[...] If a Zangief player presses regular up-toward to jump, he'll move a certain distance, but if he presses up and then up-toward, he'll jump a smaller distance. The difference isn't huge, but it's enough to noticeably change Zangief's jump arc. We figure that this will be good for mixing up crossups and making opponents whiff short-range antiairs.
We spoke with [Seth Killian] online about this and he confirmed that it actually used to be a "feature" and could be done by every character, but he said Capcom decided at the last moment to "speed up" the game and take it out. He thought it was completely taken out, so he was surprised to find out that Zangief could still do it. We figure Gief can still do this because of his extra prejump frames (he has 6, whereas everyone else has 4 except Dhalsim, who has 3). I tested it with every other character, and Gief is the only one who can do this.
[...] In the second and third clips, you can see examples of jump-in situations where this is useful. The fourth clip shows what Gief can do to capitalize on this.
Kudos go out to Jet for pointing this out.
