So the idea of Little Mac being the worst character in Smash has been tossed around and… yeah I pretty much agree with that. While a lot of characters are lacking in certain areas, Little Mac is perhaps the only one that is outright missing aspects of the game. His aerial game is so limited it’s practically a non-factor outside of incredibly niche situations, his grab game lacks any distinctive follow-ups, and his recovery is a joke even amongst bad recoveries. Due to this heavy reliance on his excellent ground game, Little Mac’s approaches are predictable, exploitable, and child’s play to counter if you know what’s coming. Little Mac doesn’t represent the Punch-Out series in this form - dodging and weaving and finding the right time to strike and adapt to your opponent’s gameplan - he represents a Punch-Out boss, with powerful strikes that ultimately are overcome simply, consistently, and easily. And he’s not even a hard boss, he’s like. Bear Hugger.

However, I don’t want to scrap Little Mac entirely or rework him from the ground up - that’s just a waste of resources. Ideas implimented in his design are very good, such as his low to the ground dash, the KO meter working similarly to the arcade titles, and his smash attacks’ armor being an excellent read punish option. In fact, I like him at his base a lot - an unfinished character who has some advantages, but can’t adapt to his opponents. But I want to go a step further, and take that base and shift it into the heart of Punch-Out - adapting to your opponent, and boxing.

I won’t be changing any of Mac’s tilts, Smash attacks, or his jab combo - what he does on the ground with the A button is great. I am, however, going to limit his jab to a three-hit combo, modeled after a jab-jab-hook boxing combination, with two quick left-handed jabs followed by a right hook. This hook will have knockback toward Mac, letting him follow up with any of his tilts, but will not be safe on shield. This way, the jabs are a ‘scouting’ tool, and if he manages to hit it, he ends up getting rewarded with an easy combo. I’m also going to reduce the knockback of his tilts for an overall design choice coming in later.

Instead, we’re going to focus on Little Mac’s specials. His current neutral special is… bad. It’s never going to get a kill unless a novice player decides to challenge its super armor, slow, and isn’t at all emblematic of the character. So instead, we’re going to change it to be his Slip Counter. Yes, I know that ‘counter’ is a dirty word, but “dodge his punch, then counter-punch” is such a Punch-Out philosophy that it feels wrong having Kirby copying something else. However, we’re going to change Slip Counter to work less like Fire Emblem and more like Punch-Out. If Mac counters a projectile, he’ll just dodge it, going into his sidestep dodge or air dodge animation, depending on if he’s in the air or not. To keep it from being judge another dodge button, though, we’re going to make this skillful dodge build up the KO meter by, say, 20% every time it’s performed successfully. That way, Mac has incentive to dodge projectiles rather than just spamming roll, and someone like Fox can’t just pressure him forever with Mac having the response of “well, guess I’ll just die, then”.

If Mac counters a physical move while he’s in the air, he performs the Slip Counter as it’s seen in its current form - the assets already exist, why not use them. However, if Mac hits this new counter on a physical move on the ground, now it gets interesting. Mac dodges the move, immediately gets into range of his opponent as if drawn in by a tether grab, and immediately starts his jab combo. Even if the enemy is in the air, Mac will do the jab-jab-hook combo on his enemy, ready for an immediate follow-up. Nothing says Punch-Out like being able to assail your foe with a flurry of blows after a correct read, and this lets Mac have an air of flexibility that other counter-users, Incineroar aside, just can’t match. It’s not a STRONG counter, and rarely one that’ll nab a kill, but it’s a great damage-dealing tool and a way for Mac to break in with a good read. Also if he does the jab combo into the air, that has the potential of linking into his dinky little neutral air, the one with the crummy spike hitbox? Suddenly Mac has an edgeguard option.

For his side special, we’re keeping the Jolt Haymaker as-is. It’s not very Punch-Out, but it’s really fun to use and emblematic of him in Smash thus far.

For his up special, we’re changing it to the Star Uppercut. This essentially works just like his current KO Punch, but with the boost that his current up special gives him. This is just to give him a LITTLE horizontal distance and a slight windbox - not much, but enough to keep pressure off of him just a little bit more.

But his down special, now we’re getting into the meat of all of Mac’s changes. His down special… is training. For this one, Mac pulls the jumpsuit back on and starts jogging in place, and Doc Louis appears in the background, probably wherever Pokemon Trainer would be hanging out, or just his voice encouraging Mac on. Doc’s a huge part of Mac’s character, and only occasionally hearing his voice during taunts just isn’t enough for me. While in this ‘training’ state, the Little Mac player can perform any action - any attack, any dodge, jumping, grabbing - anything except for Smash attacks and throws. Let’s just say for aerials, you have to press the button twice to specify ‘jump’ and then jump and an aerial attack to specify ‘aerial’. After picking the attack, a short animation will play, and Little Mac will get a buff to whatever he chose that remains for the rest of his stock. And this is the crux of Little Mac’s new playstyle - taking opportunities to buff himself up in order to respond to his opponent. Buff up the counter, now the timing window is more forgiving. Train his jab, now he gets a flurry of punches if you hold down the button like his current rapid jab, only this one boosts up his KO Meter like crazy. Tilts now have knockback and go from combo tools to kill moves as Mac puts a little more oomph into them. Choose jumping and Mac’s air speed increases, neutral air and he actually uses it like a spacing tool, down air and he changes his weak little flail into the K Rool back air spike, up air and it actually has a hitbox that works. This doesn’t make him amazing at anything, but it makes him actually able to handle his weakness of being off-stage. And maybe that’s not important right now, maybe you need the extra knockback to finish a King Dedede off, or a further reaching haymaker that now fully dodges projectiles to get past Samus’s missile pressure, or an actually threatening grab option for a turtling K. Rool. And if you use down special while in training, rather than “training training”, Mac goes right into his Slip Counter, a perfect little feint for the opponent.

The KO Meter itself I love as a concept, but now we’ve made it so Mac has the ability to combo into it and build his game around it.  My only other change to the KO meter is to make it harder to hit Mac out of it. I don’t think he should gain permanent access to it, like Cloud’s Limit, as that’s not congruent with its Punch-Out appearances, but make him need to take a significant amount of punishment, like 40%. That should be a stronger pressure tool than DK’s Giant Punch, and it’s not - it’s a novelty.

The last change I’m making is to his grab, and rather than the awkward pummel he does now, we’re going to change it to “clenching”. Clenching is when a boxer kind of… hugs the other guy and tries to work him into a corner. It’s used as an emergency way for a boxer to get some rest and heal up some of their stamina, and so that’s what we’re going to do for Mac. Instead of a traditional pummel, Mac will clench the opponent, healing off some of his damage while dealing a meager amount to the opponent. This will also charge up the KO meter a pip every time he does it, and if the meter is full, immediately recharge it to full strength if he’s taken some punishment. This gives Mac a mix-up with his approach. We’re also going to change all of his throws to have a set knockback - all of them. Mac should be able to follow up exactly how he wants to with these, and we want them to be decent combo opportunities.

And… that’s pretty much how we’d fix Mac. His issues stem from his predictability and his glaring weaknesses, and we’ve created a playstyle and is not only more emblematic of Punch-Out’s design philosophies, but good at covering up Mac’s weaknesses. He needs time to learn his opponent and figure out in what way he can beat them, before unloading. And if he goes down, he needs a second to regroup, shaken from his previous peak, but hopefully those recovery frames giving him time to get one training session in so you can try another strategy. Separated enough from and less drastic than Shulk, but ultimately making him a far more well-rounded character, if still lacking some recovery options.