Idol Showdown/Glossary

Glossary: Fighting Game Terms

Abare

Attacking while you are at negative frame advantage.

Advantage

Usually refers to frame advantage — that is, who is allowed to attack first after some move hits or is blocked. You might say "you can't press a button there, I'm advantage" to indicate that you are plus, or you can also talk about it from the perspective of the player who is minus, saying they are at disadvantage. It also might refer to who wins in a certain matchup.

Air Combo

The act of comboing an airborne opponent while you are also in the air.

Air Normal

A normal that you can only use while airborne. Basically, it's a jumping attack.

Air Tech Reset

When somebody ends their combo while the opponent is in the air in order to allow the opponent to Air Tech. This is intentionally done to catch their opponent with a new combo usually by an Air Grab or for more damage.

Air Tech

Recovering from being hit in the air and returning to neutral. Maybe the best way to think about it is like quick rising in the air once you've run out of hit stun.

Air Throw

A throw that can be input in the air, and only works against airborne opponents.

Air-to-air

Attacking an airborne opponent while you are also in the air.

Airborne

The state of being in the air, by either jumping, properties of a move, or getting hit by a launcher.

Almost Seiso

A win that was almost a Seiso, but you only took chip damage. Unique to Idol Showdown calling a Perfect "Seiso" baring similar meaning to Hood Perfect.

Ambiguous

Describes an attack which may cross up, but also may not, depending on extremely subtle and often imperceptible differences in timing or spacing. A good ambiguous attack is extremely difficult to block because the defender cannot visually determine on which side they'll be getting hit. Even the attacker may not even know whether the attack will be a cross-up or not, as the changes in timing and spacing can happen both on purpose and accidentally. Very ambiguous cross-ups will usually require a guess to block correctly.

American Reset

When somebody accidentally drops their combo, but a follow-up attack hits the opponent anyway because they simply weren't blocking or, indeed, paying attention to the screen at all. It's kind of like a reset, but with no underlying mixup behind it, which means it should "never" work... except for the times it does.

Anti-Air

Hitting someone who is either jumping at you or airborne while you are on the ground. Each character usually has a few moves that hit at an upward angle, perfect for intercepting those pesky jumpers. People who jump at you too much are giving you free damage, so you'd better learn to take it. Beware of empty jumps, so know your ranges for your anti-airs.

Arcade Stick

A common controller used to play fighting games. The left side has a joystick (with a certain top and gate), while the right side has a set of 8 buttons. Arcade machines will have input devices like this, although versions that plug into consoles and sit on your lap have been popular for a long time now. You'll probably also hear this called a "fight stick", or even just a "stick" (as in, "I prefer playing on stick").

Archetype

A way to categorize a character's general playstyle, based on their best moves. For example, zoners want to keep their opponent far away. Grapplers want to get real close and grab you for lots of damage.

Armor/Super Armor

A state where a character can absorb a hit without entering hit stun, which lets them continue to attack or move. Armor isn't quite as good as being invincible; usually, armor can be thrown, and often a game will also have a set of moves that can break armor directly. And depending on how many hits of armor you have, sometimes super fast multi-hitting moves can get through too. But armor is usually still a powerful property, since for most attacks, it will plow through without trouble.

Assist/Collab

Asking one of your off-screen characters in a team game to come on screen briefly and perform an action for you. In Idol Showdown, your assist/collab has two moves that can be used in a variety of situations. Be careful, though; your assist will dissappear when you get hit so understand the unique circumstances to use your assist/collab.

Auto Combo

When a game lets you perform several simple button presses (often even the same button), and it automatically generates a combo composed of multiple different moves. Only available in Virtual Frontier as a difficulty modifier.

Auto-Correct

An input technique for performing a special move (but usually a dragon punch) in the opposite direction immediately as your opponent jumps over your head. The idea is to input the entire special move's input in the normal direction, juuuust before the opponent switches sides with the jump, but then wait a split second until the opponent clears your head to press the attack button. In games with generous input buffers, the game will register your special move successfully, but "automatically correct" you to face the new direction before doing it. Usually applies to moves that are DPs(Dragon Punches).

Auto-pilot

Acting without thinking, usually in a predictable way that gets you killed. Usually you use it to describe to a beginner situations where they constantly do the same thing by force of habit. The skilled opponent will quickly pick up on it and bait the response every time, and the beginner will need to work on recognizing when they go auto-pilot and actively try to stop it. It takes a while, though, especially when you are pretty new and don't know how to play creatively yet.

Bait

Doing something specific to induce a certain move from your opponent, and then countering it perfectly. In other words, it's tricking them into thinking some attack or movement option was a good idea, and then showing them very clearly that it wasn't. Perhaps the most common bait is walking up to an opponent you've knocked down, threatening to attack, then blocking their reversal dragon punch; doing this successfully is "baiting the DP". You can also bait attempts to throw tech by walking up to them, pretending to throw, then walking back.

Balance

A measure of how strong a game's characters are, compared to each other. If most characters in a game have relatively similar chances to win, then you might say the game is pretty balanced. If there are a couple particularly broken strategies or characters that dominate all others, then the game would be pretty imbalanced. Perfect balance is impossible to achieve, and it's debatable whether balance is that important to fun factor anyway, since many of the genre's most exciting games have some pretty dominant characters.

Bar

A small segment of Star Super Meter or Superchat Meter. These two meters are divided into several bars,which can each be individually spent on actions such as Star Specials or Superchat Cancels.

Battery

A character or move whose objective is to build a resource, usually super meter.

Big Body

A character whose hurtbox is especially tall and wide. Usually these are grapplers who are slow-moving but super effective from close range. Sometimes unique combos will work on big bodies because their bigger hurtbox gets in the way of attacks that smaller characters would dodge. They also tend to have a harder time dealing with zoning since they're such a big target.

Blockstop

An extremely brief moment where the game pauses for dramatic effect whenever an attack is blocked. By messing around with how many frames an attack's blockstop lasts for, designers can change how "chunky" the move feels to block. The frames of blockstop exist outside the standard startup, active and recovery measurement of a move's properties; the characters get frozen in place briefly while the game accentuates the blocking effect. The version for moves that hit is called, not surprisingly, hitstop.

Blockstring

Block String Link to Block String A series of multiple attacks that work well against a blocking opponent. Generally, a block string will be composed of several plus on block or cancelable attacks performed in quick sequence. When blocked, these will slowly push your character out of range and prevent the opponent from counter-attacking, which makes them a very good default, low-risk option when trying to apply offense. Good block strings may even let you hit confirm into more damage if the opponent flinches and stops blocking!

Some people think a block string must leave no gaps; that is to say, you will be able to keep attacking your opponent trapped in block stun with multiple attacks until you get pushed too far away. Not everyone uses the term in this way, though — some people are okay using the term even if there are small gaps between some attacks that might frame trap your opponent, as long as the gap isn't very big. Because of this, you might hear "true block string" used to refer to a block string that has no gaps, to avoid confusion.

Block Stun

The period of time when your character cannot perform any action after blocking an attack. Instead, you have to wait for your character to stop reeling from the blocked attack for a small window before getting control back. All moves cause varying amount of blockstun, and if consecutive attacks leave little or no gap there (called a block string), then you need to continue blocking for a while.

In Idol Showdown, you are allowed to take a unique action called Instant Blocking to take your turn back. The duration of block stun, coupled with your opponent's recovery on their attack determines the amount of advantage a blocked move will have.

Bodied

Losing really badly. It's kind of taken on an endearing quality when used by the fighting game community, where it's okay to say you got bodied even if the matches were kinda close.

Bombo

Slang for a cool-looking or particularly powerful combo.

Bracket Reset

When the grand finals of a double elimination tournament sees the player coming from the Losers Bracket win the first set. Because the Winners Bracket qualifier hasn't lost yet, losing the first set just means both players must play again, resetting the score to 0-0. This new, final set where the winner wins the tournament is sometimes called "true grand finals".

Bread and Butter

A common, practical combo that you will use often in matches. It's almost always shortened to "BnB". You'll probably learn an easy BnB for your character for situations that come up a lot, such as landing a jumping attack or a hitting with a crouching jab. It may be possible to do more advanced, situational combos, but BnBs are the dependable staples that every player should know and will put you on the fast track to character mastery.

Broken

A strategy or character that is so utterly dominant and wins so easily that there is little or no reason to play the game in any other way. Describing a strategy as broken is an extremely strong statement about the balance of the game. Usually, frustrated beginners will throw the word around referring to any time any character hits them with any move, but truly broken strategies or characters are becoming less common in modern games as developers get more experience (and are able to patch any brutal mistakes they do make).

Buff

When the developers make a character better. There's lots of aspects they can change, from giving the character more health, more damage, better advantage on important moves, or many other things. When to buff characters and when to nerf them is a very inexact science that takes a lot of skill, and a lot of learning from mistakes. Buffing a character too much when their strategy is still underexplored is a classic error that can cause balance problems.

Buffer

A term that has two distinct, important meanings in the fighting game space.

1) Buffer can refer to a window of time where the game allows you to input a move. Check out Buffer Window for more on that.

2) Buffer can also refer to a character attacking empty space with a normal, hoping to cancel into a different attack if it hits. Learn more about that at Buffered Attack.

Buffer Window

A period of time where a fighting game will accept the input for an attack. Then, if you input a move any time during that window, it will wait and apply it on the first possible frame after the window passes.

A good example is a reversal after being knocked down. Normally inputting a reversal on exactly the first frame you wake up is pretty hard! So, modern games give you a buffer for several frames before you actually wake up. If you input your reversal special move at any point during this buffer, it will apply it as a reversal automatically, making the timing much easier. There are buffers all over the place in fighting game design, including for inputs during combos, just so that players can feel more confident the moves they execute will come out.

In practical use, people almost always just shorten this to buffer. That term has multiple meanings though, so be careful.

Buffered Attack

Whiffing a normal attack in front of you, and inputting another attack as a cancel afterwards. When your attack whiffs, nothing further happens, but if your opponent accidentally runs into the attack, the cancel happens automatically. This is a very common option select that will really help you get more mileage out of your strong pokes, and you don't have to take any extra risk! You just do the same inputs and let the game take the correct action based on what your opponent does.

This technique is always just called a "buffer" despite having multiple meanings. Be careful in it's usage.

Bug

A programming mistake that causes an unintended side effect. Bugs are common in video games, but in fighting games (especially older ones), they are especially prevalent. From moves being accidentally unblockable to oversights allowing infinite combos, many famous fighting game bugs have drastically shaped the core of the genre.

Bullying

Forcing someone to block repeatedly, often by using the same attack many times in a row. For example, you might have a strong close-range plus on block move that you can repeat over and over. Or, you might stand in the mid-range and repeat the same poke from a distance where your opponent cannot easily counter-attack, forcing them to figure out how to escape. Characters that are good at doing this might be called "bully characters".

Sometimes bullying can refer to a player trolling their opponent with a move that isn't really that great but the opponent can't figure it out.

Burst Safe

A combo that avoids the hitbox of a burst attack, making it safe to perform even if the opponent wanted to try and escape it. How easy it is to make your combo safe from bursts depends on the character. Sometimes your highest damage, best combo option is just naturally very burst safe, while other characters need to do a much lower damage version or change their combo path considerably.

Against characters that are good at this, you'll need to have good game knowledge and burst only at very specific points in the combo, or else you will just waste your burst and get hit for even more damage than you were trying to avoid. Sometimes that means not being able to burst at all, and the damage is just guaranteed.

Button Check

Testing that your buttons are correctly set by booting up a match and messing around. This is super common in tournaments where you need to change the button configuration of the last player who played on the communal station. Even though you can see that your buttons are working properly on the config screen itself, most players want the confidence of seeing their character move and behave as they expect in a match setting.

The one big downside of button checks is how much down time they add to tournaments. With the loading times needed to go in and out of matches, it's often 1 or 2 minutes per match, which adds up to huge amounts of time lost over an event.

Caliburst

Bursting when you are extremely low on life and your opponent has most of their health bar remaining (assuming it's not the final round, of course). It's a super aggressive play fishing for a comeback. This is a gamble since if you lose, you start the next round with no burst. This term is derived from how many Californian players love to play all-in rushdown styles.

Canadian Burst

Bursting while your character is at the top of the screen, and your opponent is nowhere near you. It's just the worst burst ever. It had no chance of hitting at all, and now you're gonna get massively punished too.

Usually this happens because you panicked or were too slow to realize what was happening, but there are some legitimate reasons too! Some combo paths launch you at strange angles and you might have to try bursting before the opponent gets near you, so you can look mighty silly if they didn't continue the sequence. You'll sometimes hear this called a "Domi Burst" after the strong Japanese anime player Domi, who for some reason seems to do this a lot. This is a self-deprecating term, so you can replace "Canadian" with your own region.

Cancel

Removing the recovery of an attack, usually so that you can transition immediately into another move. By far the most common instance is canceling a normal attack into a special move. To do this, input the normal and then immediately input the special move. If the normal hits the opponent, it will kinda stop halfway through and the special move will start immediately.

This is not the only type of canceling in Idol Showdown. You can cancel a normal into other normals (called a target combo or a string) or spend Superchat Meter to perform Superchat Cancels (see System).

Cash Out

The act of performing an ender, usually canceling a combo into a Star Special or Super Star Attack, in order to either end the round or make a combo Burst Safe.

Casuals

Playing matches for fun where the results don't matter. Casuals are basically everything that isn't a tournament match or a money match, and you might ask to get some casuals in whenever you go to a local gathering, in the Idol Showdown Discord, or during downtime at a tournament.

Challenge

To attack your opponent as they are trying to attack you. The most common way this is used is when you attack after you leave block stun, trying to remind your opponent that you're still playing. This isn't always a good idea, but if it works, you might hear "oh, nice challenge".

You can also try to intercept someone who's moving in while you're playing neutral. So if your opponent starts dashing in, or if they do some full screen special move like a gorilla, you can press a button to try and hit them before they reach you. In this case, you're "challenging" their approach.

Character Loyalist

Someone who plays only one character, no matter what. This means taking this character to battle even when they have a bad matchup and no matter where they are on a tier list. Highly skilled character loyalists tend to learn all the nuances and unique interactions their character can use to their benefit, and they can often overcome bad matchups when someone tries to counter pick them due to their huge experience. But this life is certainly not for everyone. You'll have to really love the character to overcome whatever struggles come with years of playing the game the same way. It might be due to the fact that your main is your oshi.

Character Specific

A strategy (usually a combo) that will work only if your opponent is playing certain characters. There are many reasons for this, including hurtbox differences between characters of varying sizes, characters that fall at different rates while being juggled, characters that reel back in an awkward way after being hit which dodges future attacks, and much more.

Cheap/Kawaii

A word used to describe an especially strong move, tactic, or strategy. Fighting game veterans tend to use the term endearingly more often than not; you might hear "wow that's cheap" used as a compliment towards a player who uses a strong move well.

Since Idol Showdown is a hololive fangame, most of the hololive fans will take offense to the word cheap. So the word Kawaii is often used in Idol Showdown.

Check

A low-risk, fast attack you'll do (usually in close-range situations) to try and interrupt the opponent if they're insisting on playing very aggressively. If your frame advantage is slightly positive or around neutral, or you expect they'll do some fast movement option like a dash or roll, you might throw out a quick jab or two to test the waters.

