Instant Air Special

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(Redirected from Tiger Knee)

Instant Air Special (abbreviated to IAS) is the act of doing an air special attack immediately after jumping. Also sometimes known as Tiger Knee, although the two are not the same strictly speaking.

The idea is to:

  1. Buffer the motion for the special attack while on the ground
  2. Input jump after the motion
  3. Once airborne, immediately press the button

This can be applied to any air special/super attack and allows players to do an air special almost as if there were a ground version!

Tiger Knee

Tiger Knee (abbreviated to TK) is the name of Sagat's move in the original Street Fighter 2, which was 2369GGK.png.

Unlike most IAS moves in modern games, Sagat's Tiger Knee is a ground special, and does not work in the air. So one needs to press the final GGK.png button before becoming airborne, doing otherwise results in a regular jump kick.

In the subsequent games (and SF2 re-releases) the Tiger Knee input was changed to 623GGK.png instead, so it's no longer a "Tiger Knee" input, so to say.

The difference between the terms "TK" and "IAS" is that "TK" primarily focuses on the input (and usually covers any motion input ending in 7, 8 or 9), whereas "IAS" on the resulting move (regardless of how the move is inputted).

Examples

GGXRD-R2
Baiken's YouzansenGGXRD Baiken Youzansen.pngGuardHigh/AirStartup6Recovery14+ 6 after LandingAdvantage-17 (J.gif623GGS.png). Inputted as 6239~GGS.png
Youzansen is an overhead, and gives Baiken access to a fast overhead attack
I-No's Ultimate FortissimoGGXRD Ino UltimateFortissimo1.pngGuardMidStartup7+0Recovery16Advantage- (air 23663214GGS.png). Inputted as 236632147~GGS.png
Ultimate Fortissimo grants a lot of frame advantage on block, thus allowing I-No more time to do mixups
BBCF
Nu's Crescent Saber (J.gif214GGD.png). Inputted as 2147~GGD.png
Crescent Saber is an overhead, and greatly improves Nu's mixup game.

In these examples the goal is to input a jump after inputting the motion for the special move, then press the button shortly after.

However IAS is applicable not only to motion inputs. For example:

DNFD
Inquisitor's IAS j.MDNFD Inquisitor jM.pngGuardMidStartup12Recovery26Advantage-1 (J.gifMS) does not involve any input tricks and is a plain 8~MS when starting from the ground
j.M is a giant low crush that is safe on block
GGST
Similarly, Jack-O's j.D (J.gifD) with held servant is 8~D
j.D launches the servant in a low arc different from the grounded 5D version

Minimum Height

Some air attacks require that you be at least a certain height off the ground before the attack can be used (referred to as minimum height). A common example of this is Ky's Air Stun Edge. In cases like this, you will need to delay your button press so you can gain more altitude first.

Inputting the Jump

It should be noted that the jump motion doesn't have to be inputted at the end of the move! For example, to TK a 632146 motion, you can do 6321476!

Prejump Cancel

A Prejump Cancel is canceling the grounded startup animation of a jump into a ground special attack. While not exactly the same as a Tiger Knee, this can be done using the same motion with slight differences - time the attack input during the jump's prejump frames, which is a much smaller window of time compared to standard Instant Air Special.

An example of this is Susano'o Dancing Dual Kick (236B.png). The final hit is jump cancelable, which can let you cancel into ground special moves by using this technique. So to cancel into a second Dancing Dual Kick, do 2369 right when the final hit of the first one happens, then press B.png during prejump. Another way to do this is to input a jump as the attack connects, then the motion i.e. 8236B.png.

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