MW Top 10s — Best Individual Moves

While in MYM 4 the contest revolved around wowing everybody with each individual move in their own right, nobody cared if the moves came together as an actual set – you could read the moves in whatever order you wanted and it wouldn’t matter. . .Of course, back then our idea of “creativity” was tossing on generic projectile reflecting/absorbing onto everything or giving something a clever animation and calling it a day. Nowadays, moves can oftentimes be perfectly acceptable as boring when looked at individually, but what impresses people is how it plays into the character’s grand scheme and interacts with other moves. This list isn’t going to ignore such interactions, but the move in question has to be absolutely vital and emphasized over the other ones – preferably, the other moves in the interaction should be promoting it. Not that they’d make it, but Final Smashes are omitted from this list, considering that lists for them have already been made. As for the list’s lateness. . .If you haven’t noticed, good moves aren’t particularly well remembered, so I’ve been coming up with spots on the list for a while. . .Maybe not the –whole- time. But still!

Honorable mentions to Octillery’s Side Special,Spadefox Remix’s Side Special, and Espeon’s Down Special – how I wish I’d remembered them. . .

10 – Pokey’s Dtilt by n88 – MYM 8

 

A very simple not so very epic attack at a glance. Pokey bends over into an arch shape. . .And can hold the pose for as long as he wants with the entire insides of his body constantly being a hitbox. It does enough knockback and hitstun to knock foes into another part of Pokey’s body for an infinite – if they land on the ground from the random angle of the knockback they’ll still slide into another part of his body. Granted, landing on the ground can be teched, making for a very cool way to escape this infinite attack and making teching relevant (Which it isn’t, my dear Ocon, at least on the actual allowed stages). The only issue with this move is that it infinites bigger characters because of their size, but what’s worse is that n88 decided to make the move have a maximum duration of only a couple seconds to compensate, ruining some of the potential fun. Ah well, the concept’s still there.

9 – Jafar’s Neutral Special by KingK.Rool – MYM 4

 

This is probably the most iconic move ever made, and the only one which has the honor of actually being remembered by name in the common MYMer mind – “Into Red Smoke”. What happens is, unsurprisingly, Jafar summons a gigantic cloud of red smoke which obscures the field. While as an individual move it’s aged rather poorly, it was an absolute breakthrough back then and introduced some very legitimate playstyle into Jafar – remember Sandslash and how he masked his traps? Jafar does it on a lesser scale through this move 3 MYMs earlier and there’s still more to it to boot. This was something unheard of in MYM at the time, as most legitimate playstyle was unconscious and accidental. Of course, Rool was very much aware of it, considering he wrote that wonderful playstyle summary.

8 – Arbok’s Dashing Attack by Hyper_Ridley – MYM 7

 

There’s a reason I constantly reference this attack in all of the match-ups I keep constantly bringing Arbok back for. . .Aside from the fact it’s overpowered! Arbok has a lot of attacks that enable him to hit the background and characters like Haunter use it as an alternate dimension, but Arbok travels among the planes so casually with this attack it’s not even funny. In a keep dashing dashing attack (Which makes it more cool by default), Arbok speeds forward as you have the ability to hold up/down to make Arbok come closer to the foreground/go more towards the background. It’s just so. . .Natural, It’s an attack involving the background that doesn’t feel forced.

7 – Cutter Matter’s Dtilt by KingK.Rool – MYM 5

 

Cutter Matter launches his middle segment out at the foe, and if it attaches it latches on to them, removing that part from his hitbox. Granted, this move isn’t much at all by itself, but with 2 of Cutter Matter’s other moves he can send out the other two segments in his body and completely remove his hurtbox. While it might sound a bit too move interaction heavy to make the list, Cutter Matter only has 6 moves – you’d better expect some bloody interaction if you want him to be at all viable and not piss easy to predict. The dtilt was chosen because it’s the last of the three moves in the sequence to remove Cutter Matter’s entire hurtbox and informs the reader of his ability to do this, and because it’s the most creative of the 3 moves.

