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), and, as well as his potentially strong 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 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 having 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. 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 character. 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 third-lightest in the game, which almost makes him a combo-oriented character.

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, 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 moveset 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. Many of his attacks, including forward tilt, up tilt, and all of his aerials, are disjointed, which gives him an advantage in spacing, but many of his attacks, especially those with horizontal hitboxes, are either slow or have awkward properties that make them difficult to use in the neutral game. By far Mr. Game & Watch's greatest weakness is his lack of horizontal approach options. His run speed isn't fast enough to catch many opponents, and his only fast horizontal aerial is his back air, which does a mere 6% and is difficult to combo with. His grab has very little range, and none of his moves are very strong on shield, with the possible exception of a spaced forward air or forward tilt. Despite this, charging up smash attacks, using Judge if the number hits 3 or 9, using Oil Panic or repeatedly using standard, down, or up tilt attacks on the opponent's shield is very strong on shield, almost resulting in the point of the shield breaking. Chef also deals more shield damage. 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, leaving him with few KO options outside of random forward airs, combos into up air (which is inconsistent), or his grab KO confirm. Mr. Game & Watch also has a hard time landing, due to his floatiness and lack of a good option 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. 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. Mr. Game & Watch's neutral air can also drag the opponent down, leading to a grab or even a smash attack if timed just right. Mr. Game & Watch also has a potentially deadly grab game, with his up throw setting up for a juggle. Back throw is Mr. Game & Watch's best and strongest throw for being good for setting up edge guards (since he has forward air and down air for meteor-smashing), where it can lead to KOing every opponents, even around 100% or less damage, his down throw forcing the opponent into a tech chase scenario and can also send the opponent off the ledge if used near the ledge and also can buy enough time to use one of his smash attacks, and his forward throw comboing into neutral air at low percents, forward air at high percents for a KO confirm, or even his potentially deadly side special, Judge — an attack that can KO at almost all percentages if the number strikes to 9 —, it is extremely easy to KO if hitting 9 both vertically and horizontally, due to his floatiness, combined with his somewhat lightweight status. 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 ability to quickly react to opponents trying to jump over him with his up special. His down air is also an extremely strong spike, 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. Mr. Game & Watch has a strong recovery himself, with a fast up special that covers a long distance, the ability to mix up his recovery after his up special with aerials, and his ability to retain his double jump after using his up special. Mr. Game & Watch is almost never at a disadvantage offstage, as up special will KO opponents off-stage.

Since Mr. Game & Watch has mostly strongest attacks, Mr. Game & Watch is described as a "bait and punish", 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, along with outboxing other slowfallers or lightweight characters while on the ground, like Kirby, Jigglypuff or Bandana Dee.

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 inital 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.

Changes and revisions
Mr. Game & Watch was mostly directly buffed, although bugs related to down throw severely hurt his KO power, outweighing most of the buffs done. Below is a list of the major changes done in v1.1.

Trivia

 * It is possible for Mr. Game & Watch to be a true "silent character", along with Sandbag, Chibi-Robo, Mega Man, PAC-MAN, and Bomberman.
 * Due to Mr. Game & Watch having a strong moveset in the game, he should have been ranked 1st of S in the Tier List by other players. The same can be said for Rayman and PAC-MAN.
 * 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.
 * Although Mr. Game & Watch's appearance mainly consists of two flat colors, 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, along with Rayman, Yoshi, Zero Suit Samus, Tails, Jigglypuff, Mega Man, and Luffy, are the only characters so far who do not go into a helpless state under normal circumstances.
 * Mr. Game & Watch's artwork is based on this official pose he makes in Super Smash Bros. Melee, ringing his bell.
 * Since Beta 1.2, Mr. Game & Watch was the most popular character in the game, along with Rayman and PAC-MAN.
 * Prior to Beta 1.2 and 1.1, in which costumes were simple filters and hues, Mr. Game & Watch's sprites were red by default, and Mr. Game & Watch's costumes had different colors that were scrapped before the release of Beta 1.2. 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.