Three platform fighters, three completely different answers to “what will my first hundred hours be spent on?” Rivals of Aether II released on 23 October 2024 and is still being patched: version 1.7.4 went out on 29 October 2026, with the next update dated for 3 November. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate released on 7 December 2018 and its latest version is 13.0.5. Super Smash Bros. Melee released on GameCube in 2001 and, on the pages cited here, has no update path at all.
This site already picks a main across the traditional fighters. Which Fighting Game to Main in 2026 covers Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Guilty Gear Strive, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves and 2XKO, and mentions Rivals of Aether 2 exactly once — as a rollback example. It does not cover the platform-fighter branch, which is where the three most different practice routines in the genre live. This piece works from what the official notes and the Smash wiki actually print: which techniques each game documents, what each one measures, and which of the three you can drill alone.
What this covers: How Melee, Ultimate and Rivals of Aether II differ on the techniques that decide the learning curve — wavedashing, shield dropping and parries — plus what each game gives you to practise alone in late 2026. Why it matters: The three share a controller layout and almost nothing else. One takes a new patch every few weeks, one’s version number stops at 13.0.5, and one shipped on a disc before patch notes existed. Who should care: Players arriving from traditional fighters who were told to “just play a platform fighter”, and Smash players weighing whether a third game is worth the switch.
The three side by side
Every row below comes from a page listed in this article’s sources. Where a blank appears, no page I fetched names that technique for that game — that is a documentation gap, not a claim that the technique is absent.
| Melee | Ultimate | Rivals of Aether II | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Released | November 2001 (Japan), December 2001 (North America) | 7 December 2018 (worldwide) | 23 October 2024 |
| Runs on | Nintendo GameCube | Nintendo Switch; playable on Switch 2 via backwards compatibility | PC (Steam) |
| Latest documented version | none — disc release, no update path on the cited pages | 13.0.5 | 1.7.4, 29 October 2026 |
| Online | no online mode; Slippi (external project, Dolphin) supplies rollback and matchmaking | built in; SmashWiki records it as widely criticised | rollback netcode, 1v1 / 2v2 / free-for-all |
| Wavedashing | yes — the technique’s home game | yes, per-character lengths measured in Training Mode grid units | wavelanding named in the 1.7.3 notes; wavedash not named |
| L-canceling | yes, 7-frame window or fewer before landing | no — absent from Brawl onward | not named on any page fetched |
| Shield dropping | yes, but the sidestep competes with the input | removed | not named on any page fetched |
| Parry / perfect shield | Power Shield; reflects projectiles in the first two frames | perfect shield, performed by releasing shield | parrying named in the 1.7.3 notes |
| Lab tools | Training Mode, CPU fixed at level 1 | Training Mode with an exclusive grid stage and launch-trajectory lines | Training Mode plus in-game move lists with video |
Melee: an exploit you are expected to learn
SmashWiki is direct about what wavedashing is: a technique “performed by air dodging diagonally into the ground, causing the character to slide a short distance”, and one that high-level Melee play “effectively requires”. The same page records that Sakurai noticed the tactic during development and chose not to remove it, and that the community settled on describing it as “an exploit of Melee’s physics, not a glitch”. That history matters to a new player for one reason: nobody designed this. You are learning a by-product of the engine’s traction, and Melee’s whole movement layer is built on by-products like it.
L-canceling is the second tax. Press shield within seven frames of landing during an aerial and the landing animation plays at double speed, halving the lag. That window exists in Smash 64 and Melee and, per SmashWiki, “is not present in later games”. So a Melee habit is also a Melee-only habit — the same input does nothing in Ultimate.
Shield dropping shows how the game punishes imprecision rather than rewarding knowledge. Dropping through a soft platform while shielding is legal in Melee, but the sidestep shares the same stick direction, so a fast input becomes the wrong action; the page describes players either hitting a narrow timing or using the “Axe/Sung method” of angling the shield fully sideways first and rotating down one notch. The same page names the difference that makes Melee feel like Melee: “a general lack of buffering on defense, meaning every option requires immense precision or commitment”. Ultimate, it notes, “will wait and do them on the first possible frame”.
