Terms To Be Familiar With in Fighting Games

 I see a lot of people who want to get better with fighting games, and dive head-first into fighting game content (YouTube channels, E-Sports, podcasts, etc.) but are overwhelmed by a surge of new terminology. So I thought I’d make a video explaining what some of the most common terms are. 

But before I dive into those terms, I need to preface this by saying that fighting games (or “Fighters”) come in many different types. Most fighting game players recognize three main types of fighting games: 

1. 2D Fighters, where you can only move in two directions, like Street Fighter, Fatal Fury and Darkstalkers

2. 3D Fighters, where you can move in all three directions, like Tekken, Virtua Fighter and Dead or Alive

3. And Tag Team Fighters, where you control multiple characters that you can switch between in a process known as “tagging.” Common examples include Marvel vs Capcom, Skullgirls and Dragon Ball FighterZ. Tag-Team Fighters can occur in both a 2D or 3D space, but they generally occur in a 2D space. 

These are the three main pillars of the fighting game community. For years, they have been dominated by Street Fighter, Tekken and Marvel vs Capcom, respectively, though the tag-team subgenre has recently seen a reemergence with Dragon Ball FighterZ. In the last ten or so years, fans have also been recognizing more “pillars,” each with their own dedicated communities:

1. NRS games (short for Netherrealm Studios) are a sub-genre of games that include Mortal Kombat and Injustice. While they are 2D fighters, they are considered distinct because of their realistic graphics, unique animations, beginner friendliness, Target Combos (which I’ll explain later) and universal mechanics like Stamina Meters and Stage Interactions

2. Platformer Fighters are games that emphasize high mobility, unique stages and aerial attacks. They are named so because they essentially splice the Platformer genre of video games with normal fighting games. They include Super Smash Bros, PlayStation All-Stars, Rivals of Aether and Brawlhalla, among others. 

3. Anime Fighters are (generally 2D) games characterized by their gorgeous visuals, anime-inspired art style, unique character mechanics, complex systems, Bursts and Airdashes. (For this reason, they are often called Airdashers). Most are developed or published by acclaimed studio Arc System Works, and they include titles such as Guilty Gear, BlazBlue, Persona 4 Arena and Under Night in-Birth. 

4. Arena Fighters are a weird pillar within the community. They focus on fighting in a 3D space, but they aren’t 3D fighters. A lot of them have tag-team mechanics, but they also aren’t Tag Team fighters. Most Arena Fighters are based on popular Shonen anime series, and they are characterized by their Target Combos, horrible balance, shallow mechanics and easy entry barrier; for this reason, they aren’t competitively viable, and are looked down on in the community. They include titles like Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi 3, My Hero One’s Justice, Naruto: Ultimate Ninja Storm and Pokken. Pokken is a unique existence, in that it’s a ridiculously well-balanced, fine-tuned, mechanically-deep game that swaps between being an Arena Fighter and a 3D fighter, and it’s the only Arena Fighter that’s considered competitively viable in any way. 

I’m mainly going to be focusing on 2D, 3D, Tag-Team, NRS and Anime Fighters, though I will touch on some concepts seen in Platformer Fighters. Platformer Fighters like Super Smash Bros tend to have wildly different mechanics, terminology and inputs then the rest of the genre, which makes it hard to create a terminology list that includes them. Also, I won’t really touch Arena Fighters because like I said, they just don’t have the depth or viability of the rest of the genre. 

Without further ado, let’s get into it. 

List of Terms: Offense and Attacks:

Normals: Attacks that occur when a single button is activated. For example, pressing the square button on the PlayStation control (aka the X button on an Xbox controller) will cause a light attack in Injustice; this is a single attack activated by a single button. 

Grab: Most fighting games let you grab and throw your character, usually with the press of a button or a simple input that is universal across the cast. 

Command Normals: Normals that can be done by pressing a single button and pressing the joystick in a single direction. 

Aerial: an attack in the air, generally with its own animation, hitboxes, frame data and damage. 

