This page serves as an introductory guide to the different mechanics, dinamics and terminology of fighting games in a compact package, and hopefully serve as a welcome to the Fighting Game Community. There's a relatively extense ammount of information needed to really understand the genre, so this page'll try to deliver a clear way to show it's depth starting from the importance of the simple act moving to universal mechanics present in most fighting games out there.

Certain terminology throughout the page will be highlighted like this; these terms are specific to the FGC so feel free to research them if you have any doubts about them!

We suggest reading the content of the guide in the presented order, although you can still navigate through the different sections to you heart's content using our handy page glossary.

As mundane as it may seem, the simple act of moving either horizontally or vertically is one of the most important skills to possess in the entire genre, a lot more so than 'combos' for example. The skill of moving in and out of the effective range of enemy attacks, as well as controlling the space and distance between you and your opponent is called footsies. This is most accentuated in games with fewer movement options and speed, in which we play a strict 'moving on the ground and occasionally jumping' kind of game (referred to as a more grounded game) such as Street Fighter or Tekken and less like Marvel VS Capcom or Dragon Ball FighterZ.

There's even been games created for the sole purpose of emphazising the footsie game, such as the adequately named Footsies:

Footsies gameplay showcase

The primary forms of movement are:

• Walking (→) forward / backwards.
• Dashing (→→) forward / backwards.
• Jumping (↑) forward / backwards / in place.
• Crouching (↓) in place.

All of these options contain specific properties to have in mind, for example many fighting games don't allow you to block attacks while you're in the air, so you have to be careful not to abuse the act of jumping at your opponent because you can be punished hard for it, as there are many moves specifically designed to deal with jump-ins (going in on your opponent by jumping at them).

As you could expect there are many other universal movement options in fighting games, such as double jumps or air-dashing, which generally appear in faster-paced games.

Resources are elements like the life bar, super bars and whatever tools a particular game has that you have to manage. These resources are finite ammounts of a game mechanic so you need to learn to either protect it as much as you can like with the life bar, or when to save or make use of them accordingly.

For example, in a game like Street Fighter V there's the Super meter, which is segmented in three parts commonly reffered to as bars which get filled by hitting your enemy or by getting hit by them. This is a primary example of resource conservation, because we can expend one of the individual segmented bars to use an improved version of our Special attacks (even giving them new properties to open combo possibilities), but we can also save our bar to expend the whole Super meter at once to unleash a Super attack (or Super for short) which when used correctly is undeniably a tide-changer for the entire match.

This very concept already teaches us about the "think before you spend" mentality, but we must also know to use our bar effectively in order to maximize it's efficiency. Since the Super Gauge has a limit to it, if it gets filled up and we're not using it at all we're sitting on a full resource bar and losing the bar we could be generating (would there be space to be filled up). It's important to know how to use our resources to push an advantage and when to save them to have more options later on in the match; this is a decision you'll have to make constantly in your matches, so the best way to get a firm grip of it is to play yourself!

These last examples are pretty much universal and appear in every game out there, but there's many other unique resources in games like the BURST gauge in Guilty Gear which let's you escape a combo being done to you and also serves as a 'get off me' move. Fighting games will always have something unique to them so you can look for whichever one you jive with.

The previous section served to explain what all those things on the screen are. Now going back to basics, every fighting game will have attacks called normals, these are your everyday kicks and punches done by just pressing a button. Depending on the game there can be different ammounts of buttons for normals, from two or three to six or even more, it'll depend on the game and more specifically the subgenre of fighting game.

Let's take DBFZ (Dragon Ball Fighterz) for reference. This game has three buttons for normals; light attacks, medium attack and heavy attacks, called lights, mediums and heavies and using the abbreviations L, M and H respectively. In fighting games these attacks are generally differentiated by two things; going from lights to heavies, attacks get progressively slower but gain damage and range. This tells us heavier buttons are riskier but landing them gives greater rewards.

Apart from normals done standing, crouching or in the air there're also command normals which are inputted by holding a specific direction and then pressing a normal button to get a different attack. For example, the character Cooler from DBFZ can press the heavy button to hit and drag his opponent forward, but he can also input forward plus heavy (→ + H) to stomp the ground in front of him for extra damage; this means his most common combos (commonly reffered to as bread and butter combos or BNBs) always have Cooler use his command heavy before his normal heavy, since they lead into each other optimizing damage done.

After normals come special attacks, or specials, which would be the fireballs and Shoryukens of fighting games that come out by pressing a combination of buttons in order. The input (↓ ↘ → + punch) is the most common and well known input for specials. These moves have the benefit of flexibility; they can range from a horizontal attack to fireballs or even teleports, and these usually are what define a character's identity and uniqueness. These usually work like normals in the sense that inputting these moves with light, medium or heavy buttons can change the same move's properties like changing the speed of a projectile or making an axe kick splat the opponent on the ground or not.

Lastly as we mentioned before in the resource section, you can use (or burn) part of your meter to improve a special and throw out the best version of that move. These generally have all of the benefits from lights and heavies being faster and dealing more damage, and most of the time they'll allow for combo extensions with new combo routes and new possibilities in gameplay.

Blocking is arguably the most important skill in any fighting game. Usually you only need to hold the direction opposite to your opponent (or 'backwards') and your character will block your adversary's attacks; a few games actually have a dedicated blocking button like the Mortal Kombat games. It's important to remember this option exists and to abuse it's strengths, as being patient and blocking attacks will naturally create openings in the opponents offense in which to take back your turn to attack. So it's established that simply being patient and blocking in your matches will rapidly improve your skills, as getting used to this aspect of the game undoubtedly separates great players from average ones.

