EX Special

An EX Special is a powered-up version of a special attack. Usually signified by the character in question flashing yellow, the EX Special version gains additional properties. These properties can include Super Armor, knockdown, higher priority, altered movement (such as greater distance covered), greater damage, less startup, fireball evasion and more.

Street Fighter III series
In the Street Fighter III series, the number of EX Specials a given character can store up depends on the number of bars in the Super Gauge of that character's chosen Super Art. For example, if Alex chooses the Hyper Bomb Super Art, he will have one bar in the Super Gauge; if he chooses the Boomerang Raid Super Art however, he will have two. These two bars will also be shorter. This means that the choice of Super Art determines not only how many EX Specials a character may store, but also how difficult it is to fill an individual bar and thus store one of them.

Street Fighter IV series
In the Street Fighter IV series, an EX Special usually uses up one segment of the Super Gauge. Every character has four segments. This means that for the most part (with few exceptions), a character can store up to four EX Specials at a time.

Examples

 * In Street Fighter IV, M. Bison's Head Stomp does 120 damage . However, when he uses the EX Special version, the EX Head Stomp does 200 damage, moves faster and knocks the opponent down when it hits.
 * Also in Street Fighter IV, Balrog's Dash Straight does 120 damage whether in the normal version or the EX version, but the EX version has Super Armor during the dash.