You probably won't get a combo or big damage out of this, but the mere act of attacking tells your opponent to not overstep their bounds; you're just "checking" that they understand you want to assert your position. Check can be used both as a noun and a verb, like "nice check on that dash" or "they keep checking me after blocking my string". You might also hear a pretty good poke called a check from time to time.

Checkmate

A situation where you have no options to avoid losing the round. For example, you might be knocked down and only have a sliver of life, and the opponent performs a safe jump on you, forcing you to block, and then does a dragon punch, chipping you out. In games where chip damage can kill, sequences like this can be unavoidable.

Chicago Punish

Correctly blocking a very unsafe move from your opponent (like a dragon punch) and then punishing it with a low damage, sub-optimal offensive move (like a throw). Normally, this should be a huge swing of momentum in a match and you should retaliate with huge damage. However, because you panicked or weren't ready, you just reflexed into some weak "default" option that makes you look a bit silly. This term was popularized in the Midwest as a self-deprecating joke, but feel free to replace Chicago with your own hometown, since if we're honest, we're all equally bad.

Chicken Block

Holding up-back while you are being attacked so that you jump as soon as there is any gap in your opponent's sequence. This works only in games that let you block in the air, like most team games, so holding up-back lets you jump and keep blocking.

In essence, you are "chickening out" of trying to guess whether to block high or low, so you try to get into the air (where attacks are all blocked the same way) to escape your opponent's scary close-range pressure instead. You can typically defeat chicken blocking by going low and catching their feet as they try to jump, but that's easier said than done in the heat of a match.

Chip Damage

Damage dealt to a character while they are blocking. Most special moves will deal chip damage when blocked. Idol showdown lets you K.O. an opponent via chip damage.

Cinematic

A situation where neither player has control over their character, but some pre-programmed series of attacks, punctuated by camera cuts, are happening anyway. Many modern-day supers, after the initial hit lands, will break out into a cinematic and show one of the characters taking a cool and stylish beating.

Clean Hit

When certain attacks need a special timing or circumstance for a positive benefit for the attacker like a wall bounce or ground bounce. In Idol Showdown this applies to Fubuki (as of V2.2.0) in her Bread and Butter combos.

Combo

A sequence of hits that are unavoidable once the first hit lands. If you want to get technical, a hit will "combo" from a previous hit if you are still in hit stun from the other attack when the new one lands.

In Idol Showdown, combos are formed by normals canceling into one another or into a Star Specail or Super Star Attack. Burst is used to get out of combos.

Comeback

Winning a round after you've spent most of it losing horribly. Some of the most memorable fighting game moments of all time are improbable comebacks, because they often require a ton of skill (and a bit of luck) and it's easy to root for the underdog.

Command Grab/Command Throw

A special move that acts as a throw. In the vast majority of games, you cannot throw tech to defend against them. They can lead to combos or does alot of damage in Idol Showdown.

Commentator's Curse

When the commentator for a match says that something is very likely to happen, only for the exact opposite to happen instead. Try not to say things like "oh, he's for sure dead" or "there's no way she loses this match, right?" — you're just asking for trouble. Even though the commentator has no impact on the match, it's best to own up to how badly they jinxed the situation and apologize. It's just the right thing to do.

Conditioning

Behaving a certain way over a decently long period of time, so that you can act unpredictably at a crucial moment later. You can condition your opponent to, for example, always expect a certain style of pressure or a pattern of how you throw fireballs, and train them to think they have it figured out. Then when the match is on the line, you surprise them by switching it up and catching them in the old habit. Conditioning is related to baiting, but in a "long con" kind of way.

Conversion

Turning an unlikely hit or a scramble into a combo through great situational awareness. Sometimes you might hit your opponent with a random move that you weren't expecting to hit, but if you're really on the ball, you can invent some on-the-fly way to get more damage out of it.

Corner

The far left and far right edges of the screen in a 2D fighting game. The corner is a bad place to be. You can't walk any further back, but your opponent has all the space in the world and can easily choose what range they want to fight at. Lots of characters have special combos that do way more damage and work only if their opponent is in the corner. You're trapped, and you have to look for a way to escape. The best case scenario would be to find a way to side switch — now it's your opponent whose back is to the wall!

Corner Carry

Pushing your opponent close to the corner, usually during a combo. Moves with "good corner carry" will push the opponent a great distance forward, which is great because cornering the opponent usually puts you on the fast track to a win. Sometimes you'll be forced to choose between moves that do lots of damage, and moves that do strong corner carry, so you might sacrifice damage now for improved positioning and hopefully more damage later.

Counter Hit

Hitting someone while they are in the startup of an attack. A giant message will appear on the screen, usually something like "Counter!", to let you know that you beat them to the punch and now they'll have to pay for it. Most counter hits get enhanced by dealing more damage and giving more frame advantage, which can open up new combo possibilities. If you're really good, you might even be able to hit confirm certain combos that only work if the start was a counter hit.

Counter Pick

Intentionally picking a character that has a better matchup against your opponent's character than the character you'd normally use. Sometimes this means intentionally picking a very favorable matchup, and then planning to use the imbalance to stomp your opponent into the ground. Or, if your character is going to be on the receiving end of a beatdown, you might counter pick to just try and bring the odds closer to even so you don't get stomped yourself.

Choosing to counter pick is a perfectly viable way to gain an advantage in a tournament, as long as you've put the work in to properly exploit the weaknesses. But be careful, your opponent has probably fought a thousand matches against their bad matchups while practicing, and if you try and coast to an easy victory, it'll be you who gets run over. If you don't want to be counter picked in a tournament, you might want to ask for a blind pick.

Cross-up

Attacking your opponent immediately after changing which horizontal side you are facing, usually by jumping over them. Because blocking requires holding the direction away from your opponent in most fighting games, cross-up attacks will force players to quickly switch their blocking direction from left to right or vice versa, or else they will get hit.

It most commonly describes jumping attacks that will hit on top of the opponent's head, sometimes so ambiguously that the defender must guess which direction to block. You might also find other ways to get on the other side of your opponent, like walking under them while they are above you in the air, which we call a cross-under. These are all variations on the standard two-option mixup called the 50/50.

Damage Scaling

A system that reduces the damage for each hit in a combo more and more as the combo gets longer. So for example, maybe the first two hits of your combo do 100% of their regular damage value, but then the third hit does 80%, the fourth 70%, and so on down to some minimum, like 10%.

Its goal is to try and keep the damage of long combos in check; in a system without damage scaling, open-ended combo systems would get wildly out of control as creative players come up with techniques the developers didn't foresee. Pretty much every single fighting game beyond the truly ancient ones has some form of damage scaling. It's also similar in concept to proration, which is kind of a "per move" version of this system, and some games will do both at the same time!

Deep

An attack that hits very close to the center of your opponent's hurtbox, leaving you extremely close. It's a term used to almost always describe jumping attacks, especially ones that are performed close to the ground during a safe jump.

Degenerate

When a character has only a singular strategy that actually works in competition. Whether it's a single good button, one really abusable special move, or even just being abnormally evasive, you've only got one viable path to having any success. Degenerate strategies aren't necessarily broken or even imbalanced, but they do make that character really one-dimensional and usually pretty boring to play or watch. Although in Idol Showdown, the term Kawaii is still used for this to prevent angering the Hololive fan community.

Delay Tech

Trying to defend against being thrown by inputting a throw tech a little late on purpose. Delayed tech (also called "late tech") is an option select; you want to try and block in case they attack, and if they throw, pressing the buttons slightly late means you will still successfully throw tech, since the window for teching throws can be a little bigger.

Delayed Wakeup

The ability to slightly extend how long you stay on the ground after you've been knocked down. This is different from soft knockdown vs. hard knockdown, where you either rise immediately or stay on the ground for a set amount of time. In games with delayed wakeup, you can choose to make your hard knockdown ever so slightly longer, in the hopes that your opponent won't be able to easily meaty you or otherwise run their planned set play.

Disjointed Hitbox

A specific type of hitbox that isn't close to any hurtbox. Normally when a game designer puts hitboxes around an attack, they'll also put some hurtboxes in a similar space. This means if you whiff the attack, the opponent has something hittable sticking out for you to whiff punish. A disjointed hitbox ignores this rule and just puts out a fat hitbox that has no way to be hit back; it is "disjointed" from the juicy meat of the attacking character's hurtbox.

Divekick

An aerial attack that accelerates quickly towards the ground, foot first. Divekicks are potent offensive weapons because they change how you can move through the air, and often characters can choose multiple angles for the divekick's approach, making it super annoying to anti-air them. Playing a character with a good divekick means you should be spending a lot of time in the air, irritating your opponent who just wants to live their best life on the ground.

Double Elimination

A tournament format where each player must lose twice before they are eliminated. All players start in the Winners Bracket (often organized into smaller sub-tournaments called pools), and they are paired up against another player. If they lose, they drop down into the Losers Bracket and get paired up against other players with a loss. Losing again means the end of your day. The Grand Finals is always the last player standing in each of the Winners and Losers Brackets, with the Losers Bracket player having to win twice.

Double elimination tournaments are by far the most popular open-bracket tournament format for fighting game events. They take longer to complete, but let skill and consistency have much more of a say in determining the outcome. Other formats include single elimination, round robin, and Swiss system.

Double KO

When both players get KOed at the same time. The more interesting conversation is who should get credited with a win if this happens in the final round and a Draw Game is announced? Depending on the game (and the tournament), sometimes both players get a win, and sometimes neither player gets a win and the match must be replayed. There've been examples of players not knowing the rule for the event they're attending and getting eliminated from the tournament incorrectly, so make sure that doesn't happen to you.

Double Tap

Pressing the same button twice in a row as fast as possible. On an arcade stick, you will generally use two different fingers and "drum" them down quickly, one after the other, over the same button. Some players like to double tap every single button they press, since it makes them feel comfortable, but that's probably a bit overkill and it's not necessary to do this to play well.

Where it does help, though, is when you need to execute a move in a tight window; often times, double tapping will give you more "chances" to hit the window correctly.If you're slightly early with your first press, maybe the second hit of the double tap will be right on time.

Down Back

Slang for blocking. Often used in reference to people who turtle a lot, just sitting there waiting for you to make a mistake.

Download

Figuring out your opponent's strategy in the middle of a match and then using that information to beat them. Maybe you'll notice a certain pattern they always do and exploit that, or maybe you play in a certain way just to get information on how your opponent plays before turning it around (e.g., jumping a lot to find out whether they can anti-air properly). When a player starts a match poorly but begins to turn it around with several dominating rounds, you might say "the download is complete".

Downplayer

Someone who constantly says the character they play isn't very good, even though there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. Downplayers tend to focus primarily on all the ways their character might lose, and tend to brush off where their character is strong, often insisting that people can easily avoid or react to all their offensive choices, even when it's not true.

Dragon Punch

A powerful rising uppercut attack that is great for anti-air and is usually invincible, making it great for reversal attacks. A dragon punch, or "DP" as it is commonly abbreviated, is an attack towards the air, leaving their feet.

This term is basically synonymous with shoryuken and uppercut, although "DP" is the most common just because it's catchy and short.

Drop

An input mistake that ends a combo before it was supposed to finish. Whether you mistimed an attack, input the wrong special move by accident, or just froze up and forgot what you were supposed to do, you blew it. Some drops aren't so serious — you might end up just losing a small bit of damage, but the match continues normally otherwise. But some drops can be pretty catastrophic and leave you wide open for punishment. Try to avoid those if you can.

Empty Jump

The act of jumping without doing any air attack. There are lots of cool strategic reasons why you might want to do this. For example, if you're a slow moving character with beefy air attacks, you can close the gap by empty jumping. Your opponent might think you want to press one of those wonderful long-range air attacks and try to anti-air you, but since you didn't press anything, they'll swing and miss. This is called a grappler jump.

Since jumping attacks are overheads, another option is empty jumping and then doing an immediate, fast low attack instead as a mixup. We call this "empty jump low".

Esports Button

An incredibly powerful attack. The joke is that the move is designed for people who want to win esports tournaments, so they can press it thoughtlessly and it will kind of just do everything for you. It's maybe not quite as strong as saying the move is broken, but it's the same idea.

EVO

The world's largest fighting game tournament. Hosted every summer in Las Vegas, the Evolution Championship Series is a multi-day, open event that hosts tens of thousands of competitors from all around the world in several games.

Execution

The physical act of moving the joystick and pressing the buttons with the correct timing and speed to get your character to do cool things. We usually talk about it in terms of "easy" or "hard" execution — a combo that has hard execution will require very precise, often fast joystick movements, and the button presses will have to be exact. Slight mistakes in these things will make the combo drop, maybe even in a way that gets you killed for trying it. In fact, Smash Bros. players sometimes intentionally use a strategy that has a known high execution counter-strategy, just to see if their opponents are even capable of doing it. You might hear this called an "execution test".

A common thought is that games or characters shouldn't have hard execution, and that a fighting game battle should take place entirely in the mind. While there is definitely some execution that is needlessly hard (maybe, for example, a pretzel motion), execution is an inextricable part of fighting game design. Asking whether a player can perform difficult (or even relatively easy!) sequences under pressure is valuable to competitive integrity, exciting to players and spectators, and allows players to carve out an identity.

Extension

Generally speaking, continuing with more attacks. It's almost always used to talk about combos. For example, you might choose to spend some meter to make the combo a little longer than it would be otherwise, and you might hear something like "nice combo extension" or "I chose to extend the combo so I could get a knockdown". Occasionally, someone might refer to doing the later stages of a multi-hitting attack (like a rekka) as an extension as well, but more commonly, these will be called follow-ups.

FGC

An abbreviation for the Fighting Game Community. Anybody who enjoys playing, talking about, or watching fighting games is a part of the FGC, no matter how good you are or which game is your favorite. The FGC is a bit unique compared to other video game communities because rather than focus on exactly one specific game, there are dozens of fighting games that people love to play, so you'll see a lot of diversity in discussion and interests.

Fireball

A specific type of projectile that travels horizontally and is traditionally input using a quarter circle command. Beams that travel the whole screen instantly and other types of projectiles that require a charge motion aren't usually called fireballs. "Fireball" can even be used as shorthand for "quarter circle forward", if you're trying to quickly describe a special move input.

Fireball War

Two players throwing lots of fireballs at each other, often without moving, while daring the other person to jump first. A lot of beginners will crack after throwing just one or two fireballs, while expert players can sit there chucking plasma for a long time without feeling the heat, knowing they will have good reactions to anti-air when the time comes. Subtle variations in timing, spacing, and strength of the fireballs used can make these battles fun and interesting, even if they look like boring spam to your average joe.

First to

Playing a set where the overall winner is the first player to win a certain number of games. Commonly abbreviated to "FT" followed by the number of wins required, such as "FT10". Most tournament sets will be FT2 or FT3, depending on which game is being played.

Fish

Using a highly rewarding move multiple times in a row, hoping your opponent will run into it so something really good happens. A good example is using a good poke and buffering a strong attack behind it, like a super. If you see your opponent swing multiple times with this poke, you might hear a commentator say "you can see him really fishing for super". The line has been cast and they are hoping to reel in the big catch.

