I have constantly put work into this character and established tech and knowledge of how to optimize him. Similarly I never feel like I have difficulty playing against Mario .



When I play against Mario, as someone who has mained the character, this is what goes on in my head. I know that in several matchups, I can jump out of Mario's low% strings (or block them in some cases), and in a best case scenario, he often does about 23%. I know also his primary way of getting close is going to be grab, both because it's his most rewarding option damagewise, and because he has almost nothing else that I can't outspace reactively. I also know that when he's looking for kills, he is extremely unlikely to kill me earlier than 150% if I do simply three things. Recover low offstage, block constantly on stage, and reset towards the ledge whenever I'm in the air. Mario's responses to these options typically only deal chip damage, until he eventually manages to get me to a range/position where he can KO with B-throw. This by itself however isn't going to win him games, because the risk/reward to do this against most characters is very unfavorable.



Mario is hurt by the changes to ledge mechanics which give him fewer options in this game to effectively cover low recoveries, and just generally doesn't trade well against most characters. He also is hurt significantly by his SH aerials hitting much higher in this game than they did in Brawl, which especially against short characters is a huge disadvantage.



I mean...I'll take my wins with Mario while I still can. Just the character in general on default settings definitely doesn't impress me when I see him against me. I would basically be only afraid of Mario players that are clearly much better than me and could probably beat me with other characters.

Melee Mario was borderline broken if his hardest matchups against space animals didn't exist. The other top characters like Sheik, Peach, Jigglypuff, and Marth were quite winnable for Mario, and then the only two other characters he struggled with were Ganon and Samus. Literally everything else was in his favor, sometimes by at least 65/35 or more. Melee Mario often straight up invalidated characters pretty hard tbh when you realize just how braindead good his chaingrabs, F-smash, and edgeguards are.



Brawl Mario went basically on average even give or take 5 points against all of the mid tiers, won 6/4 could beat the Ice Climbers, Olimar, ZSS, Pikachu, and Snake on a good day, and then his matchups against the other high/top tiers were more or less a joke. Most matchups against the good characters in Brawl were a joke for that matter, but Mario in Brawl overall was a significantly stronger and more versatile character than in Smash 4 that had a greater number of favorable matchups, even factoring the smaller cast.