The Coolest Mechanic In Any Platform Fighter Was An Accident

[@Boxish]

Fun fact: the mere idea of combos themselves in fighting games originated in the same way. An unintended mechanic they found during testing and decided to keep in, while thinking it's inconsequential

[@atWisely]

The FGC has a long lineage of making new core mechanics entirely by accident

[@Jackenough]

I’m pretty sure the Roman cancel that the guilty gear series is known for was based off the unintended “taunt cancel” present in the first guilty gear game.

[@abra_escaped]

As a very casual player, I ran into hitfalling on my own without really even realizing it was a thing exclusive to this game. In smash I did fastfall aerials all the time, but after playing rivals it never clearly occurred to me that something was changed, it just felt so good and intuitive to do. Guess if I ever play smash again it might feel a little bit wrong now that I know it doesn't have this

[@atWisely]

That's exactly what I'm talking about, super cool to hear your experience with it.

[@Boxish]

Exactly me too. I didn't realize it until I saw it was a returning mechanic in the trailers. Which is amazing because this one mechanic may be why I prefer rivals to smash

[@disaffected_npc]

Had no idea it was unintentional - but as soon as you mentioned how it came about it makes perfect sense. Having grown up on Melee (and being a Peach main at that, resulting in an already kinda skewed relationship with LCancelling) Hitfalling feels so much more intuitive than LCancelling. There are even situations where you don't want to do it - whereas LCancelling is just, an extra hoop you literally *must* be able to jump through if you don't want your skull immediately caved in on Slippi.

[@Hartkn33]

Yeah totally L cancelling would be a bad mechanic in any game that wasn't melee

[@SoftwareNeos]

​@@Hartkn33can you explain that actually. Why is it fine in melee but in anything else it would be trash?

[@Hartkn33]

@@SoftwareNeos because L cancelling is a set timing based on when you reach the ground, 7 frames within touching it. Every player learns that set timing and it's engrained into their muscle memory. But that timing is disrupted by changing when someone touches the ground and that happens with light shielding

[@captaineflowchapka5535]

it is because it been 20 years , people practice it , there is ample ressource for learning it , and also elitism . but it objectivly a stupid mechanic to put in a game , and does nothing benefecial (only rewarding people who knows how to do it by not punishing them ; to add it would mean to add a negative that give nothing to the gameplay only to be completly ignored by player taht "tryhard") hitfall just reward you with more gameplay , and can be done by accident . intuitive , easy to learn doesn't punish the newbie , inspire people to get better ect....@@SoftwareNeos

[@disaffected_npc]

It's also just, fundamentally badly designed. They had ZCancelling in 64 that took away _all_ the lag of a move, whereas LCancelling only takes 50%, but all it effectively does is make the game harder rather than adding decisions to it like hitfalling does. There's never a time when you don't want to LCancel a move, whereas there are plenty of instances where you want to follow up after a rising aerial or whatever in Rivals where hitfalling becomes a decision, rather than just an extra button you need to press so that you get to play the game. That said, you couldn't take possibly LCancelling out of Melee without casting it's already tenuous balance *into the sea* as it's kindof the only thing keeping the spacies in check - but as far as learning from & developing upon the stuff Melee got right, hitfalling feels like the perfect evolution. The thought of Rivals2 putting the other mechanics back in on top of this sounds like a dream come true. And they even got rid of mashing!

[@godrusemary]

I play rivals casually, and I hitfall constantly. I didn't even realize it was a "tech" or something, it just felt like a natural part of the game. Goes to show just how intuitive it is as a mechanic

[@pacifistminigun3987]

probably same here tbh

[@KMLProductions]

A mechanic so good they named a major tournament after it 🤯

[@atWisely]

I had a line about that originally! Had to cut it when I decided to focus less on comparisons to wavedash (also a smash major)

[@puunk_9240]

Hit falling is lawful good and nasb1 air dodging after an attack is chaotic evil

[@squiddler7731]

Huh... You know, this mechanic actually makes a lot of sense when you think about. Like design-wise, it's basically the platform fighter equivalent of canceling a move in a traditional fighting game to combo into another one. Rather than being able to cancel the animation upon landing a hit, you cancel your upward momentum to quickly get back to the ground, which then allows you to keep the combo going more effectively. In the air you'd be forced to keep following that trajectory, but on the ground you have way more options to move and jump again, and now you're able to get back to that position in those vital frames where your opponent is still in hitstun.

