Beginner Fighting Game Mechanics- Cancels

Im going to slowly compile information on most fighting game's advanced mechanics. this will mostly be a beginners primer to how fighting games function. there is a lot of stuff in fighting games that is not intuitive to the average game player and that's no good. these little articles should help people learn how to play better.

Cancels- canceling is inputting one command, an attack usually but other commands apply, and inputting another command to stop part or all of your characters animation from taking place.

The most common type of cancel is special canceling. This is when you input an attack and quickly input a special move to stop the recovery frames of the original attack from taking place. The most common combo that uses special canceling would be Ryu's crouching medium kick to Hadoken. The hadoken comes out before Ryu brings his foot back to neutral from the medium kick.

The second most common type of cancel is the chain cancel. Chain canceling is canceling the recovery frames of one normal into another normal move. A common example of this would be in Street Fighter, most characters can chain cancel crouching light punch, standing light punch, or crouching light kick into each other. This type of cancel plays a larger role in other games besides Street Fighter, but it is used in nearly all modern fighting games. In particular, chain canceling is key in Marvel vs Capcom Games, Blazblue, Guilty Gear, and Vampire Savior to name a few.


The other two types of canceling that are extremely common are Dash Cancels and Jump Cancels. These are used in limited ways in many fighting games, but are extremely important in some. Dash canceling is done by inputting a dash to cancel the recovery frames of an attack or sometimes to cancel some hits of a multi-hitting attack. Dash Canceling can also have a second function of catching up to an opponent after an attack that knocks them further away than usual. Jump canceling is canceling the recovery frames of an attack into a jump. This is usually done after an attack that pops the opponent into the air (an attack like this is usually called a launcher.) The jump cancel allows you to follow them into the air to perform an air combo. This aspect mainly applies to games like Marvel, BlazBlue, or Guilty Gear. Super Jump Canceling is a related mechanic that requires you to cancel the recovery frames of an attack into a super jump. Super Jumps (sometimes known as High Jumps) are typically performed by pressing down right before you press up. Super Jump canceling can sometimes be canceled before your character leaves the ground into a special move, but this would probably be for another article. Super Jump cancels are also used to continue combos where a regular jump is not adequate enough to reach the opponent.

That's it for this article. The next article will be on Links and Combos.