Ridley

General
Ridley (リドリー) is a recurring dragon-like antagonist in the Metroid series. He is the leader of the Space Pirates' military, and is responsible for the death of Samus’ parents, which is why the two have such a bitter rivalry. Ridley may look like a mindless beast, but he is actually incredibly intelligent, as shown by his ability to command an army of Space Pirates, among other things. Ridley has appeared in just about every single Metroid game to date, and has been a major boss in them all. Ridley has been defeated many times by Samus, but he always seems to return, be it as a cyborg or as a clone of his former self. He is one of the top requested characters to appear in a Super Smash Bros. title as a playable character.

Changes from Brawl to Crusade
Ridley became a playable character, in Brawl he was a boss in the Subspace Emissary.

Attributes
Ridley is a vicious fighter. He’s rather fast and deadly, but being such a large character, he is somewhat

heavy. His close-range moves hit very fast, but they are not particularly powerful for the most part. Of course, some of them are very strong and long-ranged, such as his Back Aerial. After all, he's Ridley. Ridley has a particularly special attribute. If he uses any attack involving his tail, there’s a slight difference in how the move works. If the opponent is hit by the larger part of his tail in the tail attacks, they don’t really receive any real knockback or damage, but if they hit the tip of his tail, the knockback and damage is greatly increased! It isn’t bad to hit the broad part of the tail, though. The lack of knockback sets Ridley up for some monster combos.

Ridley has some crazy range on his attacks, enabling him to zone out many small characters. He also hits very hard and has great survivability with his relatively high weight and solid glide recovery. His drawbacks are his large size, making him easy to combo, and his lack of close-range options (though he does have a 4-frame Jab). Ridley may be a difficult character to pick up and learn, but by carefully building momentum, he can run over any opponent using his highly damaging combos and KO power.

Ridley has one of the best spacing games in the game and this is primarily due to the amounts of disjoints many of his attacks have plus having great range in his attacks. He can easily distance himself from other characters due to this.

Ridley's Down B is one of the strongest projectiles in the game, although it goes on a downwards horizontal path. Even though it takes a long time to charge, its actually useful for edge-guarding. His Normal B is a good projectile to edge-guard, but not as useful as Down B.

Ridley is actually a really good edge-guarder. His Down B and his Normal B are good projectiles for edgeguarding. His Up B can easily get his opponents offstage and his Fair is a meteor smash (when sweetspotted). His Aerial Down B is one of the best edge-guarding moves in the game, since it goes diagonally downwards and can easily KO characters with poor recoveries. Most of all, he has his Side B, which can completely shut down characters with a recovery that sends them to their helpless state, like Krystal and Waluigi.

Ridley is also one of the best characters when it comes to shield pressure. Ridley can easily make his opponent start up a shield with Down B, which does massive hitstun, and he can use B rapidly, forcing his opponent to keep up the shield until a Shield Break occurs. He is also very good at chasedowns with his spectacular Nair, another great shield poker. His Power is almost unmatched when it comes to his Smash Attacks, his Usmash especially being a ridiculously good kill move.

Unfortunately, this does not mean Ridley does not have flaws. Ridley is tied with Porky for largest character in the game, making him one of the easiest characters in the game to combo. As stated earlier, he has a high learning curve, making him hard to use at the beginning. Ridley's unusual attributes of being tall, large, relatively floaty and relatively lightweight for his weight class (which is approximately heavyweight) greatly hinder it in terms of survivability, which coincidentally is also Mewtwo's main flaw. Ridley can combo relatively well, but lacks a proper finisher outside of Up B and he himself can be comboed really easily by characters like Captain Falcon and Meta Knight.

Ridley is the tallest character in the game and this comes at a price when dealing with small characters like Gooey and Bomberman. Ridley will have a hard time with those characters, while those characters can easily get Ridley off stage, setting up an edge-guarding position.

Another flaw is that despite having the ability to glide, his recovery, despite being long, is very easy to edge-guard. Ridley's large size make him one of the easiest characters to meteor smash or spike and his Up B can easily be dealt with characters with good range like Krystal, characters with a good air game like Luigi or Jigglypuff or characters with zair's like Link and Samus. This also hinder it in terms of survivability, ironically making him one of the easiest characters in the game to KO, despite being relatively heavy.

Overall, Ridley can be considered a glass cannon or a mixed bag. He has many upsides, but his main downside (his size) is a fatal problem that would cause the most trouble for Ridley players.

Ridley's Normal Moves
Jab


 * Claw swipe, second swipe, then turns around and attacks with a tail sweep. Does up tp 10%.

Side Tilt


 * Ridley does a two-move attack where he swipes his tail back and fourth in front of the opponent. Deals 12-14%. This move has great horizontal range.

Up Tilt


 * Slashes tail above his head quickly. Great for juggling. It hits from behind first. Deals up to 11% damage.

Down Tilt


 * Ridley swipes his tail in front of him. Has a sweet spot with more damage and knockback at the end of the tail, due to the spike. 8-10% damage.

Side Smash


 * Ridley dashes forward, attacking with his claw, then with his wing. It has moderate startup speed and good range. If both hits connect, deals 16% and high knockback.

Up Smash


 * Ridley spreads his wings out wide and smacks them together above his head. This move is one of Ridleys best killing moves. It has a sweetspot where the slap hits. 15% non-sweetspotted, 23% sweetspotted.

Down Smash


 * Ridley spins around, attacking with his tail on both sides in the same fashion as ROB's Down Smash. If opponent is close to Ridley when it is executed, they get hit multiple times, or until they reach the edge of him, where they would get knocked back by a bigger hit. If they aren't right next to him, it just does the knockback hit. Deals up to 15%.

Dash Attack


 * Ridley stretches his arm back and swipes forwards with his claw. Does 6%

Neutral Air


 * Spins in a fast, multi-hitting ball. The opponent is dragged wherever Ridley falls, like a backwards Screw Attack. Does no knockback until the final hit. Hits 5 times, 3% each time, for up to 15%.

Forward Air


 * Ridley flips, and slams the opponent with his tail. If he hits the opponent while they're right under his tail, it will be a Meteor Smash. Deals 16% sweetspotted, 12% otherwise.

Backward Air


 * Ridley swipes his tail back quickly. Tip of the tail has a sweet spot for added damage and knockback. Deals 14% sweetspotted, 11% otherwise.

Up Air


 * Ridley stabs his wings upwards. This is good for juggling. Deals up to 14% damage.

Down Air


 * Ridley sticks his tail straight down, and plummets. Does 18%.

Forward Throw


 * Ridley puts the opponent on the ground and scrapes their face under his talons. Does 14%, making it the most damaging Throw in the game.

Backward Throw


 * Ridley grabs the opponent with his tail, and tosses them away with moderately high knockback. 10%.

Up Throw


 * Ridley scrapes the opponents face on the ground with his arm, then throws them upwards. 12%.

Down Throw


 * Ridley torches the opponent, then slams them into the ground, bouncing them up in front of himself, leading to combos into Up Aerial and Neutral Aerial. 9%.

Trivia

 * Ironically enough, Porky and Ridley, (the only two characters that were promoted from being a boss to a playable character) were both sprited by the spriter GigaPichu.

Notable Appearances

 * Metroid (1987)


 * Super Metroid (1994)


 * Metroid: Zero Mission (2004)


 * Metroid: Other M (2010)