If you just watch Evo when it comes around every year, you’re missing out on the true joy of North America’s fighting game scene. Seth Killian’s commentary is fantastic and it would be great if he had the time to make it out to more events and offer some commentary. But he’s a professional. You can understand what he’s saying. The same is gloriously untrue of the commentary which graces Teamspooky’s stream. Below is a quick guide to making sense of what the hell they’re on about. Although some of these are general fighting game terms, they’re all ones I had to look up at some point.
Slang
Blow up: Doing a lot of damage, being in control of the match or having a lot of people showing up to an event.
Clean: Playing well and executing combos.
Dirty: Playing nervously and making risky attacks. Dropping combos.
Free: A person who is statistically unlikely to win a high level match.
Drop the Soap: Drop a combo.
Hype: Just means excitement, but is generally used without any regard for grammar.
Respect: Assuming your opponent will counter risky play and thus not taking those risks. A player who doesn’t respect their opponent will either throw them off balance or get beaten badly.
Body: Getting in close to someone and beating them down.
Guard Crush Special: Using Balrog’s overhead punch randomly to catch your opponent off guard and throw him off.
Justin: Justin Wong, who dominates the scene in both SSF4 and MVC3 at the moment.
Stream Monsters: The horrible beings that watch the Spooky stream. They live in the mythical Stream Land.
Justing Wong at the World Cyber Games.
More General Fighting Terms which Confused Me
Reset: In most modern fighting games, hits in combos do less damage the larger the combo is. A reset is when you deliberately stop the combo and attempt to start another one, in the hope that your opponent will go on blocking the combo. This second combo will be doing full damage again.
Frame Trap: Delaying an attack in a string by a few frames, to try and trick your opponent to stop blocking and try a counter attack. You would counter attack because you think your opponent has choked and dropped the combo, when really their attack is going to get through since they started it only a little bit late.
Hitting Buttons: Trying to attack from a position where its more normal to block and getting punished for it. This is usually when a player is getting up or when an opponent has an Ultra combo which punish any attack from the current range.
Hit Confirm: Using a light attack to check whether your opponent is blocking before going into something heavier, since the light attack can be punished less than a heavier one. Here’s a great tutorial on Youtube.
Things people say when they’re talking about Marvel
DHC: Delayed Hyper Combo. This is when someone uses second hyper combo for either more damage or to switch out the current character safely.
Dark Pheonix: If Pheonix dies with five unused super bars, she regains all her health and transforms into Dark Pheonix, who is a great rush down character.
Now you’ve earned the rights to watch some sweet Winter Brawl matches 😀
Radiant Agenda 