It’s getting into fighting game tournament season, with CEO on the horizon this weekend and then the holy grail of FGC events, EVO, following soon after in early July. This means fighting game coverage will start to dominate Twitch and many people will start watching competitive fighting games for the first time. While fighting games are much easier to comprehend on a base level compared to a MOBA, keep hitting someone until they have no health, there is a lot of in-depth terminology when it comes to understanding high level play. So, this guide hopes to give you a basic definition for many of the terms you will hear commentators use when casting tournament matches. This will mainly cover traditional fighting games like Street Fighter and Tekken, so expect a guide on Smash Bros related terms in the near future. Much of the terminology is universal but there is enough differing lingo in Smash that it deserves a separate guide.

+/- on block: Being +/- on block determines how quickly you can act after an opponent blocks one of your moves. When you hit an opponent who is blocking, you will put them in a state known as blockstun. This means your opponent can’t do anything except continuing blocking, meaning they have to wait until you finish attacking before they can do anything. This is where being +/- on block comes in. So, you may have a move which is +4 on hit and +2 on block, meaning that if your move hits a non-guarding opponent, you will recover 4 frames before your opponent comes out of hitstun and if it hits a guarding opponent, you will recover 2 frames before your opponent comes out of blockstun. You can also have it where a move is maybe -4 on block, meaning you have to wait 4 frames before you can act, giving your opponent 4 frames in which to throw out a move.

Armour: Armour is a quality which is added to some moves, which allows a character to sustain a certain number of hits before their move is interrupted. Usually, armour is limited to one hit but you can get moves which have super or even hyper armour, allowing them to soak up more hits until they are interrupted. A character still takes damage if their move has armour, they just aren’t interrupted.

Bodied: The act of getting absolutely destroyed. It’s like you are being put away in a body bag.

Bread and Butter (BnB): These are the standard combos for a character which players will fall back on, due to their efficiency and versatility.

Buffering: Buffering is where you press the inputs for a certain attack when you are in a state where the attack won’t come out. It helps simplify complex inputs by having you buffer all the inputs before you can act again, and then just pressing a single button as soon as you are able to act to have the attack come out.

Chip damage: Chip damage is a form of lesser damage which is dealt to a player while blocking. Mortal Kombat is a series where players suffer from a lot of chip damage, which forces them to make the decision between staying in block and continuing taking damage, or trying to attack and stop the chip. If a commentator says that someone is being chipped out, that means they are in danger of dying due to chip damage.

Command grab: This is a grab which is not executed via the standard grab input. They also cannot be teched, usually leading to massive damage if they land.

Crossups: A crossup is a move which will hit behind the enemy’s guard, leading into a combo. A move like Ryu’s jumping heavy kick is a move with crossup properties, hitting behind the enemy on the ground and leading into a combo. While crossing up an opponent can be a good mixup, the two are not mutually exclusive. It is quite easy to see a crossup coming.

Downloading: Downloading is the act of perfectly adapting to your opponent’s play style and then coming back to destroy them. People will often say that the download is complete when a player gets a handle on the other player’s style and proceeds to beat them convincingly.

DP (Dragon Punch): A DP or Dragon Punch is usually an invincible uppercut of some sort, which is used to either catch the opponent off guard or to hit an opponent out of the air after they jump towards you. The name comes from Ryu’s Shoryuken which literally means Dragon Punch. It is a high risk, high reward move, as it results in short term invincibility and your opponent being knocked to the floor if it hits, but it will leave a player wide open if they miss.

EX: An EX move is an enhanced version of a special move, at the cost of a single piece of your special or EX gauge. EX moves may hit more times than the standard move, be safer on block or do additional damage.

FGC: Acronym which stands for fighting game community.

Footsies: If you hear a commentator talking about someone who is good at footsies, this means they are good at winning the neutral game and establishing control in the match. Footsies is the phase of a match where players are scoping each other out, usually moving in and out of the range of a sweeping attack, in order to either land an attack or bait their opponent into attacking, so they can swing the momentum in their favour.

Frame Advantage: Frame Advantage is where you have more frames to input an action before the opponent can do something. Say your opponent had a move that had 6 frames of startup before the hitbox came out, that means you have 6 frames in which to do something before you are hit by the opponent’s move. So, if you had a move with a 4 frame startup, you would hit the opponent before their move came out and thus have frame advantage. This is a massive part of mastering a character in a fighting game, as you need to learn which of your moves beat out your opponent’s.

Frame trap: This is linked into the whole notion of frame advantage. Sometimes, a player will knowingly leave gaps in a string of blocked attack in order to bait the defending player into attacking with an unsafe move. The attacker’s frame advantage means that the defender’s attack will lose, allowing them to go into a combo.

Fraud: A fraud is someone who talks a big game and who cannot back it up. A player will usually be called a fraud if they play a powerful character then proceed to get destroyed by someone who plays a much worse character.

Getting exposed as a fraud. The greatest dishonour within the FGC.

Hit confirm: A hit confirm is a method by which a player can discover whether a combo is safe or not. By throwing out a move which is safe on block for example, a player can ‘confirm’ in their mind whether they should continue their combo or disengage in order to give themselves enough time to react to an attack from the defending player.

Hitbox: A hitbox is simply an area in which an attack can damage an enemy. Hitboxes will often match up with the animation of a character so if someone is kicking, the hitbox will be along the person’s leg. You can also get disjointed hitboxes which is where a hitbox is not attached directly to a character, so at the end of a sword for example. This usually means that a person can attack with this hitbox and not get hurt if it hits an enemy’s move.

