I’ve always had the impression that Capcom makes hitboxes a little worse in every game. Better or worse, the same moves feel different. To test this, I decided to compare an active frame from Ryu’s forward-jumping roundhouse alongside the first aerial frame of Ken’s fierce Shoryuken in every hitbox-decoded game.
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior
Ryu has plenty of red – an invincible leg and an active space extending to his other knee, but has a vulnerable hit box below him. Ken has lots of invincibility and a large attack box.
Street Fighter II: Champion Edition
Ken learns to uppercut with his knee.
Street Fighter II: Hyper Fighting
Ryu’s attack box is slightly smaller vertically, and more vulnerable on his front leg, but he loses the blue box below him.
Super Street Fighter II
Ryu reverts back to his old vulnerability boxes.
Super Street Fighter II Turbo
Ryu has a more vulnerable leg. Ken becomes vulnerable to crossups, and can now hit with his head and foot, but strangely not his fist.
Street Fighter Alpha
Ryu’s foot is invincible, but he’s vulnerable everywhere else and can no longer cross up. Ken is invincible, but has a much smaller horizontal box than he does in SF2.
Street Fighter Alpha 2
Ryu no longer has an invincible foot. Ken now has leaner horizontal range with a skinny vulnerability box.
Street Fighter Alpha 3
Huge vulnerability boxes and tiny attack boxes – that’s how you know you’re doing an SFA3 jumping attack.
X-Men vs Street Fighter
Ryu has a large crossup-capable attack box.
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter
Ryu’s attack box becomes much smaller.
Marvel vs Capcom
Ken stance has slightly more horizontal range and a higher hitbox.
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
Ryu’s foot is mostly invulnerable. Ken has large vertical attack boxes, but huge vulnerability.
Street Fighter IV
Ryu has fairly large vulnerability boxes and a small attack box. Ken has a thin diagonal attack box and invulnerable legs.
Super Gem Fighter Mini-Mix
Ryu can only hit with his foot, but luckily he has a huge invulnerable foot. Ken only has an invulnerable fist.
Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo
Ryu has no jump attacks, but the Shoryuken hitbox is so big it’s basically a full screen move.
(If you would like to view hitboxes for yourself, use these lua scripts written by Dammit.)
if you couldn’t tell, the last one is a joke, that game obviously has no use for hitboxes
Oh, so THAT’s why Ken is top tier in puzzle fighter =p Wonder how Donovan’s box and shin akuma’s Boxes look in that game. xD
Awesome error1, good report!
What’s most fascinating to me is the Alpha 3 box. I used to wonder what change was made that made Crouch Strongs such good anti-air, and I always assumed it was wonky hit boxes on the Crouching Strongs. Now I see that’s it’s entirely because of the nerfed Jumping Hit Boxes. And I wonder if they did that due to A3’s higher frequency of air-to-air fights, and for things such as, post-Flipping, characters fall faster so they had to weaken the Hit Boxes so they weren’t too dominating. It’s very fascinating.