Special Moves: Attacks that require pressing one or more buttons and moving the joystick in multiple ways. Common motions for Special Moves include quarter-circles, half-circles and z-motions. Below, I’ll talk about a few main types of Special Moves, including Fireballs, Command Grabs, Command Dashes, Reversals, Rekkas and Tiger Knees. 

• Command Grab: A Command Grab is to Grabs what Command Normals are to Normals. A Command Grab is a special move that functions as another type of grab, where you need a specific motion input and a button press to do the move. 

• Fireball: Any sort of long-ranged projectile, whether it be Ryu’s Hadouken, Goku’s Kamehameha, Terry Bogard’s Power Wave, etc. 

• Reversal: A Reversal is a special move that becomes invincible on the first frame after activation and can be activated normally or directly after a hard knockdown. The most famous example is the Dragon Punch (often abbreviated as DP) from Street Fighter. 

• Rekka: A type of multi-hitting special move in fighting games, where each “step” of the attack has multiple follow-ups or can be outright cancelled. 

• Tiger Knee: A common type of special move named after the Special Move of Sagat, a character from Street Fighter. In the FGC, a Tiger Knee is any type of move that requires one to jump during the execution of the move. 

Whiffing: Synonymous for missing an attack. If it’s intentional, we call it Baiting. 

Baiting: Doing something to prompt a reaction from the opponent, for the purpose of taking advantage of that reaction. Can either lead into a Counter Hit or a Punish. 

• Counter Hit: Counter is a multifaceted term, but I’m mainly referring to when an opponent tries to attack, and during their Active Frames (the frames in which the move deals damage), you hit them with a move of their own. This generally rewards you with extra damage, extra hitstun, extra pushback, and/or unique properties, depending on the game. King of Fighters adds an extra juggle to Counter Hits, whereas BlazBlue adds extra damage, for example. 

1. Try to remember that Counters can mean different things depending on the context. Platform Fighters don’t really have the concept of hitting an opponent during their active frames to deal more damage. As such, “Counters” refers to special moves where the user is invincible and automatically counterattacks anything that might hit them. 

• Punish: In most fighting games, “punishing” is a specific term that refers to when your opponent tries to hit you and whiffs, so you attack them during the Recovery Frames of the attack. Often leads into a combo. To clarify: in a Counter, you hit the opponent during their active frames (when the move is dangerous), but in a punish, you hit them during their recovery frames (after they’ve missed their move, when it is no longer dangerous).

Footsies: Fighting game players recognize three general “states” in a match. The first is when you’re on the defensive; that is, the opponent is attacking you, and you’re either blocking or getting hit. The second is when you’re on the offensive, and you are attacking the opponent. The third phase is called “Footsies,” and it refers to when both fighters are mid-range (about one character apart) and baiting their opponent by whiffing normals, with the goal of getting your opponent to attack. Since neither player is attacking or defending, we also call this state The Neutral. Characters that excel at this range are often called “Footsie Characters” or “Midrange Characters.” 

Crumple: When a fighter is hit hard/hit enough that they fall to the ground. Prevalent in Street Fighter and Tekken, but other games use this. Also called a Hard Knockdown. 

• Wakeup: Wakeup is the state where a character rises after a hard knockdown. Generally invincible, but only for a short period of time. Reversals in most fighting games can be activated after a crumple, thus negating Wakeup. 

• Oki: Short for “Okizeme,” this is a bit of a loaded term. Like I said above, Wakeups are generally invincible, so “Oki” refers to the attacker's efforts to keep their pressure going even though the defender now has invincibility; all without getting hit by a Reversal. In a Zoner character, this might take the form of them throwing their projectiles in such a way that the projectile hits a character just as they are rising. The defender can try to avoid Oki by teching. 

Teching: Bizarrely, teching has more than one meaning. 

1. On the one hand, “teching” can refer to inputting a throw just as your opponent tries to throw you, thus canceling out their throw. 

2. But more important for the discussion of wakeup pressure, teching can refer to shortening the amount of recovery frames for a specific action. For one example, in Street Fighter you can “tech” the animation that plays when you rise to your feet after a crumple and stand up faster, which can throw off the timing of your opponent’s Okizeme. In Super Smash Bros, you can tech the animation that plays after landing on the ground from a jump. 

