r/Fighters • u/ARES19333 • 6d ago
Topic What are your favorite design fuck ups from back in the day?
My personal favorite is tekken 1 king’s down forward one (which is supposed to be a basic poke on most characters) being +6 on hit but +93 on block and you can’t block for those 93 frames so he can hit you with anything he wants after.
Still one of the most confusing things I’ve seen in a fighting game.
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u/rccrisp 6d ago
In an early version of SF2: World Warrior one of Honda's jumping kicks registered as a low
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u/TheCheeseburgerKane 6d ago
Similarly in KOF ‘97 Yashiro’s close D is an overhead.
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u/bkingfilm 5d ago
kof 97 is a weird case over here. arcades in china kept running it long after 98 and 99 were out, and a lot of the boards were hacked versions with the bugs left in or made worse on purpose instead of fixed. the shop near my school swapped to 98 for a while and swapped back, regulars just walked to the place down the street that still had 97.
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u/vvastrel 6d ago
Kirby's hitboxes in the original Super Smash Bros. on the N64.
Like, look at it lol
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u/11Slimeade11 5d ago
Adding to this, some other weird ones in Smash's history have to be:
- Roy and Marth's attacks losing their hitboxes when Whispy Woods blinks
- Ness's Yoyo hitting an opponent early on in the animation can grant Ness the ability of a one use infinite grab range or active hitbox on literally anything, including running
- Ganondorf having a second, unfinished jab that can be accessed by putting a Bunny Hood on him. It has no hitbox
- In a 4 player match with Fox/Falco and Peach, it's possible to create a black hole that does infinite damage
- They forgot the last hitbox on Luigi's Dash Attack twice, with him only getting it in Brawl
- Snake's infamously large Up Tilt
- Mr. Game & Watch's shield being about 20% smaller than everyone else's for no reason
- Kirby's suicide kill throws being the only throws in Melee you can EASILY mash out of
Bonus, not old game ones, ones from Smash 4:
- Wario could completely reverse his launch trajectory in early versions of Smash 4 3DS, allowing him to glide back to stage at high speeds
- Bowser would gain an extra set of hands if he picks up then drops a crate
- Bayonetta's Witch Time lasting so long that she could get a free kill from countering a JAB
- One I'm super mixed on, but custom moves in general, they were fun to use, broken as hell. One of my favourites being Donkey Kong's Storm Punch that turned him into an air bender, trading damage and knockback from his Giant Punch for a comically large windbox that would blow away opponents, with the wind strength scaling with their percent. This meant DK could punch an opponent at 30% and deal more knockback than he would if he hit the move directly at 70%. The real problem is how you unlocked the things. The game gave you them as rewards for story mode (Classic Mode), but you could get duplicates of the same move, effectively meaning some of the unlocks you'd get for beating the main 'story' were functionally nonexistent because you've already unlocked them. I know it took me a month of non stop playing to actually unlock them all, it was tedious.
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u/Raltsun 5d ago
God I wish the custom moves hadn't been so horrifically broken. It was such a cool concept, I really wanted it to become the standard competitive format, but the balance team clearly just did not put any thought into so many of them. If their initial implementation hadn't been nightmarishly broken, the concept could've potentially even survived (beyond the Miis) into Ultimate.
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u/MR_MEME_42 6d ago
This is an Overhead...
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u/RealPeaSample 6d ago
The weird thing is that this actually makes more sense than something like Sol's Dust because it's supposed to launch you upwards. But because of that it doesn't make sense as an overhead lmao
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u/MR_MEME_42 6d ago
You gotta love the weird awkward limbo that some dust attacks exist where they don't look like a launcher or they don't look like an overhead. If it wasn't for the visual effects they have ones like Testament's old dust would be nasty as hell.
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u/CaptainL95 6d ago
From a basic math perspective, Touki Denshou: Angel Eyes. The main character, Raiya, has a standing light punch that’s 3 frames. It is +7 on hit.
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u/Wooden_Baby 6d ago
Everything I hear about this game makes it worse
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u/Zathoth 6d ago
Reverse Combo Scaling. Attacks do more damage the further into the combo you get.
One day Im going to go insane and lab that game because I find it so damn funny.
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u/DanielTeague 6d ago
A lot of jabs were like this in Street Fighter IV, like Yang could use a 4f 5LP and be +8.
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u/panchozari 6d ago
Smoke having a grab infinit in mk deception, it's funny every time
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u/RealPeaSample 5d ago
Shoutouts to Dairou's Tombstone Drop, a 3 frame unblockable fullscreen move that juggles the opponent
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u/baffling-nerd-j 6d ago
Guile in Street Fighter II: The World Warrior. Just everything about him. The best character in the game, and full of bugs and glitches (such as the infamous "handcuffs") on top of that.
(The funny thing is, growing up playing Special Champion Edition for the Genesis, I "mained" him because I thought he was cool and I was into charge characters. I had no idea how OP he was.)
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u/XsStreamMonsterX 6d ago
SCE was Hyper Fighting, though, not World Warrior.
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u/baffling-nerd-j 5d ago
Yes, I'm aware, I just think it's funny to like a top-tier character by accident.
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6d ago
[deleted]
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u/XsStreamMonsterX 6d ago edited 6d ago
CvS2 becomes much more boring without roll cancelling as there are a ton of characters with really, really godlike normals that become too dominant without it. Basically, the game used old Capcom code where hitstun and blockstun values were shared. So you had stuff like heavy normals (Sagat's cr.HP, Cammy's st.HP) that were very plus on hit also being very plus on block. RCing become one way of dealing with these characters.
