Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

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Perfect Stranger
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Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by Perfect Stranger » Fri Aug 06, 2010 08:24

So I bought the KOF XIII mook today and there's a handy reference for terminology used. For those of you who trawl random Japanese BBS/wikis etc, hopefully this will be useful to you if you don't speak that much Japanese. This assumes basic *ENGLISH* fighting game terminology, so don't expect me to explain stuff like what frame advantage is!
  • 当て身: Counter move (in the sense of Elizabeth's QCB p move)
  • 暴れ: To stuff a move, i.e. when in an unfavorable position, do a quick hitting move/move with invincibility to stop opponent's attacks. 暴れつぶし is to PREVENT your attacks from being stuffed.
  • 移動投げ: Moving grab
  • 受身: Ground recovery roll
  • 起き攻め: Okizeme (Attack your opponent as he gets up)
  • ガード: Block. (Slightly off topic: Japanese call this Guard. Japanese also call SF3 Parry as Block)
  • ガードキャンセル: Block Cancel
  • ガード潰し: To break opponent's block, e.g. by using throws, high/low mixups etc
  • ガードクラッシュ: Guard Crush
  • ガードポイント: Guard Point, i.e. Autoguard, e.g. Maxima's moves.
  • カウンターヒット: Counter Hit
  • 画面端: Corner
  • キャンセル: Cancel
  • 緊急回避: Roll
  • くらい判定: Essentially, ability to be hit. Often used to point out presence/absence of hitboxes on specific parts of your character, or to refer to moves that leave the opponent in a jugglable state. Also called やられ判定
  • ゲージ: Gauge
  • 削りダメージ: Chip damage
  • 下段攻撃: Low attack
  • けん制: Probably best translated as "Poke". Basically the usage of moves with good range/priority to restrict your opponent's movements.
  • 攻撃発生: Time between when button is pressed and when actual hit boxes of move appear. 攻撃発生が早いrefers to quick moves.
  • 攻撃判定: Priority. 反撃判定が強い is basically a move with good priority
  • 硬直: Lag (Recovery lag). Also called スキ, which generally means vulnerability. ヒット硬直:hit stun, ガード硬直:block stun etc)
  • コマンド投げ: Command grab
  • 持続: Literally persistence, describes how long a move sticks out
  • ジャンプ: Jump. Divided into 小 (short hop), 中 (hyper hop), 通常 (normal jump) and 大(hyper jump)
  • ジャンプ防止: Stop opponent from jumping
  • 上段攻撃: Characters literally mean "High attack", but actually means move which can be blocked either high or low.
  • スキ(also 隙). Move recovery lag.
  • 対空: Anti-air
  • ダウン: Down, meaning to hit the opponent and cause him to fall lying down on the ground
  • 立ち回り: No direct translation, probably footsies or space control is the closest equivalent. Basically your ability to direct the flow of the match
  • 打点: Hit box. When you say 打点が高いyou mean a move has a very high hit box, can be used as anti air, etc.
  • ダメージ: Damage
  • 中段攻撃: Characters literally mean "Mid-level attack", but this refers to moves that can only be blocked high, e.g. overheads, jump attacks etc
  • 追撃: Followup.
  • 通常投げ: Normal throw
  • 低姿勢: Literally low posture. Refers to moves that are very low and likely to avoid jump attacks
  • 特集追撃判定: All juggle property, e.g. Elizabeth's QCFHCB p
  • 突進技: Moves that advance while hitting
  • 飛び込み: Jump-in attack.
  • 飛び道具: Projectile
  • 二択: Literally, to choose between 2. Sometimes called 50-50/guessing game in English? Examples include overhead/low attack, throw or hit, air attack/empty hop low attack etc. To force your opponent to guess, and if he guesses wrongly, get punished
  • 昇りxx: Rising xx. Refers to jump attacks done on the rising part of the jump.
  • 反撃: Counterattack, i.e. When opponent whiffs a move.
  • ヒット確認: Hit confirm
  • フレーム: Frame
  • 間合い: Best translated as spacing? e.g. to keep your opponent in a range where your moves are more effective.
  • 無敵: Invincibility
  • 目押し: Linking, e.g. Kyo's dwn .B , stand .C
  • めくり: Crossup
  • 有利: Having frame advantage. 不利:Frame disadvantage.
  • リーチ: Reach, i.e. range of move.
  • リスク: Risk.
  • 連係: Chain. Often, but not necessarily a combo, just refers to moves you do in a sequence.
  • 連続技: Combo
  • ロック: Lock. Refers to moves like Ryo's ranbu where after initial hit, opponent gets sucked in and hit by the rest of the move automatically.
  • ワイヤーダメージ: Wire damage, i.e. moves that have the wire property when your opponent bounces off the wall and can be further juggled.
  • 割り込み: Also called stuffing in English. Means to use attacks to stop opponent's chain midway. Also called 連係を切り返す
----

Additional terms used but not mentioned in the list:
  • 暴発: Refers to when you mean to do the input for one move, but another move comes out instead, e.g. when trying to do Kyo's HCB k from a guarding position, the game reads it as RDP k instead. I'm sure there's a concise term for this in English but I don't know what it is?

Above stuff is necessarily KOF centric, though if you want me to translate SF/GG/BlazBlue etc specific stuff I guess I can help given a similar list of terms and definitions.

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Re: Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by Gunsmith » Fri Aug 06, 2010 16:05

This is awesome. Thanks for this!!!

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Re: Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by Perfect Stranger » Sun Aug 15, 2010 08:27

Cleaned up a few mistakes, added additional term not found in the list for the mook but still used throughout.

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Re: Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by Kane317 » Mon Aug 16, 2010 08:39

For the last term, the English term would be overlap. The move overlaps with another.

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Re: Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by Toxic Avanger » Sun May 01, 2011 01:48

Senpou 先鋒 (Advance Guard)
Chuuken 中堅 (Middle field)
Taishou 大将 (Captain)

Designations for "Team play" focused competitions (playing positions). I believe that the terms were originally used in Judo & Kendo; but later became broadly used in other things such as swimming, baseball and (of course!) videogaming.

I always get those terms wrong / forget about them / get confused (In fact I'm not even that sure that they are right here *xx ).... though, the kanji of "previous", "middle" and "great" are big hints to tell them apart :P
I totally don't remember the terms for a 5 or more member team... Maybe I should stream baseball or judo or something to refresh my memory :P

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Re: Japanese Fighting Game Terminology

Post by SonicTempest » Thu Oct 27, 2011 07:45

One more term I want to add to this list:

補正 - by itself it means 'correction', but when used in the context of damage/combos it refers to damage scaling.

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