Flowchart

A basic strategy that can be followed in steps: if the current game state is X, just always do Y. Flowchart is usually used in a derogatory way to indicate a person that never thinks and always does the same thing (and usually loses in the same ways each time). But that said, there's certainly value in following a basic flowchart when you're learning a game. It can reduce the burden of learning everything up front and give you meaningful practice quickly.

Follow-up

An optional extension that can occur if you press more buttons after certain attacks. You may only have one option to extend (as is often the case with the classic rekka special move), or you may be able to choose between multiple follow-ups using different command. You can even use the term for concepts like target combos or strings.

You might also hear this used to mean "the next course of action" in a general English sense, such as "they earned the knockdown, now what's the follow-up?" or "your opponent is cornered, you need to follow up with some pressure".

Footsies

A complicated, often nebulous term that refers to the battle for controlling the space in front of you, often by using good pokes. In essence, you are trying to get to a range you like, while trying to deny your opponent getting to a range that they like. How you do this varies wildly based on the game, but it often involves using strong crouching kick attacks to pester your opponent as they are trying to walk around. This dance of playing mind games with your feet is the source of the term's name.

In reality, footsies can mean different things to different people, and often combines lots of adjacent concepts. Some people think that footsies needs to be a grounded affair, between characters that don't jump and fight for space only by walking. Although this is a good example, there are other aspects to take into account like different mobility options.

Frame

A unit used to measure time in a fighting game. Most fighting games operate at 60 frames per second, which means one frame is 1/60th of a second, or about 16 milliseconds, and you can't break this unit down any further. A frame is the core unit used in frame data, which measures the properties of moves in a fighting game, such as how long they take to execute, or which character gets to act first if a move is blocked.

Some players, especially beginners, get intimidated when the word "frame" comes up, as if it's some arcane magic. If this is you, instead try to think of a frame as a relative unit. Let's say move A starts up in 3 frames and move B starts up in 4 frames. You might think why do we care about a 16 millisecond difference? There's no way to visually tell the difference between these... and you'd be absolutely right! Don't think of it that way. Instead, think that move B is "1 frame slower" than move A, so in situations where both fighters get to attack at the same time, move A is going to hit first. Imagine it as a way to compare two moves, rather than something you're supposed to notice visually, and you'll find yourself making sense of it more quickly.

Frame Advantage

Describes who recovers first when a move hits or is blocked. If you use an attack that recovers before the opponent leaves block stun (or hit stun), you get control of your character back first and can attack before the opponent, if you want. This means you "have frame advantage", and it's the same thing as being plus. You can also just ask "what's the frame advantage on that move?" to find out if you are plus or minus.

Having positive frame advantage is a bit stronger than just merely being safe, since being safe will also include a few moves that are minus (just not so minus that they can be punished). You'll hear people give advice like "I'm advantage there, don't press a button" and when you're first picking up fighting games, you should pay attention.

Frame Data

A complete list of the inner workings of every move in a fighting game. Pretty much everything will be measured with frames, a fighting game's fundamental building block of time. You can learn the startup, active, and recovery frames of each move, what the frame advantage is when the move hits or is blocked, how much damage each move does, and any other special properties the move might have, like hitting overhead or low.

Frame data can intimidate people, because it's a giant spreadsheet that looks pretty overwhelming. But, really, frame data is not intended to be memorized like a list of formulas for your high school math class. The two most important numbers are the startup of a move ("how fast is it?") and how safe or unsafe the move is if it gets blocked ("how risky is it to use?"). When you're getting started with frame data, you can generally skip all the other numbers and focus on these. Look for fast moves, and safe moves, then try these out in matches and see how you do! Then, when you get more practice with the game, the other numbers will make more sense naturally.

Frame Kill

Whiffing attacks on purpose in order to very specifically time another attack. Let's say that, after you've knocked down your opponent, you want to try to perform a safe jump. But if you were to jump immediately, you'd be too early and your opponent would still be knocked down. After a bit of clever math and the help of some frame data, you realize you need to wait for 17 frames and then the timing will be perfect.

One option is to just try and get a sense for what 17 frames "feels like" and time it manually, but this is pretty difficult so people quickly tried to find something more reliable. For example, if you know that one of your moves takes exactly 17 frames to execute from start to finish, this is way better — simply whiff that move and you'll have "killed" those 17 frames perfectly with no need for guesswork or eyeballing anything. If you see people whiffing moves nonsensically when their opponent is knocked down, they're almost certainly setting up the timing for a future attack.

Frame Trap

Two attacks back-to-back that leave a very small gap between them. The gap will be shorter than the defender's fastest attack, which means if they try to attack with a normal, they will get counter hit. Finding effective frame traps requires some basic understanding of frame data (or finding a good Youtube tutorial that has done the work for you!); you'll usually be looking for an attack that is plus on block, which lets you attack before your opponent afterwards, then swinging with a fast attack that "traps" your opponent who foolishly thought they could swing themselves.

Frame traps aren't foolproof, though. You can usually just continue to block and be fine until your opponent gets pushed out of range. Or, if you're feeling risky, you can try to get through the opponent's attack with an invincible reversal, which doesn't care about your opponent's pesky frame advantage.

Free

Being super easy to beat. Calling someone free is a pretty big deal, so you better be able to back it up if they challenge you. It's kind of related to getting bodied, but I think being called free feels worse.

Free can also mean using a move as a guaranteed punish. You might hear "that move is -3 on block, so you get a free DP" to indicate that doing a DP after blocking the move will always hit the opponent.

Fundamentals

A collection of basic skills that will help you win in virtually every fighting game. These include the ability to keep a good range, play footsies, anti-air when the opponent jumps, react to moves with high startup, and condition the opponent so they panic before you. Good fundamentals are the bedrock of a solid player, and once you have enough practice, you can transfer these skills between games, even if the systems are very different.

Fuzzy

A confusing term with two main meanings.

Sometimes people try to block two directions (like high and low, or left and right) nearly at the same time so it's harder to land a mixup on them. I talk about this over at fuzzy guard. Other times, people will try to hit players trying to crouch block with an attack that only hits on standing characters. I talk about this at fuzzy attack. Most people refer to both of these things just as a "fuzzy" though.

Generally, whenever somebody uses the term "fuzzy", they are talking about a situation where a character is trying to be in two states "at once" (that is, kind of a fuzzy middle ground between the states). So, maybe a character tries to block multiple directions at once, or you exploit a character who is trying to crouch but is actually standing. Some people will freestyle with the term a bit, talking about, maybe, a "fuzzy backdash" (trying to backdash while doing something else, like blocking). If you think of the term in this context, you'll be alright.

Fuzzy Attack

An offensive technique where you exploit a character trying to crouch block an attack, but the game still thinks they are standing up. It's one of a few possible ways to use the term fuzzy, along with fuzzy guard.

There are two common reasons for this "mismatch" between your inputs and your character's standing or crouching state. One reason is that, in many games, your character's hurtbox will be locked in position for as long as they are in block stun from the previous attack. This means if you hit a very deep jumping attack, the character will be stuck standing up for quite a while, even if you move your joystick to a crouch block position. The other possible reason is that in some games, after you block an attack while standing, there is a 1 frame "transitional" period where trying to crouch block keeps your hurtbox briefly the same as your standing state.

Either way, this mismatch exists for a small window — your character is standing up, but you are holding down-back, trying to crouch block. And no matter the reason, the end result is the same too! You can be hit by attacks that would normally whiff on a crouching character, even though you are trying to crouch. It's easiest to see when you block a jumping attack, then try to play good defense by switching to crouch block. You'll find you can be hit by some instant overheads during this brief "fuzzy" state you find yourself in.

These fuzzy setups tend to be extra effective on super tall characters, whose standing hurtbox is tall enough to be exposed to more attacks. And they often need a specific setup to work, as it's hard to pull them off on a whim. But fuzzy attacks are scary and powerful when used correctly, and these mixups are especially potent late in a round.

Fuzzy Guard

A technique where you try to change your block very precisely in order to cover multiple directions (like high/low, or left/right). One of a few possible definitions of the term fuzzy.

Let's take a theoretical example; suppose there's a character with a special move that has a high and low option at the end. If we check out the frame data, we find that the low attack starts in 20 frames, and the high attack starts in 23 frames. Rather than try to pull off some unlikely reaction to the high/low part, you instead block low for 20 frames, then switch to a high block between frames 21 and 23.

If you were successful, this will block both options and you didn't have to think! It does require some pretty precise timing though, and if your opponent can delay the attacks at all, it'll throw everything off and you'll probably get smoked. You also can't fuzzy two options if they can hit at the same time, since there is no window in between the attacks to do the switch. But a fuzzy guard is a player trying to hit this narrow window, where switching your blocking direction will catch multiple possibilities.

Game

A collection of rounds after which a winner will be decided. In most fighters, a game is decided after a player wins 2 rounds, but in private online matches in Idol showdown, it can be increased to 3 rounds.

Gap

How long your character has returned to neutral in between blocking (or getting hit by) two attacks. Like all discussions of time in fighting games, it's measured in frames. While you're in neutral, you can take any action, but be careful! If you are only in neutral for a few brief frames, there are some actions you won't want to take, especially if your opponent is looking to do a frame trap.

If your character blocks two attacks and there is no gap at all, we'll call that a true block string or say the offense is tight (it's also quite related to the Tekken concept of jailing). Sometimes players will just ask "is there a gap in that string?" just so they know whether they even have the option to do anything except block. Maybe if there's a gap they'll sometimes try a reversal to escape.

Gatling

A Guilty Gear term that just means canceling a normal attack into another normal attack. These are often called chains, strings, or target combos in other games, and the concept is pretty much the same here. In Idol Showdown, you can mostly cancel any attack into any other attack of equal or higher strength for the most part with some moves have certain cancelable properties.

gg

An abbreviation for "good game" (or its plural, ggs, for "good games"), often said at the end of a long set of matches. Saying "gg" is not a fighting game-specific thing by any means, and sometimes you'll be forced to say ggs even if they were actually bgs. It's just how it goes.

Gimmick

A plan of attack that requires either the element of surprise or a lack of knowledge from your opponent to work. The term is often meant in a negative way towards a strategy that wouldn't possibly work against well-prepared opponents, or something that can only work in the short term until your opponent understands the trick.

The term can also refer to a player who uses one linear but mostly effective strategy to beat lower skilled opponents, but who loses convincingly, with no backup strategy, when playing against better players who can defend properly. It may sound like gimmicks are kinda bad, but there's no better feeling in fighting games than to hit someone with a good one.

Glass Cannon

A character that has very low health, but a ton of exceptional tools for movement, offense, damage, and often defense too. They're kind of an "all or nothing" character; you have all the tools necessary to implement lots of different gameplans and do huge grips of damage if you land a hit, but if you make a mistake and get touched yourself, you might explode.

Glass cannons usually end up being strong characters, but like their related cousins, the pixies, they can be very stressful to play in tournament since you are on the knife's edge in every match.

Gorilla

A character who wants to get in your face by whatever means necessary and start swinging wildly, knowing that whatever move they randomly choose will be very hard to stop. Gorillas tend to not care about trifling things like "thinking" or "playing neutral"... no, they're going to do some full screen move that is unnecessarily hard to punish and then do something wild that seems to always hit you. Gorillas can be very fun to play, but also very frustrating to play against. Playing solid against them can work, but sometimes you just need to try and match their level of crazy instead.

Grappler

A character whose primary offensive tools are throws and command throws. Grapplers usually move and jump slowly and fight poorly from long distances, but are terrifying when they get close to their opponent and apply their very strong throw-based mixups. Examples include Zangief from Street Fighter and Potemkin from Guilty Gear.

A character that frequently uses command throws, but has better ways to move around the screen than traditional grapplers, are sometimes called "hybrid" or "pseudo"-grapplers. Grappler players live for that one moment when they can get close and win back all the damage they took trying to close the gap.

Grappler Jump

Doing an empty jump from a specific range with a slow moving character with big air attacks (usually a grappler). Grapplers tend to have a hard time approaching, so they're given beefy air moves to make jumping scary. You, as the defender, should rightly be trying to anti-air them. However, if a grappler finds the sweet spot where a forward jump would hit with the tip of one of these air attacks, you're in trouble; if they empty jump instead, your anti-air will probably be out of range and you'll whiff, leading to a big punish.

If you ever see a match between two skilled players, watch for how often the grappler gets to jump forward and press an air attack without being anti-aired. The fear of a potential empty jump causing whiffs is the reason why. The alternative of simply not trying to anti-air is even worse, though. You don't want grappler players getting free approaches.

Ground Bounce

Bouncing your opponent off the ground, rather than knocking them down. It's pretty common in team games as a stylish way to keep a combo going. Like wall bounces, you usually only get to do it once per combo.

Guard Crush

In Idol showdown, "guard crush" can refer to simply hitting with an unblockable (as in, the unblockable defeats their guard). This often comes up when you make them block something first, then hit them with an unblockable while they are trapped in block stun (for example, hitting an airborne opponent with a grounded normal while they are trapped blocking something else, like a projectile).

Guess

Taking an action when you aren't sure if that action will have a good outcome. For example, you might have to guess which direction you will block for an ambiguous cross-up attack, since you don't know which side you'll get hit on, or you might be getting rushed down by offensive characters and have to make a guess on whether to throw tech or block. If your guess is based on some specific information from your opponent, you might call it a read instead, but the two terms are pretty similar.

Guesses are important because fighting games are too fast to flawlessly react to everything, which means sometimes you have to act without knowing all the information. Accept that sometimes you'll guess right, and sometimes you'll guess wrong, and fighting games will be a lot more fun!

Hard Knockdown

A specific type of knockdown where the time you spend on the ground is set in stone and you don't have any extra options to choose from when you are waking up.

They tend to lead to the scariest mixups and set play, since the offensive player has lots of time to launch any strategy they like, and they know exactly when you will be rising from the ground so there's not much you can do to trick them. Try not to get hit by these if you can!

Hard-to-Blockable

A nonsensical combination of words meant to convey a situation that is almost an unblockable, but can be defended through extremely precise blocking (often changing your blocking direction as a just frame input). For example, in games with unblockable protection, instead of overlapping an overhead and a low attack on the same frame, you might try to offset one or the other by a frame or two, forcing the defender to guess which attack is coming first and then rapidly switch their blocking direction to cover the other. While these sequences are "technically" humanly blockable, they are so difficult that they are often effectively unblockable, hence this hodgepodge word soup of a term.

High Crush

A move that is designed to avoid high attacks. "High", in this sense, can mean both an actual attack that hits high, or just a move that targets the "upper half" of a character's body, even if it may actually hit mid. In games with a crush system, this works because a high crush move is simply programmed to ignore all attacks that hit high.

In some communities, they may use it in a similar way to low profile, where the hurtbox is intentionally shrunk to dodge highs. You may also hear "upper body invincible" to describe this effect. Either way, you will "crush" the high attack and go right through it without any trouble. Check to see if your character has any low crush moves while you're at it.

Hit and Run

A playstyle that involves trying for lots of stray, low damage hits on offense, while using good movement options to keep the distance from your opponent the rest of the time. Contrasted with runaway, which is purely focused on evasion without basically any offense, hit and run mixes being evasive with occasionally sticking around and playing offense when you are at a good range for your character. It can be a frustrating playstyle to fight against, especially if you are unpredictable about when you hit and when you run.

