Appendix talk:Glossary of fighting games

I Don't know if i'm wrong but i think SuperCancels were first included in Last Blade series bye!

Short Jumps
I was under the impression that SNK's Fatal Fury 3 predated The King of Fighters '96 by a year, which would mean FF3 originated the hop, and not KoF. I only bring this up because I noticed that no mention was made of how short jumps sometimes come with their own normals or alter the properties of other jump normals. On that note, I didn't see an entry for Super Jump, something KoF DID bring to the table AFAIK.

Attacking Taunts
Several characters(notably many female ones) have "attacking taunts" that can hit their opponents for pixel damage(1 point). Sometimes, this counts as a "Light attack victory", while other times, it has its own special victory symbol. Attacking taunts may have maximum priority, allowing them to interrupt even super moves. Characters known to have attacking taunts:

Chun-Li - Her "Gomen-ne" taunt hits them with her hand-wave.

Sakura Kasugano - When she points at the opponent.

Psylocke - When she says "Come on!" and gestures to the opponent to approach. This taunt is additionally notable for the fact that it does not end until the player moves or attacks(at least, in Children of the Atom. It also did block damage.).

Jin Saotome - In Marvel vs Capcom, hitting taunt will cause Jin's outfit to disappear, and he will start towelling off his back while dressed in a fundoshi. If the player keeps hitting punches while this is happening, Jin will continue towelling more rapidly until his back is set on fire. This move can hit some standing opponents, but is more likely to hit airborne opponents. It also grants various points during the "freeze-frame" portion of the game, depending on which frame of the animation is caught.

Tung Fu Rue - In Real Bout Fatal Fury Special, Tung has a similar taunt. When the C button is pressed, Tung will slap a towel onto his bald head. If it continues to be held, he will then proceed to remove his shirt and start towelling off. He gains about half a meter of power over the course of it.

Dan's "Autograph" attack in the Capcom VS series is also an attacking taunt of sorts. It only does 1 pixel of damage, but finishing the opponent off with it still gives the "Super Finish" background image.

Birdie - In the Street Fighter Alpha series, hitting taunt will cause him to flick open his switchblade, hitting the opponent with it. He can even use it in his Variable Combo.

Kobun - Doing QCF+Taunt will cause him to launch an explosive paper plane at the opponent.

Rolento - His taunt causes him to drop the world's weakest grenade on the ground towards his opponent.

Gouki - His taunt will cause him to stamp on the ground, hitting his opponent if they're next to him.

Sodom - When he taunts, he will bow towards his opponent, nicking them with the crescent on his helmet.

Should this get its own subsection? I haven't added them in because it seems like a lot of examples.

Dash
Something very similar to dashing existed in the DBZ Super Butoden series (first game was released in 1993 so before Vampire/Darkstalker). In that game you pressed L/R to move quickly forward or backward. I let you decide if this should be edited or not...

Title
Erm, isn't this appendix title grammatically impossible? It needs an s, right? Mglovesfun (talk) 18:39, 7 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. Mglovesfun (talk) 12:01, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Fighting Game Terminology
Bad caps, encyclopaedic. Might be useful as an appendix (if wikified properly). SemperBlotto 06:57, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * We do have Appendix:Glossary of fighting games, which has 130 sections. I'll merge the two, that way any good stuff can be retrieved from the page history. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:01, 5 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Already deleted; now striking. Was a bad entry title anyway. Equinox ◑ 16:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Guide is perfect, but it looks like it's missing a few stuff.
Like Shimmy, the concept of Fundamentals (i.e. maining a character like Ryu, Jago or Kazuya Mishima), etc.

I’m on it lol this page had a lot of stuff missing so I’m spending every day of my free time adding new terms, as well as editing the existing sections, adding or fixing any broken links to help people hop between terms easily, & also including specific examples across multiple games so that terminology will feel more universalized to players that only specialize in one game but want to branch out into others. I also have added an alphabetical table at the top so users can get to a certain section from the top without having to spend forever scrolling (this was a makeshift solution since I cannot figure out how to embed a search bar) DKThel (talk) 18:43, 7 July 2021 (UTC)

"academy stars"?
I just went down a small rabbit hole of fighting game articles/info, and ended up here. What does "academy stars is "black"" mean in the opening line? Based on context and the one other mention of "black" on the page, it seems like black might be a way to indicate the opponent, but that should be made clear (especially if there is a FGC convention about calling your character and the opponent specific colors). And there's *nothing* to indicate what the heck "academy stars" means. Felderburg (talk) 16:02, 17 October 2020 (UTC)


 * So someone just deleted it, but there's still a mention of "black" in the |blockstop entry. Is that a universal color thing, or is it specific to certain games? Felderburg (talk) 17:50, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Requests for cleanup/edit
I haven’t noticed this page until someone recently requested cleanup on the “Yomi” section, but for some reason every time I click the “Request for cleanup” page link that it gives me to deal with this, it takes me nowhere as if the page doesn’t actually exist. So I am making this page for that purpose, hope this helps? DKThel (talk) 01:26, 10 September 2021 (UTC)

Can anyone verify or claim this? Looking for whoever posted this:

“A user suggests that this English appendix be cleaned up, giving the reason: ‘Yomi .. is a Japanese term’ - if it's Japanese, then it's spelled differently (Kanji, Katakana, Hiragana).” DKThel (talk) 01:27, 10 September 2021 (UTC)


 * Doesn't it speak for itself? Japanese is written in different scripts. Compare Category:Japanese language at "Scripts", and even better with: "Writing system: Mixed scripts of Kanji (Chinese character) and Kana (Hiragana, Katakana)".  So in Japanese it would be something like, , . Or alternatively it would be an English term  borrowed from Japanese.  --Munchpile (talk) 07:38, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Okay I was not the person who originally wrote the definition for “yomi” and also don’t speak Japanese, so I suppose it doesn’t speak for itself entirely lol but I will look into editing it as soon as possible unless someone else gets to it first, right now there are certain sections that are completely empty that I am working on filling out first. DKThel (talk) 07:42, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

A discussion moved from User_talk:Equinox
While I understand that it may seem like an excess of examples for what should essentially amount to a simple glossary, as a member of the fighting game community I feel as though it is important to include them for a few reasons. Please hear me out in full before you make any final judgments or decisions, it would be greatly appreciated.