List of Terms: Mobility:

Dashing: Done by inputting forward or backwards twice. A backwards dash is often abbreviated as Backdash. In some games like Mortal Kombat X, they are tied to a specific meter called the Stamina Meter (which also lets you interact with the environment in the aptly-named Stage Interactions). 

Jumping and Hopping: Jumping is pretty self-explanatory, and Hopping (also sometimes called Shorthopping) is just a smaller version of that. Hopping is nice because it lets you perform aerial attacks without getting high enough that you can be anti-aired. Hopping is a big part of games like King of Fighters, Super Smash Bros and Under Night In-Birth. 

Airdashing: A version of a dash performed in the air. Occurs mainly in Anime Fighters, hence their nickname as “Airdashers.”

Instant Air Dashing: In Anime Fighters, inputting up, forward then forward leads to an “Instant Air Dash,” where you airdash  from the ground. In practice, the character moves in a sort of arc. 

Airdodge: Airdashing is not to be confused with Air Dodging, which is a technique in Super Smash Bros and other Platform Fighters that lets you press shield while in the air to enter an invincible state where attacks pass through you, but you cannot counterattack until you hit the ground. 

Wave Dashing: Again, a phrase that has two different meanings, but they generally look the same. In 3D fighters like Tekken, this refers to a type of dash that occurs when characters are crouching; certain moves need to be inputted from this state for them to work. In Platform fighters like Smash, Icons: Battle Arena and Rivals of Aether, Wave Dashing occurs when you Airdodge into the ground; your character “slides” forward slightly, and if fast enough, you can do this before you’ve even properly left the ground. 

Command Dash: A special type of dash that is not inputted with the joystick alone. Rather, it is a special move that requires a mix of joystick motions and button inputs, and the special move makes your character move forward. 

List of Terms: Defense:

Blocking: Blocking (known by some other terms, such as Guarding or Shielding) is a basic technique that allows for characters to minimize damage. However, there are some restrictions and disadvantages, and in many games, if a character blocks too much, they receive some kind of punishment, such as a stunned state. It generally involves holding back, but games like Injustice, Mortal Kombat, Super Smash Bros and Granblue Fantasy Versus have dedicated block buttons. 

• Standing Block and Crouching Block: Two different types of blocking, one while you’re standing and one while you’re crouched down. The former can be bypassed by low attacks, and the latter can be bypassed by overhead attacks. Both can also be bypassed by throws and Command Throws, though it is possible to input the throw animation as your opponent tries to throw you to cancel it out, which is called Teching a throw. Crouching block is also called Low Block. 

Chip Damage aka Scratch Damage: A special type of damage that occurs if someone is hit by a particularly strong move while blocking. Blocking eliminates most damage, but not all; the tiny amount that you still take is Chip Damage. 

Open Up: If you are trying to “open up” an opponent, that just means they are blocking and you are trying to break their guard. How easy this is depends on the game. For example, in Street Fighter, all characters have a “Guard Gauge” which limits how much they can block before taking damage, so “opening up” an opponent is just a matter of time. In games without such mechanics, opening up an opponent will require a combination of Overheads, Low Attacks, Mixups and Throws. 

• Low Attacks and Overheads: I know I’m just repeating myself with circular language, but a low attack is a type of attack that targets the opponent’s feet, so it can be used against an opponent that is Standing Blocking. An overhead is an attack that targets the top of the opponent's head, so it is effective against Crouching Blocking opponents. 

• Mixup: A move, combo or other animation that is meant to confuse the opponent. Basically, the opponent can can attack in two ways from their current state that both require different responses from the opponent, so we call these 50/50s. There are a few types of Mixups: High-Low Mixups have you trying to guess between a low attack and a high attack, Hit-Throw Mixups have you trying to guess between blocking an attack and teching a throw, and Cross-ups have you trying to guess between blocking left or right. Cross-ups occur when one player repeatedly jumps over their opponent (or runs underneath them if the opponent is airborne), thus alternating between the opponent’s left and right side, with the goal of confusing them enough they accidentally hold their joystick the wrong direction, and instead of blocking they get hit with your attack. 

