![ice climber melee ice climber melee](https://sdremix.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/450db-ic0.png)
At NorCal Tournament 2, known as Wobbles’ breakout tourney (although you could argue his victory at EVO South was also impressive), he used the grab infinite to massive success against a strong Southern California Peach player at the time in Edrees. This technique is notorious for being extremely easy to pull off, while having an insane reward of either leading to immediate death for the opponent or leaving them at absurdly high percents. After initiating this, the Ice Climbers player also tilts the stick forward to forward tilt them (or down to down tilt) with the backup climber, while still pummeling the opponent with the main climber. It consists of rhythmically tapping the A button to pummel the opponent mid-grab with the main climber. If you’re not, it’s a grab infinite done by any Ice Climbers player who gets a grab on their opponent. If you’re familiar with competitive Melee, you already know what this is. Notice what’s pulled below by the Ice Climbers. At the time, it was the most remarkable jump by a character on a Melee tier list.Īround the MLG era (before MLG Las Vegas 2006), a Japanese player named Tetsuya posted a combo video of several characters performing flashy combos on CPUs. 12 on the NTSC tier list – but by 2006, with many more inspired by Chu Dat’s success, they ranked seventh. It’s important to recognize Chu Dat as the godfather of his character, as well as one of the first relevant Ice Climbers players to use desyncing.Ĭhu Dat’s run at TG6 and successful 2004 didn’t immediately prove that his character was top tier, but his sustained excellence impacted how people viewed the Ice Climbers. Not only did Chu show how strong the Ice Climbers’ punish game was off grabs, but also how the two climbers could position themselves in tricky ways to out range his opponents. Some even saw them as previously unwinnable. This was especially impressive because these wins were in matchups that were difficult for the character at the time.
![ice climber melee ice climber melee](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/g904ciLdmrQ/hqdefault.jpg)
Here, he finished third, defeating Sastopher, Wes and double eliminating the legendary Isai. The perception of the Ice Climbers’ viability started to change when Chu Dat broke out at Tournament Go 6. Notable players: Chu Dat, Azn Lep, Trail, Kei, NealDT, Tetsuya In September of the year before, they were No. This is reflect within many of the NTSC tier lists made – in a tier list made on April 2, 2004, they were ranked No. As you can tell, the Ice Climbers have a good wavedash, but outside of their strong, but laggy smash attacks, they were limited. “Degenerate” doesn’t begin to describe what this video looks like by modern standards. Based on what I could find, this is the earliest known footage of the character in a match. Watch the video below to see how most people played Ice Climbers back then. For example, Chu Dat losing to Kamaal, a Deadly Alliance Luigi at DC Super Smash #2. Characters like Peach, Captain Falcon, Ganondorf and even Luigi were considered really difficult for Ice Climbers to deal with. Out of shield options were not as developed as today, so characters with strong hitboxes to pressure both climbers in shield gave them a rough time. In the early metagame, shield grabbing and crossup moves were seen as really important, but the Ice Climbers grab range was too short to be used effectively and they had no good offensive tools. One of the other big problems with Ice Climbers early on was their lack of good range on their grab. The idea of playing as two characters at once was complicated back then, especially when you could just play Sheik and get started comboing your opponents. Notable players: Chu Dat, ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!Įarly on, the Ice Climbers were considered too strange to be of any use in competitive play. They require a whole new perspective to understand, both in their meta development and history. Other than Yoshi, I would argue that the Ice Climbers are the most bizarre character in the game.
![ice climber melee ice climber melee](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/2FINVlUkwLQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
Melee that requires controlling two people on the screen at the same time. In addition to being from an obscure franchise, they’re the only character in Super Smash Bros.