The first being the most straightforward, which is that fighting game players do not have very good resources to learn these sorts of things as is. Before I started editing this page, it had not been touched at all for a long times & was very barebones, with many very crucial terms being left out and many internal links not being connected, making navigation very difficult (I also added the alphabet link at the top so users could immediately jump between terms by clicking the corresponding letter), not to mention unchecked spelling and grammar errors. This is not to say there wasn’t plenty of useful information to build off of on here already, but when fighting game players Google “fighting game terms” and this is the first or second hit that comes up, it’s important that they get the full information they are seeking out and that there aren’t so many gaps and missing links.

To add to this point, Infil’s “Fighting Game Glossary” is also a fantastic tool for players to get quick, handy definitions for terms they are seeking to learn. However, it tends to be very brief and colloquial at times, which can cause it to lose some formality, and ergo a certain level of educational merit. It’s great that the page may include a definition for something more esoteric and not quite as common such as “Damage Over Time (DOT),” and it makes sense that it would in fact mention that this mechanic isn’t seen in as many fighting games, but when that sentence is followed by something to the effect of “...but some games may have it a little bit, so make sure you watch out for one of those sticky situations!” then that doesn’t exactly help players learn about the subtly nuanced differences in how this mechanic IS implemented in the select games that feature it.

Both of these tie into my other point, which I believe is the most crucial: the vast & distinct variance in how every game (& possibly different characters) implements or utilizes these terms/mechanics. No fighting game is exactly the same, and leaving select few examples to go off of, for new and uninformed players seeking to learn more about all these new fighting games that are being released (or old ones being re-released), or maybe even veterans seeking to learn a game outside of their own, leaving mostly just old Capcom and SNK examples to do all the heavy lifting in explaining terms to modern gamers just doesn’t suffice on its own, as fighting game players are more looking to see the commonality between each different fighting game’s mechanics, making all the terms clearer to understand in a genre where every game may define that term drastically differently, or even perfectly paralleled in other cases.

Nevermind the fact that this page’s information lacked crucial and relevant representation for games such as Mortal Kombat, Killer Instinct, Dragonball FighterZ, Skullgirls, Injustice, Under-Night and Melty Blood etc., (as well as platform fighters such as Super Smash Bros.) but in addition to these there are also many niche older fighting games and/or indie fighters that have pioneered certain mechanics that are starting to be seen more commonly in newer games. Unfortunately, like I alluded to in my first point, their resources to learn about many of these games & their mechanics overall are scarce and limited. However, as stated before, despite many of these terms being very esoteric and subjective to each specific game applying them, having many of these specific examples helps players to understand them more clearly since they can see the similarities and contrasts drawn out more tangibly, so [for one smaller example] they have no confusion as to whether a character they play in one game counts as a “Glass Cannon” or not because they are not left to guess & compare based on a brief description of Akuma. Not only is Akuma’s balancing history explained to help players understand the design philosophy better (with clickable links about things like “balance” or “archetypes” for players to learn more if they choose), but then they can see specific examples of this type of character design in a game they may play instead if they have never got to play Street Fighter before and cannot palpably understand what “glass cannon” would mean or feel like within the context of their own game’s characters.

I apologize for this long reply but I wanted to try and explain my points as best as I could in a way that highlights the practicality of having such abundant and specific examples. With the fighting game genre changing and evolving very rapidly, I feel as though these definitions should be updated and adapted to properly reflect the modern state of how fighting games are being designed, as well as provide more detail from the existing older games so new users/players can attain a better understanding of why & how many of these terms & mechanics came to be. DKThel (talk) 21:00, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

Sorry about the portion of enlarged text, I’m not sure how that happened DKThel (talk) 21:01, 25 September 2022 (UTC)
 * It's because the line began with a space character. I have removed it. 70.172.194.25 21:05, 25 September 2022 (UTC)

tl;dr some of the terms may fare better with longer definitions and more specific examples because fighting games are always changing & evolving & applying the terms differently, which could confuse people using this site to learn the term for their game. This page will get more traffic if more players click on it because it has more useful information to them DKThel (talk) 21:07, 25 September 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm not saying your information is useless. I'm saying we are a general-purpose dictionary. So when we define a word like "oxygen" we don't add 200 paragraphs of how to produce oxygen in a chemical laboratory. (Also: don't panic about things being deleted, because they can be recovered from history, if you ever find a proper place to put them, like a game-based wiki.) But we are never going to have huge documents about 100 video games where you can use a backward-flying-kick or something. That's not what we do. Also: learn concision. Equinox ◑ 04:04, 26 September 2022 (UTC)


 * Personally, I would like to merge your fighting-game appendix into our main entries, but there are a couple of complications (like attestability regarding WT:CFI etc.). I don't want to delete the meat of it (the actual words and definitions) but we don't really have room for tons of individual chat about Toshinden versus Mortal Kombat or whatever. Ciao. Equinox ◑ 04:06, 26 September 2022 (UTC)