NOTE: This column is written by a guest writer, YarnYoshi: a longtime fan of Melee, former guest of Waiting for Game, and social critic.
I don’t play that many video games other than Melee, but over the last year or so, I casually played Magic The Gathering. Do I like Magic? No I don’t. The only format my friends like to play together is Commander, which is like playing on Hyrule Temple with items on. Each player has a strong incentive to play as degenerative as possible. Instead of paying attention to the opponent and trying to interact with them in a game of wits, you are basically encouraged to spend hundreds of dollars to fish for, like, two cards that wins you the game.
With that said, l do have to give the Magic community some credit: these guys don’t play when it comes to bans. Rather than beating around the bush, trying to appease as many people as possible without doing anything of actual substance, they straight up decide “we don’t like this,” and get to the core problem. While it’s too long and complicated to go through bans in every single format, what you need to know is that if a card is deemed broken or even merely not fun, it’s typically banned.
Since November 2024, it appears that my once beloved game of Super Smash Bros. Melee has slowly been turning into Magic The Gathering. But unlike Magic The Gathering, this community is run by a shadowy hivemind that refuses to address the most pressing problem of our beautiful game: one character, maybe the most controversial one in Melee.
This character has a plethora of broken techniques, many of which have been banned or effectively eliminated from the game through our rule set. This character is deadly off grabs, has a brutal ground game, and is arguably the best character in the game on Final Destination. This character is not too different from a broken Magic card; one who would be immune to all removal, have haste, vigilance, and when summoned, punch you in the gonads. I am, of course, talking about Fox McCloud. It is time for us Melee players to wake up and see the terror he’s inflicted on the community.
Infinites
If you think the Ice Climbers are bad with Wobbling or handoffs, or the Freeze Glitch, boy do I have a special surprise for you? Here comes this guy Fox with his metal boots and a gun and he has a plethora of even more infinites that he uses to shine you until he starts crying. Look at this clip below.
There is literally nothing Unruly could do in this clip to get away from the truth that Soonsay could do this with his eyes closed. Soonsay has played so much Melee in his life that hitting this waveshine dash JC shine turnaround waveshine dash JC shine may as well be knowing his ABCs.
Waveshine infinite. Drill infinite. Wall infinites. This character even has a laser infinite against himself. Ask yourself: how is this cool? Is it cool that in Melee you get to press buttons and if you press buttons enough times you can force your will on another player? If that wasn’t bad enough, you haven’t recognized the real horror of Fox: the fact that he can casually do this to you everywhere on the stage. I asked a few of my Fox player friends about this, and they all confirmed it was true (source: trust me).
According to them, whether or not your opponent wants to die is determined by if you properly input a smash turn or accidentally do a tilt turn. Admittedly, it’s pretty situational (waveshine JC turnaround waveshine, waveshine shine turnaround waveshine, or my personal favorite, waveshine shine waveshine shine shine shine shine shine). Usually the Fox player can already KO before you reach the very end of the stage. But the short wavedash turnaround shine is really big though. Doing it properly extends the range at which you can put opponents into a waveshine turnaround situation by a lot, and you can now do it even when facing the wrong way most of the time. With good execution, you die when shined in these areas if the Fox is good.
Did you understand any of that? Neither did I. But this is what my Fox player friend told me. What are we doing here, guys? Melee is like jazz: smooth, buttery, and living in the moment. Fox is like Yngwie Malmsteen: loud, abrasive, and uninterested in interacting. Do you really want to see Malmsteen try to groove with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, only to then play some jerkoff metal version of Beethoven-wannabe solo? I didn’t think so.
Lack of Interaction
Shine is a one frame move. If the Fox player hits Shine against you, there is nothing you can do about it unless he messes up. You are either going to get upsmashed, shined again, grabbed, or hit with basically anything if they properly react. Because interactivity is a thing we value a lot in Melee, I believe this move is very unfriendly to this core value of competition.
If you thought that was bad though, did you know that Fox has access to another uniquely broken move? I am talking about his dash. Dash in. Dash out. Dash in. Dash out. By using these simple moves, Fox can basically ensure he never gets hit. If you think about it, it’s basically an infinite. I know what you’re thinking: Fox doesn’t hit you with these moves. How could it possibly qualify as an infinite? Can’t you simply back Fox into a corner and then win through basic stage positioning? There’s two big problems with this type of thinking.
Problem 1: fuck you. Problem 2: Fox can access the ledge if he’s backed into a corner and then either immediately get a hit or retake center stage because you have to respect his ledgedash. Below, I have meticulously charted out all the locations on the stage in which Fox can get to the ledge, using Final Destination for reference.
When Fox is on the ledge and acts out of it, he has up to 15 frames of invincibility. Will he hit those 15 frames of invulnerability every time? Maybe not, but if he does it enough times, then it turns playing against Fox into a manner of praying he gets off the ledge and messes up. If you’re lucky enough to have a lead, you have to go to the other ledge and just camp there. Wait. There’s a ledge grab limit. You can’t do that. You’re screwed. Game over.
Is it impossible to imagine a future where Fox players can consistently do this and kill our game? And before you ask, the ledge grab limit won’t apply to them, because unlike other characters, Fox can just force you to interact with him at any given moment, and always on his terms. There will never be a timeout with Fox to force him to lose from a LGL scenario. If there is, the Fox player just sucks.
Honestly, the character is so under-developed; his players are basically finding new and honestly stronger ways to infinite you. Using the “It takes a very skilled player to infinite” no longer becomes an excuse when more and more people pick up Fox to learn the modern day infinites. What is there left to do other than ban Fox? If his other infinites weren’t banned, he would win every single major. Every. Single. One.
