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Balrog-dizzy

Balrog's stun animation in the Street Fighter Alpha games.

Stun, also known as Dizzy, is a mechanic common to the Street Fighter series and many other fighting games, usually referring to a fighter's state of being unable to move for a brief period of time.

Description[]

Dizziness is caused when one fighter scores several successive hits on another character, stunning them and temporarily rendering them immobile. First appearing in Street Fighter II, dizziness has become a very important (and somewhat controversial) factor in the fighting style and combos of many characters in the series.

Damage Scaling works different in some games compared to others. In the Street Fighter IV series and Street Fighter V (series) scaling continues off how many hits it took in the current sequence for the damage percentage of the following attacks. Ibuki's Shinten sequence counts as 3 hits thus if all the hits make her opponent go into the stun state her next attack will begin at 70% damage and will go down normally from there. The Street Fighter III series scales damage up until a stunned character gets up again (in their stunned state) and said character could still be Juggled when their stun state starts but once they stand in their stunned state scaling will reset and next attack will do 100% damage.

In Street Fighter 6, stun is no longer inflicted when dealing a consecutive number of successive hits on an opponent. However, the opponent will be stunned if they wall splat with an empty Drive Gauge after guarding a Drive Impact. Afterwards they will become dizzy before falling to the ground after some time.

Mechanics[]

Stun Meter[]

Rinkaisho

Some attacks such as Chun-Li's Rinkaisho in Super Gem Fighter Mini Mix stuns opponents as part of their attack sequence.

In nearly every Street Fighter game, dizziness is determined by a quantified number called stun. Stun is a static value given to each character that is measured via a "hidden" stun meter; similarly, "stun damage" is a value given to every move, from basic attacks to special moves. When a character takes more stun damage in a short period of time than their stun value, they enter a dizzy state. This retain the combo counter for a stunned opponent, allowing the combo to continue afterwards; it is unknown if this affects damage scaling.

In most games, since the stun meter is a "hidden" feature, and is not visualized like health or a Super Combo Gauge; in the Street Fighter III series, however, it is visualized by a separate bar. More recent games also allow the player to view the stat in their Training Modes.

In Arika's Street Fighter EX series, a character may be stunned if they receive any Guard Break damage. The same type of stun also applies to the Surprise Blow mechanic in the third game.

In the Street Fighter IV series, Super and Ultra Combos do not inflict stun damage, save for two: Gouken's Denjin Hadoken and Balrog's Dirty Bull. This prevents dizziness from running interference with a player's Super/Ultra Combo execution.

Some attacks are specifically designed to do much more stun damage than usual, such as Zangief's jumping headbutt, Birdie's The Birdie, and Alex's Stun Gun Headbutt (the latter two of which actually insta-stun the foe if they land). Yun and Yang in particular are known for their "touch-of-death" combo strings, aided by their Genei Jin and Seiei Enbu Super Arts.

Types of Stun[]

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An example of Kolin's freeze mechanic.

Depending on the game, there can be up to four different types of stunned visualizations, all of which can be broken out of by rapidly pressing left and right on the control pad/stick, or in some cases, added with button mashing.

  1. "Angels" - Angels circling around the dizzied fighter's head indicate that the dizziness can be broken out of quite quickly.
  2. "Bells" or "Birds"- Bells/birds show that there will be some delay before action can be used again.
  3. "Stars" - The most commonly used state, the traditional stars circling around one's head in the SF series indicate that will be a moderate delay before it can be broken out of.
  4. "Reapers" - Reapers circling around a fighter's head shows that he/she has taken quite some damage, and will take a long time to recover. There is not much hope of getting out before the player is attacked again.
  5. Kolin also has a unique "Freeze" mechanic that replaces stun when she uses her V-Trigger.

Touch of Death[]

Stun occasionally can contribute to the applicability of touch of death combos. One of the most famous examples is Champion Edition M. Bison, where despite him in theory being nerfed from his Boss Character status in World Warrior, he can perform Infinite combos out of his Scissor Kick that lead to stun, then re-stun with similar tactics. Creating a loop until his opponent is defeated.

Trivia[]

  • In the home console CPS1 ports of Street Fighter II, characters showed signs of being dizzy when they started getting up from a knockdown, rather than have the stars when receiving the hit that stunned them.
  • Poison's stun animation in V is very similar to both Chun-Li and Elena's stun animation in IV.

Sprites[]

For the full gallery, see Stun/Sprites.

RyuGemDizzy

Gallery[]

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