Last updated on Sept. 21, 2009
There are two types of Hit Boxes in Street Fighter games, a (red) Attacking Box and a (blue) Hittable Box. When you do Ryu's Shoryuken in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix with the hit box display turned on, a red square shows up around his arm, this is the Attacking Box.
On the flip side, at almost all other times Ryu's body is highlighted with blue Hittable Boxes, which shows you the areas he can currently be hit at.
Jumping, crouching or pretty much doing anything alters the size, shape and location of the Hittable Boxes, as shown by the images below.
For a move to connect in Street Fighter a red Attacking Box must overlap with your opponent's blue Hittable Box. Zangief is demonstrating this on Blanka here.
Although the hit boxes pretty much match up with the graphics in the Street Fighter series, there are definitely some exceptions. As you can see below on the left, although Guile's leg is clearly touching Zangief, the hit is still not registering because the hit boxes are just slightly too far away.
If Guile moves a bit closer though, his red box overlaps with Zangief's blue box and the kick connects, as shown on the right.
While there are only two hit boxes, both Attacking and Hittable Boxes can overlap with each other.
Some moves have a huge red Attacking Box and shrink your blue Hittable Boxes quite a bit, and vice versa. Often time it's these properties that define how a good a move is — or isn't.
Having a move with a HUGE Attacking Box that shrinks your Hittable Box considerably is probably going to be one of your best moves, especially if it has a fast start up and recovery time.
E. Honda's Headbutt in HD Remix is one of those attacks, while his feet/leg area is vulnerable, touching any other part of his body is going to result in being struck, and his head and the very top part of his back cannot be hit at all — but it can hit you.
Some moves have invincible frames or invulnerability, which means they have no Hittable Boxes for a short period of time.
Ken's Medium Punch Shoryuken is completely invulnerable in HD Remix during its start up period and the entire time he's traveling upwards. You can only hit him as he's coming down, when the blue hit boxes appear.
Just for comparison, let's check out Sagat's Hard Punch Tiger Uppercut. It offers a MUCH smaller window of invulnerability, and soon after the move is executed Sagat is vulnerable on the top of his head and from his waist on down.
To avoid being knocked out of his Tiger Uppercut, most Sagat players try to time this move so it connects right before the blue Hittable Boxes appear, letting him punch his opponent without worrying about being hit in the process.
Some people assume that the moves in Street Fighter have a mysterious 'priority', meaning there's some way the game decides which moves win out if they're both done at nearly the same time, but in reality everything is based off the location of your hit boxes.
If you stick out an attack that connects with your opponent's Hittable Box near the same time they stick out an attack that also connects with your blue boxes, your attacks will 'trade hits'.
Learning the hit box properties your moves have can make you a better player. If you understand exactly where and how your moves can and cannot be countered, you can use them that much more effectively.
While most of Capcom's Street Fighter games do not have hit box displays, you can still learn where they are through a trial and error process, which most people have been doing for years.
Coupled with frame data, understanding how hit boxes work help you dissect the games and really understand what's going on while you're playing.
Posted by GoukenFL on September 22, 2009 at 4:17 a.m. #1
Great post on the hit box data. A couple of questions though:
1) Can you tell how to see the hit boxes in SF4?
2) How did you get those images so well?
Posted by purphaze on September 22, 2009 at 4:39 a.m. #2
@3 theres no way YET to c hitboxes in sf4, our best bet is waiting for someone to MOD the pc version so u can c that or wait for dash and pray they add it into the training room. Great read, ive always kinda understood most of this but its makes it more clear to read it and c pictures. good work
Posted by SuperV on September 22, 2009 at 5:29 a.m. #3
Nice post I loved it.
Posted by Jeremy on September 22, 2009 at 5:35 a.m. #4
I'm glad HD remix let's you see the hitboxes. I really would love to see SF4's as there are a lot of situations were I am baffled that I got hit, seeing the actually hitboxes would be insanely useful.
Posted by faggy2dope on September 22, 2009 at 5:58 a.m. #5
how are the PC people not modding SF4 to show hitboxes yet?
