Hiya!

I remember being new to the fighting game scene. I loved watching tournaments featuring games like Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Sadly, for me, it took me a while to adapt to the entire lexicon. Sure, there were some things I could grasp easily, such as what a DP motion is as I was familiar with the Dragon Punch from Street Fighter. Some terms, like “cross-up,” “wake up” and “oki,” were things I could wrap my hear around using context clues. However, the commentators still kept on spouting a lot of words I wasn’t familiar with.

Now that I’ve been watching these tournaments for years now, I finally got a handle on some of the weirder terms being used by these same commentators. With fighting games hitting the mainstream once again, there might be a few of you out there unfamiliar with some of the terms the commentators are using. So, while you can go to a site like the Fighting Game Glossary, let me start you off with 3 of them here.

#1 Happy Birthday

A Happy Birthday is something which can only happen in a team fighting game like Marvel vs. Capcom, Skullgirls or Dragon Ball Fighter Z. That’s because a Happy Birthday is when you hit two of your opponent’s characters with one of your characters. This can happen as, in a lot of team fighting games, you can call out one of your characters to perform an assist move and they’ll pop into the fray for a moment. While this has some benefits, such as extending your combo, this also leaves the assist character vulnerable to getting hit. When both characters get hit with a single attack. It’s also possible to hit all three characters with one attack and that would be called a Merry Christmas. Those are ultra rare but, strangely enough, Happy Birthday is a common enough occurrence in tournaments that it’s used fairly frequently.

The origin of why a Happy Birthday is called just that is, like with a lot of things associated with Marvel vs. Capcom, started with ICF Yipes on commentary. During one tournament, Yipes mentioned one of the players was celebrating their birthday that very day. To this person’s misfortune, he called an assist at the wrong time, leading to two of his characters getting hit with a single combo. This happened to the birthday boy a couple of times, leading to Yipes calling the move a Happy Birthday. I was actually watching the stream at that very moment so I know this to be true. For the life of me, however, I cannot find the exact clip. Maybe it’s my mind playing tricks on me but, as far as I know, that’s how the Happy Birthday started and the name stuck.

#2 Tiger Knee

A Tiger Knee motion is essentially performing a quarter-circle forward or quarter-circle back motion but adding an extra up-forward motion at the end when hitting the desired attack button. This awkward motion allows characters who have special attacks which can be performed in the air or while jumping to execute the move as low to the ground as possible. This can be extremely used for several reasons, such as being as safe as possible if the move is blocked or even as a surprise air attack as your opponent won’t expect a jumping attack to be done so low to the ground.

As to why this motion is called a Tiger Knee, that’s all Capcom’s fault as they gave Sagat a new moved called precisely that in Street Fighter II: Champion Edition. Instead of making the Tiger Knee special executable with something like a Dragon Punch motion, you had to input a quarter-circle forward to up-forward with a kick button to launch Sagat’s Tiger Knee in this game. It was then discovered in later games that you can use this very motion to buffer your air special move motion on the ground with the Tiger Knee motion so the term was then transferred over to how to use this to do an instant air special.

#3 Option Select

An Option Select is a general catch-all term wherein you perform a certain combination of moves and, depending on the situation, the most ideal move comes out. It basically covers several “options” and, if done properly, the game will “select” the best possible “option” to come out. A basic example of what an Option Select is would be something called a Delay Throw Tech. This has you hold down-back and then pressing the throw command a split second after you get up. The Option Select here is, if your opponent tries to throw you during your wake up, you’ll break the throw attempt before the throw is executed. If your opponent attacks you, you’ll block the move and, since you’re still in block stun while you entered the throw command, nothing will happen. This Option Select doesn’t cover everything, like command throws, overheads or doing nothing. However, it covers two options, which is good enough.

Sadly, I can’t really pinpoint when exactly the term Option Select started popping up. From my experience, commentators started using it as early as Street Fighter II. Pro players were doing Option Select moves like buffering special move motions while doing their poking normals. If the normal connects, then it would cancel into the special move. If it whiffs and hits nothing, then the special move wouldn’t come out. It wasn’t really used all that frequently then, however. The term really became chic during Street Fighter IV.

BONUS: American Reset

An American Reset is actually a self-depreciating term used when you drop a combo my mistake but the follow-up attack still connects for silly reasons. Maybe the opponent wasn’t blocking the right way or they tried to do a move which leaves them wide open for the rest of the attacks to hit. This is actually kind of beneficial as combos do less damage the more hits connects due to damage scaling. However, as the American Reset breaks the combo, albeit my accident, the rest of the combo does much more damage than it should if you did perform the combo flawlessly.

Once again, the origins of the term has been lost. However, from what I’ve gathered, the American Reset started as a joke with how some Western players would drop combos but still magically eke out wins because the combo still goes through. It’s very much like a Mexican Uppercut (where most Central American players were more comfortable using Ryu or Ken’s crouching heavy punch to counter jump attacks instead of the Dragon Punch special) as kind of a joke but the joke stuck.

Byee!

What other weird fighting game terminologies do you know? Let me know in the comments section below!