Hurtbox: A hurtbox is an area where a player can be damaged by an enemy attack. As with the previous example, if someone uses a kicking move, the hurtbox will usually line up with the hitbox, meaning you can hit the player’s leg to do damage, as well as it doing damage to you.

Hype: Excitement. If something or someone is hype, it usually gets the crowd going and everyone invested in the match. Grand Finals are usually pretty hype.

Matchups: Matchups are often the basis for tier lists, as characters with many favourable matchups are regarded as top tier. Matchups are regarded as good or bad based on factors like speed, ability to get in close, ability to counter the opponent’s specials, strength and so on. Matchups are often talked about in ratios like 7:3 or 65:35, which is what the ratio of wins and losses would be if two players of equal skill played these exact matches a set number of times.

Mirror match: A match where both players play the same character.

Mixups: Commentators will often ask the question ‘what is the mixup?’ after a player gets put into a knockdown. A mixup is exactly how it sounds, a sequence of moves which is meant to confuse your opponent into blocking the wrong way or doing something ill-advised, in order to follow up into a combo. Sometimes, the best mixup on a player in doing no mixup at all.

Neutral game: This is the section of a match where both players are trying to turn a neutral situation into one which is advantageous to them. Good fighting game players must have mastery of the neutral game, as this determines whether you can actually hit your opponent and go into a combo. It’s all well and good knowing loads of flashy combos and mixups but if you can’t get a hit, you’re going to lose.

Option select: This is where you trick the game’s input detection in order to give you the best option based on whatever command you just did an input for. Picking the correct option select is great for mixing up your opponents.

Overhead: This is a move which hits high to low on your opponent, forcing the defender to block high in order to defend against the move. A player will usually throw out an overhead to hit a player who is continually blocking low.

Pop off: The act of excessive celebration after winning a match. Here is an example of one of the best pop offs in fighting game history.

Read: Reading an opponent is where you successfully guess what your opponent is going to do before they do it. A good read can turn the tide of the entire match and certain characters like Ganondorf in Super Smash Bros, require the player to have excellent reading ability in order to do well with the character.

Runback: The act of getting a rematch with a player. Runbacks can usually be affairs filled with salt, as one player may try to gain redemption after getting bodied.

Rushdown: Rushdown is the complete opposite of zoning, where a player will do everything they can to get in your face and keep attacking. They will force a player into uncomfortable situations where they will be pressured into doing an unfavourable input, resulting in massive damage. Rushdown characters, like Ibuki in USF4, thrive on keeping a player on the back foot and constantly walking them back into the corner.

Safe/unsafe moves: Commentators will often label these moves either safe or unsafe based on the amount of recovery a player must endure in order to move again. An unsafe move will leave the attacker waiting for ages until they can move again while a safe move will give an attacker time to either block, throw out another move or disengage from the situation.

Salt: The feeling or behaviour that someone exhibits when they are getting bodied. It will result in smashed controllers, people rage quitting games and generally acting like a sore loser. Making someone salty is one of the greatest feelings in a fighting game.

Always expect salt at a fighting game tournament.

Startup, Active and Recovery frames: Every attack in a fighting game follows the same pattern of startup, active and recovery. Startup is exactly as it sounds, the period of the attack animation where no hitbox is being projected. Active is where you move projects a hitbox and an enemy can be hit by it. Recovery is where your hitbox has gone and your character is returning to a neutral position. Commentators will often point out high recovery moves, as these are usually more damaging but leave a player in a compromising position, as they have to wait a long time before they can move again.

Tech/Technical: A tech (short for technical) is a way of cancelling the effects of certain moves. For example, if a move knocks a player to the ground, you can press a button upon landing to get up immediately or to roll away from an opponent. Certain moves put players into a hard knockdown, meaning you can’t tech out of them and you cannot tech the end of a throw. However, you can do something called a throw tech, which is where you input the grab command at the same time as your opponent, breaking out of the throw and pushing you away from your attacker.

Tiers: The ethereal measure by which all characters in fighting games are ranked, based on their attributes in game. In tournaments, you will mostly see top tier characters which are ones who are regarded as having the best attributes in the game. Low tier characters are ones which either have rubbish attributes or require a lot of work to even be viable in tournament play.

Trade: Both players get hit by each other’s attacks, usually when hitboxes collide. If one of the clashing attacks does way more damage than the other, it’s usually an unfavourable trade.

Wakeup: Doing something on wakeup means you do a move as soon as you get up off the ground.

Whiff: Whiffing is where you miss a move entirely. A whiff punish is where you successfully attack an opponent after they have missed a move and then lead into a combo.

Zoning: Zoning is a form of play, where a player will use a lot of projectile moves in order to keep an attacker out of range to land an attack. A character like Morrigan in UMvC3 is a great example of a zoner, as she relies on using her projectiles to not only keep constant pressure on the opponent by dealing constant chip damage, but also keeping them away so they cannot counterattack.

Hopefully, this pretty exhaustive list of terms will get you up to speed on most fighting game coverage. As I said, most of these terms are universal but I will do a special list for the Smash Bros series, seeing as there is quite specifically different terminology in that series and it is the one I know the most about. If you want a quick primer about fighting games in general, make sure to check out this guide by Shoryuken.com and make sure to tune into CEO this weekend for loads of fighting game action!