Music:

1st – tha Trickaz – Heritage (CloZee remix)
2nd – C5 & Seanyy – Battlecry
3rd – Skan & Krale – No Glory (feat. M.I.M.E & Drama B) [Nimez & LEVR Remix]

Released: 10/24/2017

Combos and Editing by Cjbqulix

Highlights: 0:40- Nasty EX Mine conversion against Nash utilizing FANG’S good juggle potential, 1:06- Crush Counter Sweep Combo’d into throw followed up by a sneaky reset, 1:34- Unveiling of one of FANG’s true 50/50’s off of a normal wake-up in the corner, 2:10 Tight coward crouch follow-up after a combo leading into a meaty super on Nash (may be character specific?), 2:24 The holy grail of FANG combos AKA a 30 hit stylish combo featuring a wide variety of links, all three meters, and v-trigger! More optimal versions of this combo exist for less hits with a possibility to reach up to 90% damage!

Music: Song 1- Control Freak- Hyrule(zoo)
Song 2- JaySounds – Told ‘Em All

Released: 9/1/2016

Combos and Editing by Cjbqulix

In older Capcom games, a dummy’s vulnerable area consists of invisible rectangles that loosely follow the sprites displayed on the screen. Using a hitbox viewer to peek under the hood, we can see the game engine handling these combat interactions. Red boxes represent attacks and blue boxes represent vulnerable spaces.

We can see that SFA2 Zangief’s hittable boxes stay rectangular no matter what his sprite does. Even if his sprite is bending over or leaning back, it doesn’t effect the combo.

In Street Fighter 4, recovery hittable boxes are procedurally generated and closely follow the character model. Even a slight movement, like the subtle rising of Claw’s head here, can be used for a meaty setup.

Notice that Abel’s hand is outstretched for several frames before Vega headbutts him. Because every character has a different model in Street Fighter 4, it’s possible for the same combo to work differently on every member of the cast.

Please note that although recovery frames follow the model very closely, active frames and startup frames are similar to the old-style boxes.

Chun Li’s far s.HP consistently whiffs through Balrog’s crouching hitbox in SF4, despite her fist clearly touching his shoulder. In any hitbox-based fighting game, there are bound to be at least a few visually misleading interactions.

Each character also has many different reactions to being hit – based on where they are hit and the distance from the attack. Above you can see a standing Honda getting hit by Ryu’s c.MP from two different ranges. Up close, Honda gets hit in his ribs and turns to the side. From further away, Honda gets hit in his stomach and bends over.

Here you can see that Claw has different reactions to Dictator’s j.HP depending on whether he gets hit low, medium, or high. These different hit stuns can seem quite random because extremely minor changes can cause huge differences. Figuring out what kind of reaction you want and how to cause it is very important.

You might think that identifying which characters are good combo dummies is a straightforward process: just pick the tallest and fattest guys, and do all combos on Zangief and Sagat. However, even characters that are normally horrible for combos can be used in some unique meaty setups, because of their varied hit reactions.

It’s pointless to mention every character in detail – once you get a combo idea, you really need to try it on nearly every character to find the best target. It helps to know that Blanka, Dictator, Balrog and most of the women are hard to combo on the ground, and the tall muscle men are easy. However it would be remiss of me not to talk about some of the best combo dummies.

SETH

One of the first steps to designing an SFIV combo is coming up with an excuse not to do it on Seth. Seriously, this guy has everything. He’s almost as tall as Sagat, he has one of the widest hitboxes, he has some of Dhalsim’s reach tricks, he has the lowest vitality and stun in the game, and it just feels really good to hit him.

ROSE

Rose has the most unique setups by far. She has a good dash and the slowest fireball in the game, allowing for the best fireball trade combos. She also has a unique far s.LK – if it trades, it still counts as a counterhit. On top of that, her crouching hitbox is almost as small as Chun Li’s.

DHALSIM

Dhalsim doesn’t quite have the speed or reach of Seth, but he has a lot more useful angles. He also has the most useful EX fireball and ultra for trade setups.

E.HONDA

Honda has a really small pushbox, letting you to practically stand inside him. This allows for longer link combos and registers close attacks from slightly farther away than normal, like Gouken.

THE FIST BUMP

Many characters’ hands extend past their bodies during hit stun, allowing them to be struck by standing attacks from far away. Sagat, Seth, Abel, and Chun Li all have useful hands.

THE LEAN BACK

A common reaction to being hit in the head is for the head to swing back and then return forward. This allows meaty setups by placing an attack where the head was – when the head returns, you score a delayed hit.

THE DUCK

When a character gets hit low, they often duck down or to the side. Because the head is briefly out of the way, it can be used for meaty setups such as Chun Li’s LK Spinning Bird Kick loop.

THE WIDE CROUCHING HONDA

Crouching Honda is deceptively short and surprisingly wide. Crouching characters in general are easier to hit with low attacks from long range.

