cise3895]

Damn, I was actually totally cool with phantom hits until this video. I’d only been given the “1 pixel off” explanation, so I’d always thought of it as the game giving you a freebie when you had technically missed.

[@somerandombub]

It's true that phantoms aren't giving you a freebie, but something to keep in mind is that nearly every single hurtbox in melee is significantly larger than the actual visual attack, meaning you typically "shouldn't" really have gotten the hit when it phantoms. So it sort of balances out

[@yannilibbes8219]

@@somerandombub i kinda always viewed it as melee admitting "that shouldn't have hit" tbh

[@Skulll9000]

IDK what you were expecting so I'm just guessing here; but if a game is checking that two hitboxes are within 0.01 units of each other, instead of overlapping by 0.01, that's the essentially same thing. You've basically just created a larger hitbox. There's not really any other convenient way to program glancing blows as far as I know.

[@NeichoKijimura]

I love that you came back and started uploading again.

[@gatorssbm]

There was also custom equipment in Smash 4 named smooth lander that did the same effect as L cancelling only it was automatic so yeah even more to drop on top of it being intentional

[@supwithit]

8:21 That small segment reminds me of what Blur once said. The camera zooming in and out can also affect the way spacie’s Up-B angles. If a spacie is trying to go to ledge but the camera keeps zooming in and out (due to the opponent’s distance and direction they’re facing) It could mess with their angles, and ultimately miss the ledge.

[@celastik]

I once heard a commentator saying (I don't remember who was but it was someone known, like Toph or HMW) saying that V-cancelling was a mechanic added to make CPU Lv 9 live longer and be harder to kill. CPUs should be (in theory) the only ones to always get that 3 frames windows, or at least that's what the devs thought back then.

[@JacktheRacoon]

Yeah… I used to wonder how they tested for tangent lines for phantom hits! Pretty cool! Thanks for another banger vid AsumSaus!!

[@lounowell4171]

Same lol, I assumed the engine by default was tracking near-misses as part of how it tracked collisions, and the devs added phantom hits just as a fun way to take advantage of their quirky engine. Instead it's more like they went out of their way to add it? A 0.1 overlap and a tangent might as well be the same in this case for all practical purposes, but they say quite different things about the development process!

[@thedank6849]

0:14 I just realised he added hitstun here too

[@coleton8953]

shout outs to the production value, the editing and animation stuff is CLEAN!

[@kirbyhm]

I would love to see something on the dynamics of power shielding projectiles. What makes something reflect vs deflect at an angle?

[@flipdip2133]

I get genuinely excited when you upload. Ngl

[@juanletsplay1550]

You forgot the glitch where the game functions, being a real life glitch, since the code for melee does not allow it to work, but it does in spite of this.

[@roldy2157]

Thats awesome, I've been playing Melee since it came out but not competitively. I've always felt out this "V-tech" and this is the first time I've seen someone talk about it. I noticed I had been doing what you explained and its resulted me always wondering why my survival rate in the sky was often better than my friends. Its weird that a lot of people knit accept it when they're knocked high into the sky

[@tarabelle7716]

I've * felt * a v cancel but had no idea why I was slowing down sometimes, would just have a nagging feeling I shouldn't have lived a hit.

[@Putnam3145]

Oh, yeah, the feel is real. Notice how in the SFAT/Axe clip, the commentators were completely baffled.

[@tarabelle7716]

@@Putnam3145 It is really subtle

[@keviniraheta5085]

Amazing content! Always glad to see you upload

[@TastyLemon123]

I think phantom hits are kind of okay, because if you imagine punching someone but your fist barely makes contact with the person it isn't going to hurt them as much as a proper punch. It's almost like the game is penalising the player for not making a proper contact move, and I think that's fine.

[@turmspitzewerk]

that's generally what weak hurtboxes are for though are they not

[@TastyLemon123]

@@turmspitzewerk But it's like using a powerful punch except you barely make contact. If you barely make contact, it's barely going to do anything.

[@jubeat4451]

​@@turmspitzewerkmaybe both can represent that. Weak hits still make clear contact, so they cause hitstun and knockback. Getting hit with the hilt of Marth's sword would still hurt a lot, but being hit by the last 1 millimeter of the sword tip would just give you a tiny cut.

[@adamspeiser6449]

It is cool to see behind the scenes of these not as popular mechanics (except L-cancelling because it is popular). V-cancelling is especially cool since it can be meaningful, but it is very specific and very tough to purposely pull off. Plenty of nairs in the game come out the same frames you have to v-cancel so it is obviously more worth hitting a closer opponent than taking a strong move. That said, if it was a disjoint like a weapon and you need to take little knockback to survive or escape, this would be pretty neat to purposely pull off. I liked the clip with the marth down tilt since there is not too much you could do in that scenario anyways if you use your jump and are facing that move. This is a great video.

[@michaelmamba1578]

Wait no cap i used to do vcancels as a kid against my friends and family because i noticed it helped. Didn’t know it was an actual thing. I just got in to the melee scene cuz I got a wii and still have my original melee copy and im watching tons of vids rn. Another reason why I beat everyone as a kid lol

[@zgiffish]

so soon after the last video, i’m so happy!!!! i was just thinking about you yesterday, i hope you’re doing well AsumSaus

[@b4st1on]

What’s hilarious is that I used to v-cancel as a kid accidentally, when I missed an air dodge and got hit, but still lived. I never named it or quite understood how it only sometimes worked, but I used it to stay alive for a longer time as my Kirby, down-b’ing my friends falco repeatedly until he called me cheap.

[@Eddie2P]

yes me too, i guess many people noticed it but the mechanics behind it werent exactly known until 2015 i guess

[@zoeyamon935]

Your vids are always so perfectly paced I'm wrapped into watching it from start to end.

[@gunrugger]

I like phantom hits. They aren't rng and add hype moments to the game. It would be more stale without em.

[@Cloutboifx]

I love this channel so much. Ive watched every video from start to finish and dont regret a single second of it

[@StopItRuss]

smash brothers melee

[@Xode_25]

TRUEEEEE

[@LilGabri94]

Having a 10 min video from asumsaus genuinely makes me excited

[@tristancampbell4941]

This guys' Smash content is the best👌🏾

[@calivali2876]

Asum such a unique voice and attitude… And amazing editing. Want more of this dude

[@lamergamer8211]

My theory on how these got into the game is during crunch time they did the classic “it’s not a glitch it’s a feature”

[@Hugo_Prolovski]

Walt and Asum. The kings of content

[@ohlord1514]

Standing here, I realize

[@aglassofojwowza]

no one’s playing with you bro

[@peenywallie]

I was just rewatching all of these vids yesterday.