Mugen pc game software#

With art in hand, Fighter Factory let users tweak values, line up the sprites for animations, and make everything feel just right before exporting the generated files to create fully animated MUGEN characters. These third-party programs allow creators to import either their own hand-drawn sprites or images ripped from existing sprite-based games (making good use of the various sprite sheets that littered the Internet even since the late '90s).

Mugen pc game software#

Over the years, fighter-creation software like 2005's Fighter Factory has popped up to help facilitate this process. Though you don't need programming knowledge to create a MUGEN character, the process can still be time-intensive, especially if you're creating your custom art.

For the first time, fans of fighting games weren't just allowed but expected to create their own fighters and matchups. Everything else, from additional characters to even title-screen art, would have to be supplied by the users themselves, most often through files shared via Internet communities. This early release differed from most fighting games, though, by offering only one 'official' character, Kung Fu Man, and a single stage. The first public MS-DOS beta release of MUGEN came on July 27, 1999. Taking inspiration from a PC Korean Street Fighter 2 hack known as SFIBM, Elecbyte decided to change course from a shooter to a 2D fighting game engine. The team was originally experimenting with creating an engine to handle the rigors of so-called shmup games but found that it just wasn't living up to what they had hoped to create.

MUGEN began life just before the turn of the century as a PC-based side-scrolling shoot-'em-up title, created by a small company called Elecbyte. That program is MUGEN, derived from the Japanese word for 'infinite,' which is an appropriate name for a program that provides near limitless potential for players to create new fighting games and characters. Ultimate review: The best fighting game on any Nintendo systemEven within a genre known for character-merging crossovers, there's one two-decade-old game that reigns supreme when it comes to pitting a wide variety of characters against one another.