• Ambiguous: If an attack may cross-up, or if an attack mixes you up, we would say it is ambiguous.

• Reset: When one character ends a combo prematurely and resets the fight to the neutral so they can mix you up again. 

Blockstrings: If an opponent is wailing on you and trying to open you up, but they can’t succeed, we refer to that string of attacks as a Blockstring. Because of Chip Damage, Blockstrings can still be harmful to the defender. 

Parrying: Parrying is a more advanced technique to reduce damage. Parrying eliminates all damage, including scratch damage. In games where you hold back to block, Parrying usually requires you to hold forward instead, or to hold back at the exact second the move lands. If the game has a dedicated block button, Parrying usually requires you press that button just before an attack connects. It’s much riskier and easier to mess up parrying, but it doesn’t put you in blockstun, letting you react and counterattack your opponent immediately. Samurai Shodown II is credited for introducing the system, but it really got traction in Street Fighter III (where it is universal) and Tekken (where parrying low attacks is possible in all games). However, in many fighting games it might only be used by a single character instead of a universal mechanic, like Black Canary in Injustice 2, or Ryu in Street Fighter V. 

• This mechanic might go by different names in different games. In Mortal Kombat 11, it is a Flawless Block. In Guilty Gear, it is Instant Defense. In Super Smash Bros, it is either called Perfect Shield or Power Shield. 

• Red Parry: A specific type of parry in Street Fighter III: Third Strike that lets you parry while you are in blockstun (explained below). 

Armor: Special moves with “armor” can absorb a certain amount of attacks from the opponent. Super Armor lets you absorb one attack, while Hyper Armor lets you absorb many attacks. 

Burst: Bursts are a mechanic seen in “anime fighters” like Guilty Gear and BlazBlue. When inputting a Burst (which usually involves pressing multiple face buttons simultaneously), the player will emit a shockwave. If they are the victim of a combo; this shockwave knocks the opponent away, giving them a chance to breathe. Bursts generally have their own dedicated meter, which slowly fills up over time. 

Red Health: In some games (often anime fighting games and tag-team fighting games), once a character has been hit the Health Bar displays two colors: the normal health that is left and “red health,” which can be recovered under certain circumstances. In DNF Duel, this is called “White Health.” 

List of Terms: Super Meter:

Meter: Almost every fighting game has some kind of Meter at the bottom that is filled by taking and/or receiving damage. What it is called depends on the game: Street Fighter calls it the Super Arts Meter, Mortal Kombat calls it the X-Ray Meter, Guilty Gear calls it the Tension Meter, BlazBlue calls it the Heat Meter, Under Night calls it EXS, Marvel vs Capcom calls it the Hyper Combo Meter, and that’s not even scratching the surface. Gauge is used interchangeably, and a Bar refers to one section of the Meter. The point is that this Meter always has a number of uses in gameplay:

• Super Moves: Powerful attacks that use up anywhere from half a bar of Super Meter to multiple bars. Appears in nearly all 2D fighting games, anime fighting games, tag-team fighting games, and even some 3D fighting games. 

• EX Moves: An enhanced version of an existing special move that usually requires less than Super Moves. Appears in nearly all 2D fighting games. 

• Charging Meter: In some games like Dragon Ball FighterZ and Melty Blood, the Super Meter can be manually charged by holding certain buttons. 

• Baroque: A unique state where “red health” is converted to Super Meter, and it can act as a cancel for the player’s current action. The name comes from Tatsunoko vs Capcom, though this mechanic also appears in DNF Duel under the name “Conversion.”

• Alpha Counter: A specific type of invincible move that can be done out of blocking. Appears in Street Fighter Alpha (as an Alpha Counter), Soulcalibur (as Reversal Edge), Guilty Gear (as Dead Angle Attack), Mortal Kombat (as Breakers), Killer Instinct (as Shadow Counters) and many more. Different from a reversal, which can be used in neutral or after a hard knockdown. 

