Male Wire Frame (SSBM)

Male Wire Frame in Super Smash Bros. Melee
Universe	Super Smash Bros.
A boss in	Melee
Availability	Hacking
Tier	Banned

Male Wire Frame (謎のザコ敵軍団, Mysterious Small Fry Enemy Corps), is an unplayable character in Super Smash Bros. Melee and only playable via hacking. He is unvoiced and a clone of Captain Falcon.

When playable, as is the case with most Multi-Man Melee-style characters, Male Wire Frame is worse than all of the viable roster. With a lack of special moves, his recovery is poor and his neutral is thoroughly limited. Additionally, his floaty physics and 15 native frames of landing lag make mounting an offense difficult, the latter forcing him to land in unorthodox ways, such as wavelanding or l-cancelling aerials. His large size also causes many of his moves to miss against shorter characters while making him more vulnerable defensively. His moves also have near-universally lower knockback than Captain Falcon's, rendering some unsafe on hit at lower percents. However, his moves generally have much larger hitboxes, and faster frame data; this applies particularly to his forward smash, which has improvements that make it a burst option and consistent whiff punish. He also has a much higher jump, which gives him unique recovery options and ways to push his advantage state. These unique traits come together to make his playstyle significantly different from Captain Falcon or Ganondorf. Thus, if legal, while he may not be in contention for the worst character in the game, he would be firmly in the lower spectrum of the tier list.

In the event of winning in VS Mode or Special Smash, without additional modifications, Male Wire Frame crashes the game upon the results screen being reached, due to lacking a winning animation. Losing allows the game to progress, where the game erroneously calls him Sheik.

Codes[edit]

Male Wire Frame can be played as using the following Action Replay codes and choosing any character on the Character select screen. Alternatively, he can be enabled with Debug mode.

Attributes[edit]

Male Wire Frame is a brawler of average speed but possesses the highest double jump of the Melee cast, which gives him unique edge guarding and ceiling-based KO opportunities. Some of the traits that make Captain Falcon successful remain: His up aerial has a large hitbox and can perform a Tipman Spike, his throws can set up for chain grab mixups against fast fallers like Falco, and his up tilt has a wide-reaching hitbox that can score KOs at around 130%. However, the similarities end there.

Male Wire Frame's large hitboxes make him excellent at platform pressure, with his up tilt, up aerial, and up smash all having large, long-lasting hitboxes that cover entire platforms easily. They also, generally, make him better at poking the opponent and keeping them away from centre-stage. His long rolls also give him some more effective defensive grounded movement, which can be useful against jump-ins and position Male Wire Frame for a counterattack. Thus, Male Wire Frame can employ strong bait-and-punish tactics in his neutral game. He also profits from having a down throw similar to Ganondorf's, giving him a very easy chain grab at lower percentages and racking up damage quickly.

Male Wire Frame's physics can be described as the polar opposite of Captain Falcon's. Whereas Captain Falcon is fast on the ground, Male Wire Frame is slow. Whereas Captain Falcon is a fast faller, Male Wire Frame is extremely floaty. This makes Male Wire Frame's combo game somewhat more limited (though uniquely different and strong) until higher percents, with his extremely high double jump and abnormally slow fall speed (even when fast falling) making it hard for him to chase an opponent he launched down to follow up. Coupled with his weaker moves, Male Wire Frame is goaded into playing a significantly different playstyle to Captain Falcon, centered around making use of his larger reach to poke the opponent and eventually edgeguard them, often using his up tilt to land the stock. He can't close out stocks easily outside of this, as most of his moves are very weak and struggle to launch characters off-stage even at 100%; ergo, crouch cancelling is his kryptonite.

Without access to special moves, Male Wire Frame has an abysmal recovery with few mix-ups. His floaty physics mean that while he is capable of occupying aerial space effectively, he has trouble getting back to the ground, leaving him vulnerable to juggling and making it difficult to escape disadvantageous situations. This is compounded by his native 15 frames of landing lag, which is shared with his aerials when l-cancelled. Thus, he usually wants to land with an l-cancelled aerial, at least giving him a hitbox to potentially protect himself with. However, out of these aerial moves, he lacks a reliable one to actually use for this purpose, as they all lose to disjointed attacks. Worse still, even when grounded, he has a worse shield than Captain Falcon, being easily shield stabbed by characters like Marth, as it fails to properly protect his lower half. As a result, while he has traits that make him more effective than characters like low-tiers like Zelda, he arguably sits in the same rank, being among the lower end of the Melee tier list.

