Uploaded May 2016 | Updated September 2026, 6 hours ago

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I noticed while making my Down Air video that the landing lag on Down Air seemed to be significantly lower if you hit an opponent compared to whiffing the move. I decided to test this and found that this is actually true, as documented in the frame data bible linked below. I thought it'd be a good idea to make a video visualising the differences between the amount of lag Fox suffers on whiff, on hit and on block. 18 frames of landing lag on block actually makes the move quite a bit safer on shield than I thought it was and also explains why I sometimes had difficulty buffering followups - the timing changes depending on these variables. I'd imagine this is true of all aerials with landing hitboxes like Game and Watch's Bair or Falco's Fair but I haven't tested it to be 100% sure.

The frame data bible:
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GaDXAPQJlz0AiIYSSOWFwy_dg04Rrq4a-YF9-VDOhZI/edit#gid=905402859

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Check out the rest of the series here:
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLhvLQ4f99b5tXsbR2-SfCAjXxVb5gwSEn

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I believe the reason this happens is due to the move having a landing hitbox. This means that while the hitlag or blockstun is occurring, it's skipping frames in the landing lag animation. However, this doesn't quite make sense to me because if you go frame by frame, the smoke clouds in landing lag appear on Frame 13 on whiff. I would have guessed that the smoke clouds appeared nine frames earlier on hit but they only appear one frame earlier on Frame 12 instead for both on hit and on block. I don't really understand why this happens, then, so if anyone has any ideas then I'd love to hear them!