| M.U.G.E.N | |
|---|---|
 Title screen from M.U.G.E.N 1.0 | |
|
Genre |
Fighting |
|
Version |
DOS M.U.G.E.N LinMUGEN WinMUGEN M.U.G.E.N 1.0 M.U.G.E.N 1.1 |
|
Release date |
July 1999 |
|
Developer |
Elecbyte |
|
Modes |
Arcade Team Arcade Team Co-op VS Team VS Survival Survival Co-op Training Watch |
|
Operating system |
MS-DOS Linux Microsoft Windows macOS |
M.U.G.E.N (also written as M.U.G.E.N., MUGEN and Mugen and officially pronounced as "moo-gen"), is a 1999 crossover fighting game, designed, developed and created by Elecbyte. A 2D crossover fighting game that allows users to manually create their own characters, stages, lifebars and screenpacks in different styles. Creators can upload their game parts individually and allow other people to import their objects via a semi-modular style script into their own game. With this, even a programing amateur can create their own fight game of hundreds if not thousands of characters.
History of M.U.G.E.N[]
M.U.G.E.N was born in 1999. Elecbyte, the company of fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. First off, "Mugen" is a word of Japanese origin, meaning dream, fantasy, or infinite... It was released on July 17th, 1999. The program was written in C with the Allegro library. Beta versions were made for DOS, Linux and Windows, and was distributed through their website. "M.U.G.E.N" is actually an unknown acronym. The creators, Elecbyte, never told what it was. In fact, they admittedly stated that they forgot what it stood for.
Development[]
M.U.G.E.N was first released on July 17, 1999 for MS-DOS, but development for this version ceased when Elecbyte switched to the Linux in November of 2001. Elecbyte posted a request for donations on their site to continue the project, but the the group discontinued development and shut down the site in 2003. Later speculation pointed at leaks made public of a private Windows-based M.U.G.E.N beta that was provided to donators. This private WinMUGEN beta contained a two-character roster limit, locked game modes, and nag screens. In 2004 a “no-limit” hack was released that removed most restrictions. Many updates and releases by third parties followed, fixing bugs and compatibility issues.
Elecbyte returned mid 2007 and released a full M.U.G.E.N in September 2009. This new version had many new features, but also many issues, as it required a fair amount adjustments to the previously made content in order to be fully compatible with the new engine. Elecbyte stated that they would create a fully compatible M.U.G.E.N, and they kept word. In January 18th, 2011, a 1.0 version of M.U.G.E.N was made. This new version ironed out most bugs that were featured in the release candidates and is compatible with almost all of the previously made content. As of August 2014, the latest version was 1.1 is Beta 1, which was released on August 6th, 2013.
M.U.G.E.N started off as a PC shooting game, with its name supposedly being derived from those days. Elecbyte made the change from a shooter to a fighting game as they noticed "there weren't any good commercial fighting games on the PC at the time". Elecbyte have said that some of the inspiration for M.U.G.E.N came from games such as SFIBM. M.U.G.E.N allows users (typically known as "authors" or "creators") to create content for the engine such as (but not limited to) characters and stages for others to download and add to their game, or just to keep for themselves, as well as fully-fledged fighting games. Being a fighting game engine at heart, M.U.G.E.N takes inspiration from a variety of classic fighting game series such as Capcom's Street Fighter and SNK's The King of Fighters, featuring a seven-button combat system and, typically representing three punches, three kicks and a taunt, though characters are not limited to having those presets, with some only having four or just three attack buttons and a taunt.
M.U.G.E.N has a fairly large community, with multiple forums and sites dedicated to the engine, as well as many internet videos with the purpose of teaching users how to use and customise the engine or (more commonly) broadcasting M.U.G.E.N fights.
Customization[]
Users who develop content for the game engine are commonly referred to as authors. These authors create customized content such as characters, stages and screen packs/skins. Often authors will port popular characters from 2D fighting engines such as the Street Fighter series, or from TV and book series such as The Simpsons and Sailor Moon. Many authors will also create original content. Many websites exist to showcase and disperse the developed content and forms what is often referred to as the "Mugen Community".
