Falco (SSBM)/Up special

Overview

Hitboxes of Falco's Up special.

Falco's Up special, Fire Bird, mainly serves as one of his two recovery moves (the other being his side special, Falco Phantasm). It does decent damage to anyone hit by it. Falco's Fire Bird works exactly like Fox's Fire Fox but with some minor differences. Like Fire Fox, Falco surrounds himself with flames and propels himself to the direction that the control stick inputs by the player. Unlike Fire Fox's though, Falco does not have the flames of the charging stage hurt an opponent that is close to him. However, one thing that makes Fire Bird rather inferior in recovery compared to Fire Fox is that it travels less distance than the latter. The move should mainly be used as a vertical recovery, as the horizontal distance it covers is rather short (wherein Falco's side special is much better at doing) and due to Falco's poor air speed and high falling speed, he is unlikely to recover to the ledge and even when he can, it is easy for one to edge-hog him due to how predictable it is. That said, it is not recommended to use this as an attack, as one could easily read it and deliver a punish. If the attack for any reason hits the ground, it will not suffer from too much landing lag but Falco will then bounce off to an direction.