In-depth look at Fox McCloud

[Ricky Jones]

Excellent guide. As with just about everyone, I've found myself jabbing way more. Thanks for that.

Wouldn't mind a more extensive definition/exegesis of the SHDL? Does the landing lag cancel have anything to do with it, or is it all in the timing of the shots? Always curious about that one.


Hey to everyone, BTW. Been reading/viewing here for a few years off and on, actually. :D

 

[ballin4life]

Excellent guide. As with just about everyone, I've found myself jabbing way more. Thanks for that.

Wouldn't mind a more extensive definition/exegesis of the SHDL? Does the landing lag cancel have anything to do with it, or is it all in the timing of the shots? Always curious about that one.


Hey to everyone, BTW. Been reading/viewing here for a few years off and on, actually. :D

If you're having trouble doing the SHDL, remember the key is to get your first shot off quickly. Slide your thumb from the jump button (I use left c) to b. This sliding press is a good technique for a lot of other things too, like doing mario's down air -> upair in one short hop.

Beyond that I guess it's just getting the timing of the lasers but that part is easy. The landing lag cancel isn't what makes the SHDL possible, it just makes it more effective in game.

 

[Wenbobular]

Heh, if there was landing lag then SHDL would be nearly unusable, seeing as how I still get hit by dashing Falcons running in and upsmashing, because Falcon doesn't care about laser hitboxes (half the time).

To SHDL you just have to get good at pressing laser immediately after the short hop. I personally mash B, but you should learn to timing so you don't have to kill your thumb SHDLing

 

[Kmaru]

WOW thnks a bunch for this thread i rly needed it!!!

 

[smash brawl player 99021]

amazing im crying...

 

[Ricky Jones]

That helps me a lot w/ the SHDL, Wenboblular and ballin4life. I've been able to mess around with it on console and even show off a little. Forget what I said about landing lag/cancelling it. I don't even want to think about rephrasing whatever it was I was trying to ask. haha.

Regardless, thanks for the tip! I'll definitely be keeping my eyes on this thread...

 

[UnF-air]

Some other good stuff to know:
you can infinitely change directions while in shine. This is incredible for so many reasons. My favorite is short hopping off the stage changing directions in shine and snagging the ledge for a hog.

remember that you can Usmash directly out of shield. This is a useful skill for all characters, but as we all know fox's Usmash is unreal so this is highly effective with him.

weird stuff: Up-B when done on the ground while holding down doesn't necessarily send fox the way he's facing.

 

[Daedatheus]

Some other good stuff to know:
you can infinitely change directions while in shine. This is incredible for so many reasons. My favorite is short hopping off the stage changing directions in shine and snagging the ledge for a hog.

This is a lot slower than pivot+shorthop+fastfall into ledge or dash pivot + SH + fastfall into ledge, so only use this if you are PURPOSEFULLY delaying your descent into the edge.

Also Fox's dash animation (after the initial dash is over) has a nice slide when he turns around, you can use that to hog the ledge very fast from a distance by full dashing and turning around near the edge.
If you're close, you can also do a dashpivot edgehog, Fox does it more easily than most of the cast (but not all).

 

[Nixernator]

With land canceling the shine is there any practical applications for it? I do it a lot after kills to kind of slide around really shorthop land canceled shines, and was wondering if anyone does them. I only sometimes do them to take someone by suprised to techchase/knock off edge for a guard..

 

[Lawrencelot]

With land canceling the shine is there any practical applications for it? I do it a lot after kills to kind of slide around really shorthop land canceled shines, and was wondering if anyone does them. I only sometimes do them to take someone by suprised to techchase/knock off edge for a guard..

Use it when someone is attacking your shield. Or if you can do multiple ones quickly, do it to attack their shield.

 

[Daedatheus]

With land canceling the shine is there any practical applications for it?

Shine near edge -> run off edge and fastfall -> shine(spike)

You can do this to some characters, and it's only fast enough if you cancel the first shine properly.

