ESAM: Why I main Pikachu in Smash Ultimate

Michael Gwilliam

Pikachu is one of the most impactful and stronger characters in Super Smash Bros Ultimate, and no one has gotten as many top results with the electric Pokemon as Eric ‘ESAM’ Lew.

In an interview with Dexerto, Lew dug into why he mains Pikachu, became the best Pikachu player in the world, and just what makes the Pokemon mascot the best fighter in the entire game.

Back in Melee, ESAM was a Samus main with Fox as a secondary character and Pikachu as his “low-tier” pick as his region ran a lot of low-tier side events.

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Pikachu has an incredible combo game.

Once Brawl came out, Fox and Samus felt strange to him, but Pikachu didn’t, so from that point on, ESAM was sticking with Pikachu and didn’t look back.

“He’s very creative,” Lew explained. “I’ve been the main pioneer of my character at least since 2010. Since then I’ve been the innovator of my character. I’ve been doing all the broken stuff. I’ve been figuring out most of the combos because of my creative mind with the character.”

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According to Lew, with a character like Pikachu, you have to be creative in order to do well with him.

One of ESAM’s biggest points about why Pikachu is the best character is because of how the fighter can avoid taking huge amounts of damage. “He gets to skip phases in the game where a lot of people take a tonne of damage,” he said. “Mostly being when he’s on the ledge of trying to land.”

By being able to skip bad positions with his movement, having a good combo game and damage output, many players consider Pikachu to be the best.

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About The Author

Michael Gwilliam is a senior writer at Dexerto based in Ontario, Canada. He specializes in Overwatch, Smash, influencers, and Twitch culture. Gwilliam has written for sites across Canada including the Toronto Sun. You can contact him at michael.gwilliam@dexerto.com or on Twitter @TheGwilliam