This covers the most commonly used combo dummies in Street Fighter 4. However for almost every character in the game, there exists a combo that only works on them. If you come up with an amazingly groundbreaking combo idea, don’t give up until you’ve tested it on the entire cast.

How it works: A certain number of frames are played normally, then one frame is dropped, then some more normal frames, then another drop, and so on. During a dropped frame, everything in the game world continues to happen, but it doesn’t get displayed. In the span of one real-life frame, two in-game frames get processed by the machine. This has the effect of making everything except music and sound effects faster: startup, recovery, impact freeze, walk speed, charge requirements, background animations, etc. all get faster.

1	1	0
2	2	1
3	3	2
4		3
	1	4
1	2	5
2	3	6
3		7
4	1	8
	2	9
1	3	10
2		11
3	1	12
4	2	13
5	3	14
		15
1	1	16
2	2	17
3	3	18

The other consequence is you can’t send any input during the dropped frames. Any controls held or not held before the skip remain that way during the skip. The increased speed and the temporary loss of control make frameskip important to competitive play and combo videos, but for different reasons:

• Being randomly unable to control your character makes combos more likely to fail. Combos that are less reliable can make the game more unpredictable and exciting—and can weaken any overpowered strategies the developers left in. One-frame links can end up as zero-frame links.
• Likewise, an exhibition combo with tight timing will fail if the frame needed for a link, jump, CC activation, etc. is skipped. This is especially prominent when recording input with an emulator and savestates: Once the action is started, the same frames will be lost no matter how many times you retry. You may have to kill some time before the initial setup to get it to work.
• But don’t do it at Normal unless you have to. Combos should be recorded at the same speed people play at (or faster) otherwise they just feel too slow.
• Ironically, frameskip can ameliorate the Youtube problem by constantly changing up which half of the frames get cut out by the encoder.
• In SF2HF, SSF2T and HSF2, frameskip can rob you of the ability to do reversals: if the one frame you need to execute the reversal gets skipped, you will be vulnerable for at least one frame and may be helpless against a meaty attack or tick throw.
• Frameskip will aggravate any effort to collect frame data. What’s less obvious is that it’s still there on Normal speed in some cases, like CvS 1.
• Adjustable speed presents a problem when you and someone else prefer different settings. What do you pick when you play against each other?

Except for the earlier implementations, the sequence of normal and dropped frames falls into distinct patterns. Shorter blocks of unskipped frames means a larger relative number of dropped frames and higher effective speed. The strip to the right illustrates SFA3 Ryu’s s.LK at Turbo 1 (4,4,5,4,4,5,…) and Turbo 2 (3,3,3,…). The frames that would get dropped are marked red, though the start of the cycle is going to be randomly placed.

Below is a table of frameskip patterns for most of the arcade games and some console games that use it. Also given is the overall speed relative to no frameskip, which is computed by dividing the in-game frames by the real-life frames elapsed in one cycle.

This data was collected by using an emulator and watching how the match timer goes down frame by frame at each speed setting. (Whenever it decrements by more than one unit you know a frame was skipped.) I used this Lua script to expedite the process.

* Some games have more stable patterns than others. The Marvel games are always on time with their skips, but sf2hf, ssf2t, dstlk, nwarr, and the PSX ports of Darkstalkers 3 and SFA2 are much more random. The timing might depend on the stage, how much action is going on, and possibly random factors.

Street Fighter II series

sf2hf*

ssf2t*

hsf2

There’s no frameskip in sf2, sf2ce or ssf2.

Rufus has found the patterns for HDR by looking for dropped frames in footage of Chun-Li’s lightning legs.

HD Remix

Street Fighter Alpha series

sfa

sfa2, sfz2al

sfa3

Darkstalkers series

dstlk*

nwarr*

vsav

vhunt2, vsav2

Pocket Fighter

sgemf

Marvel series

msh

xmvsf

mshvsf, mvsc

There’s no frameskip in xmcota.

NAOMI games

sfz3ugd (SFZ3 Upper)

capsnk (CvS 1), cvsgd (CvS Pro), mvsc2 (MvC 2)

cvs2gd (CvS 2)

Selected console versions

Street Fighter II Turbo (SNES)

Turbo speeds above 4 require a code to unlock.

Street Fighter Alpha 2 (PSX)*

Darkstalkers 3 (PSX)*

Marvel Super Heroes (PSX)

Capcom vs. SNK Pro (PSX)

Maj found the patterns for CFE using the beta version’s frame advance feature.

Capcom Fighting Evolution (PS2)

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 want to see these in-game, while playing, download the Marvel hitbox script and run it in MAME-rr or FBA-rr with any ROM version of these games. See the SF2 article for details.

In the Marvel games there can be up to two hitting boxes and four hittable boxes for a single animation frame, one more of each than available in previous games. It’s not common for all four blue boxes to be used at once, but many attacks have two red boxes. Usually they serve to smooth out the attack area but some attacks hit in opposite directions at once.

