Mr. Game & Watch (Super Smash Flash 2)

Mr. Game & Watch is a veteran starter character in Super Smash Flash 2. He was revealed on the third day of the APEX 2015 stream. His moveset and sprite design are taken from Super Smash Bros. Brawl. Unlike his usual appearance as an unlockable character in all the official  games released to date and the previous game, he was made a starter instead in Super Smash Flash 2.

Mr. Game & Watch is currently placed at 28th of B tier on the current tier list. Mr. Game & Watch has strong KO moves in his disjointed smash attacks, all aerial attacks (excluding back aerial), a brutal combo and juggling game, amazing out of shield options, a potentially deadly grab and throw game, with up, down and forward throw being strong combo starters and back throw being his strongest and only KO throw to opponents at higher precents of damage, and, as well as his potentially strong special attacks, Judge and Oil Panic. Due to his high air speed, he has an amazing air game, along with fast and high priority aerial attacks that provide good spacing and edgeguarding tools, with his able to meteor smash if landed on the initial hitbox. His relatively slow falling speed allows him to break out of juggles, and combined with Fire, he has one of the best vertical recoveries in the game. Since forward aerial has good and slightly disjointed range and has slow falling speed, this helps in Mr. Game & Watch's great edgeguarding tactic in the wall of pain.

Despite these strengths, Mr. Game & Watch possesses a few notable weaknesses. He is tied with and  for being the third-lightest character in the game, which makes his survivability very weak. Despite possessing disjointed hitboxes, his overall range is mediocre, allowing sword-wielding characters to keep him away. Additionally, while Mr. Game & Watch's up throw and down throw are strong combo starters, none of his throws tend to KO until very high percents of damage. His strongest special moves, Judge and Oil Panic, are also very situational, with Judge having a random effect with each use and Oil Panic only being useful against opponents with absorbable projectiles.

Attributes
Mr. Game & Watch is a medium-speedy, yet floaty third-lightweight character who has a moveset of disjointed attacks. Mr. Game & Watch has fairly average attributes all around, running slightly slower and jumping slightly lower than, but runs faster and jumps higher than most of the other characters like and , mainly the lightest characters, such as  and. He has good air speed and is on the floatier side of the cast. His most notable attribute is his light weight, being tied for the third-lightest character in the game, which almost makes him a combo-oriented character, and his very low crouch to evade various attacks: like 's forward smash, 's up smash, 's side special and 's shield breaker, being one of the characters to have the lowest crouch in the game.

His only other notable attributes are his dashing speeds, being tied with Black Mage, Bomberman, Jigglypuff, Luigi, Mario, Simon and Waluigi, and being tied for the twentieth-fastest character in the game, and his jumping speeds being tied with Naruto, along with his jumping height being tied with a few other characters like Rayman, but his walking speeds (tied with Bomberman and ) and falling speeds are slow to compensate (tied with Marth and Rayman).

Overall, Mr. Game & Watch has a fairly unorthodox playstyle focused on vertical combos. He possesses a very strong juggle game, with his neutral air having a large vertical hitbox and combo ability, his up special allowing him to quickly reach opponents above him, and his up air being able to keep opponents in the air with its windbox effect while also being a strong KO move. He has a strong set of smash attacks that deal significant shield damage to destroy it if used more than three times (which makes them shield breakers), along with dealing huge knockback and KOing opponents relatively early, especially when charged up. While his smash attacks are very strong on shield, his standard attack, tilts and aerials are strong on shield too if used numerous times, with tilts being the most strongest on shield. Mr. Game & Watch's greatest strength is the disjointance in the hitboxes of various attacks in his moveset. Many of his attacks, including his tilt attacks, smash attacks, and aerials, are disjointed with somewhat-long durations and lingering hitboxes, which gives him an advantage in spacing and also increases his KO power, as they give him a numerous amount of powerful KO options. He possesses various strong attacks in his moveset that grant potent offence and harsh punishment, but they are rather slow in the process.

