Part 54: Prompt-Cancel

Prompt-cancel

Found this one by accident when messing around with a stunned demon (see video below). I already knew that you could cancel a kick attack with a pummel, but I've never experimented or looked further into it. This trick is a variant of Stomping Fist / Heel Drop into Pummel that you might have seen in older God Hand videos by JP players. This is by far the most and arguably only real technical trick of God Hand since it requires quasi frame-perfect timing.

You perform a "prompt-cancel" by pressing the Circle button against a stunned opponent right before your hit connects. This is a frame-perfect trick and the timing is incredibly tight, the window being ~2 or 4 frames tops. To me it feels easier to perform a prompt cancel on emulator since there's a bit of lag between your inputs so in a way you have more frames to work with, if it makes any sense. You can perform a prompt-cancel with pretty much every moves in the game (except a few exceptions where you can't cancel the recovery animation of said move, e.g. Barrel Roll Kick.)

Links provided below are videos:

Prompt-cancel Poke of God on Demon

When performing a prompt attack, Gene is locked into the animation (whether it is a suplex, pummel, stinger, poke of god, etc.), however if you punch or kick before triggering the prompt, then your attack will carry its "momentum". This makes more sense using Charged Punch and High Side Kick:

Charged Punch prompt-cancel
High Side Kick prompt-cancel

But wait, there's more. The examples above are done followed by a Pummel, but what would happen on a Suplex prompt instead?

Quick Charged Punch prompt-cancel suplex

Watch it a couple of times and see if you can understand what's going on. Doing a quick Charged Punch will simply juggle enemies, not send them flying up in the air. In this video, the two enemies around Gene got juggled even though I triggered a suplex. Now let's see what happens with a launch move instead of charged punch:

Palm Smash prompt-cancel suplex

It's hard to see but the enemies around Gene got launched, look at the radar in the top right corner when I trigger the suplex.

This prompt-cancel stuff is pretty nifty and can lead to some really odd setups.