[@normalrachael]

great comparison

[@riplix20]

6:35 im really glad they didnt call it gravity cancel, considering it actually makes gravity work overtime

[@abyzz6252]

i got surprised there bcs i immediately thought of brawlhallas gravity cancelling

[@hesho24]

7:00 this has to be the rawest rivals clip I’ve ever seen.

[@Hm-wr9pm]

Ranno got that dog in him

[@bazookaman1353]

Underrated channel. I love accidental tech.

[@Renzo0]

Good video fellow content brother! Love being in the Rivals community and recognizing most of the tags in the clips, also shoutouts to me for the sick combo at 4:25, Pity did it at a local on one of my setups lmao

[@atWisely]

Pity is my fav combo artist, so I probably have a lot to thank you for LOL Thanks!

[@chairwood]

luv u renzo

[@isaiahboom7]

i love the way you made this and talked about that mechanic i also never knew what it was til you talked about it and realized thats how i was hitting clips years ago when i played rivals. its crazy to see how we have things that we just dont have the terminology for yet thank you sir

[@aaronjayadriano8363]

I'm on the periphery of fighting games and platform fighters and this video made me want to pick up Rivals. Love the way you explained the mechanic's history, impact and legacy. Looking forward to 2 now!

[@atWisely]

This is exactly why I make these videos, hope you love the game!

[@WillM69]

I learned about (and realized I was already doing) hitfalling while I was watching Fullstream's Clairen tutorial. I was already spamming nair and bair to combo, and knowing it was actual tech I could work towards making consistent made it instantly feel more rewarding

[@MMSR_Reds]

oooh, HDR's incineroar has similar mechanic. I loved it in HDR and looks like I'll love it in Rivals 2! also, another example of an unintended mechanic that the devs fully embraced I can think of would be Tekken's Korean back dash.

[@cruelcumber5317]

Another series on the opposite side of the genre spectrum that had something like this (as far as I know, I don't actually know if it was unintended the first time, but it's very believable if that was the case but was kept until much later entries) is Disgaea with diagonal throwing. In Disgaea you can have your units throw each other and you are intended to only be able to throw orthogonally until Disgaea D2 (where they changed how throw targeting worked), but if you switch between two directions when aiming your throws, the cursor is still active while it's moving to the other position allowing you to cheat out throwing along diagonals with a very lenient bit of timing. This was in the game for four entries and all their rereleases, so they had more than enough time to find it and get rid of it if they desired, but they kept it as a fun little secret that does help a lot but doesn't break the game.

[@soulcakelive]

Hitfalling is so fucking fun, and as someone who has made a few custom characters in Rivals workshop, its one of my favorite combo tools to utilize

[@barthvader4316]

This is such a cool mechanic! Really goes to show how happy little accidents can happen like that. I’m definitely going to try to implement it into my fighting game if I ever attempt to work on one

[@russaindog]

Oh so its like a dash cancel like a game with gatlings would have, but just downward. Neat!

[@madison_hailstorm]

this one is hitting the algo I can feel it

[@pikachuattack542]

It's cool watching a video on this mechanic. I had no idea it was an unintentional mechanic when I did Shovel Knight nair loops over and over. Oh, and in Idol Showdown, a character named Ollie is able to do a fast fall that works exactly like this, and gives her special juggle combos.

[@xaius4348]

It's such a natural feeling mechanic. I used it all the time without even realizing it was special.

