Defending Mugen

[RCoehrs420@hotmail.com]

I bare the 2-D cross in my attempt at defending the Mugen.
First let me start off by saying, I am not as hardcore of a gamer as most of you on this board, I accept emulation, because it's just simpler at times.
I know that's like spitting on a pope here but it's true, some of us just want to have fun with old game, Cartirage be damned! With that in mind this is my Five Point defense of Mugen...

5. Because they wouldn't just make the game.
So many Developers, So many Companies and Licesnes, It would be a nightmare to combined some series, But that doesn't stop us from wanting them. Now I know we have reached a interesting point with the release of Super Smash brothers, But it's not enough...Mario vs. Link is fine, But Bison vs. Shang Tsu is alot better! Now will we ever see a Mortal Kombat vs. Street Fighter, Maybe, but probrably not, Will Mugen give you that experience, To a point yes. It's a pure fact of demand not being supplied, so programmers made thier own

4.Go ahead make my game
The Mugen grows with each new version, Newer High resolution Stages, Screen Packs holding more and more characters, and yes more and more ability to cumstomize.
It may be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of, You'll be breezing by your character select screen , listening to The Ramones in the background, before that big battle in Dr Doom's Throne room...Ahhh it's good to be the King.

3. Characters, Characters Characters!
I have about 300 myself, Ranging far and wide, Simpsons, Transformers, Possibly some Pizza eating turtle, skilled in the martial arts?...Yup
Everyday more and more creations are made and pasted out into the world, Some for the Hradcore gamers[ King of fighters game characters] to the silly [Kool aid Man] It's all the dream matches you could want, and some you never even thought of yet.


2.It's not as hard as it looks
Youtube.com...Can't stress it enough people, Type in Mugen help and your bound to get a nifty tutorial that shows you close up the what wheres and hows of Mugen, And as anti computer sauvy as I am, after about a day I pretty much am comfortable with the whole process. It's like anything else, recall your first emulator after that good old nes finally broke down? it's like that.

1.It's that damn good
Sure you will come across the occasion lame character, but if a Character was in a fighting game..someone has made a really great version of him. Especailly if that Character was in streetfighter.
The care that went into alot of these character make alot of the light programming worth it. Ryu, Evil Ryu,God Ryu, see you even get you pick of different versions with different takes. Add in those classic fighting stages, the fighting music..I mean it's not a arcade but god, it's as close as your gonna get at times
The modes also add to the affect..have team battles [Up to four on a team] Have two on two same time, Heck you can have a survival mode going, replay value is amazing.
Also another great feature to the Mugen world is the ability sort your characters by company or game, which gives you easy access to the one you want.

Okay basically the five points melted together, and I apologize but that's kinda what Mugen is all about, Melting things together for a great gaming experience that the gaming companies have lacked to fill in our needs.
Anyways I hoope this makes some of you give it a shot, And PM for any questions I will gladly answer-Rob

[insinion]

mugen sucks

[cyberfluxor]

mugen sucks
I've seen a few good examples of it, but nothing to go crazy about.

[RCoehrs420@hotmail.com]

Okay..you say it sucks...but why?

[cyberfluxor]

Okay..you say it sucks...but why?
I can take a few guesses:
1) It's PC emulation, not the actual game. In addition there are possible slow-downs and lack of frames due to #2.
2) They're programmed by casual people so there's no professional polish on it. For those that are well done, it's very few out of the selection.
3) It's nothing to collect for as it's a virtual property.
4) It's pretty illegal, but no one is going to come after you over a few sprites unless you're selling it. But still.
5) This is a primarily console-fan base forum so you don't find too many that are open to play PC/MAC/DOS/C64/Amiga/TI, ect. games.
6) You just joined the forum and post a thread about how awesome Mugen is.

Those are a few possible explainations but many others exist.

[insinion]

The last time i played it the controls really annoyed me.. I'd rather play a good fighter like samurai shodown, king of fighters, streetfighter or i dunno there are too many. Then a game with shitty controls, and the whole pikachu vs godzilla vs ryu vs mario doesn't really get me excited sorry...

Please do me a favor and get yourself a dreamcast or if you have too much money a neogeo aes and you will never play mugen again :)

[ryborg]

Please do me a favor and get yourself a dreamcast or if you have too much money a neogeo aes and you will never play mugen again :)

I couldn't have said it better myself.

