By Tony Cannon and shadyk and ghengis.

July 5, 2001 - There are all kinds of restrictions on what your character can do after un-flying. The most restrictive is this: if you cancel a flying normal-move into your unfly, you will be unable to perform any normal action before touching the ground. By "normal action", we essentially mean a normal move or blocking; it's still possible to special or super. You see this effect all the time as Sentinel. Sentinel's standard stomp rushdown usually goes something like air-roundhouse, cancel into fly, flying-roundhouse, cancel into unfly, land. Why don't Sentinel players do another air-roundhouse after the unfly? They simply can't. The game engine won't allow it, as they've cancelled the blocked flying roundhouse with an unfly. Not only that, they can't even block until after they hit the ground! That makes the stomp rushdown EXTREMELY dangerous against Cable. After the last blocked kick, Cable is free to air-hyper viper beam and there's nothing Sentinel can do about it.

However, there's a way to get that action back! MvC2 Masters ghengis and shadyk in Southern Cali have discovered that there's a way to put your character into a mode where he gains an extra action on an unfly! Needless to say, this is a huge improvement for characters that spend most of their time in the air, like Sentinel and Iron Man. When he regains that action, Sentinel can stomp freely on Cable's head, knowing that if he unflies he'll be able to block any counter AHVB's. This opens the door to completely new rushdown tactics as well. How about: fly, flying short, flying rh, unfly, air short (call Commando), air fwd, Commando hits, *REFLY*, fly up-forward, repeat. The possibilities are endless.

So how does it work? Getting hit by certain moves will put you in a new state where you gain the extra action. We call this state UnFly Mode (UnFly mode for short).* So here's how you get into UnFly mode:

Any move that knocks your character in the air so that he flips back onto his feet when he lands will activate UnFly mode. Moves that knock your character so that he lands on his back and STAYS THERE will NOT activate UnFly mode.

For example, Magneto's fierce and Storm's fierce both knock you all the way across the screen where you land on your feet immediately. Both those moves activate UnFly. If someone launches you and doesn't do an air-combo, you end up landing on your feet in UnFly mode. The last hit of Cable's 3-hit gun, Cable's uppercut, and Cable's running punch all behave the same way. You don't even have to land (although there's no harm in landing)... you're in UnFly mode as soon as the move connects. Moves like Ryu's low roundhouse which cause you to land on your back and lie there do not activate UnFly. Furthermore, Ryu's punch throw will not put you in UnFly mode, since you're thrown onto your back. Other throws, like Cable's, which do not cause you to land on your back will activate UnFly mode.

That's it. All you have to do is get hit by 1 move. Some of you might think this would be difficult. Not at all. First of all, getting hit by most anti-air assists will activate UnFly. If you're playing an aggressive, flying Sentinel, you're probably going to get hit by an AAA several times per round. In fact, if you're flying, practically everything that hits you out of the air will put you in UnFly mode, and since you don't have to wait till you hit the ground, you can cancel your recovery into a fly and make with the stomps.

UnFly mode also seems to reset the air-dash counter. Normally, you only get 1-airdash per jump or super jump. Certain things will reset the air-dash counter, like an air-teleport (which is really only useful for Dhalsim). UnFly mode also resets the air-dash counter, giving you an additional dash per un-fly as long as you're in the mode.

What's the drawback? Well, there's only 1: you don't stay in UnFly mode forever. There are several ways to lose it:

Method #1: If you ever normal jump, you'll fall out of UnFly mode. Superjumping is fine.
Method #2: UnFly mode will decay if you fly and unfly too much. The limit is somewhere around 4. On your 5th un-fly cancel, you will no longer be in UnFly mode.

Method #1 is the main reason why you've probably never seen anyone exploit UnFly mode before. Almost every Sentinel in the world starts off their stomp pressure tactics with jumping short or jumping roundhouse. Even if they were in UnFly mode to begin with, they lose it right when they do the jump. In order to keep it, you can try starting with superjump roundhouse or just superjump cancel into fly. Or as we mentioned before... just cancel your recovery from whatever move gave you The Glow with a fly and go from there.

*: We previously credited shadyk with doing most of the work in discovering the details of UnFly Mode. In truth, the details were worked out by both ghengis and shadyk, and both deserve equal credit.