Many combat-oriented video games will have separate inputs for punching and kicking. It strives to evoke the feel of having complete control over your character's body and creates many new ways to approach combat, especially if there are multiple buttons for punching and kicking each.
The concept is very prominent in fighting games, which popularized the trope. It also shows up in sister genres like Beat 'em Up and Stylish Action.
There's a lot of considerations to having punches and kicks separate due to the capabilities and limitations of each limb. Punches for example are mostly aimed at your opponent's upper body and are generally shorter in range; between the two, punches are generally your safest option for applying damage up close. Kicks not only have the range advantage but also more power due to requiring more motion from your center of gravity. Kicks also are where most of your low-hitting moves come from, allowing you to trip and poke from down low. Conversely, kicks can be riskier to throw out because without both feet to ground you, you lose your means of balance.
A character's build and proportions will affect how good each input is too (e.g. A tall, slim character will likely have better kicking moves, while someone with big, beefy arms would favor punches). Non-human/non-bipedal characters can make for interesting attack types; maybe kick inputs result in a tail attack or punching results in a bite.
Also common are punches and kicks having variable strengths, going from light to heavy strikes. This came to be as game machines allowed for more buttons, therefore more possible inputs.
An Extremity Extremist, who uses only arms or legs to fight, can play with the button layout to suit their style.
Examples (Make sure your buttons are set correctly)
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Action Games
- Bayonetta's attacks are separated into punches and kicks; punches are quicker but deal less damage, while kicks are her lengthier and stronger attack option. Bayo also has the ability to equip a weapon to each button, allowing her to pair a number of unique weapons to each pair of limbs for interesting combinations, like wielding swords in her hands while blasting away with shotguns at her heels.
- Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance: Raiden's standard katana moveset is divided into fast, chainable strikes with a standard sword stance, and slower but stronger slashes with the sword attached to his foot; basically a punch-kick layout with a weapon rather than with physical attacks.
Beat 'em Up
- Double Dragon
- Double Dragon I: Your character can make punch or kick attacks. The punch attack can be used to throw an opponent over your character's head or make attacks with carried weapons. Both punch and kick attacks can be made backwards, thus attacking an opponent behind you. Punch attacks made backwards become elbow jabs.
- Double Dragon II mixes it up by going with a directionally-sensitive punch & kick scheme, where you either punch in front or throw out a rear kick depending on which way Billy or Jimmy is facing. This takes some getting used to, especially if you're fresh off any other games in the series, but once you have that down it becomes a bit easier to protect your flank from sneak attacks.
Fighting Games
- The Art of Fighting games typically have a layout of a Punch button, Kick button, a taunt button and a button in-between that changes between the games (in AOF1 it's the Hard Attack, which move depends on whicever of punch or kick buttons were pressed last. in AOF2 it's the throw button. In AOF3 it's a blowback attack, which also becomes throw when holding forward or a reversal counter when holding backwards).
- Darkstalkers uses a six-button system with three punches and three kicks, as common with 2D Capcom fighters. Punches can be canceled into kicks for performing combos.
- A lot of 2D sprited Capcom fighting games use the 6-button layout (see also the Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom entries), with few exceptions like Cyberbots (which uses two buttons for physical attacks, a side weapon button and a boost button) and JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Heritage for the Future (which uses a light->medium->heavy setup plus a Stand button).
- Dead or Alive has a single button each for punching and kicking, and gives every character a preset list of combo strings by tapping each button in the right order. This is what allows for the series' wicked-fast combo system.
- Fatal Fury: King of Fighters established the layout for the Fatal Fury series, and by extant all of SNK's fighting games. The game has a three-button layout consisting of punch, kick, and throw. Fatal Fury 2 then turned this into the four-button layout used in almost every SNK fighter since; light punch, light kick, heavy punch, heavy kick.
- The Real Bout installments would switch up the layout once again for a layout of punch, kick, strong attack and line shift before Garou: Mark of the Wolves would return to the two-punches, two-kicks setup from FF2.
- Guilty Gear's control layout includes a punch and a kick button, followed then by buttons for a character's "slash" and "heavy slash" which uses their weapon. The punch button has a forward input that gives most fighters an Anti-Air, making their upper body completely invincible for the duration. Kicks meanwhile become a quick and close-ranged low attack when crouching. From the first game all the way to Guilty Gear Xrd, punches can be followed by kicks due to how the game's combo routing works, allowing for any attack to be followed by one of stronger value (hence kicks are "stronger" than punches); Guilty Gear -STRIVE- changes it so punches and kicks can only be stringed into themselves, not each other.
- Killer Instinct is a six-button fighter with three punches and three kicks. And almost every normal attack, regardless of strength or whether it's a punch or kick, can be used to start an auto-combo that traps your opponent in a barrage of hits. The only way to break out ("combo breaker") requires identifying which attack is being used at the moment, with every punch and kick having a unique animation playing.