Hit Confirm

Performing an attack, seeing that your attack successfully hit, and then reacting to this information by continuing the combo. That is to say, you "confirm" that your first attack hit before you launch further attacks, and if the attack was blocked instead, you stop and don't follow through with anything else. This is important because, usually, you will be canceling into a move that would be unsafe if it was blocked, so you only want to do it if it won't get you killed.

In some games this can be a pretty advanced skill, since you might not have a ton of time to recognize if your attack hit or not. In really fast cases, good players may even employ special tricks, like looking at the opponent's health bar or using special audio cues, to help them react as fast as they can.

Hit Stun

The period of time when your character cannot perform any action after getting hit by an attack. Instead, you have to wait for your character to stop reeling from the hit and recover before you can take new actions. If the offensive player manages to land another hit before their opponent leaves hit stun, then that's how combos get formed! It's rare and super game-specific, but sometimes you can take actions during hit stun. In Idol Showdown you can Burst to escape.

Hitbox

A predefined area (usually a group of rectangles or circles) that tells the game how any given attack can come in contact with a character. Hitboxes are invisible to the player when normally playing, although some training modes will let you view them, but most hitboxes try to cover the area where the strike is causing impact, so it "makes sense" to players when and how they get hit.

Hitboxes define a lot about how moves work. For example, the active period of a move is defined to be when a hitbox is present (there are no hitboxes during a move's startup or recovery). The size of the hitbox defines the move's range, so if you're getting smoked by a move that feels like it hits everywhere on the screen at once, it's probably because its hitbox is just very large. To determine whether a move connects with an opponent, the game will see if its hitbox intersects with the opponent's hurtbox. To keep some consistency, hitboxes are almost always red when viewed using training mode or online tools.

Hitbox (controller)

A type of controller that has the layout of an arcade stick for its attack buttons, but replaces the joystick lever with four buttons that control up, down, left and right. Usually, the button for up is placed low on the controller, within reach of the thumbs of both hands, which can make tiger knee inputs very easy. Since Hitbox is a specific brand name and many companies produce devices in this style now, you'll also often hear generic terms such as "leverless controller", "all button controller", or "button box".

Hitbox can be rather difficult to get used to at first, since a lot of your muscle memory for a regular stick or a controller is lost. One benifit of using a hitbox is that it takes less time to press a button than to move a joystick, which means some moves can simply be done faster, great for doing moves on reaction. Mixbox is also a very similar device.

Hitstop

An extremely brief moment where the game pauses for dramatic effect whenever an attack successfully hits. If you increase how many frames an attack's hitstop lasts for, you can greatly exaggerate the power and force of a strike, and usually when you feel like an attack is "beefy", it's because of this.

The frames of hitstop exist outside the standard startup, active and recovery measurement of a move's properties; think of it like the game putting the characters on hold while someone shakes the camera a bit. There's a similar mechanic for blocked moves called, you guessed it, blockstop.

Honest

A way to try to describe a character that beats you "fair and square", instead of by using tricks or broken, overpowered moves. It's the type of adjective you'd hear from someone trying to downplay their character, saying that nothing they have is overly strong.

In reality, I think you can safely substitute "honest" for "bad" in more or less every situation. There are no strong characters that are honest. Strong characters will have some combination of gross mixups, pokes with absurdly large hitboxes that let them take control of the neutral easily, or moves with low risk but high reward. These things are not honest. You won't have much fun (or much success) playing a character without strong tools, and don't let people trick you into thinking a game full of honest characters is what everybody should want.

Hurtbox

A predefined area (usually a group of rectangles or circles) that tells the game how your character is allowed to get hit by any incoming attack. Specifically, you'll get hit by (or block) an attack if that attack's hitbox ever overlaps your hurtbox. You can't see your hurtboxes during a match, but some training modes will let you check them out, and most of the time, they will try to match your character's model pretty closely so things don't feel funky.

Hurtboxes will almost always be green if you're able to see them using an online tool or training mode. They may change to other colors (for example, red or yellow) if you can dodge certain types of attacks (for example, being projectile invincible). And usually there will be a second hurtbox that indicates where throws can hit you. As you might expect, if a throw's hitbox overlaps this "throw hurtbox", you will be thrown. It's not necessarily the same hurtbox as the one that tests for regular hits!

It should be noted that a lot people will often just call this a "hitbox" (for example, "I couldn't hit you, your hitbox is messed up"), which sometimes makes it hard to distinguish between the thing that is doing the attacking (the attack's hitbox), and the thing that is being hit (your character's hurtbox). But usually, through a bit of context, you can figure out which meaning is meant here.

Infinite/Infinite Combo

A combo that can continue forever in theory, but in practice will end because either the clock or your opponent's health will run out.

Infinite Prevention System

Shortened to IPS, IPS aims to to prevent infinite combos. In Idol Showdown, the game tracks the amount of moves and if you meet the limit, the opponent becomes unhittable for a short period of time. See (system) for more details.

Input Lag

When your button presses happen on screen after a delay, rather than immediately. Input lag can come from a variety of sources, including limitations of the game engine, your big screen TV processing the image before showing it, or even netcode solutions intentionally delaying inputs to compensate for network problems.

All games suffer from some inherent input delay, but as long as the delay for all factors combined is around 3 to 5 frames, this is considered acceptable performance by fighting game standards. When the input delay fluctuates during matches, though, that's when it really starts to feel awful.

Install

A powered-up state some characters can enter that will change move properties and maybe grant new moves entirely. Installs are almost always on a timer that tells you how much longer you get to enjoy the benefits before you return to your mortal self. Custom combo supers like Genei Jin or A-Groove and systems like Street Fighter V's V-Trigger and Killer Instinct's Instinct mode are common installs you will find.

You'll hear the word "activate" or "pop" often used when people turn on these modes.

Instant Overhead

Hitting someone with a jumping attack the instant you leave the ground. In most games, this will be an overhead (like all jumping attacks are), and because it happens more or less instantly, they are very hard to block, especially if this character does not normally have a grounded overhead. However, these attacks are usually low damage and quite unsafe, since you'll be flying in the air helplessly after your attack.

Invalid Combo

A "combo" that the opponent could have air teched out of. This happens when you mess up the timing of your air combo, but the opponent does not correctly air tech when they were able, so you got to continue hitting them anyway.

Invincible

A state where you are impossible to hit, fully impervious to everything. Invincible moves usually just remove all your hurtboxes so no incoming attack or throw can connect with you. As you can imagine, invincible attacks are very strong, so they are usually very unsafe or risky to attempt, and are commonly used as a reversal in situations where your opponent has a clear attacking advantage, like on wakeup.

Jab

Usually referst to fast light attacks for certain characters in Idol Showdown. They're super fast check moves you can use to keep your opponent off balance and can become a combo starter.

Juggle

The act of comboing an airborne opponent while you are on the ground. Moves that work well in juggles tend to launch the opponent high into the air and keep them close to the offensive player, so they can be hit again as they fall to the ground. As with a lot of fighting game terminology, the line between a juggle and an air combo is sometimes up for debate, so you may see the term used to describe any situation where you're comboing someone in the air.

Jump Cancel

Canceling a move with a jump. You'll just stop right in the middle of your normal or special move and immediately leave the ground.

Jump Test

A quick and dirty way to get a sense of how plus or minus on block an attack is. In training mode, pick the same character for both P1 and P2. Then, record the dummy character to do the move you're testing, and then hold up for a few seconds after. Lastly, take control of the first character, block the move in question, and then hold up yourself.

If the dummy character (that is, the attacker) jumps first, your attack is plus. If you (the defender) jump first, your attack is minus. You won't really know the exact number, but you can usually get a sense of whether it's plus by "a lot" or "a little" very quickly, and that's often enough to make a rough gameplan.

Of course, if your game has frame data built into training mode, you don't always need to do this method, but not all games have that, and you might also want to test some meaty situations where the frame data gets altered a bit. Fun fact: when fans want to verify the frame data for a game, one method is to record video of a jump test of the attack, then study the frame-by-frame footage using video software to get the exact number!

K.O.

Draining a character's health bar to zero, causing a knockout and ending the round. Pretty much every fighting game round will end in someone getting KOed.

Kara Cancel

The ability to very quickly cancel a move into another move, before the first move completes its startup. Normally, in order to cancel a move, you'll have to make contact with your opponent, but kara (or "empty") cancels bypass that restriction and cancel immediately, often before you even see the first move on screen at all. The reason you want to do this is added range; the first move is chosen specifically because it will move your character forward during its first few frames. Then, if you quickly transition to the second move, it will be executed from this new position.

The most common use of kara canceling is the kara throw, but often times you can kara cancel special moves or supers as well.

Kara Throw

A specific type of kara cancel where the second move is a throw. In games where kara throws are possible, you'll pick a normal attack that moves your character forward a little bit during the first few frames, and then you immediately input the throw; it will feel like you're pressing the attack and the throw buttons almost simultaneously. Your character will then lurch forward suddenly and throw, greatly increasing its range.

In fact, you'll often be able to throw from way outside the opponent's throw range which, as you might guess, makes defending against throws very hard.

Knowledge Check

Testing whether your opponent understands how to beat a certain attack or strategy. If they don't, you loop it until they die. Gimmicks are often good examples of knowledge checks; these attacks tend to have somewhat non-obvious answers that need very specific practice to stop, but knowledge checks don't have to be obscure or wildly unsafe.

You can test more basic things too, like whether your opponent knows there is a gap in your string, or if they know how to punish certain marginally unsafe attacks. You're basically asking your opponent "how well do you understand the basics of this matchup?" and if they answer poorly, you'll win pretty easily.

Land Cancel

Canceling the frames after you land from a jump into some other technique. Not all characters have this in Idol Showdown.

Launch

Hitting an opponent who is on the ground high into the air. You might chase after them into the air to perform an air combo, or you might stay on the ground and juggle them for more damage. In either case, you probably used a launcher to start the whole thing.

Launcher

A move that launches the opponent high into the air, usually for more combo opportunities. Most modern fighting games have moves that launch the opponent and allow for some type of combo extension. In Idol Showdown, the usual launcher is 2H (Down Heavy).

Layer

A way to classify how deep your mind games are against your opponent. For example, if you knock someone down, you might try to apply basic pressure by using a simple strike/throw mixup. You could call this the "first layer"; it's relatively easy to defend against, but you want to test whether your opponent can stop this before you try other, riskier things.

If they pass the test and defend well, you might go to the next "layer", which could involve slower moves like overheads, or delaying your button for a frame trap. If they can't stop your first mixup though, there's no need to advance to the next layer. You may also hear the term outside of the mind game context and talking about how many times you have to guess correctly before you can escape your opponent's mixup. Statements such as "that mixup has so many layers" are talking about layered mixups.

Layered Mixup

A mixup that has more mixups behind it if you manage to successfully block the first one. As you fight stronger players, they will have better defense, so you'll need some backup plans once your first attempt to hit them doesn't work.

Local

An offline gathering of people that play fighting games together, usually meeting at regular intervals like weekly or monthly. There could be a small tournament involved, but even without that, there will be several people meeting up at a friend's place or finding a venue like a bar or restaurant where they can accommodate a slightly larger group. The goal is mostly to just play casuals, meet other people who like the genre, and make new friends in a setting that is much more personal than online play can often be.

Loop

Any sequence of moves (or maybe even just one move) that repeats itself several times in a row, usually in a combo.

Losers Bracket

All the players who have lost once in a double elimination tournament, lined up and ready to fight to the death. Getting knocked out of the Winners Bracket early is tough, since not only will you be one loss away from elimination, but you'll also have to fight a lot more matches along the way. A politically-correct alternate term you might hear is the "Lower Bracket", but it's generally not used too often. Fighting game players can handle the truth; you lost, you're in the losers bracket.

Low Crush

A move that is designed to avoid low attacks. In games with a crush system, this is because your move is specifically programmed to be unhittable by any attack marked as a low hit. In some communities, though, it's also used to describe a move that pulls your hurtbox up a bit so it just avoids attacks that are low to the ground. This can also be described as "lower body invincibility" to indicate that your lower body will phase through attacks. The opposite effect is a high crush. You might very, very rarely hear the term high profile used instead of low crush, but it's so rare that I wouldn't worry about it.

Low Profile

A move that shifts your hurtbox very low to the ground... so low, in fact, that you can use it to dodge many moves that try to target the middle of a character's body. You can also use this as a verb, like "I can't believe that move low profiles my jab". It's pretty related to a high crush.

Macro

Assigning a single button to act as pressing multiple buttons. In Idol Showdown, if you have a hard time pressing Light + Medium + Heavy for burst, the game lets you assign a button to be a dedicated burst button. Most games will let you macro several common multi-button commands, like throw, in your controller settings.

Note that "macro" can also mean a long series of pre-programmed inputs automatically played by the computer. With special software, you could program a macro to do a complicated combo that will never fail, and then just press one button to watch it all happen. Using macros in this sense is extremely illegal in tournaments, and I'd better not catch you doing it online either. The general rule is to stick to what the in-game controller options allow.

Magic Pixel

A term used to describe an opponent who has no visible health remaining on their health bar, but are somehow still alive and fighting. It's normally only a big deal if someone is making a huge, unlikely comeback with no life remaining. Especially in games with chip damage, these usually end up being pretty exciting.

Main

The character you're the best with and play the most. Sometimes you might be forced to switch off this character if they have a bad matchup, but it's the character you'll hope to ride with most of the way in a tournament. People switch mains all the time as the game's meta changes, or as new patches come out that nerf or buff your favorite move. If you never switch mains, maybe you're a character loyalist.

Mash

The act of pressing a ton of buttons rapidly without any thought. Lots of beginners will randomly mash, because they don't know what attacks they should be using. Try not to do this if you can! Even if you're confused, it's better to try and find one or two useful attacks and use those. That said, mashing is a mechanic in some fighting games. In Idol Showdown, you can mash light on wakeup to prevent being grabbed.

Match

A tournament set between two players, usually a FT2 or FT3. The term "match" can also refer to a planned showmatch between two players, but it's not commonly heard outside tournaments.

Matchup

The strategy and game knowledge that applies for one specific character against another specific character. You can use the term generally, such as "I struggle in the Korone vs. Botan matchup" or "in the Fubuki matchup, try not to jump very often". It's also quite common to try to measure one character's advantage over another by stating how many games out of 10 they should win if two high-level players of equal skill played against each other. Opinions differ on exactly how to interpret the numbers, but here's a generally accepted meaning:

5-5: An equal matchup. 6-4: A favorable matchup, but the disadvantaged character can still win without huge difficulty. 7-3: A quite favorable matchup, the winning character does not have to take many risks to win, but can still lose with a few key reads by the opponent. Most modern games have a few 7-3s but not much worse. 8-2: A very favorable matchup, the winning character almost wins by default with one or two dominating strategies. 9-1: The matchup is so favorable that there is almost literally nothing the opponent can do to stand any chance of winning. These basically don't exist in modern fighting games. 10-0: The worst matchup in fighting game history. An incredibly easy strategy dominates the match with absolutely zero counter-play possible.

Matchup numbers are often up for debate, especially since people of different skill and knowledge are discussing it, but there is real value in the discussion nonetheless. You can make matchup charts this way, which might give insight into a game's balance.

Meaty

A term with two distinct but sometimes overlapping definitions.

