Sonic The Hedgehog: Community Matchup thread

SAMUS ARAN - Character Matchup 4




Introduction

Samus Aran is the protagonist of the Metroid series. Samus is the galaxy's most famous bounty hunter, constantly helping the Galactic Federation in their fight against the Space Pirates. She has appeared in all three Super Smash Bros. games to date. Samus has a wide array of both projectiles and physical attacks, which can be used in promising combinations. Samus is heavy-weight and ranks above middle in the speed-class. However, she is tall, which makes her easier to hit. Samus is considered to be easy to use, and with a good use of long- and short-range attacks, she can be deadly.

Behaviour:

-Against sonic samus uses tilts, aerials like landing fair and uncharged shots. Uair is a great follow up to a d-tilt at low percents. Any horizontal hit to samus will result in a MC, slowing down sonic's follow up and often allowing counter approach.

-Samus' game in this MU is to approach sonic to try and shut down his many mix-ups and lightning approach. On the other hand, she has to space well to take advantage of her tilt range.


Commonly Used Moves:
D-tilt: This is one of samus' main ko moves. Will star ko
Dash attack: One of the strongest in the game thanks to that big suit of hers. This wont pose to much of a problem of for Sonic as he is fast enough to space well.
Missiles: Learn to avoid these. We can scoot under these with an ASC, but otherwise we should assume they hurt us (sometimes clanked when stale though
U/Dair: Both are fairly common aerials and can be pretty painful when used right.
Charge Shot: Nuetral B. Will ache our approach. WE can really do much other than avoid it, similar to marios fireballs.

How to Win:

-Zair is weakest against short characters that can close gaps early, because the hitbox is always at the same height as samus, but travels along the beam (ie near the tip). In other words, if you start it at a height where it will hit a short character at a distance, it won't hit them if they are close. You can hold onto it and do a half-zair, but in many cases it is still not possible to hit.

-1. Samus has projectiles: No way!!! Yep, its true, Samus has what, 4 projectiles if you count the two different missiles. This can mean trouble for Sonic, especially in approaching. Sonics Spindashroll gets beaten by everyone of Samus' projectiles, and it's not a clank, it ends up with Sonic damage(even the sd hop). So it makes ground approaches difficult other than shielding your way in or rolling in. Spin shot is an option but I don't think there is as much control afterwards. ASC cancelling could work.

2. I think close range, Sonic is at an advantage. Our grab game is superior and ridiculously annoying and Samus's dmash is pretty slow. (not sure how it compares to ours).

3. With proper spacing there should be no reason that Sonic can't beat Samus in the air. Samus' forward air can be easily punished by a homing attack (itll stop ur motion from gettin in range of it, and punish the lag afterwards. Samus is tall so we can get her with a fair from below with a reduced chance of punishment. (as his fair comes from the top-down and his dair is slow to come out) Our d-air will get beaten by the u-b tho.

4. Sonic cannot be gimped by Samus*. Ofcourse on the odd occassion Samus may pull off a gimp on a Sonic, but it would be because the Sonic made a mistake. And due to Samus' priority on his recovery, itd be very hard to gimp samus as well, about the same difficult if not a little harder than it is to gimp mario. It's a matter of gettin that hunter further away from the stage. THis, in theory, could be achieve by a d-air semi spike or an annoying series of well time and positioned homing attacks or fairs. But its far from consistent.

5. Samus will survive longer. Having said this, Sonic is not lightweight, he is smack bam in the middle.

Recommended Stages:




Matchup Summary: 50:50

Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus Samus.

Ten Samustimes.

Awesome.

Greenstreet said:

SAMUS ARAN

Behaviour:
This varies depending on the Samus, especially against the better Samuses. Typically a Samus tries to play campy and space with homing missiles and zairs, however there are exceptions (like me! woohoo)

Commonly Used Moves:
Knowing what moves are most common don't really help you. I'll just let you know that Samus's Up B (Screw Attack) OoS against your spin dash or homing spin things owns and gives Samus space. Uncharged shots beat your spin dashes on the ground, as well. If you ever recover with a spring below the stage, expect to get gimped unless you're smarter than your opponent.


