Auto-cancelling is the act of landing during the beginning or ending frames of an aerial attack and circumventing the lag that would have occured had the character landed in the middle. Most air attacks can be auto-cancelled both during the first few frames or the last few frames, though some cannot be auto-cancelled at the start, at the end, or even both. Every attack has a specific auto-cancelling window.
Trivia
- The forward airs of DK and Ganondorf in Brawl cannot be auto-cancelled in the ending frames. By looking at the coding of the moves, it can be seen that they were intended to be, and they cannot due to a minor error of using the wrong type of timing function.