Fist of the North Star (arcade)/Advanced

Jump Install (star removal)
The Jump Install "feature" originally comes from the Guilty Gear series developed by ARC System Works. By cancelling the jump start animation, it basically allows you to perform an extra jump where you couldn't do so. This is extremely used in GG but is rather different in Hokuto No Ken.

The Jump Install feature of HNK only allows you to remove an extra star on moves that originally don't remove a star, or remove one extra star if the move already does. This glitch take advantage of the rule that every special move in the air will remove a star when done after a move with launcher property like.

The best example of it would be Thouther's Spear Toss move ( or ). If you perform it in a classic regular combo starting from a close (which have launcher property), you won't remove a star, but if you Jump Install the move by performing   or (i.e by performing a Sagat-like Tiger Knee motion), the game will register it as an air move done on ground and a star will disappear.

The Guilty Gear "Jump Install"-like feature of HNK is mostly used by Thouther and Shin players, for a good Thouther it's even a mandatory part of his game as his classic corner combo can use two jump intall without any boost.

For Shin the JIed  which remove two star is frequently seen at high level, but he needs boost for it.

There is also some Toki players that use this combining his  and   at the end of his basic combo.

Hit Stop Cancel
The Hit Stop Cancel feature of HNK relies on both Boost & Aura gauge. You can instantly cancel the hit pausetime of a basic move into a super move by pressing both the button required by the super move and the boost button, provided that you have boost & aura in the respective gauges.

Most seen examples of H.S.C. are Toki's cancel into  and Raoh's  cancel into, giving the feeling of accelerated super moves.

Damage Reset
Hokuto No Ken features damage reduction to prevent overpowered combos : the more you hit, the less life you remove. Although this works quite well in the game, there are cases where your move will be considered as a standalone one and will not be affected by that damage reduction : that's called the damage reset. Damage Reset only concerns super moves that deal multiple hits, like :
 * Toki's Hokuto Ujuu Danjin Ken
 * Rei's Nanto Sakei
 * Kenshiro's Tenha Kassatsu

Star Limit Override
The game has a 3-star-per-combo limitation but as stated earlier, ways to override this limit has been found.

4 star combos
There is another way to get an extra star in the limiter when you dizzy your opponent, to get it you have to remove at least one star before the opponent stands up dizzied, then you can do up to 4 stars for the dizzy reset combo.
 * Special Throw doesn't enter the star count limit.
 * The star from the wallbounce caused by a blocked max charged doesn't enter the star limit.

5 star combos
With the extra star from dizzy and the 4th star of a BD throw combo, you can go up to 5.

Mr. Heart only
Mr. Heart have an infinite on some characters that involves doing throw one after another during Itee mode until the opponent is KOed. As said above the star removed from a throw doesn't enter the limiter, so in this case Mr. Heart is able to remove all the stars his opponent have.

Use in matches
You won't see much of those combos in casual matches nor tournaments since they usually require a lot of boost stocks and most of them don't deal a lot of damage. Boost is vital for some characters & for pokes so players tend to preserve it as much as possible. Boost is also kept to perform bugged combos since they require less stocks, lead to 100 % combos and refill the depleted boost stocks. Star limit override set-ups you might see in actual play as they have a good cost/reward :
 * Shin doing 4 star from command throw on a dizzied opponent.
 * Thouther doing 4 star from throw, and up to 5 stars in case of dizzy which can happen as much since you won't see a lot of  outside from dizzy reset. This does little damage, in most cases only worth it if it kills opponent or at last round for an FKO combo.
 * Rei and Yuda can do 4 star with reasonable cost from a throw, but it will deal a lot less damage than their standard combos, can be sometimes seen if they dizzy their opponent and he have little life left.

Boost Bug(s)
This is just a list of known bugs concerning Boost. It only covers the main issues with that feature, but there are more minor ones that are not mentioned.
 * Whenever you consume a Boost stock by pressing, you will randomly deplete 20 % or 50 % of it, there's no control possible over that.
 * Boosting few ground moves make them go in the air when they shouldn't (check the video above concerning Star Override for example)
 * You can stock Boost at an amazingly fast rate when performing Dribble or Hyakuretsu combos and on other instances but the required conditions aren't clear since this is a game issue.
 * Boosting Rei's Nanto Gekisei Kakubu  in a certain way results in an endless hit glitch [ARCADE only]
 * Boosting Shin's Nanto Senjuzan  in a certain way results in Shin becoming invincible [ARCADE only]