Fatal Fury Special/FAQ

What Changed From Fatal Fury 2?

Fatal Fury Special was quite a massive update to Fatal Fury 2. Below is a non-comprehensive list of noticeable changes.

• Only 8 characters are playable in FF2, with Billy, Axel, Laurence and Krauser being unplayable CPU bosses. These CPU characters were made playable in Special, which also added Tung Fu Rue, Duck King, Geese, and Ryo, doubling the number of playable characters.
• Characters are invincible during hitstun in FF2, preventing combos from being possible. In Special, characters are only invincible on the final frame of hitstun.
• Characters are invincible during the final recovery frame of any action in FF2. There is no such invincibility in Special.
• The input interpreter is slightly stricter in FF2, requiring the first direction of a motion to be held for at least 2 frames. In Special, this is not necessary, although both games will not acknowledge the first frame's input after leaving the first direction as part of a motion.
• FF2 Lane Blasts, Lane Sway, and Dodge attacks can only be done while standing and will not execute if additional buttons are pressed as part of the input. In Special, these actions can be done while crouching and take priority over normals when pressed alongside other inputs.
• FF2's input interpreter will prioritize kick Lane Attacks over punch Lane Attacks when pressed simultaneously, and simultaneous button presses in the air will result in no action at all. In Special, Lane Attacks abide by ordinary button priority, and simultaneous button presses can perform air normals.
• FF2 rematches take place on the winning character's stage. In Special, rematches take place on the loser's stage.
• FF2's bonus stages can still occur between VS matches, interrupting them with a contest of which player can get the most points. These bonus stages were taken out of Special entirely.
• FF2's timer counts down from 90 seconds, with settings for Slow, Normal, or Fast countdown speed. FFS rounds count down from 60 seconds, with the number of seconds being adjustable rather than the countdown speed.
• FF2 has much more slowdown (like from fireball impacts) than Special does.
• After a character is dizzied, their dizzy point threshold does not increase in FF2. In Special, the dizzy point threshold increases by 8 after a dizzy.
• Backdashes cannot be special cancelled in FF2. In Special, they are cancellable during recovery and are slightly faster.
• Jumps can steal the corner in FF2, which is not possible in Special.
• Dodge Attacks knock down on hit in FF2 and can only be input as 6A. In Special, they cause an air reset on hit and can alternatively be input as 3A. Also, Dodge Attacks can be done after recovering from blockstun in FF2, which cannot be done from a single attack in FFS.
• All basic throws can only be input with the 6 direction in FF2, unless a character has a unique 4C/D throw.
• The common damage of throws in FF2 is 24. In Special, it is 26 damage.
• The common damage of hold throws in FF2 is 12 + 3xN, with the exception of Jubei's Komo Kuroshi (9C) hold, which does 16 + 4xN damage. In Special, holds universally do 4xN damage, with no strong hit at the start.
• In FF2 A/C Lane Attacks always go low to the ground, while B/D Lane Attacks always go high. In Special, A/B attacks go low while C/D attacks go high. FF2 Lane Attacks also cause an air reset on hit, while in Special they inflict normal hitstun.
• Desperation Moves are available at 31 health and below in FF2. In Special, they are available at 32 health and below.
• Andy's Zaneiken is not a charge move in FF2. In Special, it requires a short charge to input.
• Big Bear's Bear Hug hold is input with close 2D in FF2. In Special, this input was changed to close 9D.
• Big Bear's Giant Bomb has some full-body invincible frames when the move becomes active in FF2. In Special, the invincibility is moved to the beginning of the move.
• Big Bear's Super Drop Kick ([D]) has a higher minimum charge time in FF2 and only 3 charge stages.
• Big Bear's Bear Bomber (6428C) command grab does not exist in FF2, leaving Jubei as the only character with any command grabs.
• Jubei's Dai-Izuna Otoshi ([2]8P) command grab does more damage than a normal throw in FF2. In Special, it is weaker than a typical throw.
• Jubei's Neko Jarashi (63214C) command grab does not exist in FF2.
• Mai has a B version of Hissatsu Shinobibachi in FF2 that was removed in Special.
• Mai's Musasabi no Mai is input with [2]8C and can only be used on her stage with its flagpoles in FF2. In Special, this move can be performed with the A or C button and has an alternate version that uses the side of the screen that can be used on any stage.
• Mai's Yumezakura (j2D) air throw does not exist in FF2, leaving Jubei as the only character with an air throw.
• Kim's Hishou Kyaku (j2K) has no followup after being blocked in FF2. In Special, any button can be pressed to perform an extra attack before he lands.
• The CPU bosses (Billy, Axel, Laurence and Krauser) only have one version of each of their specials in FF2. None of them have a complete set of normals, either.
• Axel, Billy and Laurence's throws that send the opponent into the background will always do so in FF2. This feature would be reduced to a novelty in Special, only occuring if the opponent doesn't resist a single hit of the throws.
• Axel has a completely different projectile in FF2 that was replaced with Tornado Upper in Special.
• Laurence has an invincible spotdodge in FF2 that was removed in Special.
• Krauser cannot crouch in FF2.

