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I was interested in knowing which characters had the "best" aerial movement. Particularly, who is the fastest in the air horizontally? I ran two different tests with very similar results.
For the first test, I made a custom stage (Large) with blocks along the bottom (18 blocks) and platforms all the way up the left side creating a sort of "landing strip." I then had each character (one by one) go to the right edge of the top platform and held right to see how far each character got (how many blocks he/she traveled horizontally) and how much time it took. For each of these, I captured the video and analyzed it to estimate how many "blocks" he/she traveled and get the amount of time. These estimates were a little rough since it's hard to say exactly what fraction of a block has been traveled when the character lands. I wanted another test to get more accurate results.
For the second test, I altered my custom stage such that the "landing strip" only had 6 blocks with a wall of blocks on the right of the 6th block. I made each character teeter at the edge of the top platform and recorded the time (via video capture/analysis) it took for that character to travel from the edge of the platform to the wall. I had to make one exception for this test; King Dedede has such slow movement that I had to shorten the strip to 5 blocks in order to make him hit the wall before he hit the ground (I wanted to avoid jumping in these tests). The results of this test were generally VERY close to my first test results, so I think that both results are pretty good with the 2nd probably being a little better.
Anyway, I can describe these tests in more detail later if people desire it, but I believe the 2nd test gives fairly accurate results. I've sorted them from fastest in the air (Yoshi) to slowest in the air (King Dedede), and I've included their average horizontal air speed (in "blocks per second").
Character - Horizontal Air Speed
"S Class"
Yoshi - 4.04
Jigglypuff - 3.87
Wario - 3.71
Wolf - 3.63
Captain Falcon - 3.63
"A Class"
Sonic - 3.36
Donkey Kong - 3.36
Lucas - 3.30
Bowser - 3.30
Squirtle - 3.27
Mr. Game & Watch - 3.24
Marth - 3.24
"F Class"
Meta Knight - 2.35
Ivysaur - 2.32
Ice Climbers - 2.32
Luigi - 2.29
King Dedede - 2.10
This list does NOT take into account things like gliding, B-moves, or aerials (ROB's Bair for instance) that may affect horizontal air speed.
What does this mean? How does this affect the game?
Well for many characters in the lowest class of air speed, they cannot approach very well from the air simply because they are too slow. If you choose a character with a good defensive ground game (Donkey Kong for instance - though not vs. Dedede obviously), you can really limit their approach options on the ground and take advantage of their slow movement if they attempt an aerial approach.
Certainly, this is not the only aspect of any given match, but it is an important factor to consider. If you know that your opponent is slow in the air, how can you use that to your advantage? Likewise, if you know your opponent is fast in the air, how should you adapt your play style for that particular match?
Also, one must consider that this only refers to horizontal air speed. Characters like Jigglypuff have great movement side to side, but feel like a slug vertically. On the other hand, Dedede moves very slowly side-to-side, but his vertical movement is pretty decent.
I do think that Jigglypuff should have the highest Aerial Movement. The amount of nerfs to just about every smash and aerial attack is just ridiculous. All of them are slower and have (what seem to be) smaller hitboxes.
I wonder if you could do a test like this for fast falling? I kept my eye out on the boards for it, but I never came across it; search didn't help because I didn't really know what to call it either.
I thought on the Dojo it had said that Jiggs had the highest horizontal aerial speed
I don't remember reading that, but if so then the Dojo is mistaken. Jigglypuff can travel the farthest distance of anyone from a given height due to her fast horizontal speed and slow vertical (falling) speed. Yoshi falls a little faster, but he covers a set distance (6 blocks in my test) faster than Jigglypuff.
Interesting to me in this test is how the results compare with the feel of the game. For instance, Wario is 3rd fastest, but to me he "feels" faster (not faster necessarily but more controlled) than Jigglypuff and Yoshi. I think this is because he may have a better acceleration/deceleration rate, or it may simply be that he's in a "butter zone" for speed that gives him good speed and good control. In other words, Yoshi/Jigglypuff may be a little too fast for their own good. If an object is traveling at higher speed, it takes more time to change direction (given a fixed deceleration rate) than an object moving at a lower speed.
