Wario's Bike, an Analysis
Marsh - May 2, 2017Overview
Wario's side special, or "Bike" as its commonly referred to, is a very useful tool for wario mains, but can be very confusing for non-Wario players. The strange hitboxes, multiple ways to use it, hitbox extentions, and edgeguards with the bike can be a lot to remember while fighting against Wario.
When performed, Wario jumps onto his bike and moves faster on the ground, he can use the bike to ram into opponents, or simply jump off by pressing an attack button and let the bike ride forward by itself. The bike's speed can be controlled by holding forward on the control stick.
The bike itself can be eaten by Wario to gain 1 second of waft charge, and heal for 1%, it can also be destroyed by being hit, and thrown offstage. Unlike in brawl, the bike will despawn after 24 seconds.
Bike Options
The hitbox on bike comes out on frame 20, and can last infinetly if Wario never jumps off or is never knocked off the bike.
Wario has 5 options while riding the bike. The first and most common is jumping off the bike, by doing this, Wario creates a projectile from the bike. The bike will still move forward and deal 3% when it hits an opponent, this is referred to as "ghost-riding". Ghost-riding is useful in applying pressure to the opponent while still being able to move around freely. It is a very powerful pressure tool, forcing the opponent to pick an option to deal with the bike coming towards them, and allowing Wario to react to that option and punish. Shielding the bike is the most common option opponents pick, Wario can easily deal with this with bite, since his aerial mobility is so good, he can jump off the bike and ghost-ride it, and drift it and bite the shielding opponent. Wario can also get a dash grab if the opponent shields too long. Wario can also cover jumping over the bike since he is already in the air.
The second option is simply riding the bike. The bike will deal 10% if the opponent is hit by the front of the bike, and 7% if they are hit by the middle of the bike, it can kill at late percents.
The third option is wheelie. Wheelie is done by holding up on the control stick while Wario is riding the bike. The most common use for wheelie is as a second hit after the intial hit of the bike that most opponent dont expect. It's nice for shield poking after running into shield with the intial hit from bike, since most people don't expect wheelie. It is also useful for a little extra percent after hitting the opponent with the intial hit of bike. The wheelie hit of the bike does 8% and has the potential to kill at very late percents.
The fourth option is bike slam. This is performed after Wario does a wheelie on the bike by either holding down on the control stick, or waiting for the wheelie to end. After the wheelie, the bike will slam down on the opponent dealing 13%. Bike slam is a decent kill move as a mixup. It will kill lightweights at around 70%, midweights at around 85%, and heavyweights at around 100%.
The fifth and least used option is bike turnaround, by holding the opposite direction that the bike is going, Wario will do bike turnaround. Bike turnaround has multiple hitboxes, with the main one doing 7%, and the sourspot hits dealing 3% with the possibility to hit multiple times. This is useful for shield poking if spaced correctly. This is the least used option as it is very unsafe and easy to see coming. Turnaround is also quite slow to come out.
Bike as a Projectile
Once Wario jumps off the bike or is hit off and the bike stays on the stage, Wario or his opponent can pick it up and throw it as a projectile. Wario has 3 options to throw the bike, up, down or forward. Each direction changes the percent that the bike deals. Smash down and up throw with the bike deal the most percent with 26%, while regular down throw bike will only do 22%, and regular bike up throw will do 15%. Forward bike throw will do anywhere from 12% to 18% depending on the distance the bike had to travel before hitting the opponent, the farther it had to travel, the less percent it will do. Once thrown up, the bike will bounce twice, with a hitbox, before settling on the ground. It can be picked up again by Wario once it settles and thrown up again, if Wario does this, it will bounce once and then explode. Wario can also use the bike as a projectile by smash throwing it down. After being smash-thrown down, the bike will bounce 3 times on flat stages before settling (may be more for Lylat and its tilting). After it does this, Wario can pick up the bike again, but it will explode on its next bounce or the next time it hits an opponent.
Edgeguarding with Bike
A common strategy for Wario players is to set up the bike on the ledge to set up for edgeguards. This is done by buffering side-b as you drop off the ledge with Wario. This will cause the bike to flip onto the stage and land right on the ledge. There are multiple ways Wario can use the bike to edgeguard. The most common would be to throw the bike up. Throwing the bike up covers jump, normal get-up, and get-up attack. This will scare players into rolling, which Wario can then cover with a smash attack or waft. The second option Wario has with bike at ledge is down-throwing it off stage, by spacing correctly, Wario can smash throw the bike down and it will bounce off stage with a hitbox. This is useful for interrupting characters with very vertical recoveries. The third option Wario has for bike at ledge is hitbox extention. By hitting the bike with a move such as waft or down-smash, Wario extends the hitbox of the move he hits the bike with. This is most commonly used with waft to catch 2-frames or get-up attempts from the ledge, since it extends wafts hitbox and catches many players off guard.
Miscellaneous Bike Info
Once the bike explodes, Wario can eat the seperate pieces to charge waft for 1 second and heal for 1%.
If Wario is hit while in the animation of jumping off the bike, the bike will move back and forth for each time Wario is hit while maintaining a hitbox. I'm not really sure why this happens but it's very strange.
If Wario is grabbed in the exact frame he jumps off the bike, the bike will simply disappear. It won't land on the ground, it wont explode, it will just disappear, again I'm not sure why.
If Wario rides his bike offstage from onstage, he can jump off and pull out another bike to get back onstage. Keep this in mind while trying to punish a Wario for biking offstage.
Wario has some of the best recovery because of bike, he can use the bike as a horizontal movement tool, and use the jump off the bike as an extra jump offstage.
Any move that hits Wario's hurtbox while riding the bike will either blow up the bike or knock Wario off.
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