Life Lessons from Ganondorf

There is no practical reason anyone should ever be able to win a one-on-one fight playing as Ganondorf in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. He is a disastrously slow character in a game centered around mobility, he has no defense against ranged attacks except to pray that his basic block will hold out against them, and his jump arc — his one viable option for getting back on the stage if he gets knocked off — resembles nothing if not a wet paper bag being lobbed at a garbage can. Anyone with a reasonable level of dexterity should be able to eat Ganondorf’s lunch no matter who they choose to play as.

Yet Ganondorf, even more so than most other fighting game characters, is a creature of opportunity. He can take a while to beat up on before he’s weak enough to launch off the stage, and almost every single move of his is a potential game-ender. If you can hit your opponent with a Flame Choke, that will leave them prone, and then a simple, hard press of down-A will bring his sword out to swoop them up in the air like a chef doing meat tricks with his knife at Benihana. I have won rounds this way after sucking terribly, after scoring few to no hits for the entirety of the game previous. To paraphrase a famous threat from the IRA, whoever you’re fighting against needs to play well for the entire game, but if you’re using Ganondorf, you only need to play well once.