The Rise & Fall of Competitive Giga Bowser - Smash's BANNED Top-Tier
565,195
Published 2022-10-26
Since 2001, Super Smash Brothers Melee has harbored a beast in the depths of its code. A creature that, were he to be legal, could change the game's competitive metagame forever. For a time during the COVID-19 quarantine, he nearly did.
When in 2020, Giga Bowser was accidently unleashed onto Melee's netplay servers, a handful of players would push the character to previously unseen heights. This is their story. This is Giga Bowser's story.
This video amounted to about two months of on-and-off work from research to interviews to writing and editing. I hope that you come away with a better understanding and appreciation of Melee's greatest monster and the nuances of The Big Turtle Guy.
Should Giga Bowser be legal in SSBM? Sound off in the comments!
If you know more about the competitive history of Giga Bowser that you feel is not adequately covered in this video, feel free to DM me on twitter @wusstunes or email me at [email protected]. I tried my best to be thorough, but I imagine there is some pre-2020 G. Bowser history that I missed out on.
My links:
watch me stream on twitch: www.twitch.tv/wusstunes
follow and obey me at: twitter.com/wusstunes
donate to me on kofi: ko-fi.com/wusstunes
**
Thank you for all your support with this! This video took a lot of work from me and a lot of reaching out to players who were kind enough to share their stories (and in some cases, gameplay footage) with me. With that in mind, please be respectful towards them! I'm not trying to spur up any sort of harassment here.
In addition, this video is currently unmonetized due to me being not good at setting up my google adsense! If you liked it, consider buying me a coffee. I will drink it happily.
ko-fi.com/wusstunes
further reading:
Developing a Meta: Giga Bowser - • Developing a Meta: Giga Bowser
Mew2King with New Developments in the Giga Bowser Matchup Meta - • mew2king with new developments in the...
Are you a Giga Bowser Player? - • Are You a Giga Bowser Player? (Parody...
Play as Giga Bowser - Instructional Video • Play As Giga Bowser Online In Slippi ...
Deleted Scene - • these melee characters will NEVER be ...
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:35 What is Giga Bowser
01:48 Giga Bowser is Kinda Broken
03:44 The Second Coming
05:50 The Three Tenets
08:47 The Giga Gamble
14:40 A Second Chance
22:47 Regarding Legality
27:27 Coda, a Farewell to Giga Arms
30:25 song list ;)
All Comments (21)
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Giga Bowser should be legal once a month on the full moon like a werewolf
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Love the irony of peach being great on the giga Bowser matchup
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Legalize Male Wireframe and Giga Bowser so players like me don’t have to play low tiers like Sheik
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The Giga Bowser mirror match is probably on of the the least explored matchups in Smash history.
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For a long time I could never understand why darkgenex was so in favor of wobbling, the man was a perfectly solid spacie, but having seen this video I now understand that he is just insane
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It's cool and unfortunate this is what it takes for Bowser to see any form of competitive success in Melee
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my legacy... 🐢
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Puff beats Giga Bowser. Legalize him so I can dual-main those 2 pls
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Something about Peach making Giga Bowser worried sounds poetic. She gets kidnapped when she feels like it, and slaps down Bowser when she wants to fight.
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Giga Bowser should be allowed into tournament play and everyone who says otherwise is a coward
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I'll never forget one of the funniest things that was on Mew2King's stream once, which apparently some of these clips are from. Before it was patched out, some players where exploiting Slippi to use Giga Bowser, and M2K happened to random into one. His random character first game was getting trolled and lost, so before he starts the next game, he pauses for a moment, and then just says "I know how to beat this" and goes right to puff. Next thing you know Giga Bowser is getting wrecked by Pound -> Rest. The Giga Bowser player at one point was on last stock and wasn't trolling anymore. They actually looked scared to approach. As broken as it is in many ways, Giga Bowser exacerbates Bowser's main issue: he's too damn big and gets beat up for it. Being big in Melee sucks. Great video! This is why I love Melee. All the stories makes this game so fun to be apart of. EDIT: Pound not nair!
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Wow! I made the Mario Climbers code. Wild to see something I found mentioned in a documentary style video about my favorite game 😅 Kudos! Long Live Melee!
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The fact that he used to wobble is hilariously fitting
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I find it interesting how, despite nearly tying in their matches against him, many people consider Giga Bowser unfair.
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I get why it's not wanted in competitive play, but I do wish we could see more Giga Bowser gameplay at that high level just because it would be fun, and not as serious as competitive play.
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I feel like the only reason people want giga bowser to be legal cause we want some chaos
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Anyone who picks giga bowser in bracket is an absolute villain in the best way possible,
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"He's not fun to play against" Fox, Falco, and Ice Climbers (When wobbling isn't banned): "Allow us to introduce ourselves"
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I love the entire concept of playable Giga Bowser because it genuinely feels like you're in the middle of a boss battle during a tournament
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Make him legal occasionally. Meta needs to be mixed up now and then.