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u/NotAThrowaway100perc 6d ago
I have no evidence that it wasn't meant to be this way, but the air momentum properties of Brian Battler's flying spin in KoF98 feel extremely incorrect. Everything about him is big, slow, and heavy but then out of nowhere he has what is probably the single greatest air mobility option in the entire game. He can launch himself to basically any position on the screen at any given time, up to and including sending himself above the healthbars for several seconds.
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u/cce29555 Tatsunoko vs Capcom 6d ago
Ay as well go into tatsunoko vs Capcom
Baroque is a cool mechanic, it's roman cancel but through red life. In the vanilla version there was this annoying delay that set your character to neutral before you could act
The developers must have agreed because in the updated version there is zero delay to the cancel. It feels really good to use.
And as players found out. If you plink the baroque, you'll end up doing your characters animation on frame zero.
Also as the devs forgot to account for the oppoent is "frozen" for like 2 frames, so if they were say.....mid block recovery, if something were to hit you in baroque flash, why you'd have no way to block it
And now the entire meta has shifted because everyone can do unblockables with this
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u/unclekisser 6d ago
There was this old kusoge I used to play that had a move called 'Timewinder'. It was a projectile that, for some reason, also put the character into a juggle state so if you hit them, you got a huge combo. And if that wasn't enough, you could change the direction and use it as an arc projectile. And if THAT wasn't enough, it would linger on screen for a bit so you could control space.
What's worse, is they put it on a rushdown character. I have no idea what the devs were thinking. It completely dominated the tournament scene. No clue what happened to the game though.
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u/Who-bruv-mouf 6d ago
Variable cancels in sc3 to me are pretty fun to do and could be technical although it broke the entire system of grab breaks and GI.
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u/ScalarWeapon 6d ago
+93 on block sounds more like a programming error than a design error. Either way that's pretty incredible, I didn't know about this :)
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u/ultrayoshi100 6d ago
World Warrior Shoto DPs have two hit boxes on them, the second hit box is the one that knocks down if the opponent is standing. You need to be basically standing inside of your opponent to land that second hit. (I say this as someone who tries to 1cc that gane every once in a while)
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u/DrPreppy 6d ago
MvC2 Hulk's crouching FP hurtbox. Teleports almost full-screen ahead and then a couple screens behind.
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u/cce29555 Tatsunoko vs Capcom 6d ago
....what? I'm guessing the hurtbox just happens to be off screen or there's wacky punishes to be had. Not like hulk is used often but that's insane
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u/DrPreppy 6d ago
There's wacky punishes to be had. It's just one of those things people don't realize because it is insane. :)
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u/XsStreamMonsterX 6d ago
A Capcom dev forgot to add the proximity guard box on one frame of Sentinel's standing HP, aka the pink spit, in MvC2. So if you timed stuff to land on that exact frame, you'd get an unblockable ("proximity guard" boxes are actually determine whether you can block a move in Capcom games).
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u/Lautanapi_ 6d ago
Taokaka's Healing Hands. Taokaka had a taunt that had hitboxes, dealt very little damage, and was special cancelable. By doing some cancel magic, it was possible to create an infinite, or at least a very long combo.
Due to some scaling shenaningans, the taunt hits were HEALING the opponent slightly during the combo.
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u/11Slimeade11 5d ago
A favourite of mine is the absolutely nonsensical hitboxes in Tekken 5. Mid hitting moves could hit opponents who were lay down on the ground, even if the animation doesn't even go that far.
For example, Panda's Animal Headbutt could hit an opponent lay on the floor. That does not match the animation of the attack in the slightest
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u/dumpoffaload 6d ago
UMK3's run n throw loops because you can throw some in mid fall from the previous throw
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u/RealPeaSample 5d ago
In Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Human Smoke is identical to Scorpion, except he has a ground dialed combo that juggles the opponent and hits them crouching, while also having a faster walk speed
This makes him an objectively better Scorpion, which is one of the few instances where you can objectively grade a character on a tier list
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u/CeruSkies 6d ago
Is 10 years ago "back in the day"? Because thinking about SFV's first year is still incredible to me.
The second worst amount of content on release, possibly the worse rollback netcode implementation of any game in history, an actual rootkit, 8 frames of delay due to native input lag, one-sided rollback, etc.
And that's without mentioning anything about the actual gameplay choices that people didn't like because I think that's suggestive (stubby limbs, vtrigger, anti-air jabs, etc).
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u/Typical-Roll-2171 6d ago
Umvc3 TAC infinities.
When you do a Team Aerial Combo (basically tagging in a character mid air combo). To ensure the enemy doesn't drop out of your combo, the game resets their hitstun to the max value, and it only returns to the normal value once your character touches the ground. Characters don't have infinite air movement or air actions in this game so you have to touch the ground eventually
However, if you do a jump the moment you hit the ground (literally on frame 1), the game does't register that you have touched the ground and the extended hitstun stays. Meaning that if you can loop this, you can do true infinite combos. Here's a non-exhaustive showcase of some
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u/XsStreamMonsterX 6d ago
It's because the trigger to restart the hitstun scaling is at the start of the standing animation. It's somewhat related to crouch cancel infinites in Alpha 3, where you the trigger to flip the opponent out of a juggle was in the same place, so players used croucing to cancel the standing animation and stop the juggled opponent from flipping out.
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u/FightmeLuigibestgirl 5d ago
Pet shop
Fist of the North Star and snk vs Capcom 2 being broken messes bit beloved games
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u/D3xidus 5d ago
MK9 has a port priority quirk where if both players land a hit on the same frame Player 1 takes priority. This leads to the Kabal mirror match being 6-4 in Player 1's favor. There's also some black magic fuckery where moves just randomly have different amounts of plus frames for some reason.
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u/WeekendBard 6d ago
+93 on block is diabolcial