[@frog2098]

had no idea this was an accident but its such a big part of why Rivals feels so good to play

[@rensin4666]

crazy part is that Ive definitely used this before and just wasnt aware, like it flows so well into the game that I just never thought about it,

[@BlackHero20]

God. I remembered coming to rivals from smash ultimate. Making it my main game. Grinding for over 500 hours, and then just thinking about how hitfalling is a rivals exclusive mechanic that isn't in other platform fighters. Once you get used to it its second freaking nature, i have no idea how i used to play a platform fighter that didnt have it

[@backlashD]

No way. Wave dashing still holds that title. It's literally emulated in almost every platform fighter. It's the essence of sick platform movement in a platform fighter.

[@dakys3660]

yeah design wise drive rush cancel (not the neutral one) in sf6 looks like a similar thing where you cancel a move on hit to add extra confirm frames and open new combo routes. The fact it doesnt cost any resource is maybe overtuned but maybe balanced with the fact that it isnt a cancel you make on every combo

[@Moss_Dude]

I've never played rivals before, so thanks for telling me about this and what it is, the moment I figured it out I kind of just instantly recognized the extreme potential and fundamentalness of it, nice.

[@Oberon123]

worth noting that devs on melee knew about wavedashing before melee was released, but left it in. after melee, the team took a hard turn toward accessibility and lowering the skill ceiling, so wavedashing/l-canceling and other techs were removed and tripping was added (unfortunately)

[@BigRigCreates]

I was 100% expecting another video on wavedashing. Great video!

[@atWisely]

An early draft literally had "It's not wavedashing" in the title, but I decided to not directly spell it out, haha. Thanks!

[@almazingsk8er]

If the thumbnail wasn’t Rivals I would have 100% ignored the video as, “another wavedash video” lol

[@Yeliad]

Was not aware that hitfalling was unintended! One of my favorite unintended "bugs that became features" the Rivals devs kept in the game was the special effect Ranno gets when he taunts in the middle of a wavedash. It's just an aesthetic thing, and it goes away when you get hit, but still a neat little thing lol

[@Leafresh]

Nice video! I learned pretty early on in Rivals about hitfall when Etalus came out because my Smash habits led me to fastfall during aerials, so whenever I thought I was buffering a fastfall during his dair (which stalls you in midair on hit), I was cancelling it after the first hit constantly. After playing around and realizing it was just a thing in the game, I ended up just basing combos around it and was surprised when a lot of people in my scene didn't know it was a thing.

[@DRANBOLT]

dude hitfalling is such a gem of a tech, really fun

[@elemangell2981]

Let's gooo I've been waiting for this since you talked about it on your Rivals 2 stream! Can't wait to see more stuff like this from you with everything awesome that's happening now for the genre!

[@sylphofspace2258]

Hitfalling is so fucking good man, I find it harder to play any other platfighter because my gameplan is so built around it no matter who or what i'm playing ;-;

[@shimabotplus]

good icon op

[@WralthChardiceVideo]

The moment he mentioned that you can fastfall as soon as you hit the apex of the jump, I immediately knew why it would be bugged

[@ProperDev]

I was under the impression it was intentional. It FEELS intentional. Man I love Rivals.

[@itsrottweiler9545]

I love the "beauty of hitfalling" line lol

[@Her_name_is_luna]

So surprised how many rivals players havent played the tutorial and learned about fastfalling during hitpause

[@atWisely]

To be fair, the tutorials weren't added until several years into the game's lifespan

[@hembob]

i remember accidentally discovering hitfalling with mollo's up air in rivals 1 right after he got put in the official roster and since then playing platform fighters without it just feels weird

[@elbarnes]

Great clips to show it off and make it visible- I had no idea what it was before you showed the demonstrations. Really is impossible to not see after it’s pointed out. Nice video!!

[@d-tergent7899]

there is a good chance I've been dong this all along with various base and workshop characters and never knew this was an unintentionally intentional mechanic, it just feels so natural to do.

[@trollerthegreattrollertheg6234]

Warframe had this happen as well! A movement cancel glitch led the devs to make an entirely new system to allow the frames to be insanely fast. It was one of the key changes that made the game as popular as it is now.