Posted by duh on September 22, 2009 at 7:27 a.m. #6
theyre too busy making naked skin mods [_[
Posted by cuttyb87 on September 22, 2009 at 7:34 a.m. #7
that cool finally I can see how I can hit someone and all we need now is to understanding recovery time and where in business
Posted by Thamanator on September 22, 2009 at 8:10 a.m. #8
Uhh Guys, there is a reason that SFIV doesn't show hit boxes... They did an awful job with them. Don't get me wrong, I love the game anyway, but seriously... My mom could have done a better job with the hit boxes.
Posted by voa on September 22, 2009 at 9:22 a.m. #9
so are they saying that there is no such thing as priority? really its a matter of just getting your red box to touch his blue box (that sounded dirty for some reason). if you both touch each other boxes, then you will "trade" hits no matter what move you are doing?
Posted by me on September 22, 2009 at 9:35 a.m. #10
yeah sf4 should have it... but it has record playback option... compared to hd remix
Posted by baffled on September 22, 2009 at 11:04 a.m. #11
im wondering about e.hondas headbutt.. when in mirror match while 1 honda does the head butt and the other jumps back and presses light kick/jumping butt it beats out the headbutt ... what kind of property is that?
Posted by bwahahaw on September 22, 2009 at 11:20 a.m. #12
lets see the hitbox for ken ultra
Posted by n00b_saib0t on September 22, 2009 at 11:48 a.m. #13
"Some people assume that the moves in Street Fighter have a mysterious 'priority', meaning there's some way the game decides which moves win out if they're both done at nearly the same time, but in reality everything is based off the location of your hit boxes."
nice try attempting to make people look stupid, but people who say "priority" know that it means it is faster and has a bigger hit box. ken's MP SRK takes priority over honda's headbutt because ken has no hit box until the peak of the move. its much easier to say "has priority" than it is to say "has no blue hittable box, has a big red hittable box, and is faster". i dont get why SF players that understand the term "priority" also understand hit boxes, but players who understand hit boxes dont understand "priority".
Posted by Leviathan on September 22, 2009 at 1:57 p.m. #14
You and I might say "priority" and understand hitboxes and just say it because it's easier to throw around in conversation. But people who play casually and overhear that being to get the assumption that there IS a priority system at play and work off that assumption. We know there isn't any priority in play but it's certainly easier to use to describe the interraction of 2 moves.
It's how Global Warming took off. It's not really there, but it's easier to say than to explain a complex series of events than. Some mouthbreathers pick up on that shorthand and before you know it you've got Al Gore actually trying to convince people that polarbears don't have icebergs to sit on.
Posted by sf4 on September 22, 2009 at 2:21 p.m. #15
so dragon punch has no hitbox going up. having no hitbox going st8 up make that special moves a priority, RIGHT? so whats wrong with me saying "DRagon punch will beat out most moves because it got huge priority?"
Posted by UnderWing on September 22, 2009 at 3:45 p.m. #16
I'd say nothing's wrong with saying a move has a "high priority" as a sum of it's prioritizing properties (speed, relative location and size of hitboxes) as long as it doesn't get confused for a property on it's own -- I've met multiple people who thought priority was a property somehow programmed into the game (and not just a description of effectiveness), and they had constructed huge elaborate systems to make their system "make sense" in their heads.
One guy I met had swore that every move had a property programmed in for "sweep priority", "anti-air priority" and "forward priority" (they were also different for in-air moves). I tried to explain the reason behind everything he was observing (why certain moves prevent sweeps while others catch sweeps, why certain moves out-"prioritized" jump-ins without trading vs. w/ trading...), but he was so positive that he was right. Sitting him down with HD Remix was how I eventually was able to demonstrate what I meant. It started to make sense to him eventually: "Okay, see how this one causes the vulnerable area to shrink and move away, so there's a larger amount of forward-facing attacking area? That's why it has such great 'forward' priority, as you say -- it's not actually a number or a property, but this move takes so few frames to get out that it's very effective at protecting my character while attacking yours... thus, we don't trade when you try to attack me when I use it."
