Overview
With attempts to simplify the bulked up complexities that scare new players from the fighting game genre, Capcom has made their special moves easier to input than ever before with novel shorthand inputs. Sadly, their ability to communicate that is so poor, this guide has to teach you the neat shorthands to stop jumping up and whiffing grabs as Zangief or hadoken tossing as Ken where you want some shoryukens!
Introduction
Special moves are moves in Street Fighter 5 that require a combination of joystick motions and button inputs in order to perform as opposed to a button input alone (normal) or button input with a simple joystick input (command normal). These moves encompass the more iconic actions in a fighter’s repertoire, from Ryu’s hadoken all the way to F.A.N.G’s sotoja.
For complete newbies or even those aspiring to higher climbs, attempting to input some of the character moves can be a tad irritating, not helped with inputs that have led too many mess ups, Kens shoryukening when they want to hadoken, Chun-Lis walking back into a corner only to slap the air and Zangiefs jump grabbing that fly over thier opponent’s head.
There are however ways to make some of these inputs that tiny bit less agonizing, the key is to open up the command list on the pause screen…and flip it off!
“Well that’s rather rude isn’t it?” Perhaps, but it is justified for you see, the command list is a LIAR! A liar by ommission!
For you see, Street Fighter V (and other Capcom fighting games) have a particular system of parsing the special inputs in often times, you are not expected to follow these commands to the wire. Let’s take this from the top with the most commonly known case and remember, all example inputs operate on the assumption your character is facing right.
Back Charge to Forward
Hold Back and then press Towards the opponent
4,6
If you have ever fought against a decent Guile, Chun-Li, M.Bison (the Dictator) or F.A.N.G, essentially any decent player using a character with both a vertical and horizontal charge, then you will no doubt be able to guess the short hand here. For anyone less informed or too leisurely to run a challenge session, the simplified answer is:
Hold any Back motion then press any Towards motion
7/4/1,9/6/3
Simple as that, if you are playing Chun-Li and you want to Kikoken without backing yourself into a corner, you can just hold down-back to not only charge your Kikoken but also place you in a guarded position that does not give up space. When you are ready to launch the Kikoken, you can press Towards on the stick, or Down-Towards…Up-Towards if you want to be crazy and give your opponent a burn worthy of a dragon.
CAUTION: For any Guile fans, I do not recommend Sonic Booming using the Down-Towards motion, as Faultless Move may muddle your attempt to slice the enemy with beams of patriotism!
Dragon Punch motion
Towards,Down then Down-Towards
6,2,3
Ah yes, the Shoryuken motion. How many scrubs have felt thier bruised brow against the walls as thier frustrated training sessions has them tossing out more Hadokens than rising dragon punches. Its no surprise that some fighting games often have a “sloppy shoryuken” condition built in, Street Fighter V is no exception and comes along with cleanier choices. So,if you want your dragons out like a slob:
Press Towards, Down, Down-Towards and Towards
6,2,3,6
Towards then hadoken nets you a rather classless dragon. For people that like thier dragons to come with a title and reduce any sudden projectiles, you are better off with:
Press Down-Towards, Down and Down-Towards
3,2,3
Once again, its a case of the game more wanting the spirit of an input as opposed to the exact word of the input. This leads to a rather helpful side effect of having the character crouching throughout your input, hiding the possibility of you planning to leap into the air and spit fire from your fist…or foot.
EDIT (22nd August 2016: A third shoryuken shorthand? It is more likely than you think! This one comes from Zigi
Press Towards, Down-Towards, Towards
6,3,6
The fact that this input is as easy as pulling your stick to one side and going “down, up” frankly shocks me that I had never heard of this shorthand before now.
