Dragon Ball FighterZ has been a wildly popular game, but it’s also resurfaced some old discussions among the fighting game community—namely, numpad notation.
The method for transcribing long strings of combos has varied over the years, thanks to different games having different inputs. Street Fighter has punch and kick buttons, while other games like FighterZ have general light, medium, and heavy buttons. Some games, like Injustice, even just rely on numbers to convey which button should come next.
It all comes together to form a pseudo-language that fighting game players can use to convey combos. For an easy one, here’s one way of writing how to throw a hadoken as Ryu in Street Fighter: qcf.P. This translates to, “quarter-circle forward, then any punch.” Bam! Fireball.
While the letter versions are used in many games, numpad notation is a different method of transcribing these moves, using the numpad of a keyboard to represent the motion of the joystick. Instead of “qcf” for quarter-circle forward, now it’s “236.” The stick goes down to 2, across to 3, up to 6. Add a punch, and Ryu’s still tossing hadokens.
Many anime-style fighting games have been using this variant of notation for years, but the spreading popularity of FighterZ in particular has exacerbated the issue of whether to use English alphabetical letters or numpad notation.
Each case makes a compelling side. Numpad notation is universal, and has an easy-to-follow visual; letters, on the other hand, make it easier to speak aloud (in English) and work better with games that already use numbers to refer to their button inputs, like Injustice and Tekken
Me personally? I’m a fan of numpad. It just reads clearer in my head, I don’t need to look up definitions of certain abbreviations, and it looks neater in writing. As some have pointed out, it’s also international! For commentary though, it’s understandable why some long-time fighting game commentators are hesitant to switch.
The talk rages on, but one net-positive are the jokes to come out of it.
Numpad notation just feels wrong coming from capcom games where we use megaman 2 notation:
Quarter circle forward: flash man crash man wood man
Dragon punch: wood man flash man crash man
Back dash: heat man heat man pic.twitter.com/zU66JTgeac— Pat (@pat7286) February 2, 2018
numpad notation is terrible. I use See N' Say notation:
qcf: rooster coyote horse frog
qcb: rooster pig cow bird
dp: frog rooster coyotehorse
dash forward: frog frog pic.twitter.com/99x65Dp5D9— Pat (@pat7286) February 2, 2018
https://twitter.com/embed/status/959481154117292033
Numpad notation is needlessly complicated so I use Twister notation.
qcf: Right foot blue to red
qcb: Left hand red to blue
dp: Right foot red blue lime
spd: Right foot red right hand blue pic.twitter.com/h8N8BRxcx8— Kaydie (@peacockjive) February 2, 2018
Forget numpad, new hotness is going to be radian notation
Get ready for 3π/2, 7π/4, 2π + P for your hadoukens pic.twitter.com/aG3xoqwU3L
— Suna (@Suna_19) February 2, 2018