Differences from Captain Falcon[edit]

In general, Male Wire Frame is floatier and slower than Captain Falcon, and has weaker attacks. Contrasting this, he has faster attacks with larger and longer-lasting hitboxes with little variation in the moves. Many of his movement statistics are copied from Mario.

Aesthetics[edit]

• Male Wire Frame is larger than Captain Falcon (Model Scaling 0.97 → 1.3), giving him better reach, but a larger hurtbox, and this can also cause some moves to miss against shorter opponents.
• Male Wire Frame is unvoiced.

Attributes[edit]

• Male Wire Frame has no special moves.
• Male Wire Frame can't charge smash attacks.
• Male Wire Frame's arms and legs are grabbable.
• Male Wire Frame's hurtboxes are generally much thicker, usually sticking out from his model.
• Male Wire Frame's Maximum Walk Velocity is higher (0.85 → 1).
• Male Wire Frame's Dash Terminal Velocity is much lower (2.3 → 1.5).
• Male Wire Frame's Jumpsquat frames are much higher (4 → 7), making any aerial action inherently 3 frames slower.
• Male Wire Frame's Horizontal Jump Initial Velocity is lower (0.95 → 0.7).
• Male Wire Frame's Vertical Jump Initial Velocity is lower (3.1 → 2.5).
• Male Wire Frame's Vertical Jump Maximum Velocity is slightly lower (3.1 → 3).
• Male Wire Frame's Horizontal Jump Maximum Velocity is slightly lower (2.1 → 2).
• Male Wire Frame's Vertical Short Hop Velocity is slightly lower (1.9 → 1.8).
• Male Wire Frame's Double Jump Multiplier is higher (0.9 → 1.3), making his double jump much higher.
• Male Wire Frame's Gravity is lower (0.13 → 0.09).
• Male Wire Frame's Terminal Velocity is lower (2.9 → 2).
• Male Wire Frame's Max Horizontal Aerial Velocity is lower (1.12 → 1).
• Male Wire Frame's Aerial Friction is higher (0.01 → 0.02).
• Male Wire Frame's Fast Fall Terminal Velocity is lower (3.5 → 2), which with all of his aerial changes makes it far more difficult to land.
• Male Wire Frame is slightly lighter (104 → 100), making it easier for him to escape combos but also easier to KO.
• Male Wire Frame's Shield Break velocity is much higher (2.7 → 5), making him rocket up off-screen, but never enough for an SD. Because he is intangible throughout, this does not affect gameplay outside of running out the timer.
• Male Wire Frame's Ledge Jump Initial Velocity is lower (3.3 → 3).
• Male Wire Frame's Wall Jump Horizontal Velocity is much lower (1.4 → 0.5).
• Male Wire Frame's Wall Jump Vertical Velocity is much lower (3.1 → 2.1).
• Male Wire Frame's rolls go much further, especially his ledge roll, making getting off ledge far easier.
• Male Wire Frame's damage dealt when spat at another opponent from Kirby's Inhale is lower (18% → 17%).

Ground attacks[edit]

• Male Wire Frame does not have a Jab 3 or Rapid Jab.
• Jab 1 deals less damage (2% → 1%).
• Jab 2 deals less damage (3% → 2%).
• Forward tilt deals less damage (11% → 9%).
• Down tilt deals less damage (12% → 10%).
• Down tilt has much more active frames (10-15 → 10-19).
• Up tilt deals less damage (13% → 12%).
• Up tilt has a much bigger hitbox, making it hit players on platforms much more consistently.
• Up tilt is interruptible much sooner (38 → 30).
• Up tilt loses a hitbox around the knee area.
• Forward smash deals less damage and doesn't have a sweetspot (20%/19% → 2%).
• Forward smash has much faster start-up (18-21 → 15-19).
• Forward smash is interruptible much sooner, by 21 frames (60 → 41).
• Up smash deals less damage (Hit 1: 8%/14% → 6%, Hit 2: 12%/8% → 8%).
• Up smash's first hit lasts a frame longer (21-22 → 21-23).
• Up smash's second hit starts a frame earlier and lasts a frame longer (27-28 → 26-29).
• Down smash deals less damage (Hit 1: 18% → 12%, Hit 2: 16% → 9%).
• Down smash starts a frame earlier (19 → 18).
• Down smash is interruptible much sooner (45 → 37).
• Dash grab starts a frame earlier (10 → 9).

