Dragon Uppercut

Dragon Uppercut, called Thunder Godfist (雷神拳 raijinken) in the Japanese version, is a move introduced in the very first Tekken game and can be performed by every practitioner of Mishima Style Karate. The follow-up attacks are however character specific (see respective articles for details). Heihachi also has an electrified version and a delayed version of the Dragon Uppercut, which in some games took the regular Dragon Uppercut's place. In Tekken 1 and 2, Armor King also has this move. Roger/Alex and Roger Jr. have a very similar move called the Animal Uppercut.

The Dragon Uppercut is relatively slow, and the long crouch animation after the step-in is a sure-tell of what's to come, meaning that a standing opponent has plenty of time to see and block/evade it.

The step-in crouch is not without its advantages though. It is able to duck under all high attacks, and right before the punch itself, most mid attacks as well. This makes it a relatively good counter-attack when one anticipates the opponent to dish out a high-mid string, however, because of the often better alternatives which can also lead to juggles, the stand-alone Dragon Uppercut is rarely, if ever, used in high-level play.

In the cases of Heihachi, Devil/Angel, and Devil Jin, Dragon Uppercut will always knock the opponent of their feet, however, in the cases of Jin (pre-T4) and Kazuya, this isn't so. In their cases, only clean hits will result in the opponent being knock of their feet, regular hits, or even counter hits, do not, which is likely why they became able to perform follow-up kicks. However, not getting in a clean hit with Dragon Uppercut is surprisingly difficult.

On the original Tekken 2 Ver.A arcade machine, Kazuya's Dragon Uppercut can be cancelled into Twin Pistons with 2. This is presumably a bug, as doing the same with Devil will cancel the move back to his stance (since Devil doesn't have a WS+1,2 Twin Pistons). The bug doesn't affect Heihachi or Armor King, as they use a different version of the move, and the bug was fixed on the Ver.B machine (released one month later).

The Animal Uppercut is a very similar move to the Dragon Uppercut exclusive to Roger, Alex and Roger Jr.. The move notation is exactly the same as the Dragon Uppercut, however the animation, hit range and frame data is different. It also differs by not having clean hit damage. The Animal Uppercut can also be used in a juggle, whereas a Dragon Uppercut cannot unless the previous move was a Class 1 launcher. In the US and EU versions of Tekken 2, this move is called Jumping Uppercut.