---
title: 'The Art of Footsies - Fighting Game Fundamentals'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=mhkLBaDPuA8'
video_id: 'mhkLBaDPuA8'
date: 2026-07-28
duration_sec: 782
---

# The Art of Footsies - Fighting Game Fundamentals

> Source: [The Art of Footsies - Fighting Game Fundamentals](https://youtube.com/watch?v=mhkLBaDPuA8)

## Summary

This video explains the fighting game concept of footsies, which refers to the mid-range neutral game where players control space and bait opponents into making mistakes. It covers the history of footsies from the 1990s arcade era to modern games, and discusses how different game mechanics have evolved to change the way footsies is played.

### Key Points

- **Neutral Game Defined** [00:47] — The neutral game is the state where neither player has an advantage, typically with players at a distance, jockeying for position. A mistake leads to the punish game.
- **Footsies Origin and Definition** [01:45] — Footsies originated in mid-1990s arcades for games like Street Fighter and King of Fighters. It is the mid-range neutral game where players control space with normals, often using low kicks to pester opponents.
- **Core Aspects of Footsies** [02:53] — Footsies involves predicting opponent's hurtbox positions and controlling that area with your hitboxes, while making your own location difficult to predict.
- **Example: Street Fighter 2 Turbo** [03:29] — Low kicks are essential to keep opponents honest. They can interrupt approaches, punish extended hurtboxes, and beat projectiles due to faster startup.
- **Matchup Complexity** [04:07] — Footsies becomes more complex with different characters, as each matchup requires new knowledge and game plans (e.g., Ken vs Dhalsim or Zangief).
- **Mix-ups and Conditioning** [05:13] — Mix-ups involve deception and conditioning, using knowledge of the game and opponent to create openings. Example: conditioning opponent to block then grabbing.
- **Evolution: Aggression in Guilty Gear** [06:36] — Guilty Gear introduced the tension gauge to reward aggressive play, changing footsies risk-reward by allowing players to take hits for meter.
- **Marvel vs Capcom 2 and Air Dashes** [07:42] — MvC2 popularized directional air dashes, making jumping less risky and adding mix-up options, complicating footsies significantly.
- **Simplification: Indie Game 'Footsies'** [10:12] — The indie game 'Footsies' strips away complex mechanics to focus purely on spacing, hit confirms, and whiff punishes, teaching fundamentals.
- **Modern Trend: Simpler Games** [11:26] — Games like Street Fighter 5 and Guilty Gear Strive have reverted to simpler formulas, making footsies more accessible.

### Conclusion

Footsies is a fundamental concept in fighting games that encompasses spacing, baiting, zoning, and more. Understanding footsies grows with experience, and at its core, fighting games are about who is best at kicking shins.

