When a player is one of the best in the world at a particular game, it’s rare to see them play multiple titles. That’s one of the things that makes Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman a unique figure in the Super Smash Bros. community since he’s a top Melee player who tries to play the other games, too.
Mew2King is widely considered one of the best Smash players of all time with a playstyle that takes advantage of his large character pools and intense knowledge of the game’s mechanics. Known as one of “The Five Gods” who dominated the Melee scene for nearly a decade, M2K is the only one to actively work at the other games along with Melee.
He was ranked as the 63rd best Smash 4 player of all time when the final rankings for that game came out and he’s been working to improve at Ultimate, entering every Major this season and attending Smash Ultimate Summit.
In addition to competing in newer titles, Mew2King has helped the Melee scene grow with more than just his play. He’s known for heavily testing every game he plays, which is why he’s credited with important discoveries like attack knockback and different aspects of Melee’s game physics.
While watching the deciding matches for top eight of Ultimate at Evo 2019, Mew2King talked with Dot Esports about how hard it is to prepare for matchups in the newest game, his thoughts on Hero, and the characters he likes to play.
How have you seen the game change over the course of the first eight months? You have been to most of the Majors and been focusing a lot of your time on Ultimate, so is there one aspect of the game, like character diversity or player mentality, that’s changed a lot?
Mew2King: There are too many characters. There are a lot of characters that I like. I enjoy Incineroar. I like Bowser. Bowser is better than Incineroar of course, by a lot. There some matchups that are either really bad for certain characters—like there are some characters that camp Bowser really hard and it is really hard to get in and fight—or there are just some small matchup things that if you know makes things a lot easier. Like, oh here is a 50-50 that only works in this one situation against one character. It is tough.
It is so hard to know all of the matchups. In Melee and the other games, there are less characters and everything is more concrete in how and why you should master each matchup because there aren’t as many. In this game, there are just so many matchups that unless you know what each character can do at any time, there is a chance you can get upset.
Do you feel that the matchup dependency in Ultimate is much higher than in other Smash games?
Yes, but only because there are 70 characters. The answer is only yes because of the sheer number of characters. There are just too many. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I’m just saying that because of that, it is hard to know everything.
What’s your solution to fixing that? You obviously can’t just start tossing out characters, but is there a way you can think to work around that?
Well, you can always just pick a broken top tier. You can always just pick Peach or something because if you are good with Peach, you should be able to handle anything. There are a lot of top tiers you can just solo main. They are good enough that you can only use them and they are good at everything. There are a handful of those characters.
I make tier list videos to theorycraft and whatnot, but if you aren’t using a top tier then you probably want to be counter picking. It is always going to be beneficial to have more than one character unless you main a super good character. If you main a super, super good character, then you can just use one character. But if you don’t main a super, super good character, it is good to have two characters. And that is my opinion.
Like [Leonardo “MKLeo” Lopez] and I both believe that Wario is top five to top 10—definitely top tier and very underrated in my opinion. Leo also thinks he is underrated.
With the additions of Joker, Hero, and players swapping mains throughout the first season, what do you think the future of Ultimate looks like right now? Will there continue to be just a dominant handful of top tiers or will new content and patches change the trajectory significantly?
Well, Hero is random because he has like 20 moves that are all like partial luck what you get. It is a very interesting character, but yeah, more characters, I am looking forward to more characters. Hero is not my style, but I am looking forward to what someone like [Saleem “Salem” Akiel] does with him because he likes him a lot.
Is there a character that you think could be perfect for you or you would really like if they were added to the game? Or is it all about what’s already there for you?
I don’t really think about it that way at all, because all I really care about is a character’s playstyle. I don’t care about the lore or anything like that as much anymore. It really comes down to if I think their playstyle would be something I can be good with and/or like. That is what I value most.
Is there a character in the game now that fits that playstyle you have in your head, maybe like a Bowser or an Incineroar?
Yes, I was actually just about to name those two characters. Bowser, I think he is slightly above average. But the thing is, he has a lot of bad matchups because a lot of characters can just camp him perfectly like I said earlier. And if they camp him perfectly, his risk-reward on getting in is super bad. He is fine at most matchups, it is just a few matchups that suck. So he is probably bottom of high tier, I think, like the worst of high tier.
Incineroar is just low tier garbage that I really enjoy. I really like the character and put a decent amount of time into him, but my brain tells me he is very bad and every top player says the same. So he definitely needs some buffs. Jigglypuff needs some buffs. Bowser is in a good spot, so I don’t think they need to change anything. That’s what I think.
Published: Aug 11, 2019 06:29 pm