Wario: Wario is one hell of an odd ball. He is a heavy that hits hard, but he has good maneuverability and is the 3rd best aerial character (Jigglypuff is slightly faster and Ness has better moves). His moves are all random with unusual lag: either start lag or end lag, but never both. But why I like him is his unpredictability. My favorite play style is disruption where I just mess with whatever it is my opponent is trying to do, then kill them while they are confused. Wario was tailor made for this and is far and away my best character. His only real weakness is his range, which is abysmally short. But damn it, his motorcycle is fun.
Mr. Game and Watch: The only character I played in Melee that I am still good as, Game and Watch is another odd ball. His moves are jerky with no broadcasting at all. Good aerial, good ground game and devastating smashes. His bucket absorbs energy projectiles, which is always handy to have. He plays well with my interrupter strategy. But he is light, like, really light. Second lightest character in the game. So, while his attacks are more damaging, he flies easier than Wario, making him a risk-reward character.
King Dedede: He is a giant penguin with a jet powered hammer. A heavyweight character, he hits hard and moves slow. He gets some points for having a multi jump recovery and having good range with his hammer. Also, waddle dee toss is a very spammable projectile. I like playing as Dedede for the shear joy of pounding people with his huge-ass hammer. Playing as him taught me a very important lesson. It doesn't matter how fast your opponent is or how slow you are, if you can predict there moves you can hit them. My friend always whines when I beat his sonic with Dedede.
Captain Olimar: Captain Olimar is a recent edition to my "best characters list". He is an unusual character that takes practice to get good with. He is almost entirely dependent on his pikmin for attack (all of his smashes, grabs, and all but one of his aerials and specials require them). Despite this, he plays pretty standard. He has fast and damaging attacks, a good projectile(pikmin throw), good throws and plays the standard build damage then go for the kill strategy. The only reason he isn't the best character is his dependence on pikmin, light weight and really bad recovery. Steep learning curve, but worth it.
Zero Suit Samus: Fast and maneuverable with a focus on close combat, Zero Suit is the opposite of regular Samus. She plays a lot like Sheik in melee and is good in most areas. She doesn't have a good recovery and only has a few kill moves, but in general she can whip a lot of ass. One thing about her is that if you are playing with smash orbs on, you will often find yourself in a tough situation. You either let your opponent pull of their super death move or you get it and switch to a character you aren't good as with a completely different play style. My friend and I both encountered this problem. He just ignores the smash ball and takes the death, while I practiced as Samus and just hope another smash ball comes along.
Now I want to say a few words on brawl versus melee. Brawl is much slower in comparison to Melee. But I prefer Brawl because I think it is much fairer. Obviously when you have as many characters as this game, some are better than others and some match ups just don't work. But in Melee it was worse, even at mid-level play a few characters just dominated everyone else. In Brawl, you have to be a tournament level player before the major difference really start to show. For example, Meta Knight is considered the highest tier character in Brawl(tiers are dumb). But I have never met a player who could beat me with Meta knight, as any of my characters. At mid level play, you just can't take advantage of characters inherent differences like that. So for the majority of players, Brawl is a more balanced experience.
*UPDATE*
I was recently pretty convincingly defeated by a meta knight player while Wario. But by his own admission, he had specifically trained against Wario to defeat me (which was kind of flattering). So, though I can no longer claim o be undefeated against meta knight, the original point stays; you have to reach a very high level of skill before meta knight starts dominating.
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