How to Win:
Just be really annoying and run around a lot.. Try to KO off the top mid-combo if you can.. Samus floats in the air, so you might try to go for an offstage bair or fair or whatever you Sonics do, just beware that a smart Samus has plenty of recovery options and can possibly countergimp you.

Recommended Stages:
Samus likes platforms and small stages. I'd assume Sonic likes lots of flat land to run around, but I've seen some Sonics do well regardless. I'd say go FD, Yoshi's Island or Smashville.

Matchup Summary:

Click to expand...

I'd say it's pretty even. Sonic is faster on the ground and in the air but has to get past a bunch of Samus's projectile walls first. And if he does, Samus can screw attack through your approaches. Sonic's recovery is pretty gimped, too.

Hope that helps..

Dryn's Samus > Tenki's Sonic

'Nuff said.

In all seriousness, I think the way you organize the information for your match-up discussion is faulty. Everyone behaves differently, as n00b pointed out. One person can play as Samus close-combat, while others will camp and spam Homing Missiles and z-air. Everyone is different. If you have the attitude of, "Play smart," the way you act against your opponent will differ. For example, when I played as Pit today, and I went up against a Wolf player, I didn't begin the match by firing Palutena's Arrow straight at him since Wolf has his Reflector. Instead, I jumped and fired my arrows downward at him, so that if he did reflect, it would fly up, and I would be safe from getting hit. It's all about playing smart and using variety. No one Samus is the same, because it's not the same person. Again, I agree with n00b about knowing what your opponent might use more for an attack does not help, either.

Dryn said:

Tell them I three-stocked Tenki when playing against his Sonic the first time I brawled with him. Tell them also that he intentionally suicided on his last stock, which resulted the three-stock match, even though he could have attempted to at least KO'd me once. Tell them also that when I brawled against Tenki as Samus against his Sonic on the same stage, Battlefield, he died the same way, even though both Tenki and I are aware that he intended to KO me with his d-air, but d-aired off the stage on the same side like last time. That was ironic.

Click to expand...

...didnt really tell us much tho n00b. that analysis is about as deep as a birdbath. lol

Haven't played a good Samus in a while... but I'm calling this one even. SideB>FullSamusBeamyThingy. Samus has a nice spike, but Sonic is prolly the character least affected by gimp-spikes out of all the two-jump characters because his UpB just has so much more pure vertical rcovery(although you can argue otherwise since he doesnt sweetspot the ledge). Homing missile can be annoying, But you go under the stronger one(wow I really don't know the name of any of Samus' moves lol). Dtilt is a quick kill move. Umm can't think of much else to say... Samus is large so she is pretty succeptible to ASC and SDR combos, but she also is a heavyweight and has great control in the air. Her bair is similar to yours(lol in power and animation) and yea. Don't use brinstar because she has homefield advantage. Ok not really, idk lol.

Napilopez said:

Haven't played a good Samus in a while... but I'm calling this one even. SideB>FullSamusBeamyThingy. Samus has a nice spike, but Sonic is prolly the character least affected by gimp-spikes out of all the two-jump characters because his UpB just has so much more pure vertical rcovery(although you can argue otherwise since he doesnt sweetspot the ledge). Homing missile can be annoying, But you go under the stronger one(wow I really don't know the name of any of Samus' moves lol). Dtilt is a quick kill move. Umm can't think of much else to say... Samus is large so she is pretty succeptible to ASC and SDR combos, but she also is a heavyweight and has great control in the air. Her bair is similar to yours(lol in power and animation) and yea. Don't use brinstar because she has homefield advantage. Ok not really, idk lol.

Click to expand...

I doubt that, Napilopez. Samus' fully charged Charge Shot can stop Sonic's Forward+B. You can even ask Tenki, who was stopped by my Samus' uncharged Charge Shot when I brawled with him on Battlefield. I guess the things tested in Training Mode doesn't fully cover everything, especially since practicality dictates theory. Strangely enough, even Samus' Super Missile stopped Sonic (in our match, of course), even though I was expecting Sonic to rip through that. I'm only telling you what I know from my experience with Tenki, one of the best Sonic players I've ever seen and brawled with. (If only I had kept that replay!)