[@SkeebusMcDreeber-de9mq]

3:43 we've said what it does, but what does it do?

[@Fireelf]

I noticed that too lmao

[@SSJPENGUIN]

I recently started playing ‘Brawl+’ with a friend & now I can't help but wonder what it'd be like with this mechanic

[@snerpletiger8761]

way better quality than most other youtubers. you deseirve the world. on other note i failed my math test today and i think ill probably fail the class the way things are going

[@SamWeltzin]

Oh yeah, I do this on purpose all the time and it didn't even occur to me that it was tech. It fits the Rivals flow so well, I didn't even think twice about it 'til this video.

[@t3amtomahawk]

Great video! I'm so stoked for 2024

[@jasomega2446]

2:08 NEAT

[@EyeZee]

As a casual I found rivals very fun to practise long aerial combos with and didn’t realise this was prob the reason

[@muno]

I'm very curious how the bug came to exist, because iirc (from doing workshop stuff) Rivals has different variables for your hsp and vsp during hitpause (old_hsp and old_vsp "remember" your pre-hitpause velocity, while hsp and vsp are set to 0). Maybe hitfalling was introduced before these different vars, and once they were added they added a special case for hitfall 🤔

[@pokeaust7800]

Damn I never knew that this was a bug. It’s one of my favorite aspects of Rivals combos and really lets you go crazy where you can’t in other platform fighters

[@BucketCG]

4:51 look mom I made it!

[@BucketCG]

(amazing video btw wisely)

[@chairwood]

grats bruv. cool combo. rip dugz

[@The_Quicksand]

Popped off when i saw your name lol

[@howdyfriends7950]

as a rivals player, the first minute of this video where you don't say what it is, i was like "YES" i haven't even watched past like a minute and I'm so pumped for this video, i love hitfall so much, it's such a great mechanic, i had no idea it wasn't intentional though

[@ar.temis696]

The funny part about this is I didn't even realize it was in the game and then I saw this video and I was like "wait I do that all of the time"

[@micahfurlow2624]

It's both so natural and easy to do and opens up so many more options all at the same time Honestly a godlike mechanic

[@doomsauce3447]

So rude of joshman to beat up on a guy with shingles like that

[@KrispyKorpse]

Yo lets GOO Wisley rivals content is peak as always. Love the vid, hitfalling is the greatest accident (unless master oogway is right then there are no accidents...), keep it up man! 4:58 Maypul jab 1 -> jab 2 -> jab 1 -> jab 2 -> repeat till rage quit

[@wittywarbler1117]

i love how so many of the clips are just "horrible thungs happen to etalus

[@evernewb2073]

honestly after hearing it was found super early I'm kinda surprised that it wasn't implemented into something you can do in any direction that isn't towards the point of contact/direction of travel of attack, possibly at the cost of some of the damage dealt: it is functionally a mechanic for choosing to use the contact to maneuver vs trying to make a clean delivery of energy for damage and that is both an _excellent_ way to make interaction way more involved while making it _more_ intuitive rather than less to the point where it'd be one of those background mechanics that runs so smooth you don't really notice it's there untill you actually look for it and a good bit of realism since doing that is a *MASSIVE* part of fighting in real life: everything you do moves you just as much as your opponent and SO much of your movement is simply shifting what parts of your body are where without actually changing the location of your center of mass much. those two things are nearly everything in the actual physical mechanics of a fight and neither of those things are something you see represented in games. edit: yeesh, autocorrect turned that into something that looked like it came out of chatGPT not something a human wrote, hopefully I've got enough words turned back into what they should be to make this readable.

[@cmattss4]

Halfway through the video I realized you were the guy I saw on Twitter asking for clips of hitfalling lol. Great video!

[@ThePoodle]

This feature combines with several other features to make rivals very freeform on offense, and i love it

[@cdromthedisc]

I didn't notice that I was doing this already since I started playing the game. That's so cool that it wasn't intentional in the game.

