As much as I love fighting games, I do feel that there’s a lot of lingo that surrounds the scene that’s sure to throw people off and scare newbies away. Heck, even I have issues figuring out what “fuzzy” means in a 1v1 context at times, with a good number of people having trouble explaining it.

Luckily, fighting game guy Infil has you and everyone else covered. He has created a Fighting Game Glossary that explains every single terminology from Street Fighter to Under Night In-Birth (UNIST, UNICLR). While Infil did the project, defined the terms and words, and did the coding & design, he got other folks like HiFight, Ryan “fubarduck” Harvey, Sajam, Aurich, and many more to help with the Japanese translations, videos, and design feedback.

Introducing The Fighting Game Glossary. Over 650 terms carefully explained with 200+ video examples and Japanese translations. Easily search by term or game, share links to terms with your friends, and explore related concepts without losing your place.https://t.co/CX98RjD5qd pic.twitter.com/K2z5E6ZA0L

— Infil (@Infilament) May 18, 2021

The site is easy enough to browse & explore; you can either search for a term or just click on any of the alphabets to search for a fighting game word. You can also click on any of the fighting game series just under the alphabet list.

The website app also comes with a “Term of the Day” in case you want to look up a random term. Most of the terms have an accompanying video to show examples. Speaking of which, here are a few to get you started:

Fireball

A specific type of projectile that travels horizontally and is traditionally input using a quarter circle command. Ryu, Sagat, Jago and Sol all throw fireballs, and they are perhaps the most iconic special moves in all of fighting games. Beams that travel the whole screen instantly and Sonic Booms that require a charge motion aren’t usually called fireballs.

波動拳 (hadouken) — Lit. wave motion fist

Negative Edge

The act of releasing a button (instead of pressing it) to perform a special move. You might be surprised to learn that, in pretty much all fighting games, you can throw a fireball by first pressing and holding a punch button by itself, then doing your quarter circle input, and finally releasing the button. This input leniency helps quite a bit to correct for sloppiness on when you press the button during your motions, and you can use negative edge to your advantage with, for example, piano inputs. You might also hear the term used to talk specifically about specials that only activate on a button release, like Cody’s Zonk Knuckle.

離し入力 (hanashi nyūryoku) — Lit. release input

Fuzzy

A confusing term with two main meanings.

Sometimes people try to block two directions (like high and low, or left and right) nearly at the same time so it’s harder to land a mixup on them. I talk about this over at fuzzy guard. Other times, people will try to hit players trying to crouch block with an attack that only hits on standing characters. I talk about this at fuzzy attack. Most people refer to both of these things just as a “fuzzy” though.

Generally, whenever somebody uses the term “fuzzy”, they are talking about a situation where a character is trying to be in two states “at once” (that is, kind of a fuzzy middle ground between the states). So, maybe a character tries to block multiple directions at once, or you exploit a character who is trying to crouch but is actually standing. Some people will freestyle with the term a bit, talking about, maybe, a “fuzzy backdash” (trying to backdash while doing something else, like blocking). If you think of the term in this context, you’ll be alright.

ファジー (fajī) — Lit. fuzzy
ファジーガード (fajī gādo) — Lit. fuzzy guard
F式 (efu shiki) — Lit. F style/technique (refers to a fuzzy attack)

Even the guide thinks “Fuzzy” is confusing. Anyway, check out the full glossary here.

On a related note, Infil is also the creator of the Complete KI Guide, another awesome resource involving fighting games. Also, do consider donating to Infil via this link if you love his guides and want to support him and his future endeavours.