[cyberfluxor]

Please do me a favor and get yourself a dreamcast or if you have too much money a neogeo aes and you will never play mugen again :)
Ahhh, the solution to great fighters when you have money. :)

[exit]

Okay..you say it sucks...but why?

Your e-mail as a scree name is my #1 reason.

Consider yourself spammed.

[Kitsune Sniper]

Five counterpoints as to why Mugen sucks ass even to this day:

5. Thieves (I'll just replace the sprites! Nobody will notice!)
4. Elitism (You're not good enough for my character! I'll just show it off and YOU CAN'T HAVE IT HA HA)
3. Warehouses
2. Beggars (OMG DOOD MAKE ME A CHAR! GIMMEH!)
1. It seems to turn entire countries into raving asshats.

[Parpunk]

What is Mugen??

and yes im serious LOL

[Jorpho]

What is MUGEN? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUGEN. Also, search these forums.

You still sound a little bit bitter, eh Kitsune? ;)

Cyberfluxor has a point about the lack of professionalism. But at least the Youtube vids look pretty cool sometimes. (It's pretty nifty how they've even managed to throw in representations of the ships from classic shmups.)

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

It's my theory that the people who play Mugen these days are the same people or the same type of people that played all those "other" fighters back in 1993 like Time Killers and stuff. There was a lot of those sort of me-too fighters that were all generally very easy to learn, had rather stuff controls and generally lacked depth or a good sense of aesthetic. Many people played those games back then, though, and I have to try not to denigrate those fighters too much because it's all a matter of personal taste, I know. I like a lot of games or genres that are pretty trashy myself, so I should never try to climb up onto a high horse over stuff like this.

Those types of fighters weren't really my thing back then, though, and Mugen isn't my thing today. I'm not a huge fighter junky, but when I do play a fighter I want one that's got a sense of depth and solidity. In my favorite fighters like Last Blade, you can never finish learning new strategies and combos (chained or otherwise) even for a character you've played for years. That is not the case with Mugen in my experience. The strategies are very apparent and all seem to apply across the board for almost any character you play.


...word is bondage...

[RCoehrs420@hotmail.com]

Okay good answers everyone
Atleast I got that much, Most just snob it away and say it just does, I can respect this alot more..but just to counter point a few things

1.Yes I noticed that too, My Autofill and Me don't get along so My name is my email for now, I already contacted the Webmaster

2.Money is nice, So is dreamcast, But A.I hate most the dreamcast fighting games, characters I just don't like, sometimes to alike. B. I don't have all the money in the world. saddly to say.

3.As for lag time, I really haven't had to many problems at all.even with the 5 Gs going in it.

[Berserker]

Meh, I don't know. I mean from here, it looks like you basically just spent 7 paragraphs defending what looks to be an abandoned closed-source game engine from no one in particular.

Have you tried the Neo-Geo.com forums yet? Seems like people would have stronger opinions on a fighter engine over there.

[RCoehrs420@hotmail.com]

Have you tried the Neo-Geo.com forums yet? Seems like people would have stronger opinions on a fighter engine over there...

Why does that matter?..Sure I could talk all about Mugen with people who would just agree , but I rather like the counter point, I want the real deal on what people feel and I figured this was a very highly educated forum of gamers, who know thier history and the hows and whys.

I don't take offense to anyone with a different view as long as they are respectful and so far that's the case, I like it here. I learn alot. It's not wrong to start a forum on soemthing not popular..if that were the case we wouldn't see worst console threads..or worst game for such and such..it's debate about gaming..and that's great..Now as for being abandoned , I beg to disagree, the sites and creations may have slowed but never stopped.

Now as for profesinalism, Really depends on the creator, some do great work, alot do infact. I give the credit they deserve

[Sweater Fish Deluxe]

Oh man, I never read neo-geo.com enough to see what happens when someone mentions Mugen on the forums there, but I bet it's not pretty at all.


...word is bondage...

[ProgrammingAce]

I had no idea that video of Godzilla going through SMB's 1-1 was actually Mugen. I figured it was just video editing...

[RadiantSvgun]

Well, Mugen to me is like a fan-fic for fighting games. Also, it is a bastardization of just about every fighting game I love.

[Jorpho]

Now as for being abandoned , I beg to disagree, the sites and creations may have slowed but never stopped.

I think he meant that the original developers stopped supporting the software and vanished without releasing the source code, meaning development of the actual engine halted.