[@docspangle]

It feels so natural in the rivals engine that i never even realized it was a tech. Upair hitfalling is core to like at least half the cast and you really dont even think about it

[@playapiano666]

I played Rivals 1 from the beginning and never knew this was a mechanic. I definitely did a bunch of hit falling, but I just thought I was hitting my fast falls really quickly.

[@saxeladude]

8:15 I agree with that point there is majesty in that

[@deadfr0g]

Am I mistaken, or did Multiversus (which post-dates Rivals 1) also implement something sort-of similar with its dash cancels on hit? I’m a longtime traditional fg player but a complete platform fighter scrub, so I’m genuinely asking if anyone can clarify here…

[@atWisely]

MVS (and NASB 1) both had heavy use of dash mechanics, but they were independent of hit or whiff. You could use them at any time. It's more like an aimable air dash in a traditional FGC title, they aren't tied to your initial movement in any way.

[@AnthanKrufix]

I love it when devs choose not to fix certain bugs because they enhance the gameplay. Favorite story of it is HOIKing in Terraria. A technique where if you angle a series of blocks in the right way it causes physics to bug out and phase things rapidly through to the other side of them... Thing is Terraria devs ended up having to delay the console release of the game by an extra month because a new engine they were using had accidentally patched it out and they wanted to find a way to reprogram it back in.

[@anatomicallyincorrect1167]

i found out about hitfalling bc i naturally move around in a funky swideways S pattern and typically just pressed down when i aerial attacked

[@sooooooooDark]

would be kinda nice now to understand "why" it is perceived as such a great tech/movement option by the vast amount of players if u can distill it down to its fundamental values that it provides, it could be a starting point for further general techs the devs could consider adding that tickle a similar itch in players

[@premthottumkara654]

Man, that guy that waved at the camera was hot as hell. He seems super cool, and I bet he's friends with rockstars who used to fill up arenas

[@JustArten]

4:52 Shoutout to Dugs. I haven't seen or heard from him in quite a while.

[@Disco_Man_Doopop_Doubly]

『 personally, I think Slime Meter is my favorite Platform Fighting mechanic. Hit Fall is cool too ig 』

[@Notester82]

Nice overview on hitfalling! Had no idea it was an oversight at first, and I appreciate the explanation on how it happened, haha! :P Also, I now feel inspired to boot up Rivals and hitfall like crazy ;u;

[@VerrouSuo]

we gave ranno's hitfall upair reset (the first clip) a special name in my circle, actually ok, in smash, sheik has this setup called "raindrop", which is dragdown upair into upsmash it requires dropping through a platform, thus "rain + drop" since ranno's looks similar but doesn't use platforms (instead using hitfall), we call it "rainfall"

[@atWisely]

Ooooh, I really like this one

[@cosmic5665]

The name you gave it actually has a meaning, most of us just make random names like a Hodan combo called Ray William Johnson

[@frigomaniac]

raindrop is already calls hitfall uair one, platdrop, uair 1 usmash the raindrop, they have for a while now

[@SmashCentralOfficial]

Wow someone actually saying "by accident" in 2024. Theres still hope.

[@SmashCentralOfficial]

8:34 rip

[@atWisely]

I'm so sorry I let you down

[@FatherOfGregg]

I loved playing casual rivals with my dad and we both always did this without even realizing it.

[@leonardodelimaferreira8509]

Just as you said, I would never guess it was a tech, it's just a second nature thing

[@Lexicon865]

Watching this video and my brain instantly goes "someone should implement/integrate this mechanic to a traditional fighter tbh"

[@kolby125]

may or may have not implemented this in the fighting game im working on

[@kylespevak6781]

It's funny how people found it intuitively by playing

[@HaydenTheEeeeeeeeevilEukaryote]

hitfalling is really fun casually too

[@captainphoton1693]

yeah melee is hard. because its so old and so the controls are clunky. But you dont need wave dash to be at the bottom of competition. you can win a tournament match without any wave dash. the probleme with new melee players is just that the game itself make you fall faster all the time. require L cancel to be smooth. dash back is stupid. run shield is stupid. etc etc

[@RandomDude647]

iirc hewdraw remix also has hitfalling but only for incineroar for some reason

[@annodatum9456]

so is there DI and SDI? The combos look a little hard to get out of compared to melee

[@atWisely]

In Rivals 1 there's DI, drift DI, and ASDI but not standard SDI. Combos are more explosive, but DI is more effective too. Rivals 2 has DI and ASDI.

