We’ve been seeing impressive results from Arjun “LN|Junebug” Rao as he’s catapulted up the Super Smash Bros. Melee charts to become the best Donkey Kong player in the business right now. Junebug took the punching primate to an impressive third place at Supernova 2024 and a fifth place finish at Eggdog Invitational just three weeks later, which is notable given that Donkey Kong’s best major Melee finish prior was a fourth place performance back in 2007’s MLG Long Island.
Junebug and his character have been turning heads and thus we were especially excited to find he’s made a new Donkey Kong Melee match up chart to help us see the character as he does. The chart and Junebug’s thoughts in compiling it await below.
While he’s never been one to count out (mainly because of his incredible damage output) DK has never really been regarded as much better than about midway up the Melee tier lists.
We somewhat recently (July) got a tier list from one of the Melee gods, Liquid|Hungrybox, placed DK 12th out of the game’s 26 roster members.
Junebug’s analysis goes fairly deep as he divides match ups with a ton of precision. For example, his chart includes the categories “6-4 But Good,” and “6-4 But Annoying” as he opts to discern between tons of differences based on his experiences.
The end results sees no fewer than eight different categories with DK boasting advantageous match ups against the majority of the cast. Seven characters outright win, in June’s opinion, and two more run even with Mr. Kong.
To quickly view Junebug’s completed match up chart, simply click the thumbnail below. If you want to hear his reasonings behind each and every one of his placements (and you do) you’ll want to watch the full video embedded below that.
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