The vulnerability area of hovery characters bobs up and down along with the sprites during their idle animations. The extra height can make them more prone to jump-ins, but they always drift down before up when idling. (Ironically, the drifting doesn’t happen during flight mode.) Very low attacks miss COTA Storm at the highest point of her idling.

In COTA, reeling characters had animation-specific hitboxes, like in SF2. After that, their vulnerability during reeling is the same as their idle animation, except for tall characters like Magneto and Juggernaut.

Psylocke seems to be the only one in COTA, and possibly the whole series, with hitboxes that follow the dizzy animation.

Wolverine’s pushbox doesn’t go very low during his slide, and it doesn’t get very high up during Drill Claw. After COTA, these moves won’t pass each other although the sprites appear to miss. It’s shown here in MSH.

Likewise, Dhalsim’s pushbox doesn’t get off the ground during his dash and he can’t be slid under, as shown in XSF.

Tag-in attacks have better hitboxes than the regular attacks that they resemble. At left is MvC Captain Commando’s tag-in kick opposite his jumpback roundhouse.

COTA Sentinel had some moves that didn’t make it into MvC2. Shown here is the the j.HK (left) and sj.D+HP dive

COTA Iceman with Ice Fist has increased range on his punches. Less obviously, they also get extra active frames.

COTA Storm has invincibility in some strange situations: during flight startup and while dashing.

Gem activation in MSH hits nearby for one or two frames and gets several invincible frames before and after. It takes a move with good startup invincibility, like Spider Man’s Spider Sting, to beat it.

MSH Blackheart with Reality gem is invisible but still vulnerable as normal. Captain America with Power gem is invincible for all the rising parts (but not the falling parts) of the powered-up Stars and Stripes.

MvC Jin’s Dynamite looks like it hits in all directions but it misses the back area. His extended taunt only hits where the flame is, but an opponent with fat hitboxes can lean into it.

MvC Venom Web takes up the whole screen.

Two more kinds of boxes are revealed if you press Lua hotkey 5. If the yellow box touches the opponent’s white box, you can perform a normal ground or air throw. The red boxes only hit blue boxes and yellow boxes only interact with white boxes. While yellow attacks are always unblockable throws, red attacks are generally blockable except for a few like Shuma-Gorath’s Chaos Dimension grab and Magneto’s Hyper Grav.

In XSF and later, for some characters, your throw range during a normal jump (left) is more in front, and during a super jump (right) it’s more below.

XSF Zangief’s Final Atomic Buster beats Juggernaut Headcrush.

Rogue’s stolen SPD has less range than Zangief’s. On the other hand, her Raging Demon is better than Akuma’s.

COTA Colossus’s OTG grab (D+MP) works as a throw. As you can see, this is the maximum range against a fallen Omega Red. The OTG grabs of Juggernaut and Sentinel work the same way.

During MSF Hulk’s forward dash, his throw vulnerability is grossly elongated vertically. Since he is still on the ground he cannot be grabbed by air throws, but Zangief’s air SPD is an exception.

Even though MSF Dan’s yellow box is way forward during Otoko Michi, it gets outgrabbed by Norimaro’s grab super because Dan’s blue box is exposed.

MvC special partners are projectiles and have hittable blue boxes like any other projectile. The same goes for CapCom’s fighters and Strider’s robot pets.

A projectile doesn’t have to have a vulnerability box to be negated, as long as its attack box hits another projectile’s blue box. For example, Spider Man’s Web Ball has a blue box but Web Throw doesn’t. Therefore, WB-WB and WB-WT negations are possible, but two Web Throw strings pass through one another. Quite a lot of projectiles have no vulnerability, including MSH Blackheart’s Heart of Darkness and Dr. Doom’s Molecular Shield.

Marvel introduced beams, a special kind of projectile attack. There are two types.

Some beams send a stream of projectile objects gushing from the source like a fire hose. It’s not just a large number of independent projectiles because there’s a limit to how many of them can hit, and throwing opposing projectiles against the beam reduces the number of hits. COTA Cyclops’s LP Optic Blast and Iceman’s MP Ice Beam can fully negate each other in this way.

The other kind of beam has attack boxes strewn along the length of the beam that don’t actually move. Anything in the path of the beam gets hit, even if another target is in front. The number of hits does not decrease if an opposing projectile is negated, and may increase if the target has a wide vulnerability area.

Some beams of this type have vulnerability boxes (Ryu Shinkuu Hadoukens, post-COTA Cyclops beams) while others don’t (Iron Man/War Machine beams, Morrigan Soul Eraser). It doesn’t seem to make any effective difference, and in any case they can’t be negated without one or both players getting hurt.

Cyclops’s Super Optic Blast (the aimable one) is a beam of the first type but after COTA the boxes come out so fast that it’s tricky to negate it without someone getting hit, moreso when you have two of them, as shown here in MSF. (Strangely enough if you try two at once in XSF the first one disappears. See Maj’s gallery for more on Optic Blasts.)

