The closing of Evo 2024 marked the 20th anniversary of the Daigo Parry, one of the most iconic moments in fighting game history. Without a doubt, its impact still reverberates in the community to this day, reminding us that there may not, in fact, be a skill ceiling.
What is the Daigo Parry?
The Daigo Parry, also known as Evo Moment #37, was a historic display of technical prowess. It was Evo 2004. During the Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike semifinal match between Daigo Umehara and Justin Wong, Daigo was able to turn around what should have been an unwinnable situation through an incredibly precise application of the game’s parry mechanic.
As with most traditional fighting games, Street Fighter’s command to block is to hold the stick or directional button away from the opponent, it’s easy and doesn’t require your input to be touched. The weakness of blocking, however, is that special moves still inflict a small amount of “chip” damage. In 3rd Strike, by instead tapping the stick or directional button toward your enemy at the moment of impact, you could completely nullify their attack. Additionally, parrying leaves you with a large frame advantage to punish the attacking player. However, the timing was tight with a window of just one-tenth of a second.
Justin, playing Chun-Li, had Daigo, playing Ken, on the ropes. Down to his last few pixels of health, Daigo knew that, if he blocked an incoming special, he would lose. When Justin launched Chun-Li’s two-bar Super Art, Houyoku Sen, it would have been easy to say that the match was over. Anticipating the attack, however, Daigo used the only option at his disposal: the parry.
The Houyoku Sen is a lightning-fast flurry of kicks, rapidly hitting a total of seventeen times. This meant that even after parrying the first hit successfully, which is no mean feat as the attack crosses the screen faster than the game can register input to parry, he then had to parry sixteen more consecutive attacks. Not only that, he did an airborne parry on the last hit in order to set up a match-winning combo.
Why Does it Matter?
Even twenty years later, the hype is infectious when watching the video. You can feel the energy in the room as the crowd erupts into cheering with the first successful parry. Even if you don’t play fighting games, you immediately know you’re witnessing something amazing. Though maybe similar things had happened in dark basements and local arcades, this was the first time the community at large had witnessed such a display of technical prowess.
In this single moment, the fighting game community changed. Preconceived notions about what was possible were shattered, and new life was breathed into a stagnating genre. For the last twenty years, people have been practicing and recreating the Daigo Parry, but that’s honestly the least of its influence. Seeing a mechanic pushed to its limit like that prompted the world to wonder what else was possible. Suddenly, an entire generation of players had been inspired to push the limits of their favorite games.
Is the Parry Actually Hard?
Well, apparently, not exactly. Because it’s impossible to react to the startup of the Houyoku Sen, you have to anticipate the parry with near-perfect timing, which is exactly what Daigo did; in reality, you can tell by studying the video that Daigo was trying to bait that attack. However, once the initial hit is parried, because of the way hitstop (the time the game “pauses” after a hit, or in this case, parry) works, the rest is fairly easy with a little practice.
Even with the knowledge that the Daigo Parry isn’t impossibly difficult, there are a couple of factors that continue to make Moment #37 impressive. First, Daigo’s composure had to be at its absolute peak. To be in that bad of a situation, with the crowd behind him making noise, it would have been enough to rattle anyone. Second, it wasn’t a case where he had multiple tries. If he hit every parry and then fumbled the last one, the game was over. Even if he ended up dropping his combo at the end, it most likely would have resulted in Justin’s win.
Enduring Legacy
Even twenty years later, the Daigo Parry is fondly remembered. Justin Wong famously is very sporting about giving opponents a chance at their own Daigo moment if they practice the parry. When Nintendo announced that Ken would be joining the Super Smash Bros. roster, the trailer contained a reference to this very event. Justin and Daigo both participated in a good-natured skit for Evo 2024 in honor of the 20th anniversary of the Daigo Parry. These are but a few examples of how Moment #37 continues to live on, to say nothing of the lasting effects that still ripple through the way we play fighting games.
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