Notches

Subtly changing the shape of the gate to add notches in specific places makes hitting certain analog values easier.

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Notches are vertices in the shape of a shell’s gate (the opening for an analog stick). Notching is the process of adding new notches in specific places on the gate. The exact location of each notch is typically designed to achieve certain coordinates that correspond to certain tech in a Smash game.

Variants

There are many types of notches (see Kadano’s reference linked below) but these are some of the most common.

Wavedash notches

These are designed to help the player hit the maximum (and optionally minimum) wavedash angles.

Firefox notches

These expand on wavedash notches by adding similar notches near all 4 cardinal directions, which helps Fox and Falco hit otherwise-difficult angles with their Up-B.

Shield drop notches

These lowered the bottom corner notches to make shield dropping more consistent, but have largely been made unnecessary by the universal adoption of UCF.

Resources