When I see new players try a 3D fighting game such as Soul Calibur or Virtua Fighter, they often have trouble understanding advantage time. The concept matters in 2d fighting games like Street Fighter and Guilty Gear as well, but because 2d games tend to have so much emphasis on zoning and controlling space, advantage time is more of a concept for intermediates or experts, rather than a thing beginners get crushed by. (They are too busy getting crushed by fireball traps or rushdown!)
What is Advantage Time?
In a fighting game, advantage time is the length of time (usually measured in 1/60ths of a second, called frames) that you recover from your attack *before* the opponent recovers from blocking (or getting hit by) your attack. If you do a kick, then the opponent blocks it, you have to recover from your kick (that takes some time) and your opponent gets briefly locked into “blockstun” (a state where they are stuck blocking) and that takes time for them to recover from, too. If you recover 3 frames sooner than the opponent in this situation, we say that you have 3 frames of advantage time. If instead the opponent recovers 3 frames first, most charts of frame data will call that “-3 advantage time” though in spoken English you could just say the opponent has 3 frames of advantage time.
Why does this matter so much?
If after a blocked attack, you recover a few frames before the opponent, that means if you both immediately do a move, yours will probably win. Your move will come out sooner and get to the active/hitting part before his, if the moves were the same speed.
In 3D fighting games, beginners can get totally destroyed by advantage time tricks without even knowing what’s going on. The opponent does some moves, then it seems like it’s the beginner’s “turn” to do something, but whatever he does gets beat out. He’s probably attacking in a situation where he has frame disadvantage, but he doesn’t even know it.
Nitaku / Forced Choice / 2-Choice Situations
In 3D fighting games, there’s a term called 2-choice (or “nitaku”) situation which means you put the opponent in a bad situation where he must choose between 2 things, and the deck is stacked against him, so to speak. If he’s attacking from
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