The big blue box in front of XSF Bison’s Psycho Crusher negates any non-beam projectiles, such as the Gambit’s Royal Flush. The box was taken away in MSF.

But boxes don’t tell the whole story. There’s nothing to indicate that Captain America should be invincible to projectiles during Hyper Charging Star (also in MvC2), or that Megaman should be invincible to everything during Rush Drill. They still get hit, but don’t get hurt.

Some selected version changes:

Wolverine’s Tornado Claw (which lost startup invulnerability) and Hulk’s Gamma Crush in MSH and MSF.

The shoto Hurricane Kicks, both ground and air, could hit on both the front and back swing in XSF. In MSF they can only hit in front. The recovery on Chun-Li’s Senretsu Kyaku also lost its invulnerability, though that was changed in the last (961023) version of XSF.

In every game after COTA, guard-canceling counters can be performed at the cost of a super stock. Counters in MSH and XSF grant invincible active frames even when the moves they look like don’t. However, in MSF and MvC you only get a few frames, so it’s not always safe, especially if you countered a projectile.

Charlie/Shadow and Zangief/Mech Zangief perform simultaneous Variable Counters in XSF and MSF, showing the loss of invincibility. Notice how Somersault Shell has both projectile and direct hitting components.

The Force Field of COTA and MSH Magneto removes his vulnerability and replaces it with that of the shield. The blue area also effectively serves as a pushbox. Not even a long reaching attack like Juggernaut’s girder can hit him.

On the other hand the Force Field in XSF (and the LK version in MvC2) is a catch counter with a large, brief hit area. It doesn’t break super armor though, so Magneto still eats the Juggernaut Punch.

The hitboxes in Marvel are a little different from the other CPS-2 games. Besides the additional red and blue box and the white box, the throw range is actually one of the attack boxes but with a certain bit set that makes it unblockable. All attack and hit computations are handled by these boxes. In the non-Marvel games, throw ranges were usually hardcoded into the game’s program, which makes it hard to show them with boxes.

The pushboxes don’t have single byte IDs like the others, but depend directly on the character and the stance. Furthermore, the location of the pushbox data is not indicated by a pointer but is hardcoded. Fortunately it’s the same for all characters, though it differs between game revisions. For example, the 980112 and 980123 versions of MvC have different pushbox bases. This had to be checked for every ROM version. Similarly, there’s no one pair of memory addresses that say where the camera position is. They depend on the stage. So that had to be determined for every stage in every game.

The projectiles are also different because there’s nothing in their memory space to indicate whether they are active. Instead, the script refers to a list of pointers, one for each player, to tell which projectiles to draw. This was a setback at first when I didn’t know what to do but it’s actually a little more efficient this way.

Many thanks to felineki for the initial research on MSF, and to Battousai, error1 and Maj for ideas and feedback, and to Xenozip for his demo videos:

• X-Men: Children of the Atom
• Marvel Super Heroes
• X-Men vs. Street Fighter
• Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

High Knockdown Trick (HKD) on SFZ2 Blog

This is a very interesting and detailed old article that was posted over the first american SF Community (Before SRK ever existed), i’m talking about alt.games.sf2, this article was made back in 1998 but it still being the most informative and complete one about the High Knockdown Trick on SFA2.

The “Plinking” FAQ: Everything You Want to Know About Plinking on Shoryuken

What is Plinking?
Plinking is a technique first written about here on SRK by KIRBYSIM. It technically stands for “P-Linking,” which itself stands for “Priority-Linking.” It’s a technique utilized by many players to help land their 1-frame and 2-frame links more consistently in battle by taking advantage of a trick that allows you to repeat a button input for 2 frames in a row.

The term “Priority Linking” is used because of the nature of how Plinking works: the input you want repeated can be controlled knowing the “priority” of the buttons in Street Fighter IV.

To see these animating before your own eyeballs, follow the same drill in the SF2 article, and use the same script that shows the SFA boxes.

Lilith’s Soul Flash is just a couple pixels lower than Morrigan’s Soul Fist. This is enough of a difference that Jon Talbain can’t walk under it.

Jedah’s airdash is the only buttonless attack. His c.MK is one of his better anti-airs.

In Vampire Savior, each version of Sasquatch’s Big Typhoon has different hitboxes. The LK version (left) is a good anti-air but poor against a grounded opponent, while the HK is opposite.

Anakaris’s legs are highly vulnerable during his jump kicks, but his lower body can’t be hurt during his Dark Force.

Donovan’s vulnerable area increases greatly during his sword summon moves. The lightning from the planted sword was a new move given in Savior 2/Hunter 2.

Some moves like B.B.Hood’s Beautiful Memory and Morrigan’s Darkness Illusion have throw-like effects, but unlike throws they have normal red hitboxes and can be comboed.

