Short hop

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Sheik's short hop (right) compared to her normal jump (left).

An example of where short hops are useful. Link dodges Meta Knight's forward smash by short hopping over him, then using a down aerial to punish.

A short hop, officially a short jump (ショートジャンプ, short jump), small jump (小ジャンプ, small jump), or low jump in Super Smash Bros. 4, is the act of inputting a jump command and letting go of the appropriate button or control stick during a character's jump squat. This will result in a jump that is lower than a normal jump. This technique can be performed in all Super Smash Bros. games thus far.

The short hop technique is an essential move in competitive play, allowing the user to perform aerial attacks closer to the ground. This is useful for spamming aerials, especially with the SHFFL technique in Melee, as the aerials can be done closer to the ground and possibly hit targets who are still on the ground, with other techniques such as double jump cancelling allowing even lower aerials. Hitting grounded targets is especially important for characters whose aerials play a significant part of their metagame, such as Ness, who can perform powerful double jump cancel combos in conjunction with other moves such as his up tilt in Smash 64 and Melee. Characters who have strong aerial attacks, such as Captain Falcon, also benefit from short hopping. Short hopped aerials are also very useful for aerial approaches and spacing, especially for characters such as Marth.

Jumping speed affects the timing of the short hop, with longer jumping speeds leading to more lenient timing for short hopping. In Melee, for instance, a Fox player must release the jump button within 2 frames to short hop, while Bowser requires 7 frames. The height of a short hop varies from character to character as well. Short hopping is also used during wavedashing, to an extreme degree. For frame data, refer to Jumping.

Outside of its applications in competitive play, short hopping can also be used for Bat dropping in the Home-Run Contest.

In Brawl's Subspace Emissary mode, the time frame to input a short hop is reduced by 2 frames, increasing the difficulty of performing a short hop.