Due to the customizable nature of the game engine, no two versions of M.U.G.E.N. are the same. Each person is encouraged to download their own copy of the game engine and to create or add content to match their personal preference. Groups of M.U.G.E.N. authors will often collaborate to produce a full game using the engine. These full games are available at a variety of quality levels and are released under the general M.U.G.E.N license.
"Under this license, permission is granted to use the M.U.G.E.N Environment free of charge for non-commercial purposes... Elecbyte provides a M.U.G.E.N redistributable package, containing a minimal M.U.G.E.N Environment, that may be included with third party content for redistribution."
M.U.G.E.N's websites[]
- Elecbyte - A company of fighting game engine M.U.G.E.N. Note that Elecbyte's website now returns a 403 Forbidden error (confirmed as of December 1, 2016).
- The Mugen Fighters Guild - The basic start point for many M.U.G.E.N players. Highly recommended if this is your first time using the engine.
- Random Select - A large database for characters and stages. Currently home to the BIJIN engine, an offshoot of the M.U.G.E.N clone I.K.E.M.E.N.
- Trinity MUGEN - Created by Vans, Jesuszilla, and Fusion around 2005, it is as its name suggests. Home of many a worthwhile character and will provide hosting services if necessary). Forum is not much active, most of the action is at the IRC chat.
- mugencharacters - One of the larger databases of M.U.G.E.N characters available today, it has just about every character ever made, including some that are otherwise all but impossible to find at all (other websites just list them as being "offline," or worse, they're only hosted on Phantom Gs). Unfortunately, as a corollary, it has just about every character ever made. Additionally, it hosts its own copies of everything, which annoys no small part of the community; CTRL+F "Warehousing" below.
- The MUGEN ARCHIVE - Probably the larger database in existence, even more than mugencharacters or any other of this list. As mugencharacters, MUGEN ARCHIVE had a lot to do with Warehousing, but in these years has been redeemed having its own forum where creators also can upload their characters there and uploading characters and stages that have been offline since years as well works from offline/retired creators. However, MUGEN ARCHIVE has an new errors in June 2016. It was MUGEN ARCHIVE introduces a change to how downloads are managed, requiring registered users who are not considered to be part of the website's community to go through adf.ly in order to download files, which has been met with a significant amount of negativity; certain users who have raised issues with this change. IP addresses have been banned by the ToS violations of website.
- mugenchara.blog.shinobi.jp - A Japanese M.U.G.E.N blog, with a character/stage entry added nearly everyday. It only links content to their original downloads. A translator tool is required for most users.
- SaltyBet - It's like betting on boxing or MMA fights, except instead of Mike Tyson, you get magicians who beat you up with dolls and lasers (sometimes both), Superman, robot ninjas and undead ninjas who brutally murder their opponent,crossdressing nuns, princess vampires, robot animals, killer mecha, a children's mascot with an assault rifle, a giant, fat, pink demon and human aliens and fancy golden hair who spew poorly-ripped, badly-acted Spanish, and, of course, Mike Tyson himself. Oh, and the money isn't real. The rules are simple: you start with 400 Salty Bucks. You lose it all, you get put into the Salt Mines with a bailout of only 10 Salty Bucks, and must work your way back to freedom. There is also a premium service if you make a real-life donation called the Salty Illuminati which allows you to access the Compendium, a sacred scripture containing character statistics and matchup odds.
- MUGEN Database - A 2005 wiki website created by FANDOM (or Wikia). MUGEN Database that aims to document content for use with the M.U.G.E.N fighting game engine, ranging from characters and stages to full games and screenpacks. The wiki currently has over 3500 articles, with a large fraction of this figure taken up by character articles.
- Mugen Free For All - Another community that focuses on archiving materials for the engine, providing detailed directories of characters and stages that are kept as up-to-date as possible. With the members pretty adept at finding things that are extremely hard to find. Unlike most archive sites it also home to it's own group of creators and their own original creations.