## Transcript

welcome back to actionpedia the show
where we look at terminology from the
gaming world and explain their meaning
history and relevance today in this
episode we're once again entering the
world of fighting games and looking at
one of the most fundamental and most
complex concepts in the genre the tense
moment where both players approach each
other and try to figure out how to land
a clean hit footsies but first a quick
disclaimer this should serve as a
satisfactory introduction to footsies
and why it's so important to the
fighting game genre if you want to get
down and dirty pick apart frame data and
build flow charts there are plenty of
resources online for that that's not
what this is about with that out of the
way we hope you enjoy our take on the
history of footsies
first we're going to have to make sure
that we're all on the same page of one
of fighting games core concepts the
neutral game in fighting games the flow
of the match is constantly changing
sometimes one player has an advantage
over their opponent other times neither
player has the upper hand this ambiguous
state where neither player has the edge
is called the neutral game typically
players will be a bit farther apart
shooting projectiles fainting
engagements and jockeying for position
as soon as one player makes a mistake
they throw out a laggy move on block
they whiff something at a bad range or
they mess up their movement then we
shift into the punish game punishes are
making your opponent pay for any
mistakes they make a punish can be
anything from a single jab to a full
combo
the objective of pretty much every
fighting game is to catch your opponent
slipping and punish them as hard as you
can
so how does one win the neutral game for
that we're going to talk about footsies
footsies is a term that originated in
arcades in the mid-1990s and was used
for games like street fighter fatal fury
king of fighters and many others in
essence footsies is the mid-range
neutral game where players are close
enough to threaten their opponent's
space with normals like punches and
kicks but not too close that attacks are
actually hitting it's sort of like a
dance where each player is testing the
waters until the temperature feels just
right and they can comfortably jump in
infill defines footsies in his fighting
game glossary as quote a complicated
often nebulous term that refers to the
battle for controlling the space in
front of you often by using good pokes
in essence you are trying to get to a
range you like while trying to deny your
opponent getting to a range that they
like how you do this varies wildly based
on the game but it often involves using
strong crouching kick attacks to pester
your opponent as they are trying to walk
around this dance of playing mind games
with your feet is the source of the
term's name
so yeah full disclosure footsies is not
an easy thing to nail down but there are
certain aspects that we can isolate to
make it easier to understand this
definition we found on quora sums up
footsies pretty nicely footsies is used
one to predict where the opponent's hurt
boxes are going to be at a given time
and control that area with your hitboxes
two footsies is used to make your
location difficult to predict so the
opponent will not be able to do number
one to you theoretically that all sounds
pretty easy so let's put these concepts
into context by looking at street
fighter 2 turbo
in street fighter 2 turbo low kicks were
essential to keeping your opponent
honest in their decision making want to
walk forward if you're not ready to
block you'll eat a kick to the shins
want to throw out a move if your hurt
box extends too far forward you'll eat a
kick to the shins want to shoot a
projectile my kick has a faster startup
and it's pointed right at your dumb
little shins
[Music]
by being able to throw out a low kick
into the space in front of you your
opponent has to respect and move around
that space to do this you need to know
what options are available to you and
what options are available to your
opponent let's say we've got a match
between two ken players since both
players are playing the same character
it's easy to know what you can and can't
do your low kick has the same range as
their low kit your hadouken has the same
frame data as their hadoken so playing
footsies in this kind of setting is
simple you know that if they jump at an
unsafe angle you can punish with an
anti-air or shoryuk but where ftse
starts to become more complex is when
two players are playing different
characters if you are playing ken and
your opponent is playing del sim
suddenly you have to account for the
long range of his stretchy limbs on the
flip side if they're playing zangief you
can no longer just block when your
opponent approaches because you might
get grabbed and eat some serious damage
suddenly every matchup requires a new
set of knowledge and a new game plan of
how to play footsies but footsies is
more than just knowing options and
responding like a robot although there
are certain interactions which can be
quote unquote played perfectly on paper
any fighting game player worth their
salt will tell you that there are a lot
of situations where you're just not 100
sure of what's coming next which brings
us to our final core concept the mix-up
mix-ups epitomize the mental side of
fighting games this is where you take
all of your knowledge of the game and
combine it with your knowledge of the
person next to you it's deception it's
confusion it's sun tzu's art of war well
not really but it is the art of
conditioning a person to expect one
thing and catching them off guard by
doing something else in the context of
footsies mix-ups are how you expose
openings are you noticing that every
time you throw out a low kick your
opponent neutral jumps maybe this time
you can approach make it look like
you're going to low kick and dp to catch
them in the air got a knock down
condition them to block by throwing out
jabs as they get up and then mix them up