The most common definition of meaty is an attack that hits an opponent on the very first frame possible after they rise from a knockdown (or other similar situations, like being flipped out). This guarantees the opponent must either block the attack, or immediately do an invincible move (like a dragon punch). If they just press any random button, they will get counter hit because their attack still has to go through its non-hitting startup, but your attack is already active on top of them. Learning how to time a meaty is extremely important to fighting game strategy, and you can often just beat beginners by meatying them over and over as they insist on attacking at all times.

The other definition of meaty is an attack that makes contact with the opponent not on its first active frame like normal, but on a later active frame instead. This will generate the same hit stun or block stun, but you'll recover sooner and you'll generate more frame advantage, and possibly unlock some new combos. These two definitions often go hand in hand! When you attack someone as they rise from a knockdown, sometimes your attack won't hit on the first active frame, but rather some later frame. That would be a meaty that hits meaty.

Mental Stack

How much focus a player can devote to different strategies in a match. It's common that a player will struggle to do seemingly easy tasks because their mind is trying to focus on multiple things at once. For example, a player might be trying to play footsies on the ground, while at the same time watching for a jump so they can anti-air, while at the same time trying to hit confirm a basic poke. Each task is doable by itself, but after trying to balance all these tasks for a while, the opponent jumps and they don't anti-air, because their mental bandwidth was simply too taxed to handle it.

Managing your mental stack is something that takes a lot of practice and time. Don't feel bad if you practice something in training mode for hours, yet struggle to implement it in real matches when it's not your only focus. It also explains why very good players get hit by theoretically reactable mixups. People aren't robots, and you just can't be ready for everything.

Microdash

Dashing forward (really, running forward) for a very short amount of time, usually 1 or 2 frames. It's almost identical in practice to the microwalk, which means you'll use it to gain a few extra pixels of distance so certain attacks or combos will reach. Using a dash or run instead of walking can help you cover a few extra pixels of distance, or can be used in situations where walking is not possible (for example, you may be able to cancel a move into a dash).

Microwalk

Walking for an incredibly short amount of time, usually 1 or 2 frames. This will reposition your character by a few pixels and sometimes allow certain combos to work where they normally would not (because the hitboxes and hurtboxes would otherwise miss each other by a millimeter). Microwalk combos are often incredibly difficult; if you don't walk at all, or walk slightly too much, the combo won't work and they can often trigger unwanted input shortcuts because of the added forward input. Fortunately, they are rarely mandatory to learn and are usually reserved for combo video fare.

Mid Dispenser

A character who relies mostly on strong mid-hitting safe pokes to do damage, rather than trying to hit you with gross mixups that have to be blocked overhead attack or low. These pokes will often control tons of space and might lead to a high damage combo if they hit you, but as long as you're safely blocking, you shouldn't get hit too often. All they can do is just constantly dispense mids, after all.

This term's often used as a bit of an insult towards a character whose mixup game is weak, and labeling your own character as a mid dispenser is also kinda meant to insult your opponent, since they refused to block and constantly got hit by easy-to-defend mids. But don't be too fooled; many mid dispensers have very strong footsies tools that can make fighting against them suffocating, and they'll often have a very powerful strike/throw gameplan to back up their offense if they get close to you. It won't be the flashiest offense you've seen, but it can easily get the job done.

Midscreen

Any space on the screen where neither player is in the corner. This term is mostly used to describe combos that will work even if you don't have the benefit of pushing your opponent against the corner. You'll hear phrases like "you can do that midscreen", even if you're not at the direct center of the stage.

Mind Game

Trying to trick your opponent into taking the wrong action, usually by making it look like you will do one thing, and then doing another. A common mind game in a Street Fighter game would be knocking someone down and then threatening to attack them when they wake up. This threat might make them do a reversal to escape, but instead you just do nothing and block, which leads to a huge punish combo. Mind games are in all facets of a fight, and being crafty and unpredictable is how you win more of these situations than you lose.

Minus

When you cannot freely act, but your opponent can (usually because you're too busy recovering from your own move). It's not too much fun to be minus (or "negative") in a fighting game. First of all, if you're too minus, you can be punished. And even if you're only slightly minus, if you and your opponent attack as soon as possible with attacks that have the same startup, you'll always lose the race and get hit.

Being minus and being plus are two sides of the same coin — when you are minus, your opponent is plus, and vice versa. You'll almost always use it with the phrase "on block", as in, "my fireball is -3 on block". This means you will fully recover 3 frames after your opponent leaves block stun. Being slightly minus is not the end of the world, but you'll probably have to block after and not try to take your turn.

Mirror Match

When your opponent picks the same character as you.

Mixbox

A type of controller that has the layout of an arcade stick for its attack buttons, but replaces the joystick lever with up, down, left, and right arrow keys from a keyboard. It is, effectively, the keyboard arcade stick. These are less common than a Hitbox but have similar benefits; converting directions to button presses instead of moving a joystick can allow for faster reactions and easier execution for certain moves.

Mixup

A situation where the offensive player has several ways to attack that each require a different defensive action to stop (such as blocking in different directions and avoiding throws). Most mixups contain several fast options that are extremely difficult, or impossible, to avoid on reaction, and thus the defensive player must make a read to escape taking damage.

Simple mixups that only require choosing between two defensive options are often called 50/50s. Very powerful mixups can exist which force a defender to choose between four or five different options — for example, the attacker might attack high or low on both sides and could also throw.

Motion Input

Any special move command that requires a multi-way joystick input without any charge time. In Idol Showdown, the only motion Inputs are quarter circle and down down.

Nerf

When the developers make a character worse. They might adjust the character's health, make moves slower or do less damage, remove certain combos from being possible, or any number of other things. Some people don't like when characters get nerfed and would prefer the weaker characters get buffed to match, but sometimes characters are too powerful for the game's own good and need to be toned down a bit. Nerfs don't always feel great, but they are often needed.

Neutral

The stage of a fight where neither player is blocking or getting hit by anything, and you are trying to figure out the best way to start or continue your gameplan. There's also a bit of an implicit assumption that the characters are not point blank from each other, so there is some wiggle room to move around and use a wide assortment of attacks.

Footsies is one important aspect of playing the neutral game, and you'll often hear people talk about "the neutral". For example, "Ryu loses the neutral in that matchup" means that Ryu has a hard time finding a place on screen where he can start his gameplan without putting himself at risk.

Another common use of "neutral" is just any time your character is not blocking, being hit, or knocked down (even if you're point blank), and your character is able to take any action. If your opponent attacks you with a string, you might say "I return to neutral in the middle of that string". This implies there's a gap, so you have a chance to try evading or attacking (maybe with a dragon punch).

As if that's not enough, neutral can also mean an attack that is neither plus or minus when it's blocked. You'll hear the terms "0 on block", "even on block", and "neutral on block" for this. Both characters will recover at the same time and can attack at the same time, which might lead to trades.

Normal

A basic attack usually activated by a single button press. In most fighting games, you will have different normals if you are standing on the ground, holding down to crouch, or jumping (a normal used while jumping at the opponent is often called a "jump in"), and some characters may have special attacks, called command normals, if you hold a direction while pressing a button. Some fighting games also have different normals depending on how close you are standing to your opponent. Normals aren't nearly as flashy as special moves. but they are extremely important, and will often form the backbone of your strategy. Don't overlook them!

Notation

A common language used to refer to directions and attacks so it's easier to talk about fighting games. I'll use this glossary entry to outline a few of the familiar notation styles that every player should know. Idol Showdon uses Numbpad Notation, A way to describe joystick inputs using numbers instead of letters or words. Each direction is mapped to a number, following the same layout as a keyboard's numpad. For more information look below.

Combo Notation Help
Disclaimer: Combos are written by different authors, so the notation used can vary from the standard one. For additional information on terminology for Idol Showdown or fighting games in general, please consult the Idol Showdown Glossary or the Fighting Game Glossary.
#X	Input writted with numpad notation for the direction/motion input followed by the action.
X > Y	X input is cancelled into Y.
X, Y	X input is linked to Y, meaning Y is done after X's recovery frames.
X~Y	This notation has two meanings: 1. Use attack X with followup Y. 2. Input X, and then within a few frames, input Y. Sometimes referred to as "kara cancelling".
[X]	Input X is held down.
{X}	Input is partially charged (as in, not tapped but not held to full charge either).
(X)	Input X is optional. Typically, the combo will be easier without this input.
X/Y	Choose between input X or input Y.
#jc	Jump cancel. The number (7, 8, or 9) indicates which direction the jump cancel should be input if it is important to the combo.
j.X	Jumping input X. X should be input while airborne.
dl.X	Delayed input X. There will be some delay before inputting X.
CH X	Counterhit with input X. This is used for combo starters that require counterhit confirm.
OTG X	Input X while the opponent is knocked down but still able to be hit.
X(n)	Number of hits of a multihit attack. If an attack is multihit and this is not specified, it is assumed to let the maximum number of hits complete before proceeding.
scc	Superchat Cancel. Idol Showdown unique mechanic that allows you to cancel the recovery of one special into another special.

Controls

OD

New York slang that means "too much" or "very powerful". This is not a term that originated from fighting games, but you'll hear it used when someone loses to something really cool, strong, or ridiculous. Stuff like "that mixup was OD" is commonly heard from east coast personalities.

Okizeme/Oki

The moment during a fighting game when your opponent is knocked down and you get to attack them as they stand back up. The defender's options are limited, so the offensive player gets to attack with all sorts of mixups or apply any mind game they choose. Some options include attacking with a basic meaty, doing a cross-up, or trying to bait their opponent's desperate dragon punch by simply doing nothing and blocking.

Okizeme (pronounced oh-kee-zeh-meh and often shortened to "oki") means "wake up offense" in Japanese, so the term mostly focuses on the offensive choices. If you hear someone ask "what's the oki going to be?", they are wondering what method of attack (or non-attack) the offensive player will choose to assert their advantage. It's closely related to the term wakeup, although that tends to focus more on the defensive choices (you might hear "I can't believe they did a wakeup DP!").

If someone asks "do I get oki after this move?", they're asking whether that move leaves them close enough, and with enough time, to threaten multiple different offensive options. Moves that "don't give you oki" will leave you far away and mostly end your offensive pressure.

On Block

How you describe what happens after a move is blocked. It is often used in general strategy or frame advantage since how safe or unsafe a move is on block is one of the most important considerations for how you'll use that move.

On Hit

How you describe what happens after a move hits. You can talk about general strategy or frame advantage.

Open Up

To successfully hit someone with a mixup, or to overcome your opponent's defense and hit them with an attack. They tried to block, but you cracked them open.

Optimal

Responding to a situation with the best possible action. It's almost always talked about in terms of combos that give you the maximum possible damage, and you may even have several different optimal combos that use varying amounts of super meter (for example, an optimal 1-bar combo if you wanted to save the rest of your meter for later), or have different starting attacks.

You always want to be optimal, but the fast, stressful pace of fighting games and you losing control of your mental stack means that sometimes you'll just mess up. Players who are consistently optimal under pressure, especially when the optimal choice has high execution and is easily dropped, are super impressive. It's not easy.

Option Select

A situation where performing the same inputs can lead to several different outcomes depending on how the characters interact. Often abbreviated as "OS". A common option select is the buffer: press a normal attack and then try to cancel into a special. If you do this from far away, the normal attack will whiff and your special cancel does nothing. However, if your opponent gets hit by your attack, the special cancel will work automatically, without any extra thought or changes to the input on your part.

Good option selects tend to reduce the burden on a player to perfectly predict or react to everything happening in the game. You can perform one set of inputs, and the game will "select an option" automatically depending on what the other character did. Some OSes are common enough that we even give them names: delayed tech (try to block and throw tech), safe jumps (try to attack and block), and fuzzy guard (try to block multiple directions) are all specific examples of option selects that will help the player cover multiple choices at the same time.

Oshi

Japanese meaning "to back" or "to support" used by fans to denote which VTubers they are a fan of and support the most. This is one of the possible factors in choosing a main in Idol Showdown. It is also interchangable with the term "Main" to some players.

OTG

Using specific moves to hit the opponent while they are knocked down. OTG stands for "off the ground" (or "on the ground", depending on who you ask). OTG are often extends a combo after the opponent is knocked down.

Pad

A console controller. People might say "I play on pad" to indicate they use a PlayStation or Xbox controller instead of an arcade stick or other device like a Hitbox.

Party Starter

A specific move a character wants to land that lets them start scary offensive pressure or a nasty vortex. It might be something as innocent as a sweep or a throw, where that specific knockdown gives the character a whole bunch of scary mixups.

Usually, people will try to fish for this move, since the reward for hitting it is just so incredibly high. Most snowball characters will have a party starter that you want to avoid at all costs. You don't want to let them nudge that snowball over the cliff.

Piano

Pressing multiple different buttons in a row in rapid succession, often by "drumming" or "sliding" your fingers across the buttons of a controller (keyboard, arcade stick, hitbox, mixbox). You can use this technique to input special moves to execute the super on several consecutive frames and really increases the chances that you'll get the combo to work or have the super come out just as the player is waking up.

Plink

An input trick where you press two different buttons on two consecutive frames. If you use an arcade stick, the best way to do this is to "drum" two different fingers across the two buttons extremely quickly. It will kind of feel a bit like a piano input. It's often notated with a ~, so pressing L and then M right after would be L~M.

In Idol Showdown, Plinking is often used to attempt to tech throws due to the fact that the tech window is small as well as 1-frame links.

Plus

When you are able to freely act, but your opponent cannot (usually because they are still trapped in block stun from your attack). Being plus (or "positive") in a fighting game is quite strong; it means you always have a headstart on your next attack, even if it's only by a very slim margin.

Being plus and being minus are two sides of the same coin — when you are plus, your opponent is minus, and vice versa. You'll commonly use it in tandem with "on block", as in, "my medium kick is +1 on block". This means you will fully recover 1 frame before your opponent leaves block stun. That doesn't sound like a lot, but just think about it as a relative value. If you and your opponent attack with moves that have the same startup, your headstart means you will always hit first, and that's great.

Point Blank

The closest possible distance two characters can be from each other. If you try to walk forward, you'll actually just start pushing your opponent's character along with you. This is the range where grapplers are happy and zoners are extremely sad.

Poke

An attack that's thrown out to occupy the space in front of you and remind your opponent not to try and come closer. Usually, this is a far-reaching and safe normal move with little risk. Pokes are often used to harass your opponent into doing something stupid, not unlike prodding a bear with a stick. If you use a poke to hit your opponent's poke, that's called a "counter poke".

Pool

A small group of double elimination tournament players, separated into their own mini-tournament. A pool is usually 8 or 16 players, who will then play until two players are left (or three players in some systems). These players will advance to a new set of pools with the other winners, and will keep qualifying until top 8 has been decided. This way of grouping the players really eases the burden on tournament organizers, especially in large tournaments with thousands of players. If a good player fails to qualify from their initial pool, it's said they've "drowned in pools".

Pop Off

Getting so excited about winning a match that you directly rub it in your opponent's face. Maybe you jump out of your chair and run around, or maybe you just start trash talking them loudly. However you do it, pop offs tend to be some of the most entertaining moments for specators of fighting game tournaments.

Poverty Game

A fighting game that is mostly supported by a small but passionate community. These games tend to not have big tournaments or large payouts, hence the term, and you may have to use resources like Discord to find opponents to play against, but those who stick around are usually welcoming and excited to play a game they love.

