In one of my previous articles, I talked about how many players are typically good at focusing on their execution and mechanics, their physical gameplay, but struggle to develop their mental game. My last article on this topic covered mental state and that by knowing your mental triggers and psychological fortitude, you can put yourself in a better position to avoid tilt and play better; in this article, I want to focus a little less on emotion and dive into the more analytical side of gameplay by going over my process of observing replays.

Where to Begin…

When I started playing competitive Melee in 2006, the concept of studying replays was a bit foreign to most players as the world of esports was still in its infancy, and the number of games being recorded at events were abysmally low. Recording equipment wasn’t the greatest... I mean, look at the kind of quality we were working with; it was either that or someone straight-up recording the TV with a handheld camera, so the process of actually watching replays to develop one’s skills was not in the front of someone’s mind. In today’s world, however, the ability to check out your past games, or the sets of your favorite pros, is as easy as riding a bike.

If you’re keeping up with the rest of the Melee community, you’re probably aware of Slippi Matchmaking, but you might not be aware of the fact that Slippi also saves every match you play as a .slp file in your dolphin folder. To go back and watch these games, you can download the Slippi Desktop App, set the file location, and playback all the games you’ve played while grinding unranked; hell, you can go one step further and get a statistical breakdown of the games too.

Step 1: Picking Out Games and Watching Them

Now that you have tools available to you, it’s time to actually talk about watching replays. First, you’re going to need to propose a question for the analysis session. This can be as broad (like, "How can I play better in the Falco matchup?") or as narrow ("How am I DI-ing these hits?") as you’d like, but establishing that question is critical to an analysis session. Why? Because watching replays is an extremely time-consuming process. By not setting up a question to answer or goal for the viewing session, you will have a higher chance of losing focus and overwhelming yourself with information.

Next, pick out three to five replays that align with that goal. Melee is an extremely complex game, and one game isn’t going to cover many of your play style's intricacies. Adding a few extra replays, you give yourself a bigger sample size to answer questions about your decision-making and playstyle habits.

Step 2: Check the Stats

As I mentioned a little earlier, in addition to allowing you to watch replays, the Slippi Desktop App also does a stats break down on different aspects of the game such as conversions out of neutral, the strength of your conversions, inputs per minute, and a bunch of other stuff. While this isn’t exactly gleaning information off of your replays, it provides hard numbers for your game, which will help you narrow down key points to focus on in your matches.

Step 3: Actively Watch

You’ve got your replays picked out, you’ve given them a couple of once overs and admired your (or your opponent’s) work, now it’s time to watch through the matches actively. What do I mean by actively watching? I mean giving the replay your full attention when watching it. Turn your brain on and engage with it, take down notes about things happening in the match, mark timestamps of key moments, and start asking probing questions (we will cover this more in a later section).

How do you know what key moments to take notice of? The easiest ones are when your opponent makes a conversion from neutral and gains advantage, also known as that moment your opponent starts comboing you. Conversely, you should also note the times you convert out of neutral and gain advantage. I’d also make notes of what times you or your opponents respawn and start jotting down notes on how each of you moves while the other has invincibility. Other things you should call out depend on what your goal for the session is, so call out things that apply to that.

Step 4: Slow Things Down

After watching the replays a couple of times and taking a few notes, the next thing to do is, watch everything again, and slow it down at those key moments you called out. When we’re in the heat of a match inputting somewhere around two or three hundred inputs a minute, it’s more difficult to determine the correct decisions to make, and oftentimes you’ll be caught out because you didn’t realize your option put you at a frame disadvantage. By slowing your replay down, you can pay more attention to different interactions. For examples of this in action, you can check out any videos on turndownforwalt’s youtube channel; I’d suggest the video on his breakdown of Zain vs N0ne .

Step 5: The Five Whys

Realistically this is something you should be doing throughout the whole process, but how could anyone resist making something called “The Five Whys” step five? So what is The Five Whys, and how does this apply to Smash? The Five Whys is a fault analysis process technology companies use to determine the root cause of a defect or problem by repeating the simple question "Why?" The idea is that by drilling down and asking why at each answer, you’ll be able to get to the core of the problem by the fifth why. For example:

Problem

My opponent comboed me

Why?

Because they caught me out of my jump

Why?

Because they U-aired me when I jumped up to the platform

Why?

Because my opponent anticipated I would jump up to the platform

Why?

Because in previous games/stocks, I would jump to the platform to outmaneuver my opponent

Why?

Because it’s movement I’m comfortable with

Answer: My habits are becoming obvious. I should start mixing up my movement options and/or I should consider what options my opponent has.

As you can see, by drilling down you’re able to discover a problem in your gameplay and can walk away with information you can take into future games.

Keep in mind that The Five Whys is just a guideline. The example given above is pretty generic and lacks context, such as stage selection, character choice, or where things are in the game state. As you add more layers to the problem, you add additional complexities, which may lead you to need to ask more whys, and that’s fine. The dream is to get it done in five, but as long as you don’t stop until you have a solid root cause for what caused the issue, you’re on the right path.

Another potential problem with The Five Whys is that the answers aren’t always consistent. You or someone else could start with this same problem, provide different answers for each of the whys, and reach a different conclusion. This is why it’s important to analyze multiple replays in a viewing session. The more data you have to work with, the more refined your answers will be when going through The Five Whys process.

Lastly, this exercise can fall flat if you’re not thinking critically about the answers you give. Be real with your answers; this is the time to call out your flaws. Also, don’t stop on an answer that ends with “My opponent is just better than me” or “This match-up is unwinnable!” Drill down deeper. If the answer is that your opponent is better than you, why is that the case? If the match-up is that difficult for you, ask yourself how you can change your playstyle to change that ratio even slightly.

What Else?

As I mentioned before, Melee is an incredibly complex game, and the improvement process is ongoing. Internalize the information you gained from analyzing your replays, take it into future games and analyze those replays. If you get stuck and can’t figure out an answer for problems you’re encountering, it’s ok to cheat and take some inspiration from players better than you. Use the steps I’ve outlined in this article and learn what answers they’ve come up with and apply those to your own problems.

Lastly, at some point, you’re going to realize that critical analysis of your own gameplay is exhausting. You’ll end up spending hours or days criticizing every decision to the point where you will get sick of watching replays. To avoid this burnout, it’s important to also point out the things you’re doing right. Make notes of your good conversions and ask why you made those choices. Reinforce those good habits; it’ll make slogging through the bad stuff that much easier.