The D+KKK moves of Talbain and B.B.Hood cause their pushboxes to disappear while they scoot forward. They can quickly pass through the opponent while in an unthrowable state, and are usable as cancels and reversals. In B.B.Hood’s case she can move forward and under fireballs while maintaining charge. The dashes (both forward and back) of Felicia, Talbain and Demitri have similar properties. Victor has a D+KKK hop but it doesn’t pass through.

In Darkstalkers, Demitri’s c.MK (right) doesn’t look or behave anything like a c.MK should. It’s almost the same as his far standing MK (left), but with fewer active frames and a faster recovery. Neither is cancelable.

In Vampire Savior, Demitri’s vertical Demon Cradle (fierce version, left) looks like it covers both sides, but only the ES version (right) hits in front and the back. All versions have several active invincible frames and usually can do no worse than trading.

It seems that as Demitri matured, so did his taste in the ladies.

In Darkstalkers and Night Warriors, Rikuo had a torpedo move called the Screw Shot. In both games, his leg hitbox was erroneously elongated past the top and bottom of the screen during the recovery frames. His torso hitbox was similarly oversized during the first active phase of his c.HP in Night Warriors.

Despite appearances, Q-bee’s Royal Jelly (top) is bigger than Rikuo’s Water Jail, at least vertically. The honey ball briefly loses its ability to hit during the bounces.

Bishamon’s Iai Giri moves are unique in that the longer you charge back, the more hits you get. The required charges for the three levels are 50, 80 and 110 frames in Darkstalkers and Night Warriors, and 60, 70 and 110 frames in Vampire Savior. These moves can also negate projectiles.

Here is VSav Bishamon’s kick and punch Iai Giri, left and right. The first pic shows fully charged regular versions, the second shows the ES versions on the last swing. Although the stronger versions have bigger sprites and more active frames, all non-ES strengths have the same hitboxes. The low version comes out two frames faster and has longer range.

The series introduced Guard Cancels, or Guard Reversals as they were called before Savior. Some moves don’t give any invulnerability unless they are done as a GC/GR. Examples of these are NWarr Hsien-ko’s gong and VSav Bishamon’s Kien Zan.

Bonus question: How was the Bishamon shot set up?

Taunts (or “friendships”) were introduced in Vampire Savior.

Victor is the only character with taunts that can hit.

Phobos (Huitzil) and Pyron in Hunter 2/Savior 2 are the only characters with taunt hitboxes that aren’t the same as their ordinary standing or crouching boxes.

Every character in Vampire Savior can be divided into one of two hitbox classes: regular and tall. The regulars retain the same hitboxes as their standing or crouching idle animations when hit, whereas the tall characters shrink when attacked.

Hsien-ko and chainsaw-wielding Rapter are two of the best combo dummies because the large hittable area extending in front of their pushboxes stays large when they get hit. Demitri, Q-bee and Huitzil are the tallest of the regular characters, which makes them good targets for air chains.

The tall characters are Victor, Anakaris and Jedah. The head retracts into the torso when they reel from any attack. The big guys would be too vulnerable to air chains otherwise. (The exceptions are Rikuo’s Sonic Wave, Poison Gas and Water Jail, Bishamon’s Karame Dama, Hsien-ko’s heavy projectiles, and Q-bee’s Royal Jelly. When stunned by these attacks, even the big characters retain their full-size hitboxes.)

In Hunter 2/Savior 2, the tall characters still shrink when hit, but less. The head box moves back instead of down. This is probably because air chains were basically removed in those games.

Prior to VSav, there were no reeling hitbox differences for any character. This is unexpected considering the precedent set by SF2 and the amount of work that went into animating the sprites.

The blade swing of Lei-Lei (Hsien-ko) is a cycle of twelve attack animations, with the red box following the leading edge of the blade sprite. Every time the attack area moves, the enemy can be hit again. The fastest spin moves the blade once per frame, and the slowest once per three frames. The speed of the first spin depends on how many times you press punch after her feet leave the ground, and the speed of the following spins depends on presses during the current spin. Four punches per cycle are required for the highest speed.

As with getting hit, raising your guard doesn’t change your hitboxes either.

Moves that got toned down:

Felicia’s Rolling Buckler and Delta Kick, in Darkstalkers and Vampire Savior.

Rapter’s Death Hurricane and Skull Sting, in Night Warriors and Vampire Savior.

Pyron’s Cosmo Disruption, Orbital Blaze and Galaxy Trip in Night Warriors and Vampire Hunter 2. His teleport doesn’t get a single frame of invulnerability in the later games, not even when his sprite disappears.

Lilith’s s.HK and Rapter’s F+MP in Vampire Savior and Savior 2. There wasn’t much to tone down about Lilith’s roundhouse but it gained overhead ability, got even slower, and lost its higher hitting area. Rapter lost the initial close hitting area on his F+LP and F+MP, and consequently these moves got slower.

