Command Moves/Command Normals/Unique Attacks (
These attacks have a simple input, normally being a single direction followed by a button that does not involve crouching. While they are stronger than regular attacks, they are still slightly weaker than Special Moves by comparison, but still open up a lot of options; in The King of Fighters series, these can be used directly after regular attacks as a combo, and often can be cancelled into a either Special Move, Super Move, both or only one of the two depending on the command normal in question.
Attacks like Kyo Kusanagi's Ge-Shiki Goufu You are overhead attacks, which means these attacks cannot be guarded while the defender is crouching, and are grounded unlike jumping attacks.
Similarly, attacks such as Iori Yagami's Ge-Shiki Yuri Ori are specifically designed to be used as cross-up attacks, which make the defending player push the opposite direction to block, as they will be hit from behind not guarding properly. It is also an example of a midair command normal, which is one of the few other other options other than airborne specials/supers, for a character to chain any of their jumping normals into.
Uniquely to the KOF series, command normals only in the 2D-based games (barring the Maximum Impact games) tend to have different properties when chained-into or done standalone:
When done standalone most of the time:
- Tend to have slow startup, and may or may not be cancel-able. This often mirrors a lot of older fighting games with non-cancel-able unique arts/command normals.
- Can retain attack height properties to be able to hit overhead or low.
However, when chained-into:
- Often gain faster startup with some exceptions (such as Iori's Ge-Shiki Goufu In "Shinigami" when chained into STILL has its slow startup), and often become cancel-able on hit or block.
- However, some chained-into-command normals/unique moves still end up being un-cancel-able this way.
- Even then, there are command normals that are cancel-able out of both on their standalone or chained-into versions.
- Lose their mixup-attack-height properties (unable to hit overhead or low). This is likely meant to balance out the offensive staggered gaps generated from the short-hop-based-rushdown the KOF series is known for.
- Some chained-into-command moves despite the faster startup, are still too slow to a degree, forcing them to only combo properly from heavy normals.
While as a result, many chained-into-command moves tend to lack in the high-low-mixup department that likely would be more covered by a characters' set of special moves in question (special moves do not lose their overhead/low properties if chained-into, unlike command normals). However, characters with cancel-able command normals tend to have them be strong bread-and-butter tools for the most fundamental of their combos.
To often make use of high-low-mixup-type command normals in blockstrings to properly disorient the defender's guard, the attacker can have the ability to "late-chain" or link any of their cancel-able normals into the overhead/low command normal in question to have it still retain its specific-attack-height properties like on standalone, but at the cost of a fluid blockstring or proper chain-cancelling.
Trivia
- So far, command normals have mysteriously been fully absent from The King of Fighters '96, though characters that did debut in that particular game end up gaining command normals in later ones.