Mr. Game & Watch's greatest weakness is his lack of horizontal approach options. His running speed is not fast enough to catch many opponents, and his only fast horizontal aerial is his back air, which does little damage and is difficult to combo with. His grab possesses little forward range and is somewhat laggy, though it also reaches slightly behind him. Many of his other attacks, especially those with disjointed hitboxes and horizontal hitboxes, are also either slow or have awkward properties that make them difficult to use in the neutral game. As such, he has a difficult time getting much of anything started and struggles against characters that can outbox him on the ground, like and. He also has trouble with some zoners, as his down special only absorbs energy-based projectiles. He sometimes struggles to KO due to his slow smash attacks which have either slow startup or have more amount of time before releasing to attack, leaving him with a few KO options outside of forward aerial, combos into up air (which is inconsistent), or his grab KO confirms. Mr. Game & Watch also has a hard time landing, due to his floatiness and lack of a good options to hit below him outside of down air, which has hefty landing lag.

When he does get in, though, Mr. Game & Watch can deal a lot of damage to opponents. His neutral air, up tilt, up special, and down air are all powerful combo tools that have the ability to link into each other, and forward air and up air are good combo finishers that can net a KO at high percents, along with his standard attack being able to quickly rack up damage. Mr. Game & Watch's neutral air can also drag the opponent down, leading to a grab or even a smash attack if timed properly.

Mr. Game & Watch has a decent and potentially deadly grab and throw game, as his back throw launches the farthest of his throws which makes it arguably the best throw and his only strong KO throw and sets up edgeguards, and his down throw forces the opponent into a tech chase scenario and can also send the opponent off the ledge if used near it. Occasionally, his throws make a sudden lag for a moment; with forward throw launching the opponent at a potentially horiziontial or vertical angle, back throw launching the opponent at a swiftly horizontial angle, and down throw launching the opponent at a potentially horizontial angle while they are on the ground which sends opponents off-stage for a KO; which will immediately KO high-damaged opponents with all throws, which makes all of his throws strong and laggy KO throws. His forward throw and especially his up throw are combo throws that can follow up into aerial attacks such as his neutral air, forward air or up air for KO confirms, or even his potentially deadly side special, Judge — an attack that can KO at even low percentages if the number strikes to 9 —, it is extremely easy to KO if hitting 9 both vertically and horizontally, due to its disjointed hitbox and his floatiness, combined with his lightweight status. The higher the number is on Judge, the stronger the effect will be on opponents, with #3 destroying full shields (the same can be said for #9), #6 burning opponents which sends them at a strong semi-spike which is used for KOing high-damaged opponents, and #8 freezing the opponent and sending them upwards, in a similar style to a freezie. His other potentially deadly down special, Oil Panic, will absorb energy-based projectiles, and if filled, it will release a large and disjointed projectile that can one-hit KO opponents, depending on the strength of the projectiles absorbed, and is capable of destroying full shields if strong projectiles are absorbed. Mr. Game & Watch also has a strong edgeguarding game, with his high aerial mobility, ability to put out a large number of falling projectiles with his neutral special, long-lasting aerials, and the ability to quickly react to opponents above him with his up special. His down air is also a strong meteor-smash, and its disjointed hitbox allows it to beat out or trade with nearly every recovery move in the game, severely punishing opponents that have to recover low, such as Jigglypuff or. Mr. Game & Watch has a strong recovery himself, with a fast up special that covers a long vertical distance, slows his descent after rising, can be canceled with another attack, retains his midair jump, and has a hitbox when rising. Because of this, Mr. Game & Watch is almost never at a disadvantage offstage, as up special is capable of KOing opponents that are off the stage, which makes him more dangerous off-stage.