- The King of Fighters uses a four-button system introduced back in Fatal Fury 2; two punches and two kicks. Your throw is tied to forward/back plus a Heavy attack button. Throughout many entries in the series, punches and kicks can't simply be strung together freely like other games, instead having very strict timing windows and accessible follow-ups that are specific to most characters. On the other hand, though, while chaining normals isn't quite possible like it is in Street Fighter, it is possible to chain Normals into Command Normals (i.e., Close HK > f+LP) for most characters.
- The Marvel vs. Capcom series has been using the six-button three punches and kicks layout from the first entry up until Marvel vs. Capcom 2, which changed the layout for two punches, two kicks and two assist buttons, with the previously stand-alone medium attacks being performed by taping the light punch/kick during a light attack. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 went for the light->medium->heavy plus a button for every character's launcher and two assists layout, but then Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite would later return to MVC2's 2-punches 2-kicks layout (with the Assist buttons instead being Tag and Infinity Stone).
- Mortal Kombat:
- The early Mortal Kombat games up to and including Mortal Kombat 4 had two punch and two kick buttons, with the division being based on angles: High (head-level) and Low (torso-level) punches and kicks. Holding backwards and pressing high or low kicks would do a roundhouse or sweeping kicks respectively, and high punch while crouching becomes an Uppercut.
- The games starting with Mortal Kombat 9 use Front Punch, Back Punch, Front Kick, and Back Kick as its basic attack buttons. Whether "front" and "back" refer to the left or right limbs depends on your stance: attacks using the front-facing limb are faster, while those using limbs in the back hit harder. And while crouching, your back punch becomes an Anti-Air whereas your back kick trips your opponent.
- One Must Fall has a punch button and a kick button, and these two buttons are the entire control scheme discounting the movement keys. Which of the normal move is performed depends on the horizontal direction held at the time of the press, with forward directions giving out lighter, faster attacks and backwards direction giving out stronger attacks.
- Samurai Shodown plays with the trope; characters primarily fight with their weapons (ordered light, medium, and heavy) but also have a kick button. Should you be disarmed, all of your weapon buttons are replaced by a single punch attack that is way less effective for dealing harm.
- Skullgirls is a six-button fighter, having three different punches and kicks for every character. You can also combo freely between a punch and kick of similar strength, contributing to the game's extensive and bonkers combo structure.
- One of the longest-recorded series to use the punch-kick layout is Street Fighter. The original arcade cabinets for Street Fighter only had two pressure-sensitive buttons per player, so each button was designated as a punch and kick input which could be hit harder to increase the attack's strength. Street Fighter II, thanks to now having a six-button setup (which was also added to the first game when complaints of the pressure-sensitive buttons breaking and fatigue from constantly hitting them came in), is what popularized the light-medium-heavy selection for punching and kicking, giving fighters more options to work with than the previous game. All three punch attacks generally can be canceled into special moves; this isn't the case with kicks, which on the flip side have more range and knock back than punches.
- Capcom's Star Gladiator games cribs off the Horizontal/Vertical/Kick/Guard layout from the Soul Series. see below.
- Soul Series games fight on a 3D plane with characters who use weapons. Two buttons perform weapon attacks, A is a horizontal sweep that hits enemies to the sides but can be ducked, while B is a vertical strike that hits ducking enemies but can be sidestepped. It also has a button for kick attacks with all characters, which tended to be weak but relatively quick (especially for large characters). The fourth button was used for blocking. In the games in the franchise where weapons could be broken, the A and B buttons would cause the character to punch instead, which was much weaker.
- Tekken works on a 3D plane, and so rather than a series of light to heavy punches like the 2D Street Fighter, you instead have four buttons corresponding to each individual limb; right-punch, right-kick, left-punch, and left-kick. Tekken's attacks are thus built around unique combo strings for each character, every fighter having upwards of several dozen attack chains formed by inputting each button in the right order.
- Time Killers use the back arm, back leg, weapon arm, weapon leg and a head button. Strata's next game Bloodstorm would replace the head button with the block button.
- Virtua Fighter has a layout of "punch", "kick" and "guard" buttons. Virtua Fighter 3 also added in an "escape", which hasn't been resurfaced in further installments.
- The first three World Heroes games had buttons for punch, kick and throw, with holding either of the first two outputting a stronger attack similar to the original Street Fighter. And there comes World Heroes Pefect, which would adopt a three punches & kicks control scheme commonly associated with Capcom fighters. On a four button Neo-Geo system, thus the fiercest basic attacks are performed with pressing both of the two punch/kick buttons.
Web Games
- Neopets: In the "Meepit vs. Feepit" minigame, players control a Feepit as it's fighting various Meepit across Neopia. While there are several movements that can be made and two combo attacks, the most basic attacks are limited to punching and kicking.