Dryn said:

I doubt that, Napilopez. Samus' fully charged Charge Shot can stop Sonic's Forward+B. You can even ask Tenki, who was stopped by my Samus' uncharged Charge Shot when I brawled with him on Battlefield. I guess the things tested in Training Mode doesn't fully cover everything, especially since practicality dictates theory. Strangely enough, even Samus' Homing Missile stopped Sonic (in our match, of course), even though I was expecting Sonic to rip through that. I'm only telling you what I know from my experience with Tenki, one of the best Sonic players I've ever seen and brawled with.

Click to expand...

he's probably referring to side-B invincibility frames. It was impossible to do it with the latency between our connections (cross country: GA to CA), but Sonic can release the side-B charge to go through anything. And for clarification:

- I usually used aerial down-B anyway (no invincibility frames)
- With our latency, I got hit by waaaay more projectiles than I should have. Getting hit by more than 2 missiles in a row and running into fully charged shots was pissing me off so I suicided some games `.`;

I noticed that thing with the Homing Missile (and Waddle Dees, for that matter) too. Against some Samus players, I could break through missiles. I'm thinking that it's either because spindash was stale and got outprioritized due to its lower damage, or (hopefully not) controller port priority.

You should like... play quik2288. He lives in CA, and I think he should be good... lol.

bastard, trying to cite wins done through horrible lag >:[

edit: Also, wtf does everyone have to cite me for their 'good Sonic player'? There are so many better Sonics out there.

I think.

Yea, I've played 2quik's sonic, it's pretty good -- prolly the best one I've played. It knows how to handle the spammy/campy samuses, which is how I used to play. He would rush under any homing missile or zair attempts and use grabs to set up rather than the spin dash stuff. Samus has to sit in her shield against a lot of Sonic's approaches so mixing up feints into grabs works well against her too.

I think its pretty darn important to know an opponents moves set before you go into a match.
It is the main determinant of your own behaviour.
If i went into a match not knowing samus had projectiles (an extreme situation), i'd get owned.
Knowing moves is the first step to developing counter properties and manuevres to these moves.
If you went into a match vs sonic and u saw his moves, u'd go, wow top tier, and play all defensive. But if u knew he hasnt got priority to save his stock u'll play a better game against him.

all her tilts are good,
if shes not up b ing out of shield, its proly a down smash
forward and down smash kill well
z-air is hardcore, but we get under that easily so they wont use it as much
SH forward air alot
up throw to up air should work at lots of percents
gimp her with down air

that is all

if i give you the other matchup summarys we have on this board will you put them on here somewhere?

Fair enough. Well then, the main moves I would tell you that are a staple in any Samus's moveset are the z-air, the up b, and the dtilt. Z-air is an extremely long ranged melee aerial with a disjointed hitbox and great priority with decent knockback if hit with the tip. It autocancels and is easily spammed for spacing. The up B is Samus's screw attack which is commonly done out of shield or after a jab cancel or dash attack. It stops Sonic's spin dash approaches or if Sonic bounces off her shield when doing the homing attack. It comes out extremely fast and can clank with some ground moves. Lastly, her dtilt is her most reliable KO move, but there are a variety of setups for it so it's hard to see it coming. If the other Samus is generally predictable, you'll see it coming after a dodge and you whiff or if she's just crouching.. lol.

yep definitely. err but i guess theyll only be put up once we get to the character.

Tenki said:

You should like... play quik2288. He lives in CA, and I think he should be good... lol.

Click to expand...

Do you know what city he's in?

Tenki said:

edit: Also, wtf does everyone have to cite me for their 'good Sonic player'? There are so many better Sonics out there.

I think. [/color]

Click to expand...

