Street Fighter 6 Terms Every Player Should Know

Street Fighter 6 Terms, Acronyms, and Slang

Having trouble keeping up with all the Street Fighter 6 terms out there?

This guide aims to cover the most common ones you’ll likely to hear in the community to give you a better understanding.

Our list will be continually updated over time so please do let us know if we missed anything in the comments below!

Use Cntrl + F if you’re looking for a specific term or want to navigate quickly.

Street Fighter 6 Terminology

Advantage

• Considered to be in advantage when your frame data allows you to act first.

Approach

• How you move towards or close the distance on your opponent in order to deal damage while attempting to receive no damage.
• Universal approach options are walking, dashing, jumping, and drive rushing.

Bait

• Moving or positioning your character in a way that encourages your opponent to commit to an unsafe offensive or defensive option.
  • Example: Walking into an opponent’s attack range, then quickly walking back outside of their range before they react causing them to whiff an attack you can then punish with your own.

Block Strings

• Attacks that connect into one another even on block and do not allow the defender to attack in between.

Block Stun

• The state of being unable to move or attack after successfully blocking an attack.

Burn out

• The state of having used up all available Drive Gauge resources.
• Unable to perform any actions that require Drive Gauge.
• Experience extra frames of block stun.

Cancellable Moves

• Attacks that can be canceled into special moves and Super Arts.
• Cancel means the attack does not go through its normal recovery frames, but instead instantly ends allowing the special move or Super Art to come out before the opponent is able to recover and defend.

Conditioning

• Choosing repeating options in your attack or defense with the intention of causing your opponent to think you will continue to choose the same options, then choosing a counter to their counter option.
• Your opponent becomes cautious of your offensive/defensive choices and you exploit their caution with your aggression.
  • Example: Throughout the match you have been throw looping your opponent. Next time you follow up your first throw with a meaty to counter their throw escape since you know they have been conditioned to be afraid of eating damage from throw loops.

Confirms

• Attacks that can be verified to have hit the opponent and were not blocked, before canceling into a special move or Super Art.
• Most characters have a cancellable target combo which gives a player sufficient time to react after visually verifying their attack hit or was blocked.
  • Example: The first 2 hits of your combo were blocked but you still continued to input a Super Art anyway. You did not “hit confirm” the Super Art.

Corners

• Corners are not neutral because the player in the corner has limited movement options (i.e. cannot move or jump backwards).
• The cornered player is also susceptible to corner specific combos which often have much greater damage potential than midscreen combos.
• Getting hit by a Drive Iimpact in the corner places you into, “crush state,” allowing for a free high damage follow up from the opponent.

Cross-ups

• Moves that begin on one side, but hit on the opposite.
• Cannot be blocked by holding back and instead must hold forward to black.
  • Example: Luke can correctly space his jumping medium kick to cross-up the opponent and successfully hit if the opponent continues blocking backwards.

Crush

• Occurs when an attacker uses Drive Impact against an enemy that is close to the corner, causing them to crumple and be vulnerable to a followup.
  Also known as a “wall splat”.

Disadvantage

• Considered to be in disadvantage when your frame data allows the opponent to act first.

DP

• Abbreviation for “Dragon Punch,”
• Often used to refer to all Shoryuken type uppercut or vertical movement special moves.
• Usually [forward – down – diagonal-down -forward (called z-inputs) ] but DP also can refer to charge input special moves such as Guile’s flash kick.

Fierce

• Used interchangeably for a “Heavy” attack (aka “Fierce punch/ kick”).

Footsies

• When a player uses the term footsies they are primarily referring to being in neutral and attempting to poke, bait, and whiff punish their opponent. Each player attempts to approach their opponent, in a way that keeps their own character outside of their opponent’s max poke range (unable to be hit) while simultaneously moving close enough to connect their own attack with their opponent.
• Synonymous with the entire Street Fighter series as footsies have been fundamental to the gameplay of every Street Fighter title.
• Called “footsies” because two characters exchanging crouching kicks back and forth with neither player landing a successful hit looks like they are teasing each other with a game of footsies.
• Not only entire guides, but an entire series of guides can be made only focusing on how to play footsies in Street Fighter 6

Frame Data

• Refers to the startup animation, active hitbox, and recovery of every move.
• Active hitbox refers to the frames during which a move can damage the opponent.
• Startup animation is how many frames of animation before the active hitbox begins.
• Recovery is how many frames after the active hitbox and before the character can begin blocking, or starting a new move.
• Street Fighter 6 operates at 60 FPS (frames per second) meaning a frame is 1/60th of a second.
• An attack’s frame data changes depending on whether it whiffs, gets blocked, or lands successfully.

Hard Read

• Predicting what your opponent is going to do and countering it, before they have actually begun the option.
• Generally hard reads are unsafe options if the read was incorrect.
  • Example: You got a hard read when you jump anti-aired an opponent’s wakeup jump by jumping just before they do, and inputting an air attack first. If they do not jump, however, you have given your opponent a free opportunity for a high damage punish.

High/low mix ups

• Varying between attacks that can only be blocked high and attacks that can only be blocked low.

