Tilt attack

Mario's forward tilt.

A tilt attack (officially strong attack, referred to as power attack in the How to Play video of SSB), commonly known as simply a tilt, is a ground attack performed by lightly pushing and holding, or "tilting", the control stick or d-pad in a direction and pressing the attack button, but not smashing the control stick/d-pad as for a smash attack. The easiest way to perform a tilt attack is to press the attack button while walking or crouching. Like smash attacks, there are three tilt attacks: a forward tilt, an up tilt, and a down tilt. Some forward tilts can be angled.

Tilts typically have good range and weak knockback at low percentages, keeping opponents in place for follow-up attacks. Most have enough knockback scaling to KO at very high percentages, and can be effectively used as such in Sudden Death. They tend to also come out quickly, though they generally have more cooldown than neutral attacks.