"Priority" is a term thrown around by people "in the know", who have a fair amount of experience and understand the game mechanics well, and it's a useful term in that sense (describes the sum of a few different properties moves have, as I see it). The problem is that it is oftentimes thrown around and heard by people who don't quite understand it for what it really is, and this can be a red herring for those people trying to further their knowledge -- they think they're finally understanding it, but in reality it's based on a mistake in their lexicon. So it's useful to have articles like this (and discussions like these) in which we challenge and explain the systems, for people who want to better understand the systems at play.
/rant
Posted by sscrubula on September 22, 2009 at 8:28 p.m. #17
I can't see the pictures
Posted by someone on September 22, 2009 at 11:02 p.m. #18
Then how does Sagat's Tiger Knee beat out Honda's Torpedo if they both have big red hitboxes coming at eachother? Where can I get really in-depth info on hitboxes?
Posted by d0ze on September 23, 2009 at 12:33 p.m. #19
you want to learn in-depth info on hitboxes?
check mugen.
I might be wrong pointing out mugen as a reference since its not an engine made by capcom. However it demonstrate on plain text the very basics of how fighting games mechanics works.
And If I recall correctly, the use of hitboxes and priority work as two different values together.
Posted by BullDancer on September 23, 2009 at 8:43 p.m. #20
Again on this guide portion, i think priorities are based how deep the red hitbox intersects with your opponents blue hitbox. The deeper it intersects, the more priority it has normally. However this so called priority does seem randomly assigned in some cases. Usually when it comes to two special moves colliding, the most vulnerable one loses. For example a flame kick versus kens shoryuken(with the assumption they were used around the same time), kens shoryuken would usually win because it offers more invulnerability. Generally dp(dragon punch) moves are invulnerable at startup, but the amount of time a special move is invulnerable varies.On the other hand a special move with less invincibility versus one win with more can win, but the chances of this occurring are slim.
Posted by BullDancer on September 23, 2009 at 8:47 p.m. #21
oops delete(with your eyes i guess) the word "win" next to the word "one" on the last sentence of my post.
Posted by GJ thanks on September 25, 2009 at 12:38 a.m. #22
Good job even taking/getting screen caps for use after Backbone fudged it up from being user intuitive how Sirlin wanted it to hardly usable with their unnecessary menu overlay pause screen that can't be toggled on/off; and you see way too much already through disconnects/freezes/next game/etc.
Posted by Well there is a better solution on September 26, 2009 at 2:13 p.m. #23
Try setting the game speed to zero to get a clearer look at hitboxes itll make life easier.
Posted by Johnny.A on October 4, 2009 at 12:55 a.m. #24
What's the deal with a standing jab/short beating out a honda headbutt when the headbutt doesn't have a blue hitbox on the head ? How is it that red (hitbox) beats out red.. isn't that some kind of 'priority'?
I saw this question in an earlier post.. but that was about a jumping lk beating out a headbutt..
Can anyone answer this?
Posted by kusanito on October 29, 2009 at 8:19 p.m. #25
nice post
tnx
Posted by Matt on November 9, 2009 at 8:06 a.m. #26
Yep you can definately hit red boxes or a fireball would just pass through Ken like hes a ghost on his SRK startup. The red boxes must use priority and it would be nice to see them without trial and error.
Posted by Grievous on November 23, 2009 at 4:40 p.m. #27
"Yep you can definately hit red boxes or a fireball would just pass through Ken like hes a ghost on his SRK startup. The red boxes must use priority and it would be nice to see them without trial and error."
what? fireballs do pass through srk, and red boxes are just for HITTING
I still don't get why capcom uses two boxes(blue) for the upperbody and the legs, they do that even in darkstalkers and I can't figure out why they'd need 2 of them in most cases, one example is ryu's stance(maybe different defence on each one? I'm not sure)
Posted by M. Bison on November 30, 2009 at 11:15 a.m. #28
Hey Great Site! Looking forward to the "Expert" Section (not that i'm an expert, just would be interesting to read.) Anyway JohnnyA asked the following question and it pretty much lines up exactly with what I was going to say (except I main Bison instead of Honda) so I'm just going to re-post it...What's the deal with a standing jab/short beating out a honda headbutt when the headbutt doesn't have a blue hitbox on the head ? How is it that red (hitbox) beats out red.. isn't that some kind of 'priority'?
