SSBM/Donkey Kong/Introduction

Introduction

Donkey Kong combines the gameplay of both a grappler and a zoner, often suffering from the problems of both archetypes and only sometimes benefitting. At his worst, Donkey Kong gets completely stonewalled by opponents who refuse to interact on his terms, comboed extremely hard by much of the cast, and struggles to begin spacing without getting immediately called out. However, in capable hands or against less knowledgeable opponents Donkey Kong can feel nightmarish to fight, both spacing you out and killing you off just a single grab in the same stock. Additionally, while his movement is nothing to write home about, he can be deceptively speedy for a heavyweight character.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Throw Game - Cargo up throw leads into some of the best throw conversions in the game. It acts as both a combo starter and kill confirm in most matchups and is a huge enabler for Donkey Kong's monster punish game. Large Normals - While the hitboxes themselves are often not meaningfully disjointed, many of Donkey Kong's normals occupy a large space and allow him to contest the range of essentially any other character in the game Edgeguarding - Donkey Kong's Dair, Bair, and Up-b form a trio of moves that cover almost any conceivable edgeguard situation against many popular characters, enabling him to close out stocks on punishes that don't end with a kill confirm

Large Hurtbox - In addition to Donkey Kong's hulking size enabling your opponent to pressure you if they so much as sneeze in your general direction, he also has a hurtbox on his tie, so your opponent's don't even actually need to hit you to hit you Long Startup - Many of Donkey Kong's otherwise completely fine normals have incredibly long startup that renders them nigh unusable in many situations Picking a Direction to Face - In order to have a fighting chance against many of Melee's strongest characters, Donkey Kong needs to turn his back to them in order to access his zoning tool and saving grace in the neutral Bair. However, this also often stunts his ability to acquire grabs, which are his main way of acquiring strong punishes on the vast majority of characters