As most newcomers realize soon after playing their first few Wifi matches, the Brawl community largely frowns upon turning items on in matches.  Of course, this didn’t stop Sakurai (the SSB series’ lead developer) from equipping a sizable portion of the Brawl roster with usable items within their movesets.  While these items don’t do much beyond damaging opponents when thrown, there are several mechanics in the game that are useful to know when you or your opponents have items at your disposal.

Brawl Tip of the Week V: Items

First, let’s go over some basic item mechanics.

There are several ways to pick up an item.  You can simply walk over to it and press A, obviously.  If you use a dash attack close enough to an item, you will scoop it up.  If you start an air dodge close enough to an item (whether it’s sitting on the floor, a platform, or being thrown at you), you will snatch it.  If you time it perfectly, then you won’t even air dodge; you will just pick up the item.  You can also press A at the right time to pick up an item out of the air when it is thrown at you.  Once you have an item, you can release by either throwing it with A or by dropping it with Z.

Now I’ll show you some advanced concepts.  The most important technique is called glide tossing.  This glitch utilizes the forward (or backward) momentum of a roll to make your character “glide” in that direction while s/he tosses the held item.  This glide varies from character to character; some have virtually no glide, while other characters can glide across the entire distance of Battlefield.

This technique is performed by holding down the shield and rolling.  Immediately after the roll, mash the C-stick in the direction you want to throw the item.  If done correctly, and if your character has a good glide toss, you will glide a considerable distance in the direction you rolled.  This is absolutely vital to know if you’re playing Diddy Kong due to his dependence on bananas, and is very useful for other characters with such as R.O.B., ZSS, and Peach.

Another important concept to know is that items like ZSS’s armor pieces and Wario’s bike pieces will keep bouncing for a while if thrown directly up or down, and they will do damage and knockback until they stop.  This is especially useful for Wario, who can down throw his opponent into a bouncing bike piece, and they’ll bounce off the item and Wario gets a free Fsmash or fart, which can be devastating.

Here’s another oddity worth noting.  While Snake doesn’t have a good glide toss, he has the ability to stop a grenade in its track by pulling out another grenade and shielding.  This will drop your second grenade, and due to a glitch in the game mechanics, your other grenade will stop moving completely.  If your opponent is holding your grenade, it will magically drop out of his hands.  If you see your opponent catch your first grenade, you can shield drop a second grenade immediately after they throw it and laugh as it plops right at their feet and explodes.

Finally, if you’re holding an item that does decent knockback such as a ZSS armor piece or a bomb, you can try to throw it straight down at an opponent while they’re trying to recover below the stage.  If you aim it right, they will get knocked into the side of the stage and usually die if they don’t tech it.

Even if you hate every item in this game, learning these tips will help you deal better with characters who have items at their disposal.  Don’t be afraid to use their items against them; if you know how to handle their items better than they do, it turns their advantage into their disadvantage, which can be important in deciding the outcome of the match.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 3:53 pm and is filed under Brawl Tips . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.