| abstract | - In all Fighting Games, each attack you do has a lag time or recovery; the amount of time after you make that attack that you cannot make another attack. After you throw a punch, there may be a second or two wherein you cannot throw another punch, to stop you from just hammering the punch button and throwing out fifteen punches per second. In almost all Fighting Games, there are actions that you can perform while in recovery that reset the recovery, allowing you to attack again before you would normally be able to. Usually this allows you to still dodge, block, jump, duck, etc. even though you can't attack, so as not to leave you defenseless. The side effect that experts in fighting games seek is that they can attack again after performing this action, thereby shortening the recovery time between their attacks. These recovery-shortening actions are known as canceling. For example, let's say that you have a special attack called Punch Rush, and that after you do a Punch Rush you are in recovery for one second. Ducking takes half a second. It also resets your recovery. Therefore, if you Punch Rush and then, immediately after hitting your opponent, duck, and then Punch Rush again, you were able to "cheat" the system and punch-rush after only one second instead of three. This would be referred to as a Punch Rush Cancel or Punch Rush Canceling. Of course, in real examples the time is much shorter. This trope is almost completely ubiquitous in Fighting Games, though is by no means exclusive to them. It might also be worth noting that, when used in a platforming or action title, dash canceling or jump canceling can be used to make your character move absurdly quickly. Often this requires frame-perfect timing, meaning that this can only be performed with any consistency in a Tool Assisted Speedrun. Compare Re Stabilization for Knockback cancelling.
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