Olimar vs. Snake Super Smash Bros. Brawl tiers, match-up votes and discussion

One of Snakes worst matchups, alongside Meta Knight, King Dedede and Pikachu. The neutral is in Olimar’s favour as Pikmin are superior to grenades for camping purposes. There faster, deal more damage and clank with grenades so they won’t go directly at Olimar, but at the same time the Pikmin will die which is good for Snake. This forces Snake to approach rather than set up traps but he also has a very rough time approaching Olimar as well. Pivot grab, F-smash and U-smash all beat Snake’s aerial and other grounded approaches and his mobility isn’t good enough, forcing Snake to approach with his DACUS/Dash attack or held grenades which both work well, but the latter will become stale and predictable and the former causing self damage to Snake himself. Factoring in the follow ups Olimar can get from his throws, juggling from Snake’s bad approach and the zoning he can do, his damage racking in this matchup is insane. Snake has capable damaging racking with his grenades and up close tools like his pseudo chain grab he can do on Olimar with his down throw into a regrab (this works because Olimar’s tech roll is short) but even then it’s quite simple to break out of and it doesn’t match Olimar’s damage racking. This means that throughout the stock, Snake is going to be at high percents trying to land which is the right position where Olimar wants him to be in. Olimar can then reset the neutral where he can begin to zone and force Snake to approach or try to constantly juggle Snake with U-smash or Uair, both of which are bad for the solid snack. Snake does have capable kill confirms and power to KO Olimar outright and he has multiple moves that can kill the pikmin as well, like landmines, c4 and grenades. The problem with that though is he gets stuffed out hard and Olimar can just consistently pluck more Pikmin, while in return, Olimar can kill him as he will be at relatively high percents. Snake does edegugaurd better, however as he can edge trap him well with up smash, grenades, landmines and C4 and all of those counter Olimar’s get up options, but getting him offstage is gonna be hard enough for this not to save Snake.

So in summary, while Snake’s KO potential and edge trapping are capable on Olimar, his ability to control the stage so well, stuff Snake’s approach and keep him in disadvantages positions throughout the match make this clearly one of Snake’s most difficult matchups, especially for a very neutral heavy character like Snake, although it’s still not as bad as the Pikachu matchup. I vote 6/4