Pre-Jump

The startup for a jump, usually a brief few frames. In most games, while you are "trying to jump", you are throw invincible but you remain on the ground, which means being hit by most attacks will keep you on the ground and open you up for big punishment. You can also usually complete the input of special moves during this time and the game will still give you a grounded attack.

Pressure

The act of repeatedly attacking your opponent from close range. Pressure usually includes the use of block strings, safe on block moves, and generally just not giving your opponent any space while you make them scared of getting hit. Toss in a mixup when they least expect it, or vary the timing and pace of your button presses to keep your opponent super confused about what you're doing, and you'll have good success.

Priority System

A mechanic in select games where certain attacks will always beat other attacks if they collide on the same frame.

A lot of beginners will use the term "priority" to talk about when a move "beats" another move, but that's usually for a bunch of reasons other than a true priority system coded at the system level. For example, the move might just be very fast and good at interrupting opponent attacks, or it might have a really large hitbox.

Projectile

A type of attack that travels independently from any character and does not have a hurtbox attached to it. Usually, projectiles are represented as giant balls of energy, screen-filling beams of light, or other similarly realistic ways of attacking your opponent. Once a projectile has been thrown, your opponent just has to deal with it, either by countering with his own projectile (usually, they destroy each other), blocking it, jumping over it, or using a move to turn himself projectile invincible and go straight through it.

Projectiles can travel at many different speeds and angles, and using them smartly on offense while dodging them gracefully on defense is an important strategy in the vast majority of fighting games over the last 25 years.

Projectile Invincible

A state where projectiles cannot hit you, but all other attacks or throws will. Usually the projectile will just pass right through your body, sailing harmlessly into the background, as you throw your hapless self full throttle towards whatever zoner is frustrating you today. It's not as good as being fully invincible, but it gets the job done in lots of situations, and moves with this property are especially powerful to use on reaction when you see someone throw a projectile from a bad range.

Proration

A mechanic in many fighting games (especially anime games) that reduces the damage for future hits in a combo whenever a specific move is used. It's like a more advanced damage scaling, but instead of a combo gradually getting weaker because it goes on for longer, it's the use of very specific attacks that apply a damage penalty.

For example, if you start a combo with a strong up-close move like a crouching light punch, it may make all future moves do 80% of their damage value. It's another way designers can try to control how damaging combos can be, tailored specifically to which attacks are fantastic at starting (or continuing) combos.

Punish

Attacking someone when they are unable to block, making the damage guaranteed. Maybe you made them whiff an attack and then hit them before they could recover. Or maybe you blocked a very unsafe move and earned some big damage on a free counter-attack. In any case, the opponent made their mistake and now have to own up to the receiving end of some pain. Idol Showdown rewards Punish with 15 Superchat gain.

Pushback

How far the offensive character gets pushed away from the opponent when an attack hits or is blocked. Getting "pushed out" is very important to fighting game balance. For example, if a move is very unsafe but you get pushed halfway across the screen when it's blocked, the opponent usually won't have any punish that will reach you, so it doesn't matter that much.

Similarly, if you have a plus on block move that doesn't push you out at all, you can use it repeatedly and make the defender's life miserable. Moves that are this strong are pretty rare, though, which is why blocking is a good defensive option; if you hold your position and block, usually the defender will get pushed out after a few attacks and you'll have breathing room again.

Pushbox

A hidden collection of rectangles or circles that define the non-overlapping space your character takes up on the screen. This is not your character's hurtbox (i.e., the part that can be attacked), it is simply the part that prevents your model from overlapping with another character. We call it a pushbox because if you were to walk face first into another character, you would begin to push them backwards when their two pushboxes meet.

Quarter Circle

A motion used to input many common special moves that starts at down and moves in a circular motion, ending at left or right. The version towards your opponent is down, down-forward, forward, or 236 in numpad notation. It's commonly abbreviated QCF for "quarter circle forward", or maybe just called "fireball", since the vast majority of fireballs use this command. Similarly, down, down-back, back, or 214, is called QCB for "quarter circle back", and commonly referred to as the "tatsu" input, since it matches Ryu's Tatsumaki special move.

Random

Acting extremely unpredictably and seemingly without a coherent strategy. Calling someone random usually has a tinge of salt behind it, because when it works, it can be pretty frustrating. The world's best players need to throw a bit of randomness into their gameplans to keep opponents off-guard, but don't go too wild or you'll just lose for no reason.

Random can also refer to picking your character using the Random Select feature on the character select screen. In theory you should have an equal chance to play anyone in the game, but in reality you'll get yet another character you don't know how to play for the seventh time in a row.

Range

A general term to describe how far away the two fighters are, or to talk about a location on the screen. If someone makes an attack whiff, you might say "they were just out of range", or if they find a way to make an attack connect just at its tip, you might say "wow, nice range on that poke". If you are standing at a distance where a lot of your moves are effective, you'd be "standing at a good range".

You can talk about specific points on the screen by using terms like "close range" (from point blank to a step or two back), "mid range" (somewhere around 1/3 to 2/3 screen away), or "long range" (3/4 of the screen away or further). If someone talks about "ranged fighting" in the long-distance sense, they're usually talking about zoning. There's lots of uses for this term, but most of them should make reasonable English sense.

Raw

An attack done purely by itself, with nothing preceding it, often when you least expect it. It's a common word when the move is usually risky by itself, so you'd normally expect it to be used as a follow-up or hit confirm from a previous attack. You'll hear stuff like "he killed me with raw super".

Reactable

An attack that has slow enough startup that a human can react to it and correctly defend (either by blocking or intercepting with their own attack). A good example of a reactable move would be a jump — good players will have enough time to see these coming and input an anti-air before the jump completes... most of the time.

It's important to note that very few attacks in fighting games are actually reactable! In fact, most of them are unreactable because they are well below the best case human limit for reaction. But fortunately, most attacks aren't mixups, so it's okay to just pre-emptively block. I'd say if you can reliably react to moves that have around 20 frames of startup, you're doing a super great job. And don't worry if you sometimes get hit by something that is theoretically reactable. Fighting games are hard, and nobody is perfect.

Plus, if everything was easily reactable, fighting games would not be interesting at all. When players don't always know what's coming, you get exciting moments of reads and a player's personality really starts to shine through. That's the truly interesting stuff.

Reaction

The act of noticing that a certain action has occurred, and then taking a specific action as a result. On defense, you'll use reactions to do things like see an overhead and change to a standing block, or see a jump and anti-air with an uppercut. On offense, you can force people to swing and miss and then whiff punish them, or you can hit confirm your attacks when they land. Reactions can come from visual or audio cues (usually, it's some combination of both).

Not everything is reactable in fighting games, since humans have physical limits. Because of the struggle of dealing with your mental stack, even very good players will often get hit by moves that have 20 frames of startup or more, so don't feel bad when it happens to you. The opposite of doing something "on reaction" is a guess, and both halves of this coin are vital to fighting game design.

Read

A sub-class of a guess where your decision is not wholly random, but instead informed by some knowledge about the game or your opponent's tendencies. In reality, though, they are pretty closely linked. You might say, for example, "I knew he likes to throw in that situation, so I made a read and jumped to avoid it." Some people think a read is just a guess that worked... and there is probably more than just a little truth to that.

Real

A situation (usually a mixup or a block string) that does not have an easy way out that always works no matter what. Usually you'll hear this word used to describe what is not "real" (some people will call something that isn't real "fake"). For example, "that setup isn't real/that setup is fake, you can always just jab me out of it" describes something that looks really scary, but actually has an easy defensive answer that always just works. The threat is simply smoke and mirrors. It is not real.

Meanwhile, if something is real, you will have to make a legitimate defensive choice, and mashing a fast button or holding up to jump won't automatically let you escape.

Recovery

The period of time that occurs after your attack has finished hitting, but before you gain back control of your character for more actions. It's one of the three stages of an attack, along with startup and active, and is measured in frames. Recovery is the final stage of an attack, the part where your character is finishing the follow-through and usually left wide open if you whiffed.

Rejump

Doing an air combo where you land from your jump while the opponent is still airborne, then jumping a second time and continuing the combo with more air attacks. It's important that the opponent doesn't touch the ground between you landing and jumping again.

Rekka

A type of special move that allows for multiple stages with successive inputs. Rekkas tend to have exactly three distinct parts and will move your character forward along the ground with each new input. Usually the first part is safe on block, and you'll only continue into the later parts as a hit confirm, although some games will tinker with this formula a bit.

Reset

Intentionally stopping your combo before its natural conclusion, and trying to hit your opponent with a surprise mixup while they are confused or overwhelmed. For example, you might stop a combo and throw someone, since they will not be expecting the need to throw tech while they are being hit. Or you might stop and use an overhead suddenly, since your opponent will not be thinking about changing their blocking direction.

In some games, resets are very powerful — if they work, they might start a new combo which resets the damage scaling and leads to extremely high damage.

Respect

To predict that your opponent will do an option and pre-emptively defend against it. Or, put another way, to give credit to your opponent that they are going to make a decision that beats you, and backing off instead. A common way this is used is on wakeup, when you think your opponent will do a reversal dragon punch. If you don't attack them and back off, you might say "I respected your DP". You'd say this even if they didn't end up doing a DP after all!

You can also say things like "my opponent isn't respecting me at all", which means they are doing whatever they want without fear of how you might counter-attack, because they just simply don't care. Of course, you can also use respect for its standard English meaning, as in "I respect (insert player name) for his accomplishments as a player", but when talking about fighting game strategy, it's usually the first meaning.

Restand

Bringing your opponent from an airborne state down to a grounded state, usually during a combo. Some restands will let you continue the combo, but even if they don't, restands will usually grant you some serious frame advantage so you can go for a mixup. For this reason, sometimes they are called "standing resets".

Reversal

An attack that is launched on the first possible frame after your character recovers from a state where they weren't allowed to attack, such as being knocked down or trapped in block stun. If you input a special move or super in this way, most games will usually display a "Reversal" message to indicate that you hit the timing correctly, meaning there was no way the move could have come out earlier.

Reversals can be any move, but you will usually pick a move with invincibility, like a dragon punch, so that you can successfully avoid an opponent who is trying to attack you. If you hear someone asking if a character "has a reversal", they're basically asking if they have an invincible move that can be used to escape pressure in this way. In most modern games, you can input your special move a little earlier than the reversal frame, and the game will save and apply your input as a reversal. This extra leniency means you don't have to nail a just frame timing to get out of sticky situations.

Reward

A discussion around what could go right in the best case scenario when you make a certain decision, often measured by damage earned. Not every fighting game attack needs to earn a high reward; for example, it's common for safe moves to earn very low damage. These attacks would be low risk, low reward, and we will commonly talk about risk and reward as a pair for any decision. Ideally you want to find something that is low risk and highly rewarding when it works, but those pesky game developers usually try to avoid such degenerate options if they can.

Risk

A discussion around what could possibly go wrong when you make a certain decision. Usually a risky attack is one that is likely to be blocked and would be unsafe. We often talk about risk in combination with reward; if your attack is very risky and there is not much reward even if it works, then you should be rethinking your strategy. High risk matched with high reward is a valid playstyle, although you'll get a lot of gray hairs doing that.

Robbery

A term used when you lose a round you think you definitely should have won because your opponent "stole" it from you with a massive comeback. It's a salty term that's almost always used as an insult towards your opponent or the game, maybe because you aren't happy with how strong the game's comeback mechanic is.

Round

The act of playing until a single health bar is depleted. Usually you need to win multiple rounds to win a game, and in most fighting games, winning a round will reset character positions and health bars. In team games, the definition doesn't really make much sense, so we usually say there aren't any rounds and just jump straight to winning or losing a "game".

Round Robin

A tournament format best suited for a small number of players (typically 4-8) that sees each player play every other player. The winner is the player with the best record after any tiebreakers are applied. Round robin works great for small invitational tournaments where time is less of a concern and players want to see lots of matches between excellent players. They're less well suited for large open-format events because they just take too long.

Route

The specific choice of moves you use in a combo. Really, it's mostly a synonym for "combo". It's more common to use the term "route" or "combo route" in an anime game or other titles with a bigger reliance on air combos.

You might say something like "that combo doesn't work on Ayame, you need to use a different route" to imply that some moves in the combo need to change. You might have a few different routes for your BnBs depending on which character you're facing and whether you're midscreen or in the corner.

RPS

Stands for Rock Paper Scissors, the classic game where each option beats one thing and loses to one thing. You can think of close-range attacks, throws, and blocking as a basic application of RPS, where attacks beat throws, throws beat blocking, and blocking beats attacks. While there are some situations where each option is equally likely, and you just pick something and see if you win or not, fighting games are usually more nuanced.

Most of the time you will try to weight the RPS in your favor, so if you win the exchange, you will get a lot of damage, but if you lose it, it won't matter too much. You can stand at a good range so that your attacks won't be punishable if they're blocked, for instance. Or you might option select a few options at the same time to cover multiple scenarios.

In general, if someone says they are "playing the RPS", it means they are just trying to cycle options in an intelligent way to win more exchanges than they lose. You can also talk about which side the RPS "favors", and that side will probably have an easier time picking an option that has high reward without too much risk, so their opponent should be scared of being put in that situation.

Run

Running across the screen continuously, usually instead of dashing which goes a short distance and then stops. In Idol Showdown you can press Forward and hold Forwand to run, while double tapping Forwad will only dash.

Runaway

A defensive playstyle that involves constantly trying to move far away from your opponent. It has similarities to other defensive ideas, like zoning or turtling, but the focus of runaway is to use powerful movement to create space, usually after you've taken the life lead. Then, your opponent is forced to try and chase you, which will no doubt annoy them into making mistakes. Good runaway players will often win by time out, even if it's not very exciting.

Runback

Playing the opponent you just lost to, hopefully to redeem yourself by playing better and winning. You can also hear it used like "let's run it back". The odds of winning the runback won't be very good if you're salty, not that I would know from experience or anything.

Rushdown

A style of play that focuses on getting close to your opponent and relentlessly attacking them until they die. It's kind of the opposite of zoning. Good qualities for a rushdown character include lots of ways to get around long-range attacks, tricky approaches like divekicks so you can be hard to anti-air, and lots of plus attacks so your opponent has to repeatedly guess on defense to survive. The ultimate rushdown character is a gorilla.

Safe

A move that, when it hits or is blocked, lets you successfully block (or avoid) any possible retaliation from your opponent. Basically, as long as you make contact with this move, you cannot be punished. Sometimes a move may be safe because your opponent is too far away to do anything, even if the frame data says you can be punished in theory. So while the numbers are most of the story, sometimes good range plays a factor. Safe moves play a hugely important part of the offense in basically every fighting game.

If you want to know the science behind a move being safe, it's a race between the block stun of your move and the recovery of your move. You don't necessarily have to recover before the block stun ends (such a move is not only safe, but plus), you just have to make sure the gulf is smaller than your opponent's fastest move. So, you can be minus and safe, as long as you're not too minus.

Safe Jump

A very well-timed jump attack on a character who is rising from a knockdown. Your goal is to attack extremely close to when you land so that, if the character performs an invincible reversal attack, you will land and be able to block. The opponent is then forced to block your jumping attack, since reversaling doesn't work, which will give you some nice pressure and hopefully an opening.