Aerial attacks[edit]

• Male Wire Frame's native landing lag is much higher (4 → 15).
• All of Male Wire Frame's aerials have 30 frames of landing lag (NAir: 15 → 30, FAir: 19 → 30, BAir: 18 → 30, UAir: 30 → 15, DAir: 24 → 30).
• Neutral aerial deals less damage (Hit 1: 7% → 5%, Hit 2: 6% → 5%).
• Forward aerial deals much less damage and is far less powerful (Sweetspot: 18% → 9%, Sourspot: 6% → 5%).
• Forward aerial autocancel lockout is a frame earlier, but also a frame later (7-34 → 6-35).
• Back aerial deals less damage, but is technically more consistent thanks to not having a late hitbox (14%/8% → 10%).
• Back aerial's hitbox lingers for much longer (10-17 → 10-22).
• Back aerial has a slightly wider autocancel lockout window (7-20 → 7-21).
• Up aerial's clean hit deals less damage, but the late hit deals more (13%/6% → 10%/8%).
• Up aerial is interruptible sooner (33 → 30).
• Down aerial deals less damage (16% → 12%).
• Down aerial's autocancel lockout window begins a frame earlier and ends a frame later (4-35 → 3-36).
• Down aerial's hitbox is much longer, reaching slightly beyond Male Wire Frame's feet.

Moveset[edit]

• Unlike regular fighters, Male Wire Frame lacks special moves and cannot charge smash attacks.

For a gallery of Male Wire Frame's hitboxes, see here.

Announcer call[edit]

Both Fighting Wire Frames have an unused announcer call, which can be accessed if made selectable on the Character select screen. It is present in all versions.

Taunts[edit]

• Stands up and salutes, identical to Captain Falcon.
• Looks to the right and points, the same as Captain Falcon.

• 

  Facing right

• 

  Facing left

Idle pose[edit]

• Makes a battle pose where he leans forward and thrusts his arm out. Same as Captain Falcon's.
• Makes another battle pose where he crouches slightly and thrusts his elbow out. Same as Captain Falcon's.

In competitive play[edit]

Due to Male Wire Frame only being playable via hacking, he has been banned in competitive play since Melee's release. This is primarily due to accessibility issues; loading the game modded takes time, money, and logistics that tournament organisers have to work around. Furthermore, the win screen causes the game to crash without additional modifications, which would cause more time to be spent loading a match and delay events.

However, Male Wire Frame has seen experimentation by a notable players in Abate, with a combo video^[1] and an exhibition match at The Shape of Melee to Come 5 called "Abate's Wireframe Challenge"^[2]. Outside of Abate, videos attempting to build his metagame have amassed thousands of views on YouTube; notably, a video by Big Yellow earned over 200,000^[3], and Joseph Maolin produced a video attempting to build a hypothetical metagame for the character^[4]. Male Wire Frame's first documented tournament appearance was in Winners Round 1 of Man on a Ledge #528, played by Gumball.^[5] Outside of this appearance, Male Wire Frame has seen zero representation.

Despite experimentation and advancements in Melee modding, Male Wire Frame has not been made legal. This is possibly due to a potential slippery slope in allowing Giga Bowser, a severely metagame-warping character, alongside the other unplayable characters. In other words, while Male Wire Frame's metagame impact would likely be minimal, the consequences of other unplayable characters being made legal could be too severe to justify.

In 1-P Mode[edit]

In Multi-Man Melee[edit]

Male Wire Frame in 100-Man Melee.

Male Wire Frame, as part of the Fighting Wire Frame duo, is a central fixture in Multi-Man Melee, with them attacking the player in gangs. He appears in all modes, including Cruel Melee, where they are extremely threatening. In these modes, Male Wire Frame usually has a handicap, changing his statistics dramatically.

Trophies[edit]

Male Wire Frame's trophy in

Male Wire Frame

Who built the Fighting Wire Frames and to what purpose remains a mystery. They're a simple collection of wires which house a sparse framework of bones and organs that lends them a rather disturbing appearance. They look rather big and powerful, but in reality, both their offensive and defensive abilities are subpar.

Super Smash Bros. Melee (12/01)

Fighting Wire Frames's trophy in

Fighting Wire Frames

The Multi-Man Melee mode consists of 10-Man, 3-Minute, Endless, and other such matches, which pit you against the Fighting Wire Frames under varied rules. Of particular note is the Cruel Melee, where the Wire Frames pull no punches; they'll come after you with a single-minded fury rarely seen in CPU opponents.

Super Smash Bros. Melee (12/01)

Trivia[edit]

Male and Female Wire Frame on the No Contest screen, labelled as Sheik.

• While winning with Male Wire Frame causes the game to crash on the results screen, this does not occur if losing or quitting mid-game, where they are erroneously labelled as Sheik.
• Male Wire Frame has a fully functional Jab 3 and Rapid Jab, but they go unused due to lacking an input window. If modded in through software like Crazy Hand, they are revealed to merely be weaker versions of Captain Falcon's.^[6]

References[edit]

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