A teeny tiny guide to cancels, carries and corners

Oh my!

Welcome back to another STREET FIGHTER 6 post, where i talk about STREET FIGHTER 6 into the void. But this time, the principles covered are translatable to other fighting games! Before we start i want to give a quick thank you to Luke, who came in on his day off to help demonstrate, what a trooper.

Above you will hopefully be seeing footage of Dee Jay performing his standing heavy punch. You'll notice that when he connects with the hit, he tends to follow through with his step forward. While this is probably necessary for him to discharge the momentum from his punch, for us the player it is USELESS. We want to do DAMAGE and we don't CARE if Dee Jay needs to defy the laws of physics to do it. This is where the art of cancelling comes in, and you don't even have to open twitter! By perfoming the input for one of Dee Jay's special moves at the right time during the HP animation, we'll cancel the rest of it and instead immediately go into the animation for the special move. Lets try out a machine gun uppercut by inputting a quarter-circle backwards.

Ta da! We've successfully cancelled! Machine gun uppercut is a great candidate for being cancelled into, because it does a lot of damage but is slow to come out. By making use of the hitstun from our cancelled attack, we get around that limitation for a nice chunk of damage. i also find that a quarter-circle backwards is one of the easiest inputs to perform quickly, but that might just be me. Now i know you're shocked at what we've managed to do already, but what if i told you we could go even further? There's a sort of loose flowchart you can follow for cancelling, VERY generally speaking it goes normal move -> special move -> super art. Different special moves will have different super arts that they can cancel into, you can check the Street Fighter website for a full table of which moves can cancel into which for each character. All we need to know at the moment is that Dee Jay's machine gun uppercut can be cancelled into his lvl 3 super art, by inputting two quarter-circles backwards.

The nice thing about this cancel chain is that machine gun uppercut is active for a long time, so you've got a generous window to input the next command. If you know the lvl 3 will finish off your opponent you can do it straight away, but if you're maximising damage you can wait until the very end. Don't wait too long though, as you might miss the cancel window and drop the combo. So that's a basic guide to cancelling, probably the most fundemental part of traditional fighting games, and one of the ways that you build up a successful combo. But there are other ways....

To needlessly break it down, what you're seeing is a medium punch -> heavy punch -> drive rush (hey remember that) -> crouching medium punch -> quick dash -> heavy tatsumaki senpu-kyaku. Deep breaths. Combos like these are one of Ken's main strengths in Street Fighter 6, that being carries. Ken's carries are so strong largely due to his tatsumaki senpu-kyaku, from here on out referred to as a tatsu, which covers a fairly large chunk of horizontal distance WHILE ALSO moving your opponent. Provided you hit them. Ken also has his quick dash, which is kinda like a special character-exclusive drive rush. Almost all of Ken's special moves performed out of a quick dash will be FIRED UP, what we're worried about is his tatsu. A quick-dashed tatsu is active for a longer time, resulting in both more damage to the opponent and more distance travelled. The reason all of this matters is that carries are a very useful tool for moving your opponent around the stage - delivering them into that all-important corner. But why do we want our opponent in the corner?

Firstly, your opponent's options are very limited in the corner. They can't run away because there's a solid wall of pixels at their back, meaning they've either got to block or try and counterattack. This puts them at a significant disadvantage when it comes to the classic attack/block/throw game of rock paper scissors, due to the limited options available from their positioning. If they lose that game of attack/block/throw, then things get even worse for them. If they're thrown, then they've been knocked to the floor and their opponent has the advantage on wakeup. If they unsuccessfully attack, then their opponent has the advantage and can even get a counter hit in. And if they get hit by an attack, then they're potential victims of the most damaging combos possible in Street Fighter. Using the principles of cancelling and carrying, certain combos are possible in the corner that simply aren't anywhere else on the stage. The knockback on a lot of attacks prevent them from being used in certain combos, but this problem is prevented when they're stuck in the corner. Moves that normally wouldn't be possible can link into each other, taking full advantage of the lack of movement of the unfortunate recipient. After Ken delivers Luke to the corner, Luke tries to jump out and Ken seizes his chance to BRING THE HEAT.

Light shoryuken -> light shoryuken -> lvl 3 super art -> light shoryuken -> overdrive shoryuken, for a total of 7 shoryukens in one combo. Is this optimal damage? Is it reliable? Is it easy to perform? The answer to all of these is no but i hope you enjoyed or tolerated this post. i promise there are other things coming, i think i alluded to some ideas in other posts but things are happening, blog-wise and wider site-wise. Oh and happy 2026!