Increasing Prominence
It was already bad that we had two of these characters in the top four of Nouns Bowl 2025. But to have it again? It’s preposterous! For all the talk about wacky characters like Donkey Kong, Link, Yoshi, Pikachu, Ice Climbers, and Samus in the metagame, why aren’t we talking about the increasing prevalence of Fox players? I think this is very concerning.
Between moky vs. Aklo being our grand finals at Don’t Park on the Grass 2024, Cody Schwab and Joshman being our grand finals at Nouns Bowl, and Cody Schwab and moky being our grand finals at Full House 2025, it’s becoming clear that Fox dittos are dominating the metagame and centralizing it to a unhealthy degree. Don’t believe me? Well how about this: the last time we’ve had a Foxless major top eight was Kings of Cali back in 2012. Honestly, if we’re going to call that a major, we may as well call Full Bloom 2025 a major. On second thought, that’s fine with me, but you get the point.
Fox is also bad for viewers, as the centralized nature of the game has led to in recent times. The more Fox players, the less viewers we get; I studied this deeply. In case some of you nerds come in to ask me about the methodology of my study or some shit, I asked my uncle who works in the statistics department of Nintendo and he told me that this study had a p-value of .042069.
Let me tell you something: it isn’t just viewers. Every top player is miserable with the state of the Fox game. The top floaties all hate Fox. The Marth players are starting to hate Fox too because they don’t just auto-die to down-throw down tilt anymore. Let’s not even get started with the Sheik players or Hungrybox on a laser limit. In fact, even the top Fox players all hate playing the ditto with each other. Guys, Chickenman400 is picking up Fox. That should be the last straw; the final cry for help that we needed to finally act.
The Stage List
A wise man I have never disagreed with at all (The Crimson Blur) once daringly said that every rule change we’ve made in the history of Super Smash Bros. Melee has benefitted Fox. Frankly, he’s correct. When you think of total utter nonsense stages that have benefitted Fox, where else do you look other than the current ones that we have right now? Pokemon Stadium may as well be called Fox Stadium because Fox can just run roughshod over and away from everyone there. Yoshi’s Story may as well be called Fox Story: the story of Fox players sweatily making out with the ledge (during the full summer heat with no air conditioning) for like 15 times in between stocks before they ledgedash uptilt upair upair you to death and blame you for not respecting them.
Compare this to our old stage list, where we had legends like Kongo Jungle 64 or Mute City: safe havens for floaties. Those were the days when this game tested real skills, like comboing opponents into the lava on Brinstar or avoiding the Klaptraps on Jungle Japes. Of course, the Fox players couldn’t just let us ban the obviously broken shit like Hyrule Temple or Big Blue or Green Greens. They had to get rid of all the other stages that could actively nerf them.
You know how the Brawl community tried to nerf Meta Knight by eliminating a bunch of stages, only to have the Ice Climbers pop up and become an even more annoying character? Imagine if instead of that latter part happening, the Fox players just all refused to play the game with us until we banned the stages they didn’t like. Our game doesn’t have to be like this. We don’t have let grand finals be Fox dittos where one player just tries to break the game.
Randomness
Competition is supposed to be entirely on the players. To make sure that we don’t have randomness in Melee, we try to eliminate as many RNG elements of the game. Otherwise, we may as well play Mario Party. The bad news, however, is that there’s actually a very prominent example of RNG that determines the outcomes of games. I am talking about Fox’s tail.
Because it flaps around in the wind, it makes trying to hit Fox very inconsistent. If Fox were another character or did not have this tail, it would be one thing. However, because he is Fox and everything else about him is horrible, this tail essentially gets to determine whether or not you get a hit against him. It is basically like having an item on. Not fair.
Incremental Steps
Do I think Fox should be banned? Absolutely. Do I think it will happen immediately? No. But I am a very reasonable fellow who has talked to a lot of top players about this serious topic, and as such, I’ve decided to give it serious attention. Serious attention requires an incremental series of mild reforms.
Have you heard of the Controller Ruleset Committee? I’ve finally started something similar upon seeing moky beat Zain for the first time, which gave me a similar reaction to when Zuppy defeated aMSa at Collision 2023 (my 9/11). I call this group the Committee to Undermine McCloud (CUM). Although I would like to see Fox removed from tournament play entirely, I have instead drafted a list of experimental changes that could be tested at local events and regionals. Call them the 12 CUMmandments.
CUMmandment 1: Double Fox is banned in teams.
CUMmandment 2: Actually, you’re not allowed to refer to him as “Fox” any more. He is to be referred to as McCloud.
CUMmandment 3: Double McCloud is banned in teams.
CUMmandment 4: McCloud is limited to six waveshines in a sequence.
CUMmandment 5: Pokemon Stadium is banned.
CUMmandment 6: Yoshi’s Story is banned.
CUMmandment 7: Battlefield is banned.
CUMmandment 8: Dreamland is banned.
CUMmandment 9: Fountain of Dreams is banned.
CUMmandment 10: McCloud players must apologize after every opening they get off missed-tech roll in shine or a ledge dash.
CUMmandment 11: McCloud players who use neutral SOCD are forced to swap to neutral SUCKD.
CUMmandment 12: There can be no more McCloud dittos: if the two players involved in a tournament set double-blind pick McCloud, then instead of playing a set of Melee, the winner will be determined by who of the two players can shove their controller the furthest up their ass over the following 10 minutes.
Let us save this community. It’s time for us to stand up for something right; to hold our hands together, reject McCloud, and embrace CUM.