How Tricks Work

Air Tricks (researched by Crabbi)

Air tricks are pretty straightforward: the game has a counter that goes from 1 to 4 then loops back. Whenever you enter/reload a level, it gets set to 1. When you do an air trick, the counter increments by 1. Depending on the counter and the current direction you're facing, each character has their own set of tricks they do depending on whether you press X or Y. Roboy, NT-3000, Zero Beat and A.KU.MU share tricks with Noise Tank, Yoyo, Beat and Gouji respectively.

Check out Crabbi's video to see it in action:

Grind Tricks (by daft7)

Grind tricks are handled much differently than air tricks in JSRF. While air combos cycle through a counter from 1-4, grinds only cycle between 1 and 2. Upon entering a level or changing characters, the grind counter is set to 1. Jumping on rails then changes the counter from 1 to 2 or from 2 to 1. The trick that happens when landing on the rail depends on the character; the value in the counter, 1 or 2; and the direction the player is facing, forward or backward (also which side of the rail the player jumps onto, more on that later). The tricks for all characters are presented in Table 1.

As an example, if a player enters a level as Cube and jumps onto a rail facing forward, the player will execute a variant of Torque Slide when landing. If the player then jumps, executes a Y air in mid-air to turn around, and lands on another rail, they will perform a variant of Alley-oop Mizsou.

There are 9 possible tricks when landing while facing forward and each has a standard direction associated with it. Forward lands are detailed in Table 2. Arrows are the direction moving while landing. To use the Cube example again, if the player jumped rightward onto the first rail, they would perform a Backside Torque Slide. Jumping leftward onto the rail would be a normal Torque Slide. Each landing trick also has a specific trick that follows when pressing X or Y.

There are 6 possible tricks when landing while facing backward. Again, each has a standard direction. If the player in the example landed the air while moving to the right, they would execute a Farside Alley-oop Mizsou. Landing while moving to the left is a standard Alley-oop Mizsou. As with the forward lands, pressing X or Y moves into a specific trick for each landing trick. Backward landing tricks are shown in Table 3.

Once the player begins tricking, every character follows the cycles below. Pressing X repeatedly moves down the first column from Soul to Acid Soul and then back to Soul. The same is true for the second column. Pressing Y is more complicated. Pressing Y while facing forward moves to the trick down one and over one into the backward cycle. Pressing Y while facing backward moves directly to the left into the forward cycle. As an example, if a player has just performed a Torque Soul and then presses Y repeatedly, the tricks that follow will be Alley-oop Makio, Acid Soul, Alley-oop Mistrial, Soul, Alley-oop Soul, and so on. The cycles are shown in Table 4.