You're the only one I've come across that has been one of the best. The others I've seen and played against just come at me with their spindash, fly in the air and use u-air. Or they'll use Up+B and then d-air. That is all they will do. Like I've never seen that one before. You, on the other, hand, played differently. You had variety.

take it as a compliment tenk.

because you give us the basis for everything we do...
i think most people were going to give up on sonic here before you came in with your ASC thread
you are the guy with all the info
you are the guy who does all the testing
you are the first sonic main to pull a pivot move in a reall match
you are the guy with the most technique in your videos
your sonic may not be the most effective, but its the prettiest.
you basically CREATED the feinting style of sonic
you also play more really good people on wifi than any of us put together

thats why people say you are one of the best... is that not enough for you
sure, there are more effective sonics (3000/K.I.D.) but your sonic is most people's only experience with a good sonic, and liek i said, yours is the most fun to watch
god, stop hating on your self so GD hard... its annoying
youre good, just accept it

and green...
all the work is mostly done and on the stickeyed match up thread
which needs to be switched out for this thread by the way

i'd wud definitely kill to b able to play as many ppl as u do.. but alas, australia lol.
now lets stop worshipping tenki and get back on to samus.

Samus won't use zair much cos Sonic goes under it very very easily. However if you go aerial you can expect zair to be used as you are falling. In general though, zair isn't a great weapon vs sonic because of his speed.

Samus is very floaty but every single one of her aerials auto-cancels. If you like to rush the usual vulnerable spot (ie right as someone lands), expect to eat a tilt or jab to tilt. A better approach is to shield as you dash in.

Samus' grab is terrible and will not be used much. More successful grab approaches are a) rushing after a homing missile; b) dash away, pivot grab; and c) shield a shield poking move (typically an aerial) and shield-grab as she slides away.

Having just played a sonic imo it is pretty even as far as landing attacks goes, probably in sonic's favor a little as Samus can't abuse her staple zair, and sonic's speed/height. Recovery seems pretty even, I imagine both characters would struggle to gimp the other. Both characters can also struggle to KO at times. In Samus' favor - range, weight, aerial game. In Sonic's favor - speed, height, grab game.

I see it as pretty even with strong arguments for both characters.

yer i can agree with that throwback.
I cant see an ultra effective way one could gimp the other.

if sonic does his upb early to land on the stage instead of grabbing the edge, samus has a shot at a dair. but i can only see it working once, cuz noone'll ever do it again.

Greenstreet said:

Samus is considered to be easy to use

Click to expand...

Lmao

10Sammies

thats smashwiki lol. take it up with them.

Hmmmm.. I believe this match-up to be at worst neutral.

Greenstreet your write-ups aren't in the front page. Should I add them to the stickied thread since we want to merge them at some point? As for mine, i'll be finished with one of the write-ups on the weekend (goes back to studying).

da K.I.D. said:

because you give us the basis for everything we do...
i think most people were going to give up on sonic here before you came in with your ASC thread
you are the guy with all the info
you are the guy who does all the testing
you are the first sonic main to pull a pivot move in a reall match
you are the guy with the most technique in your videos
your sonic may not be the most effective, but its the prettiest.
you basically CREATED the feinting style of sonic
you also play more really good people on wifi than any of us put together

thats why people say you are one of the best... is that not enough for you
sure, there are more effective sonics (3000/K.I.D./IceDX) but your sonic is most people's only experience with a good sonic, and liek i said, yours is the most fun to watch
god, stop hating on your self so GD hard... its annoying
youre good, just accept it

Click to expand...

I feel the same way...and i belive lots of others do/should to

IceDX said:

I feel the same way...and i belive lots of others do/should to

Click to expand...

You guys are all by yourselves. Tenki sucks.

Ilu, Tenki. <3

Sonic mains are such fanboys lulllllll+agree points on umby.
I bet Boxob is still better than me and he doesn't even play Brawl anymore lol.

Throwback said:

Samus won't use zair much cos Sonic goes under it very very easily. However if you go aerial you can expect zair to be used as you are falling. In general though, zair isn't a great weapon vs sonic because of his speed.

Samus is very floaty but every single one of her aerials auto-cancels. If you like to rush the usual vulnerable spot (ie right as someone lands), expect to eat a tilt or jab to tilt. A better approach is to shield as you dash in.