• Guard Break: A specific type of attack that can break an opponent’s guard. Appears in BlazBlue off the top of my head but I’m sure there’s more. 

• Faultless Defense: A type of defense that increases pushback and eliminates chip damage, but slowly drains Super Meter. Appears in Guilty Gear and Melty Blood, but a variation occurs with BlazBlue’s Barrier, which is tied to a separate meter in that game. 

• Instant Faultless Defense: Using Faultless Defense at the exact second an attack connects to increase pushback even more. Appears in Guilty Gear, Melty Blood and BlazBlue. 

• Vanish: The player disappears and reappears behind the opponent. Can be used to escape pressure or extend a combo. Appears in Dragon Ball FighterZ. 

• Pursuit Attack: A special type of attack that targets a knocked-down opponent to deal more damage before they can get up. Appears in Darkstalkers. 

• Blitz Shield: A defensive state that deflects the character’s attack. Appears in Guilty Gear Xrd. 

• Custom Combo: A short, powerful state that allows you to mash normal buttons and they’ll cancel into one-another without any startup or end lag. Appears in Street Fighter Alpha. 

• Veil-Off: A special type of transformation in Under Night In-Birth that requires a minimal amount of the Super Meter. Usually buffs damage output and allow a character to perform other Meter-costly moves (Supers, EX Specials, etc.) with little or no Meter. Also appears in games like Melty Blood and King of Fighters. The former is an interesting example, in that it actually has two such transformations: one that requires one-third Super Meter, and another that activates automatically when the Super Meter is full, and both of these transformations can be stacked. 

• Breakaway: A mechanic in Injustice and Mortal Kombat. Those games both rely heavily on Juggle Combos, so if you are the victim of an aerial combo, Breakaway lets you spend meter to break out of the combo by making your character briefly invulnerable to attacks, letting you finally fall to the ground. 

• Clash: A unique mechanic found only in the Injustice duology. Activated out of block, Clash plays a brief cinematic, during which players can wager up to four bars of their Super Meter. The character who bets more wins the Clash, which recovers their health (if they were the defender) or deals damage (if they were the attacker). 

Free: Free (synonymous with Meterless) refers to a technique (almost always a Guard Cancel or Reversal) that would normally require some portions of the Super Meter in a given game, but does not here. If you hear someone say “Sol Badguy has a meterless reversal” what they mean is that his reversal does not cost any meter, even though some other reversals in Guilty Gear do. 

List of Terms: Frame Data:

Hitsun: A special animation that every character goes into when they are hit. For a split-second, only a few frames, the character cannot attack, block, throw or do anything because they are in hitstun. 

Hitstop: The split-second where a character is frozen in their animation after they are hit by an attack. 

Blockstun: Same concept; a tiny amount of time after a character is hit (while they are blocking) where they cannot do anything. Blockstun is shorter than Hitstun, meaning that certain combos only work if you’re in Hitstun and can’t work if you’re blocking. 

Frames: A fraction of a second, a single still “image” on screen if you were to pause the game. Most games run at 60 FPS (frames-per-second), meaning that there are sixty frames of motion in a single second. This is important for reasons I’ll explain in a second. 

Frame Data: the frames involved in a character, their movement and their attacks. 

1. Startup Frames: the first frames when a character starts an attack. For example, if an attack has 5 frames of startup and the game runs at 60 FPS, then that means the attack will start within 1/12th of a second of the input being received. 

2. Active Frames: the following frames in an attack, which have a hitbox (explained below). These are the frames that can actually damage an opponent. For example, if an attack takes up a total of 12 frames and 4 of those frames are active, then that means that the attack occurs in 1/5th of a second and that 1/3rd of that attack (1/15th of a second) can actually damage the opponent. 

3. Recovery Frames: the final frames of an attack. These are the frames that occur after the attack has occured; whether or not the attack hit, the character that activated the attack is now in a “recovery state”, wherein they cannot attack again. The stronger and more damaging an attack (such as a “Heavy/Hard” move in some games, like Street Fighter, Marvel vs Capcom or Injustice), the more recovery frames there are. Because of this phenomenon, combos generally start with light attacks, so that way, if it misses, the recovery time is small. 