Aerial Quarter-Circle
While in the air, press Down, Down-Towards and Towards
2,3,6
Due to the nature of some inputs along with revisions Capcom has made to them as of Street Fighter V, this next input shorthand lacks the many applications that it would have in say, Ultra Street Fighter 4, but Chun-Li and Ibuki can benefit with thier airborne hyakuretsukyaku and kunai respectively so I suppose its still viable to cover in this Street Fighter V guide. Aerial specials often sport unique properties from their grounded counterpart which can still be of great use against a grounded opponent. Rather than just jumping up and trying to time thier inputs to catch the grounded enemy however, you are better off tiger kneeing the input. What’s a tiger knee? Well:
While grounded, press Down, Down-Towards, Towards and Up-Towards
2,3,6,9
Inspired by Sagat’s aforenamed Tiger Knee motion from the Street Fighter 2 series, tiger kneeing (typically abbreviated to TKing) is a fighting game community term of adding an up input to the end of a quarter-circle motion so as to allow the player to execute an aerial move as close to the ground as possible.
Half-Circle Back
Press Towards, Down-Towards, Down, Down-Back and Back
6,3,2,1,4
For all my grapplers out there, this shorthand is for you but first, an apology. To anyone that read the “Aerial Quarter-Circle Towards” portion of this guide, you may have thought from my description that the attack “Tiger Knee” had an input of “While grounded, press Down, Down-Towards, Towards and Up-Towards / 2,3,6,9”. Well, I pulled a commands list on you as I have sadly lied by omission. In reality, the tiger knee input was diagonal half-circle forward (Press Down-Back, Down, Down-Towards, Towards and Up-Towards / 1,2,3,6,9).
“Why did you lie to us and why should I care?” I can imagine you thinking, well because that is actually a clue to the Half-Circle Back shorthand:
Press Down-Towards, Down, Down-Back and Back
3,2,1,4
Yup, just remove the first step, and as the tiger knee has demonstrated, this can apply to half-circles in all sorts of directions should a DLC character with various half circles enter Street Fighter 5 (come on, Fei-long!) or you decide to try out other capcom fighters.
Screw/Spinning Pile Driver Motion
Press Towards, Down-Towards, Down, Down-Back, Back, Up-Back, Up and Up-Towards
6,3,2,1,4,7,8,9
The 360 motion, the SPD, the input that has made many a young Zangief player unnecessarily jump and ruin thier dreams to plant fighter trees head first! What glorious secret lurks in Zangief’s magnificent beard that can help unlock the secret to the full-circle motion? Well:
Press any four unrepeated input for each cardinal or inter-cardinal direction
That’s honestly it. You don’t even need it to be in a circle. You could input Up, Down, Towards, Back / 8,2,6,4 on your controller and it would work as a full-circle motion. Same for Up-Back, Towards, Up and Down / 7,6,8,2 or Up-Towards, Down-Towards, Up-Back and Down-Back / 9,3,7,1 or any other inputs that don’t sport repeats.
But I hear those of you not using a keyboard or other directional button input device hissing in frustration at the inpracticality of such motions for thier joysticks so, for you, hear’s a shorthand input that will reduce your odds of jumping without a living body pillow to hug:
Press Towards, Down-Towards, Down, Down-Back, Back and Up-Back
6,3,2,1,4,7
Much more natural for sticks, its like a tiger-knee for half-circles!
EDIT (22nd August 2016): Interestingly, the Screw/Spinning Pile Driver is one of the few inputs that can be done forwards or backwards like so:
Press Back, Down-Back, Down, Down-Towards, Towards and Up-Towards
4,1,2,3,6,9
With this, you can launch into pile drivers from a defensive position. Special thanks to Frupert the naked apricot for pointing that one out to me.
Other secrets?
Undoubtably, there are many more secret input shorthands in the Street Fighter series, unfortunately as this is not a guide to “all capcom fighters and a select quantity of 2D fighters in general” I am afraid talking about them would not be of any use as of the initial publishing of this guide.
If you believe you know of an input shorthand that can be added to the guide, feel free to leave a comment and tell us all. With enough evidential backing and successful reproductions (we are scientific street fighters apparently), I can edit this guide to reflect your valuabel insight.
Until then, good luck Street Fighters!
FACE IT STRAIGHT!