Click to expand...

Ay, I have problems with aerial characters since I think/rely alot on my ground game, and Samus can stay in the air for way too long `.`;

I played against Crei (yoshi main) on his 2nd day using Samus and he gave me problems with SHAD Z-air. It is possible to hit Sonic on the ground with Z-air though =/

Tenki said:

Sonic mains are such fanboys lulllllll+agree points on umby.
I bet Boxob is still better than me and he doesn't even play Brawl anymore lol.


Ay, I have problems with aerial characters since I think/rely alot on my ground game, and Samus can stay in the air for way too long `.`;

I played against Crei (yoshi main) on his 2nd day using Samus and he gave me problems with SHAD Z-air. It is possible to hit Sonic on the ground with Z-air though =/

Click to expand...

I agree with the Tenki praise.

I've def been hit with a few Zair, but I think Sonic has enough movement options so that its not the biggest deal =P.

Umm

I tend to find homing attack as innefective against Samus in the air, because she moves around pretty darn quickly. Ugh.

And again, watch out for dtilt, it comes out super quick, and as was mentioned, it is quite easy to set up in a variety of ways.

And yes, I was referring to invincibility frames on SideB. Its not always the easiest to time(You have a very small window for a fully charged shot), but it annoys the heck out of a few Samus' I've played =P

Gimping, is definately difficult in this match-up for both characters. Sonic has too good of a recovery, and samus moves much more well in the air than Sonic for Sonic to even set up the gimp. Still possible though.

It's Samus time guys.

So I heard you like Samus.

Tenki said:

Sonic mains are such fanboys lulllllll+agree points on umby.
I bet Boxob is still better than me and he doesn't even play Brawl anymore lol.


Ay, I have problems with aerial characters since I think/rely alot on my ground game, and Samus can stay in the air for way too long `.`;

I played against Crei (yoshi main) on his 2nd day using Samus and he gave me problems with SHAD Z-air. It is possible to hit Sonic on the ground with Z-air though =/

Click to expand...

You can't SHAD zair, afaik. Short-hopping it is the usual way to use it. Some people claim to be able to SHFF a full length Zair (SHFFZ lol), but i've never seen it in a vid or been able to do it myself.

Zair is weakest against short characters that can close gaps early, because the hitbox is always at the same height as samus, but travels along the beam (ie near the tip). In other words, if you start it at a height where it will hit a short character at a distance, it won't hit them if they are close. You can hold onto it and do a half-zair, but in many cases it is still not possible to hit.

Against sonic samus uses tilts, aerials like landing fair and uncharged shots. Uair is a great follow up to a d-tilt at low percents. Any horizontal hit to samus will result in a MC, slowing down sonic's follow up and often allowing counter approach.

Samus' game in this MU is to approach sonic to try and shut down his many mix-ups and lightning approach. On the other hand, she has to space well to take advantage of her tilt range.

Ground game is probably sonic's but samus' excellent tilts and superior aerial game (combined with d'tilt, which allows her to put sonic in the air in the 1st place) put this back to a neutral imo. Due to the hedgehog's light weight, it could even be argued for samus. I also think samus can get the kill easier in this fight with charge shot, d-smash and d-tilt.

Both characters have clear advantages over the other, so the match is going to come down to who gets to play their game. I call even.

Throwback said:

Due to the hedgehog's light weight, it could even be argued for samus. I also think samus can get the kill easier in this fight with charge shot, d-smash and d-tilt.

Click to expand...

I hate that misconception lol. There are 20 characters lighter than Sonic. He is not light weight, he's like a heavyish middleweight.
Charge shot won't kill til retardedly high percents, either.

Sonic is the same weight as Mario in most aspects.

BlueTerrorist said:

Hmmmm.. I believe this match-up to be at worst neutral.

Greenstreet your write-ups aren't in the front page. Should I add them to the stickied thread since we want to merge them at some point? As for mine, i'll be finished with one of the write-ups on the weekend (goes back to studying).

Click to expand...

i did half the work for you dude, check the last page of your thread

n00b said:

Sonic's recovery is pretty gimped, too.

