How Bad are Smash 64's Low Tiers?

What did they do to my boys in green?

As someone who mained Link and Ness in 64 thanks for teaching me rhe difference between the Japanese alts
I knew link wass better at recovery in Japan.
I dunno if i trade Ness faster run speed for better Pk Fire though

I mained Link and Pikachu, very different characters but both were fun to play. Yes links recovery is terrible, so just don’t get hit offstage.

Sounds like the Japanese version of 64 is more fun to play with the better recoveries and stuff!

Luigi's taunt does more damage than any other character's. This video is null and void.

I think it’s crazy that a game with 80 characters( smash ultimate) feels almost as tightly knit as a game with 12

Good info! Always interesting to see a character shift down a tier list as much as Ness.

Couple notes though? Transitions between characters could be made a little clearer with a change of background or BGM. Kinda gets confusing and bleeds together whenever you move to the next entry— although that was kind of engaging in a way, the overlaps did get me to focus more…
And just a technicality: JPN is also NTSC(-J). The “NTSC version” here is the NTSC-U (NA) version. Using “NTSC” in place of NA makes most sense when you’re comparing it to one or more PAL versions (like you do for Link), otherwise it can be a little confusing.

I remember Ness being top tier!

A video on Ultimate Low Tiers would probably be similar to this.
Cause even bad characters in SSBU like Little Mac, Piranha Plant, and Dark Pit can still put in decent results

Atleast they are Top 12

... I mained Luigi in OG smash. I was actually really disappointed with how he changed in Melee lol. Particularly the changes to his up+b.

Why is link always fucking low tier

Good video, but there is one pedantic correction I need to make.

Saying that just the America version is "NTSC" is wrong because both the American and the Japanese are NTSC. People usually distinguish the Japanese version of games by adding J (NTSC-J).

It comes from the TV signals that American/Japanese outlets use as opposed to the outlets that European countries use (PAL). It's mainly the reason why NTSC runs at 60 FPS compared to PAL, which usually runs at 50 FPS (until it starts to change during the 6th console generation if I remember correctly)

Did you talk to any good competitive smash 64 players when making this video?

When I played smash 64 with my high school friends, they were all surprised when I said that Luigi is the lowest tier character in the game because I just made him look good. The mind games I could pull with his up B, down smash, and all sorts of other goofy things

I cant tell if youre doing a socially awkward bit, or fighting World War 27 with the 'tism.

Either way, i love it and thought it fit the vibe of the video lol

Seems like an interesting video but unfortunately it is hard to focus on what you are saying because the music is SO LOUD.

Seems like the guy who made this video rips farts

Would like to point out some stuff, as I feel like some additional detail would be good.

Samus: She's bad because she lacks any real combo potential, relying heavily on tech chase/reads. She had good grounded moves, her f smash, jab, dash attack can build up% quickly. She's hard to combo because she's both heavy AND floaty. She has great kill options, charge shot into grab, dair into grap, bair. Her dair of stage and if she has a setup if she uses a bomb close to ledge, then grabs ledge, it can guarantee a kill with her dair.

DK: His infinite only works if people mash out, and isn't really as strong as you're making it out to be. It's good vs newer players who don't understand this. His up b is good as both his hands have no hurt boxes, making him very safe, and why you often see then spamming it in neutral, as it's a really good move. Like Samus he relies a bit on tech chasing with his down slam resets after a dair. His bair is really good as it's quite long and has no real end lag. His punch turns him around, which is very useful for positioning, as you can cancel it very quickly.

Ness: He can be very scary, his ability to rush people down can be hard to deal with, his up tilt, up air have high prio and can combo into itself. His djc is the strongest its ever been, as z cancel removes all end lag vs melee/p+ which just speeds things up. His ability to gain % quickly is amazing, and his throws are a kill move (most are in this game vs melee). But as you said he has a hard time getting in, and his recovery is very easy to stop, as its so slow that you can just grab ledge, force them to go high then punish them. He was a high tier as people didn't know how to deal with him (Similar to Snake in Brawl) but after they did, he slowly went lower and lower.

Link: Link sucks cause his combo potential is very low, has 7 frames of jump squat (you have to wait 7 frames before jumping off the ground), he has no out of shield options, which makes him very weak to fake pressure. At most he can go for grab out of shield or up b. His recovery sucks and the meme is back throwing Link of stage is usually enough to kill him. What makes him good is his disjoints, his ability to actually have good match ups into high tiers (He's good into Kirby and Yoshi, along with the Mario Bros, Puff) but lose hard to the rest of the cast. His ability to mix things up with soft throw vs hard throw on his projectiles can make it hard to approach, his dair comes out like frame 3 or 4. He's not bad when he has room to exist, but if Link can't get the space, he just dies. (Falcon is like 9:1)

Luigi: Ultimately, he's just a worst Mario, sure his up b and down b are kill options that Mario lacks, and his projectile can be better in some situations over others compared to Mario. But he's just a worst Mario ultimately, he's slow, awful air speed, needs to build % to try and go for kills, suffers from similar issues that Mario does where his recovery is easy to counter, has a harder time actually building %. The easiest counter is to just never approach Luigi as he struggles to do so himself. If Luigi forward throws you on stage, you can not tech, get up and still punish Luigi, depending on the position of the throw, he's that slow. The nice thing vs Mario is he's floater, so his down b makes him go higher, and generally speaking he can live higher% due to the weight difference, along with his higher jumps.