..Oh, gee, Wikipedia says their official site returned mysteriously just today!
http://www.elecbyte.com/faq/

[Arasoi]

I get a lot of enjoyment out of Mugen, it just depends on what kind of game you want to build and the quality of the characters you can find.

I've had quite a bit of fun gathering up every KOF character from 96-on, and creating "dream" matches, or teams.

This is is from someone who owns a Neo Geo and a fair amount of carts for it too. *shrugs*

[Kitsune Sniper]

I think he meant that the original developers stopped supporting the software and vanished without releasing the source code, meaning development of the actual engine halted.

..Oh, gee, Wikipedia says their official site returned mysteriously just today!
http://www.elecbyte.com/faq/

That seems like a very elaborate prank to me.

I hope they release something that is so broken that all Mugentards will be forced to quit. Haw haw.

[cyberfluxor]

Oh man, I never read neo-geo.com enough to see what happens when someone mentions Mugen on the forums there, but I bet it's not pretty at all.


...word is bondage...

LOL
Oh man, I feel like going over there now and searching for Mugen threads that would have certainly been locked due to flaming.

...Or maybe if you read the rules closely they have a ban against Mugen discussion. ;)

[Moo Cow]

I'm way to picky about my fighters. I only play 2D fighters that I especially enjoy (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Super Smash Bros. Melee, Street Fighter series, King of Fighter series, older Mortal Kombat, etc.). Most mugen characters aren't really that well made. But, hey, I hate many games people consider classics too (Tomb Raider, Dragon Warrior/Quest series, Super Mario 64, Tetris, and waaay to many others to count). So, to each his own.

[Berserker]

Why does that matter?..Sure I could talk all about Mugen with people who would just agree , but I rather like the counter point, I want the real deal on what people feel and I figured this was a very highly educated forum of gamers, who know thier history and the hows and whys.

I don't take offense to anyone with a different view as long as they are respectful and so far that's the case, I like it here. I learn alot. It's not wrong to start a forum on soemthing not popular..if that were the case we wouldn't see worst console threads..or worst game for such and such..it's debate about gaming..and that's great..Now as for being abandoned , I beg to disagree, the sites and creations may have slowed but never stopped.

Now as for profesinalism, Really depends on the creator, some do great work, alot do infact. I give the credit they deserve

Right, but what I'm saying is that in general most people here are probably "meh" on the whole issue. I think this thread is certainly justified in being here though. It's a classic gaming forum and there's a good slice of folks here who love fighters. Just saying that over there, they're pretty much ALL folks who love fighters, so you would probably get way more points/counterpoints that are as strong as your initial post here.

Anyway, it's good that you dig it but personally, from what I've read I have a hard time taking the whole thing seriously. And as Jorpho said, I'm speaking only of the engine, not the content being created for it. I'm sure there's probably a healthy community of folks churning out content, but the developers abandoned it. And since they lorded the source code instead of releasing it so that other folks might carry on the work whenever it is they and their select group of buds lose interest, which is what you really should do for a project so reliant on community-generated content, yeah... it's pretty well dead in the water.

A project like this needs constant tending and development, and maintenence as bugs are found and need for new features arises with the changing times. The only way you can really do that for something like this is to open source it. That, or have a band of ultra-dedicated developers who won't abandon the project -- which is really really unlikely if they're not charging anything for it.

[Kitsune Sniper]

...That, or have a band of ultra-dedicated developers who won't abandon the project -- which is really really unlikely if they're not charging anything for it.

*snorts*

You mean like when they asked for donations to supposedly fund the purchase of a legit compiler and then they vanished off the face of the earth?

[XYXZYZ]

I'm surprised by the replies I'm seeing here, everyone's sighting a bunch of stupid reasons that have no impact on how "good" a game is.

I say MUGEN does not suck, and here's my reasoning behind it-

1. When I play MUGEN, I have fun.

You see, MUGEN is sort of a "you get out of it what you put into it" kinda thing. People bitch about the lack of professionalism; if a MUGEN character feels flakey to you, toss it and only keep the good quality ones that feel nice and polished. There are more than you think, really. Take the time to gather all the music, sound effects and whatnot for the character select, vs, etc. screens. Take the time to assign just the right stages and music to all the characters. You can also learn a little MUGEN code, so if a character has some element you don't like you can change it. And don't expect Samurai Shodown characters to play just like a Samurai Shodown game, it's just the graphics applied to a new fighting system. There's also a creativity element to it- if you have a good vision of what kind of game you want, and you know what you have to work with, you can make it. If you're just haphazardly throwing random shit together, it's bound to suck.