Click to expand...

Maybe the Sonics that you have played.

In regards to the matchup threads and discussion and write ups etc:

It really does not matter to me whether they are put mostly here or the are put in your thread BlueTerrorist. The main purpose I made this thread is to get the write-ups done a lot quicker. It would be no problem for me if you important information from here into your thread, and I certainly wouldn't mind if you allowed this thread to use the information on the few matchups you have already completed. It's really up to you.

Maybe you would like this thread to be where things are discussed, and when they are in their final form they can be moved to Sega vs Everyone. It really doesn't phase me. I just figured that I am online a fair bit, being a Uni student, so I am able to regularly facilitate peoples views, strategies and guides on characters matchups against Sonic. The quicker we get a complete guide to his matchups, the better, in my opinion.

I think that once we have analysed every character we can go back and review what seems to be similar in the "how to win' section and maybe development of better Sonic players can evolve from this. And actively discussing it with members of the other side of the matchup develops knowledge of the game, which results in improvement if applied. Either way, getting the knowledge out there to the Sonics mains who check out this board is what's most important really.

In regards to Samus Discussion:

I'll be the first to admit, I don't know a bloomin' thing about fighting a Samus, of all the people I play, none have committed to her, unless ts Zamus. Having said this i do have some general tips/behaviour/whatever that i would assume applies to a Samus/Sonic matchup.

1. Samus has projectiles: No way!!! Yep, its true, Samus has what, 4 projectiles if you count the two different missiles. This can mean trouble for Sonic, especially in approaching. Sonics Spindashroll gets beaten by everyone of Samus' projectiles, and it's not a clank, it ends up with Sonic damage(even the sd hop). So it makes ground approaches difficult other than shielding your way in or rolling in. Spin shot is an option but I don't think there is as much control afterwards. ASC cancelling could work.

2. I think close range, Sonic is at an advantage. Our grab game is superior and ridiculously annoying and Samus's dmash is pretty slow. (not sure how it compares to ours).

3. With proper spacing there should be no reason that Sonic can't beat Samus in the air. Samus' forward air can be easily punished by a homing attack (itll stop ur motion from gettin in range of it, and punish the lag afterwards. Samus is tall so we can get him with a fair from below with a reduced chance of punishment. (as his fair comes from the top-down and his dair is slow to come out) Our d-air will get beaten by the u-b tho.

4. Sonic cannot be gimped by Samus*. Ofcourse on the odd occassion Samus may pull off a gimp on a Sonic, but it would be because the Sonic made a mistake. And due to Samus' priority on his recovery, itd be very hard to gimp samus as well, about the same difficult if not a little harder than it is to gimp mario. It's a matter of gettin that hunter further away from the stage. THis, in theory, could be achieve by a d-air semi spike or an annoying series of well time and positioned homing attacks or fairs. But its far from consistent.

5. Samus will survive longer. Having said this, Sonic is not lightweight, he is smack bam in the middle.

6. We are better off on stages with low cielings, because Samus hasn't really got the capacity to star ko (terms and conditions apply).

These are just general observations so keep that in mind, but I would love to hear dissenting views.

^ Yeah, I replayed him today and I retract that statement. He can spin dash and uair or air dodge right out of his up B so it is a bit harder to gimp him. I also retract my statement about being able to screw attack out of shield all the approaches because apparently you can cancel a spin dash into a shield. I was not aware of these ATs. Needless to say, I still won quite a few matches against him, mainly using mindgames atypical of an "average" Samus.. it includes pivoting and pivot grabs and what have you.. -_-

Uh huh.
Sorry n00b can't take anything you say seriously.

Play any other Sonic that isn't bad near you. I'd offer but i live in NY.

hows ur connection n00b? I am an aussie but if you have broadband we shudnt have too much lag? If you're not up for that, maybe one ofthe american sonics that is at least slightly closer, could vs u.

He can spin dash and uair or air dodge right out of his up B so it is a bit harder to gimp him.

Click to expand...

Since wen can Sonic spindash out of an up b?