[@atomicmelodies]

damn this one popped off, lets go wisely

[@PigsSSBM]

I included Hitfalling in my More Mechanics mod for Melee it’s so so fun in melee too

[@bgiv2010]

So basically how I've played Sheik since forever...

[@something5931]

Sakurai did know about wavedashing if i remember correctly. So the reason it got removed from subsequent games wasnt because it was a bug, instead it was removed to make the game easier im guessing

[@atWisely]

Yep, he did! They just didn't know how powerful it was going to end up being.

[@iRaz_GG]

Rivals has the heart of melee 🥲.

[@windwalker9800]

i never played rivals, however hitfalling was in NASB and i personally thought it was arguably as bad for the game as the netcode. it resulted in top level gameplay boiling down to auto comboing the same aerial out of hitfall until it becomes a poor version of brawlhalla edgeguard simulator. anyways at face value your video gives me hope that this wont ruin the game like i initially thought

[@atWisely]

So NASB's mechanic isn't hitfalling as it actually requires *more buttons* and uses the airdash. I totally understand how it looks similar though. In practice, combos from them look extremely different, from things like move speed, cancel timings, etc. Rivals isn't as cut and dry, there's very little "autocombo" moments. It's extremely fluid, and decisions need to be made on the fly.

[@captainphoton1693]

ho i get it. fast falling isnt tied to the height of your jump, but a timmer that start when pressing jump? right? so if you hit someone, the hitstop let the timer run out before you hit max height. therefore you can fastfall as soon as you get out of hitstop. thats so cool. (EDIT : well almost right)

[@torafights]

Awesome video brother 👍

[@atWisely]

Thank you fellow bald mid-tier enjoyer

[@know_the_nme788]

Hitfalling so cool we made a tourney for it

[@brownishtint]

Yeah it's made Tails basically perma banned in workshop tournaments

[@samk2407]

To me as someone who only ever played smash games casually until smash ultimate, wave dashing absolutely does not feel as natural as hit falling. Hitfalling feels natural because inherently moving is something you do with the left stick and fast falling is something almost everyone does by accident because they point the stick where they want their character to go, and hitfalling is a natural extension of "point where your character goes with the stick". Wave dashing on the ground is not something you will do unless you are messing around with the game in a more determined way or just have way more hours in it. You have to hold two buttons at the same time, and in every other game with it than rivals, hold a relatively specific angle on the stick at the same time. Wave landing on platforms, maybe something you would discover on accident as someone without friends in the competitive scene, but wave dashing across the stage? No definitely not without many hours in the game

[@wassabisabi9871]

Great video, Ive fallen abit off of melee but Im actually thinking about picking up Rivals 2! Can I use the Boxx for it?

[@atWisely]

Yep! I play on a rectangle for R1, and it worked in R2 when I got to try an alpha build.

[@wassabisabi9871]

@@atWisely that’s awesome!!

[@wassabisabi9871]

Where can I learn about any new archetypes for R2 and is there a discord ? And when does it actually release? Sorry for all the questions

[@iammuffin2030]

I still think the coolest tech is wavedashing, but god damn rivals combos with hit falling are cool

[@sammcgarry5822]

BRAWLHALLA MENTIONED 🎉🎉🎉 but seriously good video man! Its very nice to see discussion and content abt platform fighters that arent smash. I'll be looking forward to whatever you make! (Especially if its about brawlhalla, my main plat fighter)

[@saxeladude]

6:06 it sounds really cool can the tutorial please emphasize more not only what it is but that it's the most important part of competitive rivals please

[@Boomblox5896]

Will Rivals 2 feature custom workshop fighters?