Hitbox

• Fighting games do not register the exact character model interactions to determine what attack attempts make contact with a defender. Instead, interactions are based off of block shapes within or around the character models that determine what areas of an attack hits.
• Street Fighter games do not have the ability to turn on a hitbox viewer. Due to the importance of hitboxes, however, community made mods exist for just about every Street Fighter title which displays hitboxes.

Hurtbox

• The block shapes within or around character models that determine what areas can receive damage at any given moment.
• A character model’s attack animation can overlap with the defending character model but the game does not recognize the overlap as making contact if the hitbox and hurtbox do not make contact.

Juggle State

• Certain attacks that hit a character into the air, or while in the air, allow the player to continue to land attacks on the airborne opponent.
• “Getting juggled” happens when a player gets hit over and over by attacks that keep the character in a juggle state.

Lame

• A gameplan or playstyle where you play defensively and safely to force the opponent to be the aggressor or win by timing them out.

Meaty

• Inputing a normal move on a knocked down opponent where the active hitbox frames have already begun by the time the opponent wakes up.
• Meaty attacks stuff throws and non-invincible wake up attacks since the active hitbox already exists in the first frame the waking up character can begin any move.

Mid-screen

• When both players are fighting in a position away from the two corners similar to the starting position.
• Each player can be positioned at the two edges of the screen and still be considered to be fighting in mid-screen as long as neither is near a corner of the stage.

Mix-ups

• Varying your offensive and defensive options in order to prevent your opponent from correctly guessing and punishing the options you chose.
  • Example: A player who constantly wakes up with a Overdrive DP and keeps having their attack blocked then punished, has NO mix-up game.

Neutral

• Occurs anytime during a round where both players’ characters are in a standing position and in mid-screen.
• Called “neutral” because both players are considered to have equal opportunity to damage their opponent and begin their offense with neither player 1 nor player 2 having an advantage in frame data or position.
• Every match begins in neutral.
• A player’s understanding of how to attack and defend in neutral is often referred to as their “neutral game.”

Option selects

• Inputs that cover two or more options.
  • Example: A commonly used, “option select,” in Street Fighter 6 is to very slightly delay your tech throw attempt while blocking when waking up.
    • If the opponent goes for a grab, you will safely tech it.
    • If the opponent goes for meaty, you will safely block it and your grab will not come out while your character is in a blocking state.

Poke

• Primarily refers to normal moves performed with single button inputs.
• Pokes are often single attacks used to test your opponent and gain information on how they react to your attacks.
  Example: crouching medium punch, standing heavy kick, etc.

Reactable / un-reactable moves

• Moves with long startup animations are generally considered to be reactable for the opponent if they are expecting it.
• Drive impacts are a very commonly used reactable move but can still land successfully if the opponent is caught off guard.
• Attacks with short start-up animations such as light and medium normals, are considered unreactable because even if they expect the attack, the move comes out so quickly no opponent would have enough time to reactively input a counter option.
  • Example: Crouching normal moves have 4-6 frame start-up animations, giving the defender an impossible 1/15th of a second to react.

Raw

• Throwing out an unsafe attack while the opponent is just standing there.
• Not confirming that an opponent is unable to defend against your unsafe attack before executing.
  • Example: While both players are standing in neutral, one player performs a Drive Impact leaving the opponent free to react with a counter option.

Safe / Unsafe

• Attacks that leave you at a frame disadvantage and in a position to be punished during their recovery.
  • Example: Full screen fireballs are generally considered safe and cannot be easily punished, but throwing out a fireball while right up against your opponent is extremely unsafe

Shimmy

• After knocking down the opponent, the attacker walks back and forth, while the opponent is waking up.
• Fundamental to wake up mix-ups.
  • Example 1: Shimmying forward then backwards can be used to bait out an unsafe wake-up option such as a whiffed throw tech attempt, or wake-up DP
  • Example 2: Shimmying backwards then forwards can be used to trick an opponent into thinking you are choosing a defensive option then catching them off guard with a grab.

Stuffed

• An attack being canceled during its startup animation due to being hit by the opponent’s move.

Throw loops

• Throws that position the attacker in close enough range to immediately throw the opponent again upon their wake up.

Wake up

• The animation of a character standing back up from any move that placed them into a knocked down state.
• Extremely disadvantageous due to the standing attacker being able to freely position themselves and choose from nearly endless attack options while the character waking up is forced to react or guess.
• Unless hit with a “hard knock down,” you have the option to stand back up with either a standard standing recovery or a backwards recovery (performed by pressing any two buttons on knockdown)

Whiff Punish

• Reacting to an opponent’s missed attack (referred to as “whiffed”) with your own attack before they are able to recover and block your attack.
• Important to note that attacks in Street Fighter extend a character’s hitbox forward, so attacking immediately after your opponent whiffs a move allows your move to hit at a range greater than its own standard range.

Zoning

• Using pokes or projectiles in order to prevent an opponent from closing distance on you or play in their optimal range.
• Some characters such as JP, Guile and Dhalsim excel at zoning due to their long range moveset and projectiles.
  • Example: Opponent attempts to walk forward to attack, you shoot them with a fireball. Opponent attempts to jump over your fireball to attack, you knock them back with an anti-air move.

Thanks for reading! For more guides, check out the rest of our Street Fighter 6 blog.