Sakurai angle

The Sakurai angle (sometimes displayed as a *) is a special knockback angle programmed into many attacks. While it reads in the game data as an angle of 361 degrees, the actual resulting angle is dependent on whether the victim is on the ground or in the air, as well as the strength of the knockback.

When hitting an aerial opponent in both Melee and Brawl, the angle is simply 45 at all times.

Against someone grounded, however, the angle depends on the amount of knockback. In Melee, the angle is 0 when the knockback is below 32 (0.96 launch speed), and is a 44 angle when 32.1 and above (0.963 LS). Between this extremely small range from 32 to 32.1 the angle transitions from 0 to 44. In Brawl, it is a 0 angle when it is below 60 (1.8 LS), and a 37 angle when it is 88 and higher (2.64 LS). Between 60 and 88 knockback, a far larger range compared to Melee's yet still relatively small, it quickly scales up from 0 to 37. As a point of reference, attacks will begin to induce tumble when the knockback is 80 or higher (2.4 LS), which in Brawl's case has an angle of around 27.68.

The Sakurai angle does not correctly tilt the impending angle indicator; it will remain at a flat angle.

While a grounded hit of a Sakurai angle-attack is technically a semi-spike, it can never be used as one due to edge slipping. Such hits also have a small chance (11%) of causing a trip, due to being low-angle attacks on characters that don't leave the ground.

The angle exists in Smash 64, but its exact characteristics are currently unknown.

Name origin

Early in Brawl's lifetime, it was noticed that many attacks with the "generic horizontal launch angle" have a low chance of tripping. Once decoding of moveset data progressed enough, it was then discovered that most of said attacks have a technical trip chance of 0% and an angle of 361. As Masahiro Sakurai is somewhat infamous for making tripping existent in Brawl, the angle was named after him. This is technically a misnomer, however: while it is true that the angle has an extra 11% chance of tripping, this applies to all attacks with horizontal angles and not just the Sakurai angle.