How Does Each Character Play?

• Andy is an easy and strong character with great neutral. All of his special moves are incredibly useful, especially his safe Zaneiken that does tons of damage. He may seem like a shoto with his fireball and DP, but his fireball is actually quite slow so he prefers to be more of a hit-and-run bully.
• Axel has gigantic normals and amazing anti-airs, but is the slowest character in the game. Despite being a boxer, he enjoys keeping opponents away with his projectile and encouraging them to jump to their death. He runs into problems up close as he has no reversal, and if he loses the life lead it's difficult for him to come back with his limited movement and combo potential.
• Big Bear is a huge grappler with huge normals who can blow through pokes and projectiles with his huge invincible tackle. While the damage of his individual moves is impressive, his damage output is actually low as he will go many matches without ever being able to do a combo. His signature command grab, the Bear Bomber, sports gigantic range in a game with very abusable tick throws.
• Billy is a top tier character who pokes you from half screen and does combos from just as far. He is very oppressive in neutral and has unique tools such as multiple movement options and a near-instant projectile shield.
• Cheng is an oddball character who controls the mid-range with his arcing, lingering fireball and good anti-airs, but has slow movement without using unsafe specials. His unique projectile, instant rolling attack and homing snipe allow him to get creative, which is necessary for him as he can't play very traditionally against other zoners. At low health, he can start chucking nukes across the screen.
• Duck King is a difficult character who can kill opponents for one mistake, but has very little going for him in neutral. He has an extremely fast walk speed that gives him seemingly endless pressure and combos, but can't safely get around grounded fireballs. At low health he gets access to an extremely long range command grab that does half health which makes him even more of a nightmare up close.
• Geese is a zoning character who can do nice combos up close. His instant counter and air fireball specials let him approach situations in ways other characters simply cannot.
• Joe is the undisputed god of zoning. His tornados are both tall and cover the ground, invalidating most anti-fireball tools while also recovering quickly. Once his opponent jumps, his sliding sweep has a ridiculously unfair hurtbox that dodges almost every jumping attack in the game. Even up close, he has insane jabs that lead to deadly combos.
• Jubei is a tiny charge zoner who also has an insanely cheap low profile slide. He has great pressure, combos and tick throws in the corner thanks to his fireball's lightning-fast recovery, but struggles to approach grounded fireballs and is easily dizzied.
• Kim is the most mobile character in the game, and commonly regarded to be the best. His divekick is a constant threat from anywhere on the screen and his combos are top class. As if the divekick isn't already a game changer, his super makes defense terrifying as it does big chip, is plus on block and catches backdashes all in one.
• Laurence has good pokes and pressure, but needs to maintain a specific distance. He has a good ability to stuff and whiff punish his opponent's normals while wearing them down with chip damage, but once it's not his turn he has poor defense and can't easily navigate fireballs.
• Mai is a zoner with an incredibly deadly reversal that is not easy to punish. With one Ryuuenbu she can do half of an opponent's health and put some characters one hit away from dizzy. She's a simple and easy character, while also being one of the best.
• Terry has a nice grounded fireball, solid anti-airs and great combos and pressure. He's a deceptively complex character who can do a lot.
• Tung Fu Rue possess high combo potential and good pressure, and has a short-range projectile to help him deal with incoming spam. He is able to low profile many moves with his 2B and sweep.
• Wolfgang Krauser is a pure zoner with long normals, a long backdash and both high and low fireballs that knock down on hit. Even neutral jumping over his projectiles is dangerous as he recovers very fast when throwing them. He has slow normals, no reversal and few combo options up close, but he makes getting there difficult.
• Ryo is unplayable in arcades and therefore banned.

What Does The Tier List Look Like?

2019 Tier List by U-Q

S: The strongest characters. Great normals and specials that can completely demolish the opponent if given the chance. The top 3 especially have amazing damage output.

• Kim
• Joe
• Mai
• Billy

A: Lots of great normals and specials, but some moves have short reach or strange properties. Good damage potential once you get used to them.

• Jubei
• Andy
• Terry

B: All about tactics and reading your opponent. Suited for expert players. Good at tick throws. Duck is hard to master but can win a round from one good read.

• Geese
• Duck King
• Krauser

C: These specialist type characters have their strong points, but their general footsies game is pretty tough. Gameplay goal can be hard to understand, thus they require some studying in that regard.