A safe jump is an option select; with the same set of inputs, you can both attack your opponent and block if they reversal. Pretty useful! The inner workings of a safe jump rely on how much recovery you have when you land from a jumping attack. In most games, it's pretty small, so as long as you have less recovery than the startup of your opponent's reversal move, you can make it to the ground and block in time. Some games have extremely fast reversal attacks though, so if you try to safe jump those with standard methods, you'll just get smoked. Because your attack has to be so well-timed for this to work, it's really hard to just do a safe jump randomly. That's why most people have setups for them so they work consistently.

Salt

Intense frustration, typically after losing a game. Fighting game salt is quite pronounced, since its nature as a 1v1 game means you have no one to blame for your loss than yourself. Of course, this doesn't stop most players from blaming the game, their opponent, or their dog for losing anyway.

Sandbagging

Intentionally playing below your ability, usually to troll your opponent or because you want to try and hit some cool, but impractical move or combo. If you're an experienced player and you're playing against beginners, sometimes it's okay to sandbag to let them get some practice in. But some players really don't like it and would prefer their opponents always try as hard as they can.

Sauce

The general cool factor of a character, or the ability for that character to let player expression shine through. Usually this amounts to characters doing really cool combos or moving around the screen super fast and fluidly. You kinda just know when a character "has the sauce".

Scramble

A situation where some unlikely or surprising interactions happen, and both players start to panic a little bit and need to quickly improvise what to do. Scrambles are particularly common in fast-paced games where sloppy play is more likely and new situations that aren't often seen can spring up out of nowhere. Creative players with good game sense will often turn these "off the book" interactions into cool combo conversions or will always somehow be able to land the next hit despite the chaos. They're also pretty fun to watch when they happen!

Screen Freeze

The period directly after a super (or certain other powerful techniques) where the game pauses for dramatic effect. Usually the screen gets darker, the camera angle might change, and the character does some special pose. The in-game action stops during this time, and depending on the game, you might be able to use what you see during a screen freeze to your advantage after it's over. They aren't always just for show!

Scrub

Someone who thinks they're much better than they are and makes excuses whenever they lose. The classic scrub believes that the only reason they aren't winning is because the opponent isn't following some self-defined set of "honorable" rules (like not spamming whatever move is hitting them today), not through any lack of skill on their own part. Some people use the term to refer to any beginner, but really the core of the term is an insult towards people who refuse to learn.

Secondary

An alternate character that isn't as well-practiced as your main, but you've still put in a fair bit of time to learning them. Maybe your main character has some bad matchups so you learn a new character to help deal with those in tournament. Or maybe you just think the character is really cool and you want to learn them. Either one works. You might also hear this called a "pocket"; it's just a character you've got stored away in your pocket for a rainy day.

Seiso

A VTuber meme. It is a term which can be translated as "wholesome". It refers to a character type defined by innocence, purity, and propriety. It is also used ironically to refer to a character who definitely does not have those qualities, or who tries and fails to act pure and wholesome. In Idol Showdown, it is the ingame term for a Perfect, which is winning without taking any damage at all. This is really hard to do, since it's hard to avoid taking chip damage.

Set

A group of games. Usually in a tournament, you will have to win a set against your opponent to move on (usually the first to win 2 or 3 games), just to make sure nobody can fluke a single win and send you packing. Most of the time, you'll see the letters FT used to talk about how long a set is — for example, a FT10 is a set that ends after someone wins 10 games. You don't have to be this formal about it, though, you can also just ask your friend to "run a set" and play until they kick you out of their house.

Set Play

Performing a pre-planned, calculated setup after you've knocked your opponent down. There's no winging it by the seat of your pants here; set play often involves some frame kills to set up very specific timing that will make your mixups extremely ambiguous and often avoid reversals. Think of it like drawing up a "set play" in a sport like American football. The plan of attack is well thought out and all possible outcomes are computed in advance.

A "set play character" is a character that thrives on knocking you down and putting you in super gross set play situations. The best part about set play is, unless you're a training mode monster and enjoy the challenge, you typically don't have to find these mixups yourself! The kind folks on Youtube and Twitter will find them for you and tell you how to use them for maximum effect. People sometimes confuse this term with vortex; a good vortex is usually set play, but set play doesn't have to loop into itself. ---

Setup

A situation that gives you ample time to plan a specific mixup. For example, if you land a hard knockdown on someone, you should have enough time to perform some pre-planned idea like a safe jump or maybe an ambiguous cross-up. If you hear people asking "do I get a setup after that?", they're basically asking if they have enough time to plan something devious. Setup and set play are more or less the same idea, although the latter sounds a bit fancier.

Similarly, a "setup" might refer to the actual method of performing these pre-planned mixups. For example, maybe after a certain knockdown, you walk forward a step, whiff a jab, and then jump forward to perform a safe jump. This specific set of actions is called the setup, since they set up the timing and spacing requirements reliably. When you hear someone say "what's the setup for that mixup?", they're usually asking about this type of thing.

Shimmy

Tricking someone into thinking you're going to throw them by walking close, and then, at the last second, walking backwards out of range so they whiff a throw tech attempt like a dummy. You can then pummel them with a huge punish. Shimmying is easier to do in games with small throw ranges (so you can walk out of range easier) and games without crouch teching (so they can't defend against throw while also hitting you as you walk away), which makes it a pretty common strategy in a game like Street Fighter V. It's one way to enforce a very basic "throw or not" 50/50 on someone, and you'll see this style of throw bait used pretty often.

Shoto

An archetype originating from the Street Fighter series marked by having a fireball, a dragon punch, and a tatsu. Their main gameplan is to play solid footsies with fireballs and pokes, and then uppercut you when you jump at them.

Side Switch

Any move that reverses the screen position; if you were facing left, you are now facing right, or vice versa. It's really only used to talk about situations where you had your back in the corner (bad), but you did something that puts your opponent in the corner instead (good). This can be as simple as just doing a back throw, some special move that puts you behind your opponent, or any number of other ideas. Good players will apply corner pressure in a way that won't allow for a side switch most of the time, but everybody gets got sometimes.

Single Elimination

A tournament format where losing just one match means you are immediately eliminated. There's no mercy of the double elimination system here; the winner of the tournament will have won every single match they played. This structure is typically run for very small events, where a double elimination format doesn't make sense, although formats like round robin also work there.

Skill Ceiling

The absolute peak of skill possible by a human in a game, assuming basically unlimited time and knowledge. If a game's interactions are pretty straightforward and easy to understand, or if there aren't a lot of interesting options that require practice, the skill ceiling will be pretty low. If a game is filled with tons of esoteric character knowledge, there are many interlocking system mechanics, and you'll have to make difficult snap decisions quickly, these things will give a skilled player a huge edge and the skill ceiling will be pretty high. We hope most games have a huge skill ceiling, or else they tend to stop being interesting much faster. You can also discuss a game's skill floor.

Skill Floor

The minimum amount of knowledge and practice needed to progress past basic button mashing and start getting better. It's important that there's some intentionality to the actions, since any game could be played without thought. The skill floor usually refers to a player trying to understand basic game interactions and act with purpose, even if they are not super good yet.

A game with a low skill floor means even super beginners can start doing strong things with their character in no time. Meanwhile, a high skill floor means you'll need to invest a fair bit of time, practice and knowledge into the game before you can even engage in basic strategy. A related concept is the skill ceiling.

Skipping Neutral

The ability for a character to go from a long range away to extremely close very quickly. Typically you'll be using a move that is pretty fast and probably also safe on block to do this. Your opponent, who is probably expecting you to close the gap by playing footsies or navigating the neutral game in a clever way, will be surprised when you come flying at their face with a relatively risk-free move that skips past all that space. Your opponent will have to try to intercept or avoid your move, or if that's not an option, go complain about the character.

Slide

A common name for any attack that hits low and sees the character slide along the ground, aiming their attack at the opponent's feet.

Snowball Character

A character that becomes more deadly the more often they hit you. These characters tend to start the match at their weakest, and once they get their momentum going, they will just get more powerful, like the proverbial snowball rolling down a hill.

Solid

A playstyle that involves lots of good decisions rooted in strong game knowledge, without taking lots of unnecessary risks. A solid player will be hard to crack open on defense, and their offense will be safe and stable. Their gameplan is to wait for you to make all the mistakes, and then capitalize with high damage punishes. It takes quite a bit of experience to play solid and win; you have to be good at slowing the game down to the right pace and forcing the opponent into errors, while making few errors yourself.

Space

Generally speaking, an area on the screen. Usually you talk about space in relation to your character, like "the space above my head" or "the space in front of me". The best pokes will pre-emptively take up important space that your opponent wants to stand in. It's a pretty similar concept to range.

It's also common to talk about "spacing", which is the skill of putting yourself at a good range for your best attacks. A player who has good spacing will subtly change where they stand using movement, and they always seem to magically be at a range where their attacks hit, but yours somehow don't. Spacing is a critical concept for playing footsies.

Spacing Trap

Doing an attack that is minus on block, but being far enough away from your opponent that if they try to attack you, they will whiff. You can then immediately whiff punish them for trying to take their turn back.

Spacing traps are pretty similar to frame traps, both in name and in execution. You're trying to create a situation where your opponent believes they should attack, but they really can't; here, you're adjusting your spacing (or range) to do so, rather than trapping them between your own plus on block attacks. Often times you don't have to judge the correct spacing for your attack by feel alone, you can go into training mode and plan a specific block string to push you back to the perfect range automatically.

Spam

Using one attack over and over again. Calling something "spam" or someone a "spammer" is the hallmark cry of the scrub, who is unwilling to find a strategy to beat any attack that hits them, no matter how telegraphed it is. Fighting game veterans will still use this term, but mostly in jest, or to give praise to a legitimate strategy. If you think someone is bad for using one move repeatedly to beat you, I'd recommend looking inwards and re-evaluating your strategy and game knowledge before lashing out. You might save a bit of embarrassment and you'll probably improve at the game at the same time.

Stagger

Any move that causes a super prolonged state of hit stun, usually with the opponent staggering over their feet while you get free rein to do whatever you want. It's a common word in Killer Instinct as there is a specific state called "stagger" that allows for opponents to be hit or thrown freely, but it can be used in any game where giant hits occur.

Stagger can also be used in its more common English meaning to describe attacks that are slightly delayed or off-beat from each other. Basically, you leave gaps between your attacks in tricky and unpredictable ways so your opponent thinks they're free to attack, then you smoke them with a devastating counter hit. You might hear something like "he staggered that heavy punch" or "nice stagger pressure" to indicate this.

Starter

The first hit in a combo. Depending on the game, which attack you use to start a combo can make a pretty big difference in how much damage your combo does! The first hit is not affected by damage scaling and it might change the proration of future hits, so you want to make sure you start with the juiciest, highest damage starter you can whenever possible.

Startup

The period of time that occurs after pressing your attack button, but before your attack is capable of making contact with the opponent. It's one of the three stages of an attack, along with active and recovery, and is measured in frames. It's best to think of startup as your attack's "windup" period. It's also a pretty important number to get comfortable with when learning frame data, since the "speed" of an attack is often used when formulating strategies. You'll often hear people say "how fast is that move?" to ask about its startup.

The communities for many games will double-count the first active frame in the startup frames, so a move that has 8 frames of startup will hit on the 8th frame (as opposed to the 9th frame). This makes it easy to understand punishes for moves, because an 8-frame attack will punish something that is -8 on block. So just ask which way of documenting startup is preferred for your game if you're unsure.

Stop Sign

Slang for a fantastic poke, either from the ground or from the air, that seems to always stop everything in its tracks. Think of the poke putting up a giant stop sign in front of itself, as if to say "sorry, no opponents allowed".

Strike

A physical attack. "Strike" and "attack" are used pretty much interchangeably in fighting game lingo, but sometimes "strike" will be used to include physical attacks but exclude projectiles, especially when you're talking about a move that is invincible to certain things but not others. Importantly though, throws are not strikes.

String

A somewhat generic term that means multiple attacks performed in sequence. In the general fighting game sense, you'll see it used in terms like block string, and you'll often hear people casually call things like chains or target combos strings depending on their background. But you're pretty safe to use the term whenever multiple attacks get lined up and performed quickly back-to-back, no matter the game.

Stubby

How you might describe an attack, usually a normal, that has very short range. Not every short-range attack is stubby though... it's more about the expectation of the move. Usually it's because you intuitively feel like the move should have longer range — maybe because other characters have similar moves that reach farther than yours, or because the move's hitbox doesn't seem to quite line up with the animation, making it whiff when you think it should hit.

Stuff

Interrupting an attack. "I can't believe that move stuffed my jab" means you tried to jab but your opponent hit you first.

Styling

To perform a flashy and unnecessarily difficult combo or pressure sequence in order to impress the crowd or show disrespect for your opponent. "Styling on" someone shows that you're more interested in getting a good clip for your Youtube channel than you are just closing out the match with something easy and reliable. And as long as you don't drop the combo, these moments can be pretty fun to watch.

Sweep

Any normal that knocks the opponent down by sweeping their legs out from under them. Watch your toes. All characters have a sweep dedicated to 3H.

Swiss System

A tournament format where all players will get matched with another player that has an identical record, trying to earn a set number of wins before earning a set number of losses. After the initial set of matches, all players with 1 win will play against each other, and all players with 0 wins will play against each other. Then, after the next stage, players who are 2-0, 1-1, and 0-2 will fight, and so on.

The goal is not to decide a single winner, but to divide players into "groups" for future tournament stages; for example, if the goal is 3 wins, players who finish with records of 3-0, 3-1, or 3-2 will qualify for the next stage of the event, with 3-0 players earning the highest seeds. Meanwhile, those who won fewer than 3 games (with records of 2-3, 1-3, or 0-3) will be eliminated. Swiss systems tend to eliminate about half the players, while allowing for more matches played than, say, a double elimination bracket, making it a nice hybrid format.

Target Combo

A character-specific attack that lets a normal cancel into another, different normal. Some target combos go on for longer too, sometimes stringing together 3 or 4 normals into a long attack sequence. It's important to note these are specifically programmed to only certain characters, and often appear in their move lists as a unique ability.

It's pretty similar in concept to a chain, and depending on who you talk to and what game you're playing, that term might be used instead. Sometimes refered as "string" or "gatling".

Tatsu

The name of a shoto special move where the character travels forward with their foot extended, usually spinning like a top while doing so. It is sometimes called "Hurricane Kick" in English, but many in the community call it "tatsu", a shortened version of the Japanese name. Tatsus are often briefly projectile invincible which can help you win fireball wars, and they're often good combo enders too.

You can use the generic term "tatsu" to refer to a move in any fighting game where the character leads with their foot, flying forward; bonus points if they're spinning and if the command is mapped to quarter circle back. Also, like the term "fireball", you can also just use "tatsu" as a shorthand for "quarter circle back" itself, if you're trying to describe an input quickly (even if the resulting move is not a spinning kick thing).

Teabagging

Repeatedly crouching and standing up again as a means to aggravate or taunt your opponent. You can do it while standing over a knocked down opponent for extra impact, but doing it anywhere on the screen will get the message across just fine. Just like in first-person shooters or other genres, teabagging is usually seen as bad manners and will get people riled up when you do it. It can also be a bait or buffer for 22 special moves.

Tech

Most commonly is shorthand for a throw tech. It can also refer to the act of quick rising after being knocked down, as in "you should tech when you hit the ground".

