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In many advanced ST combo videos, you see someone cross up an opponent, and then hit them with an attack while facing the wrong way. Everyone knows that the crossup must barely make it over the opponent and that the follow-up must be performed as soon as possible, usually on the landing frame. However, there are quite a few additional conditions which must be satisfied in order for the attack to come out facing backwards.

The main trick lies in causing the dummy character to reel backward fully before you land. That way their head is extended past your body and the game takes longer to figure out that your opponent is actually behind you. Here are the basic rules which apply to most characters:

1) must use a medium or hard jump attack because light attacks don’t trigger full hit reel
2) opponent must be crouching because jump attacks cause more pushback against crouching characters, plus they lean back further
3) jump attack must hit early enough during jump arc to give opponent enough time to lean back fully before landing
4) 1P characters must cross up by jumping from left to right and 2P characters must cross up jumping from right to left

It’s much easier to perform against opponents who lean back farthest during hit stun, such as Blanka, Honda, and Chun Li. Certain characters have a much easier time getting this to work than others. Most notably, T.Hawk and Chun Li can bypass almost every rule listed above. It has to do with their flat descent arcs, as well as having crossup attacks with great vertical and backwards horizontal reach.

If you take a closer look at various classic combo videos, you’ll start noticing patterns and it’ll become easier to figure out which characters need to obey all the rules. Generally with Tosaka and zerokoubou videos, if they can find a way to break one of the rules above, they’ll show it off. If they abide by the rules, that probably means they couldn’t find a way around them with the character they were using and/or the combo they had in mind.

Another point to consider is that performing an early crossup attack during a forward jump can give your character too much extra air time to continue flying forward before landing. Depending on the unique jump arc of the character in question, putting that extra space between your character and the opponent can be a deal-breaker. That’s why a lot of backwards attack setups utilize the corner in one way or another. It’s also why vertical jumping attacks are employed so often in these setups.

Hopefully this information sheds a little light onto the subject and makes it easier for everyone to set up these combos. There are one or two additional rules but they’re hard to pin down and they don’t come into play very often.