Again, the more time you spend with MUGEN, you will learn what sucks and what's good, what you like and don't like. Then you can reject the bad, assimilate the good, and you've got yourself a pretty darn good video game.

[Iron Draggon]

oh man, Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter... I WISH! the game that never was that always should've been... if they would release that for one of the new consoles, I just might have to buy one of the new consoles just to play it...

Sony could save themselves and their hideously overpriced PS3 by securing the exclusive rights to a game like Mortal Kombat VS Street Fighter... think about it... EVERYONE would have to own a PS3, just to play that one game!

this could work one of two ways... they could use digitized characters for all the Street Fighter characters, so they'd look right with the Mortal Kombat characters, or they could use new animated versions of the Mortal Kombat characters, so they'd look right with the Street Fighter characters... I vote for the latter... the former would be OK for me, but it prolly wouldn't be OK for most others... too many bad memories of the Street Fighter movie game still lingering... but just imagine something like cel shaded Mortal Kombat characters going up against cel shaded Street Fighter characters... it would be the fighting game to end all fighting games... no doubt about it at all...

and theoretically, it could still happen someday... we already got Capcom VS SNK, and nobody thought that would ever happen, so why not MK VS SF?

[RCoehrs420@hotmail.com]

Wow when I started this Thread I had no idea how many people actaully liked it, Or how strong both sides felt.

I suppose I had a little ikling of it, and that's why I started the Thread in the first place,Basically when I found it, I freaked out, I loved it, I mean adroed it, all these characters finally getting to fight. I thought this has to be the biggest thing.
Yet when I waved the Mugen Flag around I got odd comments back like Mugen sucks and So what thats a retard game, I was honestly shocked, I thought gamers loved hacks, fidning the secrets and creating thier own stuff, Making better what developers dropped the ball on.

I see the hacks of Mario always going over well. I see the music file changes being a big hit with people. But Mugen is like a bastard child of the hacking community, I suppose I asked here because wlel I wanted old school gamers opionions on it, and I did..and I thank you all for taking time to give them.

For those against it, or those who did not like it, You haven't changed my mind but you did make me see the points against some of the aspects, mostly in the quality of some of the characters and I agree.

Those who like it have also given me a few things to think on too, Thank you for being so nice everyone.

[punkoffgirl]

Your e-mail as a scree name is my #1 reason.

Consider yourself spammed.

I hope this didn't really happen.

[Kitsune Sniper]

I hope this didn't really happen.

Anyone who uses an email address as a screen name or username is just asking to get spammed, either by people with nothing better to do or by spambots who harvest addresses from websites.

[Juganawt]

There's not a problem with MUGEN as such.. It's a nice little fighting game engine.

The problem is with the idiots who use it. Everytime I see a MUGEN build with more than 50 characters it just makes me shake my head and feel disgusted with the community.

Most MUGEN users have absolutely ZERO idea of how to make an enjoyable fighting game. Fighting games are all about balance, and most MUGEN builds are just loads of characters copied and pasted into the .def file, with no consideration whatsoever, apart from the single thought of "wouldn't it be cool if I had 500 characters in my game from street fighter, Mortal Kombat and King of Fighters? Who cares about their strengths and weaknesses. Hey, let's put an MVC character in here that can jump twice as high as everyone else and has 100 hit combos that nobody else in my game can do!".

Hell, most MUGEN builds don't even have a unified button layout that all characters use. Some have a 6 button LP MP HP LK MK HK layout, while another could have a 4 button HP HK LP LK layout, and another could have a 3 button B P K layout, completely confusing the player who has to constantly switch buttons depending on which character they use.

99% of custom games aren't edited in any way, meaning that there are usually a heapload of problems.

If you're going to use MUGEN, do it right, and make sure you take the time and effort to tune each fighter and level them all out so that no individual character has a clear upper hand. Start off with characters and evenly balance them out, then add a third and balance that one compared to the existing 2, and slowly, slowly, build up your fighting game over several months, making sure that no character has an unfair advantage over the other one, testing it thoroughly every step of the way....then once you've done that, make custom lifebars, music, and character select screens (don't just use someone else's... we've seen them all a hundred times before).

Once you've given birth to a highly tested and polished game, you can see that in the right hands, MUGEN can be a wonderful program indeed.

..its just such a shame that hardly anyone ever makes the effort to do so.