Stun

"Dizziness" is a popular slang-term in the Street Fighter series, usually referring to a fighter's state of being unable to move for a brief period of time in the Street Fighter series. Dizziness is caused when one fighter scores several successive hits on another character, making the unlucky receiver dizzy and immobile for a temporary period of time. First appearing in Street Fighter 2, dizziness has become a very important factor and somewhat controversial concept in the fighting style and combos of many characters in the series.

Stun
In nearly every Street Fighter game, dizziness is determined by a quantified number called "stun." Stun is a static value given to each character, similarly "stun damage" is a value given to every move, from basic attacks to special moves. When a character takes more stun damage in a short period of time than their stun value, they enter a dizzy state. Some attacks are specifically designed to do much more stun damage than usual, such as Zangief's jumping headbutt. In most games, stun value is a "hidden" statistic not visualized like health or a super meter, but in some games such as Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, it is visualized by a separate bar.

However, in Arika's Street Fighter EX series, your character might be stunned if they receive any Guard Break damage.

Types of Dizziness
Depending on which SF game players are using, there can be up to four different types of dizziness visualizations, all of which can be broken out of by rapidly pressing left and right on the control pad/stick.:
 * 1) "Angels" - Angels circling around the dizzied fighter's head indicate that the dizziness can be broken out of quite quickly.
 * 2) "Bells" or in most games "Birds"- Bells/birds show that there will be some delay before action can be used again.
 * 3) "Stars" - The most commonly used state, the traditional stars circling around one's head in the SF series indicate that will be a moderate delay before it can be broken out of.
 * 4) "Reapers" - A state feared by anyone unfortunate to be stuck in it, reapers circling around a fighter's head shows that he/she has taken quite some damage, and will take a long time to get out of. There is not much hope of getting out, and most players usually do not even try to break out at that point (since usually the foe who made the fighter dizzy is nearby to follow up with a combo).

Controversy
Controversy has arose over the overall concept of dizziness in the series, especially in earlier games featuring this. In some cases, dizzying combos made characters "broken", or very unbalanced. Some characters in the original Street Fighter 2 (most notably Guile) had "re-dizzy" combos, which usually involve trapping a pinned foe against a wall with an onslaught of moves that will dizzy the foe once, and can be immediately set up again for another dizzying. Thus, it made some fights in competitive play virtually unwinnable when set up correctly.

The bosses of the same game also had an array of unusually powerful and chainable combos; M. Bison was extremely notable, with his air and ground follow-ups having solid attack power. Beginning with later iterations of SF2, the games had a majority of these removed, though this has not made it less annoying to some players.