Guide to understanding Hit Boxes in Street Fighter

Last updated on Sept. 21, 2009

What is a Hit Box

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.

When Hit Boxes collide

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.

Invincible Frames

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.

How does the game decide which moves beat each other?

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'.

Conclusion

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.