Beginner to Intermediate Fighting Game Mechanics - Frames, Links, Juggles, and Combos

Together with Cancels, Links and Juggles make up the usual parts of Combos in most fighting games. Briefly, I would like to explain something I should have explained in the cancels article:

In fighting games, timing is important. Time in fighting games is measured mainly by animation frames or "frames" for short. Frames are the tiny pieces of animation that build up the motions that you see on screen when you play games. You can look at this like how a cartoon works. Cartoons are thousands of drawings placed quickly after each other to make it look like things are moving. Modern fighting games are animated in 60 frames per second. Most fighting game animations take less than a second to take place. Sometimes characters are invulnerable during parts of the animation also for as little as 1/12th of a second. Humans can't count in these divisions of time so it is helpful to understand how many animation frames things to take to occur. Measuring attacks and actions in frames solves part of this problem. If you know how long an animation or part of an animation takes place, you can mathematically solve how to react to an attack. Frames could take up an entire other article but beginners only need to know so much about them.

An attack is always composed of 3 stages regarding frames. There is the startup, active, and recovery. The startup is how many frames it takes until the attack begins the active frames. The active frames are the frames in which the attack can hurt the opponent. The recovery frames are how long it takes for the attack animation to end. After the recovery frames, the character can perform another action unless they are canceled.When it comes to attacks, the startup and recovery frames are generally the most important. When an attack is called "slow," "fast," or "safe" and "unsafe" they are referring the the frames, and it is usually referring to either the startup or recovery. Active frames are also important, but for different reasons outside of this article.

Links are the when you perform an attack after the entire animation of one attack ends, but before the opponent is able to react again. To explain why this happens, I need to explain another important mechanic of fighting games. When you connect an attack with the opponent in fighting games, they go into an animation of being hit for a moment. During this animation, the opponent cannot attack or block. Sometimes it looks like they have been hurt or the stumble a bit or sometimes they just flinch. This is called hitstun. When hitstun lasts longer than the full animation of your attack, you can perform another attack before the opponent even has the option to react. So another way to look at links is an attack that hits the opponent during hitstun but is not a cancel. The window that links can be performed can be as little as 1frame to as much as 7 frames or longer (although longer would be pretty rare.) Also, for beginners, don't be intimidated by things like "4 frame links."  As you play more fighting games, you'll learn that 4 frames feels like forever and that 1 frame links and 2 frame links are the only really difficult ones. Even then, 1 frame links are not that difficult to pull off. The difficulty is doing it consistently and that only requires practice.

Juggles are when you performan attack that puts the opponent in the air or keeps the opponent in the air and you are able to follow up with more attacks. Juggle combos are done when the attacking character is on the ground for most of the combo. When the opponent is in this state, it is called juggle state. During juggle state, the opponent can be hit by another attack that puts them in juggle state sometimes. In many games, you only have the option of juggling the opponent for a few attacks, in other games (usually older ones) you can actually keep the opponent in juggle state until they are Knocked Out. Juggles can also happen from bouncing the opponent off of the ground in some games. While the opponent is in juggle state, the attacks that can hit that can be either links or cancels. Sometimes, you have a fairly wide window to follow up with attacks while the opponent is in juggle state. It is important to note that juggle state is a specific state that only exists in certain games. People might get juggle combos confused with aerial combos, but they are two different things.

Combos are when you perform a series of attacks or hit the opponent multiple times before they are out of hitstun. How someone does this is by using cancels, links, and juggles. The purpose of fighting games (and competitive multiplayer games) is to beat the opponent before they can beat you. In most fighting games, you do this by depleting the opponents life bar first. Therefore, you want to attack them and prevent them from attacking you back. The absolute best way to do this is by using combos because it completely prevents them from attacking you back or blocking. As I said before, a character cannot do anything while in hitstun. So if you keep them in hitstun while attacking them, they can only take damage. In games like Street Fighter, you can win by shooting fireballs and poking them with normal attacks. However, it is not likely that the opponent won't hit you with an attack of their own. If you combo them, you can maximize the impact of each hit you land on them. You can do more damage than what your simple pokes would have done. This is why combos are important. Combos can be composed of 2 hits up to over 100 hits in some games. Sometimes, combos can be done by inputting one attack command that happens to hit multiple times. Combos, in some games, can be done on the ground OR in the air.

For some readers, this stuff might seem completely obvious, but this is for the people that just don't understand fighting games. Feel free to ask questions if I'm not explaining things enough. I'll be writing more advanced articles in the future.