| In one line | One drawn image on screen. Browser games target 60 frames per second for arcade-smooth motion. |
|---|---|
| Spotted in | Reflex Duel, Ski Rush, Key Rush |
| Related ideas | Twitch gameplay, Pixel-perfect, Hitbox, Invincibility frames, Sprite |
The Full Story
Everything you see in a game is a slideshow running fast enough to fool your brain. Each still image is a frame, and the rate they appear at, measured in frames per second (fps), decides how smooth motion feels. Sixty frames per second, one fresh image every 16.7 milliseconds, is the arcade standard this site is built to hit.
Frames are also the game's heartbeat for logic, not just pictures. Positions update, collisions get checked and inputs get read on a per-frame rhythm. That is why players talk about 'frame-perfect' tricks: some maneuvers only work if the input lands on one exact frame, a window less than two hundredths of a second wide.
You will feel frames most clearly in twitch machines like Reflex Duel, where reaction times are measured in frame-sized slices, and in fast scrollers like Ski Rush, where smooth motion is the difference between reading the slope and guessing. Every machine here runs its simulation with a capped time step so the game plays identically on fast and slow screens.
Heard on the Arcade Floor
“At 60 fps, a two-frame dodge window gives you about 33 milliseconds to move; no wonder it took forty tries.”
Where You'll Feel Frame on This Floor
Reading about frame only goes so far; Reflex Duel and 2 other machines here run on it:
- Reflex Duel (ten rounds against the fastest gun in silicon) - wait for the signal, then react faster than the machine across ten duels, with frame doing quiet work underneath.
- Ski Rush (fresh powder, mean trees, one hungry mountain) - carve down an endless slope, threading slalom gates and dodging trees and rocks, where frame shows up on every single run.
- Key Rush (four lanes of falling keys - miss one and the music stops) - tap the falling tiles in the right lane before they cross the line, and frame is half the battle.
Load Reflex Duel and this entry turns from vocabulary into muscle memory.