It can also refer to recovering in the air after you've been hit by an air combo. Or, if all these definitions aren't enough, it's also used to talk about cool new strategies developed for a character, like "did you see that new Botan tech posted to Twitter?"

Tech Trap

The act of hitting someone trying to air tech during an air combo in an anime game or team game. If you intentionally leave a bit of a gap in your air combo, you can maybe trick someone to air tech at a poor time, and then hit them. It's a bit of an advanced strategy though; as a beginner I'd just focus on trying to not drop your combos.

Teleport

A move that turns your character invincible and warps them to a new position.

Throw Loop

Throwing someone, and then being close enough to throw them again immediately as soon as they wake up. In essence, if your character has a throw loop, it means you will be able to apply strong oki after you land a throw, mixing between a strike-or-throw 50/50 until the defender guesses correctly and escapes. In some cases, you may throw them multiple times in a row if they do not correctly defend, which is why it's called a loop.

Tick Throw

Making someone block a fast, close-range normal and then immediately throwing them. This is often a good strategy because light normals are usually plus when blocked, and you won't get pushed very far away after, so following up with a throw is a strong offensive option. Since the quick switch between attacking and throwing can be pretty difficult to stop sometimes, tick throws are particularly effective against beginners. Learning to defend against them (for example, by using delayed tech) might save a few controllers from being tossed against a wall.

Tier List

A subjective ranking of a game's characters from strongest to weakest. You can try to take a statistical, numerical approach to this, like through a matchup chart, or you can simply rank the characters by feel or intuition. Most tier lists assume that the game is being played by players of equal skill and a high level of proficiency, otherwise the rankings can't carry much meaning. As the name suggests, characters tend to fall into "tiers", a letter grade category that conveys a relative sense of strength. The meaning of these tiers is subjective itself, but here is a common interpretation:

SS: Incredibly, game-breakingly strong. No losing matchups and easy strategies that can lock down the game. S: Usually the game's best characters. Not very many losing matchups, but not strong enough to overrun the game. A: Able to win tournaments without needing a counter pick. Has a few losing matchups that are generally tolerable. B: Can make top 8 at a tournament but might struggle to get over the top without a dedicated specialist. Does okay for the most part. C: Needs a dedicated specialist to see tournament success. There is likely a character in the game that has a similar archetype but is just strictly better. D: Pretty darn bad. Loses most matchups and is invalidated by several other characters. Play at your own risk.

There are some people who think that because tier lists are subjective, or reliant on finding strong players of equal skill, that they don't hold any weight. Don't be one of these people. There is real value in thinking about character strength, as it advances the community's knowledge and promotes interesting discussion. As long as you understand the context of the tier list, they are pretty useful!

Tiger Knee

A method to perform a special move in the air as fast as possible after you leave the ground. Almost always abbreviated to TK, and sometimes called an Instant Air Special (IAS). In Idol Showdown it is pressing Special button just as you leave the ground.

Tight

A block string that has no gaps. This means there is no opportunity for an opponent to try and attack during your offense, so once they block the first move, they're gonna be trapped in block stun for a while. Tight offense typically doesn't last too long, but you'll often be able to apply some chip damage or choose your next mixup pretty safely.

Tilted

Being so frustrated during a match that you start playing really badly. You'll hear common phrases like "they're on tilt" or "I would be so tilted after getting hit by that". It's a little different from being salty, which is just kind of general anger from losing after the match. Being on tilt tends to be from some specific, dumb thing that keeps hitting you, and it rattles you enough to impact how you are currently playing.

This term isn't unique to fighting games; I'm sure anyone who has played a MOBA has spent more of their time playing tilted than not. The origin of the term comes from poker, where losing a big hand to a bad player puts you in such a rotten mood that you won't be able to stick to your gameplan.

Time Out

A round being decided by the clock running out before either player's health bar reaches zero. The player with the most remaining health wins the round.

Timer Scam

A strategy where you intentionally bleed time off the clock by activating a super. In some games, a super's screen freeze will not stop the timer, so all you have to do is get a life lead, wait until 3 or 4 seconds are left in the round, then launch your super. The timer will run out while both characters are frozen in place, and you win. Just make sure you know how the timer works in your game of choice, since some games pause the timer during all screen freezes, so this strategy wouldn't work.

TO

Stands for Tournament Organizer. It's the main person in charge of running your favorite event, which could mean things like booking the venue, deciding which games to run, seeking out sponsors, and everything in between. Most TOs have a team of people working with them to make the event run smoothly, but they are kind of the front-facing entity of the tournament.

Top 8

The last 8 players remaining in a tournament. If the format is double elimination, there will be 4 in the Winners bracket and 4 in the Losers bracket. Tournaments will usually schedule a special time to play down from top 8 to the champion, often times the Sunday of a weekend tournament, and it's usually the most exciting part of an event.

Top Tier

A character or strategy that is among the best in the game. It's a bit of a subjective opinion rooted in tier lists, but there's usually a decent consensus on which characters are pretty darn strong. If you want to do well in tournaments, you should probably just pick a top tier.

Touch of Death

A combo that is guaranteed to kill you if it hits (assuming no combo drop), even if you started with full health. Commonly abbreviated to "TOD". These were decently common in older games, but in most modern games, you'll be hard-pressed to find a ton of true TODs that can be used in fights against actual human opponents (although some team games will have a few kicking around). Note that while all infinite combos are TODs, not all TODs will be infinites. Sometimes a TOD will have a theoretical end, but will just do enough raw damage to kill first.

Tournament Combo

An easy, nearly risk-free version of a BnB combo that you will always feel comfortable executing, even when you're playing in a tournament and your nerves are high. Tournament combos will probably do less damage or needlessly spend more resources than your optimal combo, but the value of never dropping it in the clutch means they are great backup plans when you feel your heart racing.

Similarly, a "tournament character" is a character that has many safe, relatively low-risk attacks and options so you can maintain stability in a long tournament run. In contrast to this, characters like glass cannons can succeed in tournaments as well, but you might get a few more gray hairs along the way.

Trade

When two opposing attacks hit each other on the same frame. Typically, both characters will animate getting hit at the same time and then the fight continues, although in games with a priority system, some attacks may be programmed to simply beat other attacks in these situations. Super clever fighting game players may even find a way to continue a combo after some trades, if they pressed a heavy attack with a lot of hit stun.

Trap

A stationary attack placed on the screen that has a lingering hitbox, and stays there for a set period of time or until the opponent runs into it. Characters who focus on littering the screen with these nuisances are called "trap characters".

Turn

A general notion of when you "should" or "shouldn't" be attacking, based on whether you are plus or minus. Basically, if you are plus (and both players know it), it makes sense that you "should" be asserting your advantage and attacking, while the opponent "should" be respecting your advantage and blocking. You'll hear people say you are "taking your turn" if you attack like this. If the defender wanted to try and "steal their turn", they would attack even though you were plus, which runs the risk of them getting counter hit or getting a hail mary dragon punch blocked.

Very aggressive players can be frustratingly good at stealing turns through various means, which constantly makes you second-guess your own gameplan and causes you to play out of your comfort zone. On the other hand, solid players will often take few risks, respecting whose turn it is and doing simple block strings or defending accordingly. Then, when both players return to neutral, they'll systematically wear you down there instead. Both playstyles work and it's why fighting game players can have such diverse personalities.

Turtling

Playing overwhelmingly defensively, with as few offensive risks as possible. Players who turtle will largely prefer blocking, putting up strong defense with powerful, pre-emptive pokes or projectiles, and in general will almost never instigate an offensive attack. Their goal is to win long, grueling rounds, often by time out, where the opponent feels like they have no way to get close. The term is often intended as an insult, but many turtling players take pride in their playstyle.

Unblockable

An attack that cannot be blocked. As you probably figured out, trying to block the attack will cause you to get hit instead. While technically all throws are unblockable, the term usually refers to setups that cause a move to hit you both high and low, or left and right, at the same time and bypass your ability to block in Idol Showdown.

Unreactable

An attack that is too fast for human beings to react to.

If you're a beginner, it might surprise you, but most fighting game attacks are unreactable! Online reaction tests will tell you the average human reaction time is around 250 milliseconds (about 15 frames), and virtually all of your standard normal attacks will have startup way under this theoretical reaction limit. This means even the world's best players will need to just block pre-emptively a lot of the time.

But it's even more difficult than that. Because it's so easy to overwhelm your mental stack while playing, reacting to 15 frames in a fighting game is almost impossible. In fact, even world class players will miss anti-airing jumps extremely regularly, and these jumps can take 45 frames! This is why most mixups a fighting game developer want you to try and react to will give you way more time than 15 frames to see it coming (usually 20-25 frames is common). Anything less than that is just extremely difficult.

Unsafe

A move that, when it is blocked, will let your opponent hit you for free before you can block or otherwise avoid their move. It is the opposite of being safe. You might also say the move is punishable. Moves that are unsafe are usually risky to use, but they tend to be pretty strong... maybe they're highly damaging, able to start a long combo, or invincible in some way.

Much like measuring whether a move is safe, the inner workings of being unsafe is a race between the block stun of a move and the recovery of a move. If the recovery takes a long time and the opponent leaves block stun much earlier, they'll have enough time to wind up a move and hit before the recovery completes. Knowing whether a move is safe or unsafe when it is blocked is one of the first steps to using frame data well.

Untech Time

The amount of hit stun you inflict on an airborne character. Often in these games, you will have to manually tech in the air (that is, recover and be able to take actions) once your hit stun runs out. If you don't tech, your opponent can keep comboing you, even though you could have prevented it. Untech time, therefore, is the amount of time where your opponent can't manually tech, and follow-up hits are guaranteed.

Uppercut

Yet another blanket term that almost always means a dragon punch.

Vanilla

The basic, first version of a game. Use it when you want to be clear which version you're talking about.

Vortex

An offensive sequence that starts with a very difficult to block mixup, which then causes a knockdown (usually) if it works and loops back into the same mixup over and over again. You might also hear this called a "blender". The important aspect here is that it loops into itself; if you guess wrong on the mixup, you should be put back into gross situations repeatedly until you guess right. If you can "escape" by getting hit in a way that doesn't lead back into the blender, it's not that good of a vortex.

Wakeup

The act of rising from the ground after you've been knocked down. Since you are usually invincible when you are on the ground, there's a specific period of time when you become hittable again; this moment in time and the decisions around it from both players comprise the "wakeup game".

The term "wakeup" usually focuses on the choices the defender makes as soon as they stand up. If they choose to do a risky reversal attack like a dragon punch, you might say "man, another wakeup DP from this guy?" Or, if they press buttons and keep getting counter hit, you might hear "you gotta stop mashing on wakeup". The term okizeme is very closely related, focusing more on the offensive choices.

Wall Bounce

Using a specific move to smack your opponent into the edge of the screen, causing them to bounce off of it back to the middle of the stage. Wall Bounce act as ways to extend a combo.

Whiff

An attack that neither hits nor is blocked. You swung and you missed entirely. Good players will often punish you for this, but it's not always bad — sometimes, whiffing fast attacks can be good for faking people out or controlling space.

Whiff Punish

A particular kind of punish that will hit an opponent after they have whiffed an attack, and are left recovering in the open. Some whiff punishes are possible on reaction, if the attack has lots of recovery or you have a strong read on when your opponent will try to attack. At other times, if you stand at a good range and use strong pokes, you can whiff punish fast attacks without needing a reaction. Whiff punishing is one aspect of playing footsies; walk closer to your opponent so they think it's fine to attack, then walk backwards and watch them swing and miss like a dummy.

Win Condition

A specific situation you're hoping to achieve with your character to maximize your chances of winning the round. Usually, the decisions you make should be informed by what your win conditions is. For many characters, this can simply be described by a position on the screen (for example, cornering your opponent), or by standing at a specific range where you have a world-class move that you should be using often. Characters that have great set play will be trying to land a specific knockdown to apply their scariest mixups. Some characters want to earn a specific resource that will greatly increase their power, so they might pass up on damage in order to build this resource so they can steamroll later. Knowing your character's win condition will help you come up with a more focused plan while fighting.

Window

A period of time. It's usually used to describe how much time you have to perform a certain action; for example, "you have a window of 5 frames to perform a reversal". It's related in some ways to buffering, but that usually implies a much more technical meaning than window, which can be used really generally if you want.

Winners Bracket

All the players who have not yet lost in a double elimination tournament, paired off and ready to fight. Lose, and you go down to the Losers Bracket. Try not to lose. You might hear the politically-correct term "Upper Bracket" used here sometimes, but it lacks the punch (and clarity) of Winners Bracket.

Zoner

A character whose main gameplan involves zoning their opponent to death. Zoners will have some powerful method of attacking from long range, whether it's a projectile or some far-reaching normals, and they'll often have a strong way to move backwards.

Even though they are stronger from long range, most zoners will not be helpless up close! They can rush you down, at least a little bit, if they're forced to play at close range. But it won't be their first choice, and they'll probably back up as soon as they can.

Zoning

The act of using long-range attacks to try and prevent your opponent from coming closer, typically by using long-distance normals, fireballs, and backwards movement. Generally, your goal is to frustrate your opponent into doing something stupid to close the gap, like jump, which is when you use a move like a dragon punch to gently place your fist into their face. Zoning can be seen as a mixture of offense and defense, since you are both trying to damage your opponent while preventing them from getting to a range where they can comfortably begin trying to attack you.

Most new players really hate dealing with zoners, usually expressing their frustration by calling you a fireball spammer and unplugging their console.

1-Frame Link

A link that only has a 1-frame window to succeed, the smallest possible time interval in a fighting game. You'll know you have a 1-frame link on your hands if the on hit advantage number for your first move matches the startup number for the second move (for example, a +5 on hit attack linking into a move that hits on the 5th frame).

In some games, it's as tight as it sounds; you'll just have to hit the link perfectly with a just frame input with no tricks to save you. But in most games, you'll get a bit of help to make the link easier. For example, there are input tricks like plinking and pianoing that will give you multiple shots to hit the window. And the game itself might have an input buffer which will save and apply your input on the correct frame if you hit it a little early. So despite how hard it may sound, hitting the exact 1-frame window isn't always necessary.

50/50

A mixup that has two possible primary options for the attacker, with each option requiring a different defensive action. Typically this is used to describe difficult to block cross-up attacks, which force you to choose between blocking left or right, or a mixup between a good low and overhead, which force you to choose between blocking high or low. Even being directly in your opponent's face can be a mixup between attacking and throwing; this is often called a "strike/throw" mixup.

They're named this way because it can feel like you have only a 50% chance of defending correctly. If you're struggling with these, you might check to see if any option selects exist in your favorite game that can help you deal with basic 50/50s, like fuzzy blocking or delayed throw teching.

Navigation

Idol Showdown (IS)
The Game	FAQ Glossary HUD & UI Virtual Frontier News & Updates
The Battle System	Controls System Resources Game Data
Idols	Aki Rosenthal Ayame Nakiri Botan Shishiro Coco Kiryu Fubuki Shirakami Korone Inugami Kureiji Ollie Pekora Usada Sora Tokino Suisei Hoshimachi
Collabs	Kanata Amane Amelia Watson Marine Houshou Iroha Kazama Risu Ayunda Mio Ookami Roboco Miko Sakura Kaela Kovalskia Kiara Takanashi Moona Hoshinova AZKi