Game Version: Capcom vs SNK 2 / Dreamcast / Japan / 2001

This may or may not be new, but Hibiki has some weird whiff cancel properties on her close standing fierce. Whiff cancel is the appropriate name for what was mistranslated as proximity canceling (this article used to be titled "Proximity Canceling in Alpha 3" and the link to it in the features index is still labeled that way). As a whole, the mechanism was eliminated from CvS2. Morrigan could use it in CvS to do some illegal cancels such as c.HP xx fireball by first chaining the c.HP into HK and canceling that HK before it executed (hence, whiff cancel). She can't do this anymore in CvS2 and neither can Yun, Athena, Terry, or anyone else with a chain combo. But Hibiki has something similar.

For those of you that don't know, her close s.HP is an upward slash, and she has the ability to cancel it into a downward slash (that combos off the first one) by holding down HP during a specific point in the attack's animation (regardless of whether or not it connects). This can be done simply by holding down HP the whole way through - it doesn't have to be timed if you wanna be lazy. But it turns out that she can cancel the follow-up slash into a special move.

It's not too easy but it's not too difficult either. The easiest way to go is to cancel it into her QCF+HP slash, which combos off the first hit of s.HP and knocks down. It is possible to combo into the QCF+LP or any other special move such as her KKK dodge or even her Taunt, but you must hold down the HP button to activate the followup slash in order to cancel it. An easy way to do it is to press close s.HP and wait until the appropriate time, and then buffer the second HP into the special move motion. So basically, perform it as if you were going to do a kara-special or RC special (except the timing is a little more forgiving).

Unfortunately, this kara-canceling property seems quite restricted. For example, she can't kattobi cancel the second slash into CC activation. She can't cancel it into S-Groove charge or N-Groove activation either. On omni's suggestion, i tried canceling it into roll and S-Groove dodge but neither of those worked either. These could all be intentional rules added by Capcom, or maybe it's just incidental carryover behavior from Last Blade 2, her game of origin. Either way, it's kind of neat.

cvs2whiffcancel01.jpg (320x240, 56 KB, JPG)
cvs2whiffcancel01.wmv (0:08, 903 KB, WMV9)
cvs2whiffcancel02.jpg (320x240, 46 KB, JPG)
cvs2whiffcancel02.wmv (0:08, 765 KB, WMV9)