Bishamon’s command throw makes him invulnerable until the throw succeeds or he starts leaning forward from the whiff animation. The whiff invulnerability is only observable if he’s attacked by a delayed projectile, and he can only attempt the throw at close range. In this shot, he attempts the throw against Hsien-ko, who escapes with her invisible teleport dash while her time bomb goes off underfoot. No one was harmed. This only works in Vampire Savior.

Demitri’s Vampire Savior version of Demon Billion turns him into a glob of bats that rushes forward. After some brief invulnerability, his normal standing hitboxes reappear behind the swarm. Despite having no corporeal form, he’s about to slip on Sasquatch’s banana peel.

The first game covered, the one that started this ball rolling, was Vampire Savior. felineki had coaxed the hitbox routine out of the game with MAME’s debugger to help with a Mugen conversion, and mz translated the code to Lua (which he had ported to FBA-rr and MAME-rr) so that the boxes would be displayed in realtime. After the Alpha and SF2 series had been added, felineki and I had no problem figuring out Night Warriors and Darkstalkers.

The Vampire Savior code is the same as SFA3 but with different addresses. The later games had simpler code, with no pointers for anything except the animation pointer for the attack box.

While all the SF2 games have a projectile limit of eight, it’s only four for the first Darkstalkers, despite the fact that it’s easy to throw two projectiles at once, with Demitri at least. It has pointers for both the animation frames and the hitbox tables, a complication which is typical of the earlier games, but by the time I looked at this one I had learned to recognize them by looking at the memory browser.

Night Warriors, the middle game, is unlike any of the others because it has two separate banks of memory space for projectiles. There are 12 slots for ordinary ones like soul fists and another 28 for special projectiles like the Tenraiha spikeballs and the Demon Billion bats. This was the first Capcom game with massive numbers of simultaneous projectiles (predating SFA2 custom combos) and for some reason the developers made two overlapping systems instead of just doing it the usual way on a larger scale.

The blue boxes on projectiles are responsible for negation, but we’re not sure what the green and yellow are for. They probably have something to do with getting pushed by other projectiles, getting reflected by Hsien-ko’s gong, getting eaten by Anakaris, or causing special hit effects like dizzy, burning, freezing, etc.

Now, please enjoy some of Xenozip’s videos:

• Morrigan
• Gallon and Jedah
• Lei-Lei and Felicia

It’s my intention that this will be a series of comprehensive resource articles concisely documenting fighting game glitches with pictures, videos, and all the good stuff. Today we are starting where it all began, with Street Fighter II. SF2 may have a lot of glitches, but that’s only because it invented everything. Since we don’t know what Capcom was thinking, some of these bizarre occurrences may even be intentional programming, rather than genuine glitches.

• CPS-1 Chain
  Characters with rapid fire weak kicks in all of the CPS-1 Street Fighter 2 games (WW, CE, and HF) can cancel them into any punch attack in a different position. For example to do Guile’s C.LK -> HP chain, press D+LK, and once it connects or whiffs press LK+HP. In the same way, to do Guile’s LK -> C.HP would be LK and then D+LK+HP. It is a very well known glitch and it’s easy to time because it works as a chain combo.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMGAASgcSR4#t=2m10s
      … and every CPS1 SF2 combo video ever
  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/articles/sf2chain.html

• Jump-Canceling
  In all Street Fighter II games, chainable attacks may be canceled by a jump.
  For example, to do Guile’s LP->NJ. HP, the input would be: LP, U+LP, HP
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZpOq-67YHdI#t=0m31s
      … and every Street Fighter II combo video
  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/articles/sf2chain.html

• Invisible Dhalsim
  In some versions of Street Fighter II World Warrior, doing a kara Yoga Fire may cause Dhalsim to become invisible. The exact input is D, DF, Hold F, MK or HK, HP. The game is fairly inconsistent about it, but if you try for a couple minutes you should be able to do it. When invisible, Dhalsim can’t do anything. Some attacks will whiff, some will cause him to automatically block, and some moves will hit him. If the opponent presses back, it will cause him to block. Like the red Hadouken and handcuffs, Dhalsim later learns a more useful way to turn invisible with his Yoga Teleport.


Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEFPzcOK_uQ

• Red Hadouken
  In CPS-1 Street Fighter 2 games, very rarely a Hadouken will be red. It can happen for Ken or Ryu (or Zangief and others in Rainbow Edition). It’s exactly the same as a normal Hadouken except for the color. It’s unclear whether this phenomenon was intentionally programmed or a glitch, but there’s no harm in including it here. Later Ryu would lean how to make a red Hadouken with fire properties on command.
  

Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_ZNf6gQWNc
In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/articles/sf2randomness.html

• Whiff Rolling Attack
  In WW, if Blanka does a Rolling Attack that is blocked or hits, and then does another one before he hits the ground, it won’t be able to hit. If the opponent is in the corner, the Rolling Attack will simply end when he hits the corner. Otherwise Blanka will do the recovery animation as if it hit.


Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPdmDJpURjc

• Ryu Dizzy Damage
  In WW, if Ryu is hit during the dizzy frame where he is leaning farthest forward, he will take more damage. Certain moves like Blanka’s Rolling Attack are supposed to take extra damage if they are hit during the move. For some reason a frame of Ryu’s WW dizzy animation has this weakness hit box.
  

  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/?p=4476

• Car Bonus Glitch
  In Street Fighter II if you break one side of the car so that it causes red hit sparks and then do a backwards jump and attack, it may cause your character to become stuck in mid air. To jump backwards you need to press Up and Back at the same time. It’s harder than it sounds. The easiest normals to get it to work with are Ryu and Ken’s HK, and E.Honda’s MK. The spot you need to hit to trigger the glitch is very small, so expect for it to take you a ton of tries. A second player can knock you out of it, but if time runs out with you stuck then the game is effectively frozen. Some special moves like Dragon Punch can also cause it if used when standing on the car.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXAHbz6Huqw

• 512 Special and 512 Guard
  In WW there is a 1-in-512 chance of a random button press doing a special move. This can cause a charge move to happen without a charge, but can’t be used to cancel a normal. There is a also a 1-in-512 chance of a move being automatically blocked without the player holding back. This is probably not a glitch.
  
  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/articles/sf2randomness.html

• Knock Down Cancel
  In many Street Fighter games if a move that causes knock down, and a non knock down move hits the same character on the same frame, the knockdown will be canceled. For example in SF2, if Guile connects with his D+HK sweep at the same time as a Sonic Boom, it won’t knock the opponent down. If Dhalsim connects with a normal at the same time as a Yoga Fire, the opponent won’t catch on fire and won’t be knocked down.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzqIChnXrwg

• Float Glitch
  In all SFII games but ST, if a character gets hit by a projectile and a normal at the same time in the corner, right before they land from a jump, they will enter ground hit stun in the air. Right as they recover they can jump, block, or do any ground move in the air. Note that trying to chain light attacks will cause you to enter an air state instead. Guile, Dhalsim, and Akuma have the easiest time setting this up.
  

Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoVwfBNj1b4
In-Depth Examples: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JaB_2blg_o#t=3m10s

• Ryu vs CPU Ryu
  In WW if you get to Ryu’s stage and lose, then continue as second player and pick Ryu, you will fight a CPU controlled Ryu.
  

• WW Guile Glitches
  Grab a seat – this could take a while.
  • Handcuffs

  Doing an MP throw and then immediately doing a Flash Kick (as if you were doing a kara Flash Kick) will cause the throw to screw up. Instead of being thrown, the opponent will become stuck to you. During this time the opponent is invincible and Guile can’t perform special moves. If you do a Sonic Boom as the handcuffs are starting, Guile may become stuck as well, but can free himself by doing a Flash Kick. You can end the handcuffs by doing a magic throw.
  

  • Stance

  If you do a close F+HK upside-down kick and try to cancel it with a Sonic Boom, Guile may become stuck during the recovery. In this state he is invulnerable to some low attacks but can’t move or attack. It can be ended by doing a Flash Kick or being hit. This is also possible during handcuffs.
  

  • Magic Throw

  The magic throw is done almost the same way as the stance, but you need to hold Forward a little bit longer and you need to hit both buttons at nearly the same time. If done correctly, Guile will do a throw without touching the opponent. The opponent can move and attack but he will still get thrown when the throw finishes.
  

  • Reset the Game

  In some versions of WW, doing a HP throw then immediately doing a Flash Kick will cause the game to reset. Also, doing a MP throw and then doing a Flash Kick after the throw has started but before the opponent hits the ground may cause the game to reset.
  

  • Scrolling

  In some versions of WW, rather the resetting the game, doing a HP throw and then immediately doing a Flash Kick will cause the opponent to get stuck in a stun animation and constantly scroll through the floor. During this time, doing a Sonic Boom will stop the scrolling, sometimes causing an odd, often game breaking thing to happen. Once stopped, the scrolling may often be resumed by doing a Flash Kick.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3DalBIjfqI
  The video shows, in order: handcuffs, stances, magic throw out of handcuffs,
      normal magic throw, HP throw reset, scrolling into handcuffs,
      magic throw out of handcuffs, and MP throw reset.
  In-Depth Reading: http://nzism.alphaism.com/forum/index.php?topic=8.0

  • Charge Storage

  In some versions of WW, doing a MP throw and then doing a Flash Kick after the throw has started but before the opponent hits the ground will store a Flash Kick. If done correctly, it will cause Guile to walk back for a frame and hitting any kick will cause him to do Flash Kick. Holding the direction when doing a MP throw and pressing a punch button after it’s finished will cause you to throw a Sonic Boom. This Sonic Boom charge can be used to do a quick magic throw.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72qlbOhttjI
  In-Depth Reading: http://old.jasongordon.com/static/sf2 (street_fighter_2_glitch.txt)