That said, blocking often doesn't completely nullify an attack's damage. Many times a very small fraction of damage from the moves you block will still be inflicted to you; this is called chip damage. There are many moves in the genre (like Krillin's Destructo Discs in DBFZ) that purposely do a much higher ammount of chip damage than your average move which incentivizes dodging the attack or trying to interrupt it, as just blocking it can hurt quite a bit. There're even games that allow chip damage to K.O players!

So we've talked about the ups and downs of blocking, now we'll talk about it's main counter...

These are your best tool against an opponent who is dead set on blocking. Grabs (also known as throws) are a universal mechanic available to every character; it's a short range move that connects against grounded opponents no matter if they're blocking or not, after which you'll go into a brief animation of your character knocking down the opponent and leaving them in a hard knockdown state, which means they'll be laying on the ground and will have to get up giving you the chance to get in the opponent's face and apply pressure during their wake-up (meaning their 'getting up' animation). The act of applying pressure to an opponent on wake-up is called okizeme, or oki for short; this term is thrown around a lot in the FGC so we're letting you know what it means in advance!

That was a lot of terminology in a small paragraph (sorry) but it helps us to define the core game of rock, paper, scissors between the established main mechanics of fighting games:

• Grabbing beats Blocking
• Blocking beats Attacking
• Attacking beats Grabbing

This being said, there's a couple more ways to counter grabs in fighting games. We've said at the beggining of this section that grabs connect against grounded opponents, so jumping is a natural way to counter to grabs. And the most used way of countering grabs in many games like SFV is to tech the grab, meaning inputting your own grab at the same time as your opponent which will essentially cancel the grab.

Grab teching showcase in SFV

Lastly, grabs can also be extra special moves in a characters kit, giving the character an extra way to throw your opponent; these are called command grabs! As the name suggests you'll need to input a button combination like any other special move to use them, and they are usually a bit slower than regular grabs but can have more special properties than the universal grab everyone has access to, such as being un-techable. It's a very valuable tool to have in a character's kit, and it can even be defined by it.

We've been mentioning attacks having different properties for a while now, so it's time we list a few of these to get a clearer picture of what this means:

• Mids

Attacks that connect with both standing and crouching opponents, and can also be blocked both ways.

• Lows

Attacks that hit low meaning they need to be blocked while crounching, otherwise they'll connect. Pretty much all crounching normals will have this property but there are many standing normals that hit low as well.

• Highs

Attacks that hit high meaning they whiff against crouching opponents, but can be good for hitting people out of the air.

• Overheads

Attacks that hit in a downward arc and connect against enemies crouch-blocking. These need to be blocked standing.

• Anti-Airs

Generally specials, these attacks hit in an upwards arc, primarily used as the go-to option for hitting peolpe trying to jump at you. Also used as reversals to deny an opponent's pressure.

• Air-OK

Attacks that can be used both in the ground and in the air.

• Unblockables

Attacks that cannot be blocked, period. These moves'll have to be dodged (backdashing or jumping) or the opponent needs to be interrupted during it.

• Armored



Attacks that are fully armored or have ticks of armor.

Normally hitting someone during their attacks start-up will interrupt them and our hit will connect. In this case our damage will still be dealt but we won't interrupt the opponent's attack, leaving us wide open. These moves can either have ticks of armor (meaning they'll tank as many hits as they have ticks), or they can be fully armored so the move has infinite ticks of armor.

• Guard Point

This property is practically the same as armor, but hitting someone during the start-up of these moves won't damage them whatsoever.

• Invincibility

Attacks with invincibility make it so you can't be hit by any attack during it's start-up and/or duration. This property is present in many Anti-Airs and Supers that can be used as reversals off of wake-up.

Theses are just a few of the different properties present in fighting games, though they are some of the more relevant ones.

Supers are like the ultimate moves of fighting games, you do them by inputting a specific command and they require you to spend some sort of resouce to do them, so you'll first need to build up to it. In SFV, characters get one Super which requires you to dump all of your meter to use them, and in tag-team games like Marvel vs Capcom or DBFZ you fill up and store multiple bars and use different ammounts of them depending on which super you want to use.

In DBFZ there are lvl 1 supers and lvl 3 supers, which cost one bar and three bars respectively. On top of this many supers can be upgraded on start-up by using more bars, and some of them will let you waste ALL of your bar on them. All of these factors add up to a game with a seven bar meter which is beyond excessive, but the game is designed around it!

Supers are like specials on steroids, given that they are even more flexible. They can be beams, projectiles, a flurry of attacks, grabs or even utility supers that can really go crazy with what they can do like allowing flight, healing you or in some fringe cases even switching your character with your opponent's.

To close this segment out, we'll leave you with a video of one of DBFZ's lvl 7 supers, Tien's Neo Tribeam:

With this guide we've taken a look at all of the most common or mainstay mechanics in practically every fighting game. There's a game for everybody, and fighting games are no exception; if you've found this guide interesting, helpful or even fun, then the only thing that's left is to find the game for you! Experiment and play around to find the game and character that best describes you.

There are a lot of different concepts and terms that didn't make it into this introductory guide so keep researching and most importantly, have fun playing and practicing.

We thank you for reading this guide and wish you the best of luck out there!