Melee’s online story is not Nintendo’s. The game shipped with single-player and 2–4 player multiplayer, and Slippi — a project for emulators such as Dolphin, led by Fizzi — supplies rollback netcode, integrated online matchmaking and automatically saved replays. As of June 2020 those were the features in the build; the page lists them as current components. That means your practice loop on PC depends on an external toolchain sitting between you and a GameCube disc.
Ultimate: the same input, sanded down
Ultimate kept wavedashing. SmashWiki’s article treats the technique as native to Melee and Ultimate, and the Ultimate section is unusually measurable: wavedash lengths are listed per character in “units of grid spaces in the Training Mode stage”, from Ice Climbers at 29.5 down to Little Mac at 11.25. If you like knowing that a movement option has a number attached, Ultimate is the game that publishes one.
It removed the other two. Shield dropping is “an advanced technique in all Super Smash Bros. games prior to Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, where it was removed” — so the option SmashWiki calls “exceptionally useful” in Melee is simply not in Ultimate’s toolkit. Perfect shielding survived but inverted: instead of pressing shield as the attack arrives, you hold shield and release it immediately before the hit connects, and the defending character flashes.
Ultimate’s training mode is the strongest measuring instrument of the three. Beyond the standard sandbox — which every game in the series has — Ultimate adds an exclusive stage with a grid that “displays exact distances between points”, plus a modifier that draws launch distance and trajectory as an arced line. That is a lab where you see what an attack does instead of inferring it.
What it is not is moving. SmashWiki records that after a final update applying character balance changes and amiibo support, active development has “reportedly ceased”, and that the latest version is 13.0.5. The same page documents the Switch 2 story: the game is playable on the new hardware via backwards compatibility, system update 20.1.5 in June 2025 addressed errors caused by that hardware, and version 13.0.4 on 25 June 2025 fixed the game further. Nintendo’s own product page for Ultimate separately carries a Switch 2 compatibility note: “Supported – Game behavior is consistent with Nintendo Switch.” In other words, the game works on the current console and will keep working, but you are learning a fixed puzzle.
Rivals II: shields, ledges, and a note every few weeks
Rivals of Aether II is the only one of the three whose own store description is still adding vocabulary. Its Steam page frames the sequel’s additions explicitly: “Shields, ledges, grabs and throws add new layers to the frenetic flow of combat”, plus three named options — “Pummel Special, Ledge Special, and Getup Special”. It also states a commercial rule neither of the others does: a launch roster of 10 characters, with “all future characters will be added to the game for free”. Multiplayer is 1v1, 2v2 or free-for-all, on rollback netcode, with Steam Workshop and shared/split-screen play listed among the features.
The patch notes are where the comparison gets concrete. The 6 October 2026 update, 1.7.3, is a long one, and three of its gameplay lines map directly onto the vocabulary above:
| 1.7.3 change | What the note says |
|---|---|
| Waveland | Wavelanding “will no longer put grab on a 1 frame cooldown”; the note explains the cooldown arrived when waveland was “shortened from 10 frames to 8 frames” |
| Shield hurtbox | The shield hurtbox “is no longer grabbable”; a new, thinner grabbable shield hurtbox was added, and parrying now uses it |
| Weight | The knockback weight multiplier formula changed from (200 / (weight + 100)) to (255 / (weight + 150)) |
That is the texture of a game still being tuned: a parry that resolves against a specific hurtbox, a waveland with a frame count, a weight formula printed as an equation. The same patch moved the engine to Unreal EngineUnreal Engine. A widely-used commercial game engine from Epic Games; powers many large-studio (AAA) games. UE5 is the current generation. 5.8, added a move list explaining each character’s moves “with an accompanying video” in the extras menu and training mode, and took Workshop out of beta with custom characters and items — including support for importing Rivals 1 characters.