• Vega OTG
  In WW, Vega is briefly vulnerable when rising, so he can be hit after a knockdown move.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0LBdBX_QTA

• Dhalsim Juggle
  In CE, Dhalsim is vulnerable during part of his air recovery. So if hit out of the air by a move that would normally cause him to land on his feet, he can be juggled.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8_XU1wry0I

• Vega Barrel Scrolling
  In CE, on the third bonus stage, if Vega removes the left- or right-most barrel and then backflips where the barrel was, he will start scrolling all over the place.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuSEas9Ig3Y

• Zangief Magic Reversal
  In SSF2 930911 USA, if Zangief does a reversal with 360+MK, and the opponent is on the ground and throwable, he will grab them no matter where they are. The same trick works with O.Zangief in SSF2T 940223 World, using 360+HK instead.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xV0qYi2ueHg

• Zangief Magic FAB
  In SSF2T, Zangief may perform a backwards super without actually grabbing the opponent. He will teleport to the opponent when doing the suplexes, and the opponent will be knocked down at the end. An interesting side effect is that shadows will follow the other character until he enters an idle state, even if Zangief is hit out of it during start up. There is no consistent way to do this glitch, but the easiest way is to knock Zangief out of the air with dictator’s S.LP and then walk under him as Zangief does a reversal FAB.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3s-eLeBAsA
  In-Depth Reading: http://nki.combovideos.com (NKI-glitch.bible.txt)

• Super Special Reversal
  In SSF2T, Dhalsim, Sagat, and Ken can’t do reversal supers. If you try, they will do the last special move they performed instead. If the last special move was an air Hurricane Kick, Ken will a quick one hit air Hurricane Kick on the ground. If your last special move was a super, you can actually do a reversal super. If your last special move was a projectile, you can still do it even if you already have a projectile on the screen.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWmAF8wV4c
  In-Depth Reading: http://nki.combovideos.com (NKI-glitch.bible.txt)

• T.Hawk C.MP Stray Hitbox
  During T.Hawk’s C.MP recovery, his head hitbox ends up way in front of him for a frame.
  
  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/?p=4476

• Dhalsim’s Yoga Blast Stray Hitbox
  The first active frames of Dhalsim’s Yoga Blast appear behind him.
  
  In-Depth Reading: http://sonichurricane.com/?p=4476

• Bypass Hitstop
  Normally when an attack connects in Street Fighter games, the game pauses for around ten frames. If the move is canceled, the followup will come out after the pause. Certain special moves ignore this pause, and will come out without delay if special-canceled. This applies to Bison’s Headstomp in CE, HF, SSF2 and ST with O.Bison only. Blanka’s Vertical Rolling Attack bypasses hitstop in HF, SSF2, and ST with O.Blanka only. And Dee Jay’s Machine Gun Upper works throughout SSF2 and ST.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHBGExAlcuQ

• Selecting Original Colors
  Normally in SSF2T, a character’s original colors can only be selected if you are playing the old version of the character. There is a method for playing with the new version of the character with the original colors.
  1) Choose an old character.
  2) Lose to the CPU.
  3) On the continue screen, have the other player join in.
  4) Wait until the character select screen loads, then press Start to continue. Your character will revert to the new version, but keep the old palette.
  5) Don’t press anything until the timer runs out and your character is automatically selected.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2f9gY-pKTE

• Continuous Crazy Kicks
  If Ken ends a round with his QCF+K crazy kick, he may cancel the recovery with another QCF+K indefinitely. This works both with kayo and time over.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2JhE-vfQms
  In-Depth Reading: http://nki.combovideos.com (NKI-Vol9.Evo2006.Special.txt)

• Time Over Super Flash
  If you connect a super move as time expires, and the super would’ve inflicted enough damage to kill the opponent, it will still cause a super flash. Furthermore if the opponent won the round, the super won’t be able to kill them, so the hits won’t stop juggling even after they should’ve died. In the case of a draw game, there is no super explosion.
  
  Video Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=knwmKYZfQ5Y
  In-Depth Reading: http://nki.combovideos.com (NKI-Vol9.Evo2006.Special.txt)

Note that at the moment this is only a list of Street Fighter II Arcade Glitches. Many new glitches exist in the console ports. While this article attempts to be as comprehensive as possible, I purposely left out backwards moves and renda canceling. If you have any information on glitches I may have missed please post them in the comments.

Special thanks to NKI for all the documentation and transcripts; Dammit for making input display, hitbox viewer, and I stole some of his images; and desk for finding the float glitch and explaining how it worked.

Check out http://code.google.com/p/mame-rr for the scrolling input display and hitbox viewer used here. A playlist of all the videos can be found here. Some of the clips are tool assisted.