Stuff like this is why gamers in 1990s arcades were able to convince other kids that they totally saw a Fatality where Baraka knits a sweater with your intestines "but it's really hard to do".

FUN FACT: Ivy's Summon Suffering command was at the time the notation for Namco HQ's phone number. XD

My favorite "impossible input" has to be Shang Tsung's secret fatality in MK2 - turns into Kintaro and punches opponent in half. It's a simple input... but very difficult to pull off. It's just "hold low punch 30 seconds and then let go."

Yeah there's nowhere near 30 seconds after announcer says FINISH HIM, so you have to hold it down through the entire 2nd round of the fight, which disables all Tsung's morphs and his fireball.

Devs: "Why can't we attract new players?"
Also devs: "you need to draw a star in 0.0005 seconds with the joystick"

The reason, so I've heard, for SF1's odd button recognition is that the game originally shipped with pneumatic pressure-sensitive buttons - one for punch, and one for kick. Yep, the light-medium-heavy was determined by how hard you pressed the button, which naturally meant that every non-light input would essentially have to bungee-jump through the lesser levels. Thus, the onset of the signal couldn't be trusted as the final word, only the outset could. I think I heard people were injuring themselves on the pneumatic buttons, though, and so they didn't even last long.

bro that’s so easy, just do the ⬇️⬇️↙️↗️↪️↕️🔼🔼🔄👊👊

Fun Fact: If you think Aggressors of Dark Kombat has a strange sounding, almost contrived name, it's because it does. The name was chosen because the company that developed it (and the Neo Geo hardware, as a matter of fact) was Alpha Denshi Corporation whose name was changed to ADK. So they chose that name (Aggressors of Dark Kombat) to coincide with the 3 letters of the developer name, ADK.

Hardest input? Pushing the Star button

8:54 I'm not gonna sugarcoat it

FYI - you can perform the Bobby Dance by starting with a front grapple then hitting Jump, which will put Bobby in a back grapple (so you won't need to manually maneuver to get behind your opponent). The input for the Bobby Dance itself is ridiculously tough to pull off as it is, but at least this makes the setup a bit easier.

Primal Rage inputs are more like a fever dream of a cheat code than special moves

Kazuya: Oh man, look how hard my just frame EGF is to do.
Lee: MARVELOUS!

Dizzy's IK with taunt is pretty ingenious since she apologizes right before turning into a uncontrollable gear that kills you. neat touch lore wise, wonder if that was the intended way to do it

As a young kid playing Street Fighter 2 at Pizza Hut the toughest move for me for years was on a arcade joystick attempting to pull off Zangiefs 360 slam lol

Ivy's Command grabs in SC6 still allows for the simple input of spinning the stick... BUT... it also has a just-frame version of the moves which are done by pressing each input deliberately.

Theres a whole indie fighting game based on this. Called misinput i think. Edit:The game is called Motionsickness. You can pick from 4 input styles with the harder input styles doing massive damage

soul calibur 3 had some truly inane inputs. setsuka had a three-part special combo that switched sides so you had to mirror the horizontal inputs in the second step.

One thing I remember reading about Heavy Chicken Wing is that move specifically doesn't have input buffer, I believe you do have to push HK and up forward on the same frame

I confirm that SF1’s special moves are performed most effectively using negative edge. It might have something to do with how Japanese arcade machines for SF1 had those pressure-sensitive “piston”buttons. Anyway, the negative edge theory makes sense, considering that normal attacks actually come out when you let go of the button, and not when you press the button down.

My favorite "impossible inputs" ever are Athena's "Psycho Medley" in KoF 2002 UM and Ralph's "Bareback Galactica Phantom" also in KoF 2002 UM. They're both stupidly hard moves to both land and do in the first place, but Ralph's move is an instant, One-Hit KO from full health IF you manage to land the second input (which is frame perfect and changes timing depending on the opponent's hitbox, so good fucking luck).