I have been trying to think of a way to measure "air control" or acceleration/deceleration to see if there is any difference among the characters. It could be different acceleration, or the "butter zone" effect I mentioned, or maybe just the different falling speeds, but I definitely feel like Wolf, Wario, and G&W have better control than Yoshi and Jigglypuff. Perhaps their (wolf, wario, G&W) aerial attacks being good also give the illusion of better control.
Remember that his information fails to account multiple jumps, attacks, or additional inputs of any sort. This is a good basis for which characters move around what speeds horizontally, but this is only that. Real players will approach differently, with varied heights, coming from dashes or stand still jumps.
Good information, I hope this can come to good use.
edit: Rason, please edit your sig so that all threads you post in don't have to involve horizontal scrolling.
Nice. I had done my own tests a couple of weeks back, they agree quite nicely with yours. If you don't mind, I'll post them here. Not trying to take over your thread or anything, but it would help validate both our results.
And yeah, this is just max speed, it's pretty clear that Jigglypuff, Squirtle and Wario can turn on a dime and thus have better control over their air game, while Snake probably has the worst acceleration rate in the game (have you ever tried doing a forward jump and then trying to get him to go backwards at max speed? It ain't pretty.)
To measure acceleration, you could freefall a character in a neutral state and measure the time it takes to go from 0 horizontal movement to max horizontal movement. The problem is that there are no visual cues, so it'd be really friggin hard to tell precisely when the character reached that point.
So here's my list.
Fighter Ratio Speed (b/s)
Yoshi 1.418 3.907
Jigglypuff 1.343 3.7
Wario 1.327 3.657
Wolf 1.285 3.541
Captain Falcon 1.243 3.424
Sonic 1.186 3.267
Donkey Kong 1.17 3.223
Squirtle 1.142 3.145
Mr. Game & Watch 1.14 3.142
Lucas 1.135 3.126
Zero Suit Samus 1.107 3.05
Marth 1.107 3.049
Bowser 1.101 3.033
Zelda 1.078 2.969
Samus 1.052 2.899
Charizard 1.045 2.879
Lucario 1.026 2.828
Ness 1.024 2.822
Toon Link 1.011 2.785
Snake 1.001 2.759
Mario 1 2.755
Ike 0.977 2.691
Pikachu 0.968 2.668
Peach 0.962 2.649
Falco 0.961 2.648
R.O.B. 0.952 2.623
Fox 0.948 2.612
Pit 0.944 2.602
Ganondorf 0.92 2.535
Kirby 0.908 2.502
Sheik 0.903 2.488
Olimar 0.88 2.424
Diddy Kong 0.871 2.399
Link 0.87 2.397
Ice Climbers 0.816 2.249
Meta Knight 0.808 2.225
Ivysaur 0.801 2.207
Luigi 0.789 2.174
King Dedede 0.699 1.925
Pulled straight out of Excel so sorry about the formatting. We have almost exactly the same list, with only a few discrepancies here and there, and the speed measurements we got agree well. One thing I notice is that my speed measurements seem consistently lower than yours by about 0.1 blocks/sec. Probably has to do with how we measured it? I made my characters travel a longer distance 9 blocks before running into a wall. I also tried to account for the character's model - for example, some characters only "hit" the wall when half of the model is overlapping with it, so I started the timer when the appropriate parts of the character model were past the edge of my starting platform (this is probably the main cause of differences in the list.) Jumps were involved, but they don't affect horizontal speed at all as long as you're still holding forward (this is easy to test with two of the same character), and I made sure to use the necessary jumps before hitting the wall.
You can disregard the ratio, it's just the ratio of that character's horizontal speed to Mario's.
By the way, I also did very accurate falling speed tests and added the falling speed and horizontal speed as vectors to obtain the falling angle. Would anyone be interested in me posting the falling angle list?
I do think that Jigglypuff should have the highest Aerial Movement. The amount of nerfs to just about every smash and aerial attack is just ridiculous. All of them are slower and have (what seem to be) smaller hitboxes.
Actually Uair has a bigger hitbox and dair>rest is common now. And with stutter stepping f-smash is incredibly long ranged.
On top of the ability to jump five consecutive times in the air, Jigglypuff’s midair acceleration and top speed are in a class by themselves, making Jigglypuff the ultimate midair brawler.
from the Dojo
I would say that "in a class by themselves" would mean fastest... apparently not
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