I saw this question in an earlier post.. but that was about a jumping lk beating out a headbutt..
Can anyone answer this?
Posted by Grievous on December 9, 2009 at 6:51 a.m. #29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KimKJC...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA18jo...
http://forums.shoryuken.com/showthrea...
Posted by SF4 CHUN-LI on January 17, 2010 at 2:30 a.m. #30
This explains why I've snuffed out many dragon punches with a well placed angled jumping lk w/ Chun-li. The red hit box is active longer and goes in deeper, faster than her other air moves and from the right angle it protects my blue hit boxes-putting out the fire on kens fist.
Knowledge is pwoer!)
Posted by CHARGE E. HONDA on February 15, 2010 at 1:23 a.m. #31
STREET FIGHTER 4 is not balance in any sort of way except that top tiers are balanced against other top tiers (which is about 5-6 characters) including sagat.
Capcom statements that their weak characters are two guys and their making them stronger by increasing one of those char' footsy game while for the other his claws take longer to fall off , what a flipping joke on us capcom .Think of this for one moment capcom , forget hitboxes 'cause i know you don't want to give the many weak characters help in this division ,wake up options and get off of me options you don't want to bother with either so you need to think about this atleast;
BUFF AND NERF
1.level of attack power on both normal and special moves
2.reach of normal and special moves
3.defense power(health)
4.trades
5.ultra strength
6.options to get in full ultra
7.super's strength and all around usefulness
8.ex bar usefulness
9.combo and juggling ability, pressure "block" string ability
10.combo complexity which determines the chances mistakes can occur
11.chip damage game
12.safe ex bar building moves that are either being block or not hitting
13.horizontal and vertical control of space
13.5 all the above vs the ability to control the spacing in the game
Sagat has a high ability to control the spacing in the game even against shotoken masters and all other "12" categories mention above to a high degree ,now when you compare that to the majority of the sf4 cast you get a situation of a one sided fight which gives sagat his broken rating but this is not the case when you put him up against the other 5 bosses in the game "why you may ask" because of how severely all other characters lack in the 13 categories ,
Akuma escapes this situation mainly due to the fact of his ability to control the spacing thus pace in the game aswell as having strong combos that are easy to perform thus giving less of a chance to the opponent to fadc into ultra from mistakes unlike Gen's combos which have a lower reward anyway.
I "THINK " THE NEW CHARACTERS WILL HAVE THESE ATTRIBUTES .
JURI.2,5,6,7,8,9,10,12 and the ability to control the space in the game horizontally
T.HAWK . 1,2,3,4,5,7,8,10 AND 13 in respect to vertical space.
DEE-JAY . 1,2,3,6,7,8,9,10,11,12 and 13 in respects to horizontal space
ADON . 1,2,3,5,8,9,12
GUY .1,2,3,5,6,8,9,12
CODY . 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,11,12
I'm not saying everyone in the same category is at the same level as t.hawk health is far better than deejay's or any one else so that's another aspect of it.
Posted by Adjacent on March 11, 2010 at 9:22 a.m. #32
you have aspbergers
Posted by General_Awesomo on April 25, 2010 at 1:34 a.m. #33
Hit Boxes + Framework = Priority.
Posted by Hadododouken on August 18, 2010 at 1:58 p.m. #34
@CHARGE E. HONDA,
OR, you could just improve how you play and stop whining, instead of hoping that Capcom takes any of your rambling seriously.
Posted by QUANCRO on July 25, 2011 at 8:59 p.m. #35
good guide here ot undestand the hit box..very ussefull
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