Frame Advantage (or just Advantage): Describes who recovers first when one character blocks another character’s attack. 

• Safe: A move that does enough Blockstun that, if the opponent blocks it, you would have a chance to block before they get out of blockstun. In essence, a “safe” move is one where you can attack and then avoid retaliation. A series of quick, safe moves that force your opponent to keep defending is called a Blockstring. 

• Plus: When the recovery frames of your move end, so you are able to act, but your opponent cannot, because they still are in blockstun or hitstun. In other words, you are in Advantage. 

• Unsafe: When you attack your blocking opponent, and their Blockstun ends before your Recovery Frames are finished, meaning they can attack you right back before you can defend yourself. 

• Minus: When your opponent can act, but you cannot. When you are plus, you are safe; when you are minus, you are unsafe. If you are plus, your opponent is minus, and vice versa. 

• Turn: Together, plus and minus give an idea of “turns,” the general flow of the game. If you hear someone say it’s “their turn” in a match, it means they have a chance to act when their opponent doesn’t. 

• Abare: Attacking someone in a context that puts you at minus. 

Hitbox: The part of an attack that can hurt your opponent. For example, in Ryu’s Hadouken, the hitbox is the fireball he emits from his hands. 

Hurtbox: The part of the character that can be hurt by your opponent’s attacks. For example, in Ryu’s Hadouken, the Hurtbox is his whole body after he’s thrown the fireball. 

List of Terms: Combos and Notations:

Combo: A string of attacks that do significant damage. When the opponent is caught in the first attack, they are generally unable to escape rest. Different types of combos appear in different subgenres of fighting games. 

1. Link Combos are strings of many smaller, shorter Normals with few recovery frames. If the first attack connects, the player can attack again before the opponent is out of hitstun/blockstun. Essentially, these are combos that are within the bounds of the game system. These are very common in 2D Fighters. 

2. Juggle Combos are combos that appear in 3D Fighters. These combos begin with a “launcher” that sends the opponent into the air, followed by several shorter moves that aim to keep them in the air as long as possible. 

3. Cancel Combos are very short, simplistic combos that utilize a mix of Normals, Specials and Supers. In a Cancel Combo, inputting the commands for a Special Move as the Normal connects with an opponent will cause the animation for the Normal to be “cut short,” and the Recovery frames of that normal will be replaced with a Special. Some games take  in one step further, allowing you to then cut off the recovery frames of that Special with a Super Move. This was originally a glitch discovered in Street Fighter II. 

4. Chain Combos go by many other names, but they appear mostly in Anime Fighters and Tag Team Fighters. These are where normals can be cancelled into one-another, instead of being cancelled into just special moves. Generally, the combos have to be cancelled in ascending order of strength, from light to medium to heavy. However, some games like Under Night let you also go from heavy to medium to light. Even though Anime Fighters and Tag Team Fighters are based around Chain Combos, that doesn’t mean Link Combos don’t exist. Like I said, these “Chain Combos” go by many, many names: MVC calls it the Magic Series, Melty Blood calls it the Beat Edge, Guilty Gear calls it a Gatling, Under Night In-Birth calls it a Reverse Beat or a Passive Link…you get the idea. 

5. Easy Combos/Auto-Combos are combos that can be achieved by pressing a single button repeatedly. Games that use these include Dragon Ball FighterZ, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle and King of Fighters XIV, among others. 

6. Target Combos are unique combos that consist only of pressing different buttons in a specific order. Note, this is not the same as a Chain Combo. Whereas a Chain Combo is several normals being cancelled, a Target Combo is a unique series of preprogrammed attacks that is independent from the buttons it's tied to. They are very common in NRS Fighters and Anime Fighters. 

1-Frame Link: The hardest type of Link Combos, these ones require you to press the right buttons with only a single frame as your window of time. Because most fighting games run at 60 FPS, that means you have to correctly input the combo down to 1/60th of a second. 