Other than that, it's nice for fancy combos involving shine->jab. I've seen it used in matches as part of a combo, too. If you're fast enough, most people will not tech it because it's so sudden and unexpected in smash64, so you can do shinecancel, then immediately dash and grab. Maybe even use it as an upsmash setup? Very Melee...

Also another unmentioned Fox AT is the teleport. Do it just like Jigglypuff's. Rather than explain it here, just check out this video which demonstrates it AND the description tells you how to do it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdggE9_qbiI

 

[Wenbobular]

Thanks Daed, hopefully House doesn't mind me using his little video...

 

[Ricky Jones]

Also Fox's dash animation (after the initial dash is over) has a nice slide when he turns around, you can use that to hog the ledge very fast from a distance by full dashing and turning around near the edge.
If you're close, you can also do a dashpivot edgehog, Fox does it more easily than most of the cast (but not all).

I remember when I discovered this with Fox on accident. I use it all the time... Which other character has just as easy a time dashpivot edgehogging? I've only been able to successfully (in gameplay) nail it with ness and pika...?

 

[Nybb]

I remember when I discovered this with Fox on accident. I use it all the time... Which other character has just as easy a time dashpivot edgehogging? I've only been able to successfully (in gameplay) nail it with ness and pika...?

Falcon can do it too. Plus there is also the added possibility of throwing in a taunt-cancel while going off the edge to really show them your moves.

 

[Daedatheus]

Which other character has just as easy a time dashpivot edgehogging?

As Nybb said, Falcon does it well, but the easiest character to do it with is Luigi because of his slide when you dash pivot.

It's very realistic to do it consistently with Falcon, Fox and Luigi, other characters seem a little harder but I haven't tried with other characters very much. All I know is I have about 95% success rate with Falcon but getting Link to do it was more like 30%. But I'm sure a little practice with every character will yield good results.

 

[Kitamerby]

I read this guide, and now my Fox can box.

I've finally started (ab)using jabs more thanks to this guide. I can't believe I never noticed how amazing they were until someone told me. <<

 

[Nixernator]

Oh and another important thing. Is it possible for someone (not on the Keyboard, with a controller) to DI out of fox's SH drill and retaliate before you can shield/grab/utilt/jab?

 

[Daedatheus]

Oh and another important thing. Is it possible for someone (not on the Keyboard, with a controller) to DI out of fox's SH drill and retaliate before you can shield/grab/utilt/jab?

Yes, but not always, and it often depends on how you follow up. So if your opponent has good DI, make sure to react to their DI rather than continuing a combo on muscle memory. IE if they DI far away from you, catch them with fox's dtilt. If they DI behind you, downsmash or pivot quickly into an uptilt.

Sometimes they might be able to get a shield up before you can get your next hit in, so that leaves you with too many options to list.

If you do the drill low enough to the ground, they ideally shouldn't be able to get out consistently.

 

[Nixernator]

Thanks Daed never really played anyone with good DI and I"m getting worried someone might pull it out on me soon.

 

[Wenbobular]

Bumping my guide because I love attention.

That and apparently no one thinks we have any guides on this forums. Where's that Pikachu(?) guide that Kefit(?) wrote up?

Stickies please or at least a mention in the Smash index.

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

I think i will create a samus guide...or a yoshi guide

whatever character you guys want more

 

[Blue Yoshi]

We need both I believe.

I had a thread with a list of who was doing which guides... back when we started making them.

 

[teganyavo]

super extra bump

ive read this guide like ten times over the past year and every time I glean some new insight into Foxery from it. Very well done sir, all of my smashing friends know and loathe the foxjab

This time i finally realized how to pull off the shine near the ledge to shinespike, so til we meet again, Foxthread

 

[Wenbobular]

Man, that was like a super duper bump haha.
I think guides are a little less useful in SSB64 because frankly, as you play you'll learn most of it just by watching / playing
Melee / Brawl (maybe) have less obvious tricks ... I was watching Falco vids and reading the guides, frankly I never knew how hard playing a technical Falco was before I tried playing him haha

 

[teganyavo]

Meh disagree, obviously playing trumps all, but guides like this one certainly help point you in the right direction. For instance, a year ago, the concept of the short hop zcancelled dair approach was completely beyond me. a few months later I reread this thread and 'got' it, I guess... and learning how to use z-cancel in that instance basically developed my skill to z-cancel every move. without it id probably still be stuck in early lvl 4.