This video seemed like something that was done from reading the smash wiki, along with stretched 4:3 remix/19XX game play, but I'm glad more videos are coming out that aren't just "lmao 64 is just zero to death, isn't that so crazy guys?!" so I'm happy for that. Anyways, have a good one.

The Smash bros 64 physics helped balance the game. None of the characters were overwhelmingly faster, & high hit stun allowed all of them to have combos.

Good video but also a good amount of Luigi slander, he is not weaker than Mario in raw damage. Sure his smash attacks deal like 2% less, but his aerials deal the same damage, and he has some moves that deal even more than Mario. They both have slower/faster attacks than each other seemingly arbitrarily and I will admit perhaps Luigi got the short end of the stick there. However, his recovery is amazing and I've played for long enough to know, even in that clip where you sandbagged for a full second, you could still get back to the stage if you up b faster.

You ain't good on camera boy

And then along came Isai.

i thought the text in the thumbnail said LOVE lol

Didn't Isai win a major tourney with Link back in the day or did he get 2nd? Regardless, what a fucking flex. Isai is too good.

Creo que lo mejor de los low tiers de 64 es que almenos tienen herramientas que otros personajes no como el peso de Dk o los multiples proyectiles de link

dope video style homie

“NTSC version” japan literally uses ntsc just say NA version

I'm normally not a fan of these deep dives into tiers and mechanics but you kept me interested, you're a good presenter. Keep it up.

Smash 64 low tiers: Almost half the characters.

Melee low tiers: All of the characters except fox.

Also Luigi basically doesn't have a dash attack.

I think part of the reason why low tiers are able to get away with having poor disadvantage states in this game is because unless you are one of the 3 characters with non-grabage recoveries in the game, chances are if you get sent off stage by a competent player, you're just dead. It doesn't really matter if you're Fox or Luigi, your recovery is extremely exploitable.

I would actually argue that Ness has an above average recovery in this game. His strong double jump covers a lot of distance and his fast aerials can make edgeguarding legitimately risky, which is not a claim many members of the cast can make. It's still pretty bad though. If you get caught off stage without your double jump then you're dead, but that applies to virtually everyone not named Pikachu.

For those curious, the 3 characters I consider to have non-garbage recoveries are, in order, Pikachu, Kirby and Yoshi. Every other recovery in the game ranges from "bad" to "competing for worst recovery in the entire series".

Combine the near universality of garbage recoveries with the high number of 0 to death combos in the game, and the fact that the only legal stage is quite small, and having a terrible recovery isn't actually a death sentence in 64. It's a flaw, but not the automatic death sentence that it would become in later games like Brawl.

Short Answer: They're pretty good, just dont expect them to do shit vs Kirby or Pika LMAOOOOO

Bro did you just say ultimate is tight nit?

The background music is really distracting

Dude thank you ❤ spitting out a samus fact right out of the gate. Now i'm watching the entire thing

you've probably gotten this comment before but i just have to say it: NTSC does not mean NA. it means NA/JP/KOR/etc. easy mistake to make because of melee not having any differences between the NA/JP 1.02 versions so it often goes left unsaid. But I figured I would say so.

Ive been watching your videos for a while and love seeing the growth you have had but i think using footage of a non moving/low level cpu makes the video look very low quality. Not expecting you to be going all combo contest mode but at least use more pro footage if you need to fill gaps.

Theyre more like midtiers

Not bad at all

This is another reason why I still like Luigi slightly better than Mario as a character. Even though Luigi was first initially a Low Tier character in Smash 64, he still possessed with having a pretty broken Uppercut move to the point where it became immensely nerfed in Melee back then. LOL However, when Mario was a Low Tier character in Brawl, he actually was almost unplayable back then. Especially since Mario didn't have any type of broken moves in Brawl back then. It's just proof that goes to show that Luigi will always have much better character abilities than Mario has even when they both happen to actually be in the Low Tiers.

It’s weird to think that Luigi had the worst mobility in this game

I'm really hoping they release Smash 64 on NSO for the 25th anniversary of the game this month.

Honest Content you have come a long way wow!

Hey @zachhonest if you're interested in doing more smash 64 or smash remix content I'd be happy to help with info on competitive play and development

"DK is super easy to combo"
(Shows Mario whiffing combos and landing randy hits on missed techs)

Man talks about the dk "infinite" and doesn't show it being used in tourney =(

Top 6 Genesis 6. Always funny