Paying homage to MUGEN

Today I have been looking into some old backup files from years ago and I found something unexpected. It was a folder full of MUGEN related content.

For people who don't know, back in the day, MUGEN was a freeware fighting game engine from a company called Elecbyte where people could download and modify pretty much everything: menus, characters, lifebars, stages, music, order in which chars would appear on arcade mode, etc.

_{Title screen for default MUGEN package (Source)}

There was a language and tools for implementing content and a lot of communities making full games for it and posting many tutorials for new creators. People would often do ridiculous match up fighting games like Mario vs SpongeBob, King of Fighters vs Mortal Kombat. Stuff that companies would never do. It was a blast.

_{Look at how many characters this guy put! (Source)}

When I discovered this as a 12 or 13-year-old kid it blew my mind. Being able to create your own game was the DREAM for anyone that liked games. I spent countless hours reading forums and trying to make my crappy characters work. I think I wasn't very successful on that but it was one of the first times that I got so interested in something at a point of researching and learning by myself and I believe it was a nice contribution from this engine for me. God, I still use some image editing tricks I learned there to this day!!

_{Tutorial on collision boxes from Elecbyte (Source)}

So now, ladies and gentleman, I am going to introduce you to THE BEST MUGEN GAME OF ALL TIME! My 13-year-old self will finally have his art displayed. You think Dragon Ball Fighter Z is a good game? Check out this bad boy:

Unfortunately the game is too powerful for my PC and crashed Windows 10 on the start of my first match so no gameplay footage today xD

But seriously, thank you ElecByte, developers and all the communities for this tool. It was fun while it lasted (and who knows? Maybe there is still people messing with it today). I hope Unity and other modern engines serve as a teaching tool for the new generation as much as MUGEN was for me.

Til next time,

Anderson