Plink: Pronounced as one syllable but short for “priority link,” this is a trick useful in games such as Street Fighter. Remember those 1-Frame Link Combos I mentioned? Plinking is a trick where you can input two buttons on two consecutive frames but the game will count it as one. This is nice because even if you miss the timing on the 1-Frame Link, if you pressed them both consecutively you might still get it on the next frame, essentially doubling your combo from 1-Frame Link to a 2-Frame Link. 

BNB: Short for Bread and Butter. In much the same way that Bread and Butter is a rather basic meal, a BNB is a basic combo for that character. BNBs will obviously vary by character, and what a BNB consists of will vary tremendously by game. A BNB in Street Fighter might be a Link Combo with a Special Cancel at the end, whereas in Guilty Gear or MVC it might be a Chain Combo, for instance. 

Motion Inputs: Remember how I mentioned above that Special Moves often require moving the joystick in more than one direction? Well, we call those joystick movements “motion inputs,” and fighting games use a lot of the same ones, so fans have developed nicknames for them. 

• QCF and QCB: Many special moves require for the joystick to be angled down, down-forwards, then forwards. In practice, you’re essentially tracing a quarter of a circle facing forward, so fans abbreviate it as QCF. QCB is the same motion but facing the other way: down, down-backwards, backwards. 

• HCF and HCB: The same idea as above. Some special moves require half-circle motions: back, down-back, down, down-forward, forward. In other words, tracing half a circle and forward. HCB is just the same thing but reversed. 

• Pretzel Motion: A notoriously difficult to perform motion input for Geese Howard’s Super Move in King of Fighters, named so because, when written out, the motion input directions look like a pretzel. 

• Shoryuken: The Japanese translation of Dragon Punch. Most Reversals require the joystick to be moved forward, then down, then down-forward. In practice, this looks like a Z on the joystick, so it’s just as often called a Z-Motion. In the west, some of us use the English “Dragon Punch” or the abbreviation “DP” to refer to the move itself, but we use the Japanese “Shoryuken” to refer to the joystick notation, which is notoriously hard for newcomers to perform. 

Keypad Notation: In Anime Fighters, Keypad Notation refers to a system where fans (and sometimes programmers) use numbers to refer to directions. Anime Fighters aren’t as popular outside of Japan as something like Tekken, Street Fighter or Super Smash Bros. This means that their international communities don’t often get official access to translations, so we needed a system that people of all languages could understand, hence we chose numbers. Picture the Keyboard on your laptop: a 3x3 grid, where each number corresponds to a different direction:1 is down-back, 2 is down, 3 is down-forward, 4 is back, 5 is a neutral state where you aren’t moving at all, 6 is forward, 7 is up-back, 8 is up, and 9 is up-forward. 

In this situation, rather than trying to describe combos with phrases such as “quarter-circle forward” or “half-circle back,” we just use numbers. QCF becomes 236, QCB becomes 214, HCF becomes 41236, HCB becomes 63214, and the Z-Motion becomes 623. Afterwards, we usually put a letter to refer to what button, such as L for light attacks or H for heavy attacks. 

List of Terms: Miscellaneous:

FGC: An acronym for fighting game community. Refers to the community as a whole and every one of the subgenres I just mentioned.

Idle Stance: the stance a character adopts while they are staying still and the player isn’t activating any inputs or moving the character. 

Guard Cancel: While you are blocking, some games let you “Guard Cancel” your block into another action. Alpha Counters (mentioned above) are the most famous examples, but in some games you can also Guard Cancel into rolls or other actions. 

Fuzzy: Continuing with the annoying trend of fighting game players using the same word to describe multiple things, Fuzzy is a confusing word that often refers to trying to be in two states at once. For instance, if you are blocking and crouching, but your opponent tries to hit you with an overhead, your instinct is to stand up and keep blocking so the overhead won’t work, right? But there is a one-frame “transitional” period, where you are standing up but you keep the Hurtbox from when you were crouching. The end result is that you got hit by an overhead while you were standing, even though a standing-blocking opponent should be immune to overheads. TLDR: A Fuzzy is any attack that exploits changes in the games movement, systems and animations to attack someone that should have been invulnerable to that attack.