The 29 October 2026 patch, 1.7.4, is smaller: a crossover skin bundle, and one gameplay fix noting that “Hitgrabs can no longer hit hurtboxes that extend past a shielding opponent’s grabbable shield hurtbox”. A game that publishes a fix that narrow two years in is a game whose competitive details are still in flux.
The patch record, dated
| Game | Release | Most recent documented change | Next documented change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Melee | December 2001 (North America) | none on the cited pages | none |
| Ultimate | 7 December 2018 | version 13.0.5; version 13.0.4 on 25 June 2025 “to fix the game further” | development “reportedly ceased” |
| Rivals of Aether II | 23 October 2024 | 1.7.4 on 29 October 2026 | 3 November 2026 |
The scene numbers point the same way. Rivals 2’s two-year anniversary post on 24 October 2026 reports “passed 100 million games played this year”, “over 6,000 Rivals 2 brackets” run on start.gg between anniversaries, and “over 2,000 creations” uploaded since the Workshop beta opened. It also names the circuit those brackets feed: the Rivals 2 Championship Series, whose Riptide and Ultimate Fighting Arena events the studio promoted in September 2026. Nothing equivalent is published for Melee or Ultimate on the pages cited here, which is not evidence those scenes are quiet — only that this article has no figure for them.
What you can actually practise alone
This is the question that settles the purchase for most people, and the answer is not the same as “which game is deepest”.
Ultimate is the best instrument. A grid that shows exact distances, launch trajectories drawn on screen, and a documented per-character wavedash length make it the only one of the three where the game itself tells you the number you are trying to hit. If your practice happens in twenty-minute sessions without a training partner, this is the strongest case Ultimate has.
Rivals II gives you the most to do in the mode. The 1.7.3 move list runs in the extras menu and in training mode and pairs each move with video, so the game explains itself rather than leaving it to a wiki. Workshop 1.0 adds custom characters and items, and support for importing Rivals 1 characters — a route to drills and sparring content that Melee and Ultimate do not document. It also has the only one of the three patch lines that can change your practice routine mid-month.
Melee rewards the most specific practice and documents the least. Training Mode exists in every game in the series, but in Melee the CPU’s level is fixed at 1, so the mode is a sandbox rather than a sparring partner. What Melee gets instead is Slippi’s automatically saved replays and live match mirroring — a review loop rather than a drill loop. If you like studying your own losses frame by frame, that is a real workflow; if you want the game to hand you a target number, it will not.
Which to learn
- Pick Rivals II if you want a game whose rules are still being written and whose patch notes print the frame counts. You get shields, ledges, grabs, a documented parry and waveland, free future characters, and a studio that dates its next update. You accept that the game will change under you, and that its documentation uses its own vocabulary rather than Melee’s.
- Pick Ultimate if you want the largest measuring toolkit, a Switch 2-compatible build, and a fixed puzzle you can solve without the ground moving. SmashWiki’s note that its online mode was widely criticised is the cost; the lab is the compensation.
- Pick Melee if you want movement as the skill itself. Wavedashing, the seven-frame L-cancel and shield dropping form a stack of execution demands that no later game in the series kept intact, and Slippi supplies the netplay and replays to support it. You accept that the toolchain is community-run and that the game you learn is the one shipped in 2001.
What this article does not confirm
Several things a buyer would reasonably want are simply not printed on the pages cited, so they are not asserted here:
- Wavedashing in Rivals II. The official notes name wavelanding and floorhugging; no page I fetched uses the word wavedash for Rivals II. Whether the Melee input exists there under another name is unconfirmed.
- L-canceling and shield dropping in Rivals II. Neither term appears in the store description, the presskit or the patch notes cited. Their absence from those pages is not proof of absence from the game.
- Rivals II ranked structure. The Steam page lists online PvP and the notes describe online queues and public/private lobbies; no page fetched describes a ranked ladder by name, so none is described here.
- A current purchase route for Melee. It released on GameCube; nothing fetched establishes how, or whether, it can be bought digitally in 2026.
- Ultimate’s status as finished. SmashWiki’s wording is “reportedly ceased”, and it is kept as a hedge here rather than resolved.