You're definitely not gonna get good just reading guides, but if you play a lot you'll get good a whole lot faster with them. Same thing with vids; it doesn't replace actual experience but it supplements the hell out of it if you actually pay attention and try to apply what you see

 

[dandan]

without it id probably still be stuck in early lvl 4.

lvl 4? what levels are these?

 

[asianaussie]

That old learning curve posted a while back. Level 1-4 is scrubs, level 5 is like everybody who knows how to play except the top console/online players and level 6 is isai, boom etc.

A huge argument over level 5 was sparked because it was way too generalised and people were like 'hey i can combo with falcon that makes me 5c' while some of the better players were saying they were only 5b because their DI wasn't too great.

Why do people still believe the learning curve is accurate...?

 

[KoRoBeNiKi]

The learning curve should be from 1-9. 1-6 is rather dumb due to too little levels.

 

[teganyavo]

Why do people still believe the learning curve is accurate...?

it's definitely not accurate. it was just a handy and arbitrary standard with which I could make my point.

 

[MattMode]

I was wondering if anyone could tell me how to do the teleport upsmash? I saw the video but i don't really get it how to do it.

 

[ballin4life]

Say you're running right.

Tap left, then immediately usmash. It takes a while to get the timing down, you basically have to make a quarter circle with the stick

I'd practice teleporting with jiggly too, but using jump (so run right, press left and jump right after) so you can see what the timing is like.

 

[Darth Rancorous]

teleporting upsmash with samus is hard! i mean, i can teleport with samus somewhat consistently, but my fingers arent always fast enough for the added upsmash

back on topic, jiggs is a good way to practice teleporting. just do what ballin said and u should be able to do it. and then after that, just practice! lol

 

[mr yo]

jigly´s teleport is the largest so is the more useful to combo, mindgame, surprising, scaping and tech chase your opponent...and if you REALLY master it you can control the distance of the telepor by changing the timing between pressing back and jumping.

fox and samus telepor are shorter (in that order)...fox is maybe a litle more of a body of distance, maybe two....samus i thnk that is a body or less

so is not THAT useful....against a real goodplayer that space REALLY well, that distance can make a difference with a fair, nair, dair, or bomb...even with samus.....combing into a teleported-up smash with fox can be the difference betwen a stock and an unclosed combo...an interesing use for samus teleported up smash is that with practice and maybe a litle luck you can brake a shield...if every hit of samus up smash (it has like litle explosions of fire that goes from the front to the back) hits the shield it brakes....so if you are sliding while doing it you might do that; specially if your opponent is on a platform above you...if you do that correctly you are going to brake the shield or at least stab it

and if you brak a shield with samus that means you can make that cool combos with a bomb and an up smash as starters...maybe bair too if he is a heavy and its at 0%....

teleport is cool and usefull...learn how to teleport

 

[greenblob]

When I do a regular teleport, I snap the control stick back and jump. When I'm doing a teleport usmash/upB, I do a 270 degree circle back and press A or B.

 

[rpotts]

When I do a regular teleport, I snap the control stick back and jump. When I'm doing a teleport usmash/upB, I do a 270 degree circle back and press A or B.

I do fox's teleport upsmash like this too. When i want to teleport with jiggs i just snap back and jump with C, but I never really use jiggs and when i do i don't apply teleport.

The first time i successfully used a teleport upsmash to finish a fair combo with fox I almost jizzed. I was happy cause the person I did it to noticed it/understood it. It was N64, the ssbm pikachu main.