Ever since Morpheus gave Neo the option of taking one of two pills that would result in different outcomes in The Matrix, the internet has been obsessed with using the concept for any and every situation.
That conversation has popped up again in the Super Smash Bros. community, with a set of eight pills that would give whoever took them different advantages in playing the game, competing at events, and overall mentality.
The abilities range from powers like simply increasing your reaction time all the way to guaranteeing a zero-to-death combo in every game you play in. Looking at each, some of them vary in usefulness depending on how good of a player you already are at your respective Smash title.
Here are all of the options that the Melee community, including multiple top players, have been arguing over for the last several days.
| Color | Ability |
| Yellow | Your reaction time speeds up by three frames. |
| Green | You become the best in the world at your character, but you can only play a character lower than Luigi on the tier list. |
| Blue | If an advanced tech involves using a Shine, you can execute it 100 percent perfectly every time. |
| Orange | You always play at your physical peak (your hands don’t get sore, you’re unaffected by sleep loss, your controller always works, etc.) |
| Red | You practice three times as efficiently as normal and struggle less to adjust when switching characters. |
| Pink | You can go into an “avatar state” where every retired pro player can coach you from within your own head. |
| Grey | You can always execute at least one zero-to-death at some point during the first three stocks of a game. |
| Black | You always get seeded in the luckiest possible place in bracket and you never run into any inconveniences when traveling to and attending tournaments. |
Depending on how you interpret each result, most players would have differing opinions on which pill they would take.
For many, taking the grey pill instantly means they are up one stock on their opponent, regardless of the matchup, because there is always at least one zero-to-death. That gives them a huge statistical advantage in every game and makes for some incredible combos that can lead to awesome stream moments.
Someone who is looking to get into Melee or top players who don’t like the grey pill option might go with the red pill since it makes it so that working on your game gets more results. Though the top players will be more interested in how that works on labbing matchups and how it lets them swap to secondary characters without warming up, which is huge in tournaments.
Yellow pill users might be better off playing other games, as Melee (and most fighting games) have certain situations where reacting to quickly might not work out in their favor, and that is without factoring input delay and other factors. Though overall, it is still a very useful ability.
Jumping to the black pill, for foreign players traveling to the United States for big tournaments, this might be a good option. And as Leffen said when ranking the results on stream, this is probably the best option for female players within the community because they won’t have to deal with any of the well-documented cases of harassment and general sexism within the Fighting Game Community.
“The Black Pill is S-tier for girls, let’s be real,” Leffen said. “Not being inconvenienced when attending a tournament. Holy shit, this is triple S-tier maybe for girls. So for more than half of the population, this is literal S-tier.”
Published: Aug 2, 2020 06:39 pm