A Street Fighter 6 clip hit the interwebs this week that has quite a few people perplexed. On the surface, what we witnessed was essentially a miracle, but there’s actually an explanation for how it all happened.
BoladoZangief on Twitter uploaded a clip featuring their Zangief going up against a Lily player. In it, we see Lily completely avoid Zangief’s level 3 command grab super while grounded and performing her wind stock move — which is something that, under normal circumstances, just isn’t possible.
The uploader of the clip was naturally shocked to see this happen in-game and took to social media to see if anyone could figure out what was going on. Lab monster and avid A.K.I. player Pochoclo23 responded with the perfect explanation.
Zangief’s level 3 command throw super in Street Fighter 6 is an incredibly powerful maneuver that only hits grounded opponents. If the opponent isn’t already jumping before the super is activated, they will get scooped up and taken for a ride that will undoubtedly hurt.
Somehow, though, the Lily player in this clip still managed to avoid the super while performing her wind charge special move — a move that not only sees her remain grounded, but also one that does so the entire time until she is done with the move’s animation.
What’s actually happening here is the use of a jump cancel. In some fighting games (including Street Fighter), there exists a way to perform some special moves in a way that sees the character enter into the early frames of a jump, but then cancel that into the special move.
To the viewer, it just looks like the player performed a regular special move, but in actuality, those jump frames registered and while the character never actually leaves the ground, the game considers the fighter airborne for that very, very short window of time.
It’s tough to jump cancel special moves, and the timing to do it properly is really tight. With that having been said, this is a tactic that grappler players tend to know well as this character archetype usually has bad defense, so in order to beat things like regular throws on wake up, you’ll see some players jump cancel their own command throw to avoid the opponent’s regular throw and reversal them.
With this miracle here in Street Fighter 6, the Lily player just happened to get the jump cancel because they tried to jump away right before the level 3 super was activated. They then mashed to get their own level 3 super out, but instead got regular wind charge and ultimately canceled the early jump frames into wind charge and successfully performed a jump cancel to evade Zangief’s clutches.
Lily jumped before Gief LV3, and then, during the flash he started to mash LV3 for their life and for mistake he did a jump cancel charge during the pre jump frames of the first command he did
My man just did a huge miracle by accident https://t.co/bBXyVqDyJU
— HDG | Pochoclo23 (@Pochoclo23) April 2, 2024
Jump cancels are a high level tactic and they’re not easy to do. The wind gods were really looking out for this Lily player this time.