• Laurence
• Tung Fu Rue
• Cheng
• Axel

D: Pretty tough. Good hitboxes but has almost no combo potential. Long reach on his command grab, but it requires precision. Terrible matchups against Joe and Jubei.

• Big Bear

2015 Nagoya Wolves / Koumei Matchup Chart

2004-11-4 Matchup Chart from http://www.ii-park.net/~garosp/

	Joe	Kim	Mai	Andy	Billy	Jubei	Geese	Terry	Krauser	Axel	Cheng	Duck	Tung	Bear	Laurence	Total
Joe	-	3	5	5	6	8	7	6	7	7	7	7	7	8	8	91 (+21)
Kim	7	-	6	6	3	6	6	7	7	7	7	7	7	6	7	89 (+19)
Mai	5	4	-	5	6	6	5	6	6	6	7	7	7	7	8	85 (+15)
Andy	5	4	5	-	5	7	5	5	6	7	6	7	8	6	7	83 (+13)
Billy	4	7	4	5	-	6	4	6	5	6	7	7	8	7	7	83 (+13)
Jubei	2	4	4	3	4	-	3	6	7	6	7	8	7	9	9	79 (+9)
Geese	3	4	5	5	6	7	-	5	4	6	6	6	7	7	6	77 (+7)
Terry	4	3	4	5	4	4	5	-	6	6	6	5	6	4	5	67 (-3)
Krauser	3	3	4	4	5	3	6	4	-	7	4	3	7	6	7	66 (-4)
Axel	3	3	4	3	4	4	4	4	3	-	6	7	7	6	5	63 (-7)
Cheng	3	3	3	4	3	3	4	4	6	4	-	5	6	7	4	59 (-11)
Duck	3	3	3	3	3	2	4	5	7	3	5	-	2	6	8	57 (-13)
Tung	3	3	3	2	2	3	3	4	3	3	4	8	-	7	6	54 (-16)
Bear	2	4	3	4	3	1	3	6	4	4	3	4	3	-	5	49 (-21)
Laurence	2	3	2	4	3	1	4	5	3	5	6	2	4	5	-	49 (-21)

• Kim is no longer the dominant force he was once considered, he's not even Rank 1 anymore, Joe is. The top tier is a lot more closely contended as well.

• The top 5 looks more or less the same, with only Terry dropping in the ranks, and Andy receiving a massive boost from rank 11 to joint 4th.

• Bear goes from joint 6th to joint bottom.

• Jubei goes from a fairly mid tier character to just outside the big 5.

• In the Gamest tier list, you could argue that everyone apart from Kim (rank 1), Cheng and Tung (rank 14 and 15) is more or less in a mid tier, but in the later tier list, there looks to be much more defined tiers.

January 1994 GAMEST Matchup Chart

	Kim	Mai	Billy	Joe	Terry	Bear	Axel	Geese	Jubei	Krauser	Andy	Laurence	Duck	Cheng	Tung	Total
Kim	-	6	4	5	5	8	7	7	8	7	7	7	6	7	7	91 (+21)
Mai	4	-	5	5	7	4	5	5	6	5	5	6	7	6	7	77 (+7)
Billy	6	5	-	6	4	4	6	4	7	3	5	5	6	8	7	76 (+6)
Joe	5	5	4	-	6	6	4	6	6	6	5	4	6	6	5	74 (+4)
Terry	5	3	6	4	-	5	5	5	5	6	7	5	5	7	5	73 (+3)
Bear	2	6	6	4	5	-	6	4	4	6	7	6	5	6	4	71 (+1)
Axel	3	5	4	6	5	4	-	5	7	5	5	4	5	6	7	71 (+1)
Geese	3	5	6	4	5	6	5	-	5	5	5	6	4	4	7	70 (+0)
Jubei	2	4	3	4	5	6	3	5	-	7	5	7	6	4	7	68 (-2)
Krauser	3	5	7	4	4	4	5	5	3	-	5	7	4	6	6	68 (-2)
Andy	3	5	5	5	3	3	5	5	5	5	-	6	5	6	5	66 (-4)
Laurence	3	4	5	6	5	4	6	4	3	3	4	-	6	5	6	64 (-6)
Duck	4	3	4	4	5	5	5	6	4	6	5	4	-	5	4	64 (-6)
Cheng	3	4	2	4	3	4	4	6	6	4	4	5	5	-	5	59 (-11)
Tung	3	3	3	5	5	6	3	3	3	4	5	4	6	5	-	58 (-12)

How Do I Use Training Mode?