6 – Hades’ Grab by BKupa666 – MYM 4/6

 

Hades. . .I’m sure a lot of you don’t remember that name so fondly, but everybody loves Hades’ grab. It’s yet another simple yet brilliant concept, as Hades stretches out his arms as far as he wants for infinite range, but has to wait for his arms to reel back in if he misses the foe, with there obviously being more end lag based off how far he reached out at the foe. I ripped off this move with –Lust- of all things in MYM 5 (The moment I read the thing I wanted to steal the idea it was so good – I specifically remember it), then Kupa comes back with a Hades remake with (some) playstyle that brings this move back again in all its’ glory, increasing the memorability/iconic status of this move significantly.

5 – Mach Rider’s Dashing Attack by Chief Mendez – MYM 4

 

Mach Rider’s dashing attack is his mechanic in and of itself. While you might complain it’s a simple mechanic booster, nothing else enables Mach Rider to change gears in any form, and nothing directly benefits from it. He doesn’t get generic power as he goes faster, so all credit for Mach Rider’s awesomeness goes to this move. Of course, he still has far more benefit going at high speeds – ever heard of hit and run? This is one of the very, very, VERY few sets that does it right and isn’t blatantly campy in nature.

4 – Joe’s Neutral Special by Junahu – MYM 6

 

While spacing is vital to a good chunk of Joe’s attacks, he doesn’t have many ways of obtaining that space. . .Enter this move. This move enables Joe to shuffle forwards and back during the starting and ending lag of other moves, being the ultimate method of obtaining space (Aside from blatant fleeing) in and of itself. Like most of the time when Junahu strikes gold, it’s so simple and obvious but so brilliant at the same time, and also helps to capture the actual feel of boxing which the vast majority of the Punch Out sets fail to do.

3 – Raven’s Neutral Special by Half_Silver28 – MYM 6

 

Raven is labeled a camper, but how’s about a camper without projectiles? Rather than just spamming a projectile, Raven sends out a copy of herself to fight normally while she just stays behind a wall, not taking any damage. There have been multiple versions of this move, but most of them were in the distant past and just thrown in as gimmicky creativity, such as on my own Dimentio who even goes so far as to use it on the same input. It’s hard to make this relevant outside of making the double cheap fodder for going on gimping suicide missions, but this concept is much much better and makes a camper have much more varied options than just spamming projectiles. This really is an under utilized concept and I’d love to see another set try it in the future.

2 – Subaru’s Up Special by Darth Meanie – MYM 7

 

Subaru has her gear shifting, but that’s more just a way to keep a mechanic in check, not the mechanic in and of itself like Mach Rider’s Dashing Attack. Now then. . .What did everybody say Mach Rider needed? A stage that was big enough for him to actually use his higher gears (Extras were common, even –expected- at the time from some idiotic people, who also demanded excessive detail). Subaru’s Up Special enables her to have as much extra stage as she wants to build up momentum and even do loop de loops, as a track is constantly created in front of her for her to ride upon. Almost no interactions with the road and those few that exist aren’t meaningful – the road takes pretty much all of the credit for Subaru’s success.

1 – Spadefox’s Down Special by Hyper_Ridley – MYM 6

 

Oh my god. Spadefox 1.0 won a positive list! Yeah, Spadefox basically made it to 8^th on account of some of his more epic flashy moves, such as this one. What this move does is cause Spadefox to dislodge the foe’s soul, which is an ethereal version of the character which has stamina (Less based off the victim’s damage). It fights as a level 6 cpu who always play defensively, while the victim player still controls the body as normal. If the body grabs the soul they can absorb it, but if the soul dies then the body dies too. While that’s already over 9000 levels of epic, Spadefox is rather sucky when it comes to damage racking, isn’t he? Well, all of his gimmicky status effects become *gasp* RELEVANT because of this move, as any status effects the body had will be given to the soul permanently – all Spadefox has to do is prevent the body and soul from reuniting. This move, which wasn’t brought back for the remake (Which didn’t rely on status effects) enables the first set to stand up on its’ own two legs better than it’s given credit for.