by grabbing instead anything to keep
your opponent guessing mix-ups are
essential to conditioning your opponent
to think one thing and then exposing
them by doing something else can't
really spam the specials anymore but
he's got extra range bruh
the pressure oh my god yo the pressure
the depth of learning and understanding
match-ups in fighting games is why
they've survived for so long and as
players began to master older simpler
fighting games developers wanted to make
it harder for them to solve their games
towards the end of the 1990s and into
the early 2000s some fighting games
began pushing players to be more
aggressive in an effort to speed up
gameplay and make things more exciting
one game that is a perfect example of
this is guilty gear one of the goals of
its creator daisuke ishiwatari was to
create a more aggressive action-packed
game in guilty gear x the tension gauge
was introduced which rewarded players
for choosing aggressive options like
throwing out attacks and walking forward
over defensive options like back dashing
and blocking the incentive to be more
aggressive fundamentally change the risk
reward of playing footsies as now you
could go in hard eat a couple of hits
and be rewarded with meter to make your
next combo hit harder the primary
objective was no longer to avoid getting
hit at all costs on top of this for
players and spectators alike
rushdown-centric gameplay can be much
more exciting than watching two shoto's
low-kicking at each other for an entire
round while not really a mainstream game
at the time guilty gear is an example of
games moving away from slow meticulous
gameplay in favor of offense and
aggression and this idea of overwhelming
opponents with brute force is best
illustrated by our next title
marvel vs capcom 2
new age of heroes
marvel vs capcom 2 is a game which plays
very differently than most traditional
fighting games there are a number of
reasons for this but one of the most
notable is the introduction of
directional air dashes in most
traditional fighting games jumping is a
big commitment if you jump in place you
will land in the same place you started
if you jump forward you can't alter your
trajectory
so if you get red you'll be eating an
anti-air for breakfast while marvel vs
capcom 2 wasn't the first game to have
air dashes in it games like dark
stalkers had it back in 1994 mvc 2
popularized it like no other now jumping
wasn't necessarily a dangerous
commitment but rather a fundamental part
of how some characters worked take storm
for example storm is an eight-way air
dasher this means that after a jump she
can air dash in any of the eight
directions you can hold the joystick so
rather than a jump being a 100
commitment storm can jump and then throw
in a mix-up will she do a regular
jumping attack jump into a backwards air
dash to stay safe a triangle jump to try
and cast you off guard with an overhead
air dashes open up a lot of
possibilities and complicated the game
of footsies like no other now an
opponent who is in the air has several
options and mix-ups to choose from and
simply throwing out ashore you when you
see them jump won't cut it anymore there
are those who lamented its fast pace and
offense first gameplay jokes about
quote-unquote marvel footsies being
mashing jab until something lands or
marvel players getting washed in any
other fighting games aside mvc 2 is an
example of a game which fundamentally
changed the way that footsies is played
[Music]
today oh my god
oh my god
this trend towards complication was only
getting started in the early 2000s as
anime fighters began to get more popular
mostly for their high speed and
notorious difficulty titles like
blazblue and guilty gear xrd epitomized
speed and aggression on top of that
roster sizes skyrocketed across the
board with games like ultra street
fighter 4 having 44 playable characters
tekken 7 having 54 some of whom will
have nearly 200 unique moves and smash
ultimate having 89 characters that's a
lot of matchups to learn but not all
games want to be harder or faster or
more complicated than whatever came out
before it and one game at the forefront
of making games simple again is an indie
game aptly named footsies the game's
description says quote footsies retains
the fundamental feeling of the fighting
game genre where spacing hit confirms
and with punishes are key to achieving
victory
oh come on i got the i hit the load
forward i held forward there there's no
air dashing no projectiles no 69 hit
combos just two players with the same
options and clearly defined rules of how
to beat the other person alright spammer
me versus spammer alright look spammer
all right i see why he's called spammer
in order to win in footsies you have to
be really good at footsies controlling
your own space with hitboxes punishing
your opponent for overextending and
knowing how to hit confirm are
fundamental aspects of all fighting
games and ftse strips away all of the
excess to give a lesson in fighting game
fundamentals
and some of the big names in the genre
have tried to revert back to a simpler
formula as well street fighter 5 and
guilty gear strive are two examples of
games which are a little bit easier than
their predecessors
regardless of what fighting game you're
playing footsies is gonna be a part of
it colin north describes it best in his
article for gigi noob where he says
quote the concept of footsies is so huge
that you can't really pin it down in a
specific way it encompasses all of the
important fighting game ideas spacing
baiting zoning with punishes corner
pressure the list goes on and on your
understanding of footsies will only grow
as you continue to learn and master
various aspects of fighting games and if
all of this sounds overwhelming then one
thing you should take away from this
video is that the core of fighting games
boils down to one thing and one thing
only who amongst your friends is the
best at kicking shins
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