Since Mr. Game & Watch has mostly strong attacks, he is described as a powerful "glass cannon" and a "bait and punish" (can sometimes be an "all-rounder"), which is a character that possesses a potent offense, and can deal a lot of damage. Mainly, he can forcibly punish other lightweight characters, since most of his attacks are fairly powerful and has lots of great combos, and has amazing out of shield options, brutal combo game, and a strong off-stage presence, along with outboxing other slowfallers or lightweight characters while on the ground, like Kirby, Jigglypuff or Bandana Dee, making him more like a high-tier or top-tier character. He is also descirbed as a "grappler" and a "zoner", which is a character who focuses on controlling the stage and use their grabs as a large part of their playstyle.

Overall, Mr. Game & Watch had a few differences in Beta 1.1 in terms of moveset, such as his down air meteor-smashing without a sweetspot or hitting the initial hitbox, his forward air somewhat sending the opponent upwards, resulting in an apparent Star or Screen KO to opponents who are around 100% damage, and lastly his down attack pushing the opponents who are above it upwards, like his up aerial. Because of this, Mr. Game & Watch was once again the most popular character.

All in all, Mr. Game & Watch is also one of the most disliked characters in competitive play, having a reputation for being one of the most frustrating characters to deal with due to his amazing out of shield options, brutal combo game, a strong presence off-stage and powerful and somewhat slow-startupped smash attacks which makes him very difficult to punish and allows him to deal large damage and close out stocks quickly in a short amount of time.

Changes and revisions
Mr. Game & Watch was mostly directly buffed, which means he has very potential and powerful KO power and a numerous amount of combos, although bugs related to down throw severely hurt his KO power, outweighing most of the buffs done, but has the least nerfs out of the other characters in the game (excluding ), fairly making his survivability strong. Below is a list of the major changes done in v1.1.

Notable players

 * Byllant

Tier placement history
Mr. Game & Watch was first placed 40th out of the 39 characters in the previous SSF2 Beta tier list since Beta 1.0, making him the first bottom-tier character in the Beta 1.0.0 metagame, the second bottom-tier character in the metagame is Black Mage. However, he rose to becoming 2nd and overall 17th in the mid tier list, being ranked 28th in the tier list, however, according to the fans of Mr. Game & Watch, he was most directly one of the most popular characters to be more played than the other characters, making him to be considerably ranked 1st high-tier or top-tier character in the game.

Trivia

 * Mr. Game & Watch,, , , , and are currently the only true "silent characters" in the game.
 * Mr. Game & Watch and Samus are so far the only two characters in the game to have the lack of visible eyes. By extension, he is the only true "silent character" to have an eyeless trait.
 * Mr. Game & Watch and are currently the only characters to have more than one victory pose in the game, with Mr. Game & Watch being the only one to have three.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's sleeping and home-run bat animations are heavily based on the same animations in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate.
 * All of Mr. Game & Watch's moves use objects from games in the  series, making him the only character to have every single move in his arsenal based on a game he appeared previously before.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's Ball form when thrown by another Mr. Game & Watch is simply a giant black circle for his head since he does not have a visible nose or a mouth if facing the screen, resembling the other balls thrown.
 * Although Mr. Game & Watch's appearance mainly consists of two flat monochrome colors (a black body, a white outline), his appearance when metal consists of multiple shades of gray. To accomplish this, his default sprites are actually the same sprites he uses when metal, which are then recolored for his costumes.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's overall appearance is based on the generic Game & Watch-esque characters from the games Fire and Parachute, while his costumes are based on the appearances of various displays of the game consoles he appeared at, like the Virtual Boy and the Game Boy.
 * Mr. Game & Watch,, , Jigglypuff, , Mega Man, Rayman, and are currently the only characters who do not go into a helpless state under normal circumstances.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's artwork is based on his official pose in Super Smash Bros. Melee, ringing his alarm bell.
 * Prior to Beta 1.2, in which costumes were simple filters and hues, Mr. Game & Watch's sprites were red by default. This was due to the fact that it allowed for more varied costumes for the character, as grayscale colors like black cannot be changed by applying different hues.