Fatal Fury Special does not have a built-in training mode. The best way to train alone is by using the training lua scripts included with Fightcade, but there are some things to note:

• Holding the coin button (or pressing coin 4 times) will open the menu to change training settings. Pressing coin twice will begin a recording (of P2 by default) and 3 coin presses will replay that recording.
• The script's combo counter is broken and considers many non-combos as combos. To test if a combo is real, set the recording feature to "Record P1" and test if P2 can block after the first hit while it is replaying.
• Desperation Moves can be used by navigating to the Player Settings page and changing health to be 32HP or less with the "Health Always Full" setting.

Enable Hitboxes in Training

The hitbox display script garou-hitboxes.lua (located in the fbneo-training-mode/hitboxes folder) comes included with Fightcade and works for all Fatal Fury games, but the training mode script fbneo-training-mode.lua isn't set up to use it by default.

To enable hitboxes in training mode, modify line 68 (or any line concerning a Fatal Fury game) of fbneo-training-mode.lua to include hitboxes = "garou-hitboxes", as demonstrated below

fatfursp = {"fatfursp", hitboxes = "garou-hitboxes", iconfile = "icons-neogeo-32.png"},

Then, in garou-hitboxes.lua, add the following to the end of the file

function hitboxesReg()
  if hitboxes.enabled then
    render_hitboxes()
  end
end

function hitboxesRegAfter()
  update_hitboxes()
end

On FBNEO with Runahead set to 0, the hitboxes shown will be 1 frame ahead of the sprites. This can be fixed by changing the extra_frame value to 1, which can be done for all Fatal Fury games by changing line 731 of garou-hitboxes.lua to the following

g.extra_frame = g.extra_frame or 1

Doing this will cause the opposite problem when playing with Runahead 1 or on FBA-RR, which work perfectly if extra_frame is 0 (default).

Any FFS Resources I Can Use?

Match Videos

• Game Center Mikado, a Japanese arcade that hosts the annual Fatal Fury Special World Cup, in addition to regularly streaming matches and even having character tutorial videos (no translations though).
• Nagoya Garospe Stadium, a Japanese arcade with almost nothing but FFS cabinets.
• Kohatsu, a Japanese arcade that regularly streams FFS.
• Magical, a Japanese arcade where FFS is one of the most played games.
• G-Com Wajiro

Wikis/Guides

• English Game Guide by Universal-Quantifier
• Incredibly Detailed Seesaa Wiki (Japanese)
• Old Seesaa Wiki (Japanese)

Legacy

• Creators of fantastic Matchvids (Japanese, archived)
• The original FFS Supersite (Japanese, archived)
• SRK Fatal Fury Special Thread (read-only, archived)
• Glen's FFS Website (Japanese, archived)

Isn't Lane Switching Too Gimmicky/Cheap/Poorly Designed?

Kind of.

While being an interesting option to escape checkmate scenarios and get around zoning, Lane Swaying (NOT Lane Attacks) unfortunately lacks direct counters like what would be found in later Fatal Fury games. The jump itself can be thrown and the opponent can pursue with a light lane attack, but there is high pushback on block that makes it difficult to stop the opponent from just swaying right back to the other lane again. Some characters just aren't able to safely deal chip damage between lane jumps, and Krauser has it worst of all as his lane attack can be ducked under and punished by almost the entire cast, making a constant lane-switching strategy waste even more time.

Additionally, 1-lane stages exist and have no real gameplay issues, and the "1-lane game" can still be played in 2-lane stages, but not vice versa.

So why is lane switching only "kind of" bad? Well, ignoring Lane Sway, the rest of the lane mechanics are actually well balanced and interesting, and even the Sway can add a bit of depth when it's not being abused. This dilemma of the lane system adding to the gameplay but enabling a technique that heavily detracts from it is likely why SNK themselves have chose to ban the use of Lane Sway more than 3 times in a round while having no penalty on changing lanes via Lane Blasts, Lane Attacks and rolling, and why the above matchup chart was written assuming a near-complete ban on Lane Sway. However, this kind of rule is not standard in the West. Even without rules like these, Lane Sway is not commonly used in Japanese arcade matches and tournaments.

Are They Really Called Lane Blasts?

No, but there's no good official name.

SNK had very little consistency with their English names for FF2 and FFS' C+D attacks. Across various manuals, arcade flyers, and the in-game "HOW TO PLAY" sequence, they take the names "a very strong attack (in a different line)", "Super Attack", "Super Power Attack", "Powerful Attack", "3D Attack", and others. After FFS, this kind of attack never appeared again in the Fatal Fury series.

For the record, Lane Attack and Dodge Attack are not official names either for similar reasons, although "Dodge Attack" is now the term used in Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves, so it's retroactively official?

Is There Any Difference Between "Lane" and Line/Plane/Background/Foreground?

None of these names are wrong as this is also something SNK was inconsistent with in English. In Japanese, it's consistently "Line", but that's probably the least natural sounding name in English.

This wiki refers to them as "Lanes" exclusively for consistency.