I have my doubts about reviewing MUGEN. MUGEN technically isn't a game at all. In fact, its a game engine created by a now dead company called Elecbyte. Instead, I'll just provide a brief overview about it. About 10 years ago, they started developing a game engine that was free to use. However, around April 2001, they released their last version. Their website remained online for about another year, but then all of a sudden, their website disappeared and nothing has been heard from them since then.

NOTE: If you want to see MUGEN in action, you need to look for videos on websites such as YouTube. Screenshots can't really explain much since it looks a lot like other fighting games or can be easily photoshopped.

What is MUGEN?

MUGEN is a fully customizable game engine for fighting games. It's pretty popular and there are lots of websites out there for it. MUGEN itself comes with all the tools necessary to make stages and characters for it but most people rip their favorite characters from their favorite games and put them into MUGEN with some edits to make them function properly. Every aspect of the game can be modified. This means the intro movie, title screen, menu screen, character select screen, music, sound effects, AI, life bars, super bars, literally everything can be modified. Characters can even be given stories. Some people have developed screenpacks which are a set of different graphics combined to make 1 full design of the game. These tend to be based on a single theme such as Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat. The best part is, MUGEN is very easy to use. For example, to change the theme, just download a screenpack and overwrite the old files. To add a character, you just extract it to a folder and add the folder name and stage for the character (or just type random). The only limit to the number of characters you can have is based on the screenpack. The default has 10, the custom ones can go up to 10000.

Why use MUGEN?

I'm sure at any point in someone's life, they would wonder how a fight between 2 completely unrelated people would turn out. Before the cross over series (X-Men vs Street Fighter and such), it was completely up to their imagination. Once these cross overs started, it became popular and more and more people became interested. MUGEN allows you to take it to the next step and lets you pit any character you find online and pit it against anyone else. Most of the characters are from other fighting games, but there are custom ones out there. You can literally pit George W. Bush vs Osama Bin Laden if you want to (the characters are out there for download).

YouTube – Ryu and Chun Li vs Krizalid and Adelheid

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJZVB2IB4pk

YouTube – Ryu and Ken vs Adolf Hitler and Osama Bin Laden

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGHVcAAG7wQ

YouTube – Peter Griffin vs Giant Chicken

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtU12bsLylU

Problems with MUGEN

The main problem with MUGEN is from putting all these unrelated characters together. The speed difference tends to be the main problem. This is not counting the obviously overpowered characters that are made on purpose such as Super Dan or God Jam. There are some characters edited to be similar to characters from another specific game. A character from Marvel Vs Capcom 2 has an absolute speed advantage over a character from say King of Fighters '98. It isn't a big of a problem unless its against characters of different statures. There are some chibi characters that cannot be hit unless the normal sized characters crouch or duck. This kind of destroys the point of the game, but the chibi characters are usually ripped from a GBA game or something resulting in that size and stature. Some characters have been adjusted for by widening their hit box, but they just don't seem to fit in overall. Many characters are also incomplete and a few have either graphical glitches (usually minor) or sometimes freezing issues. The following video is the best example of the insaneness because Patchouli comes from a heavily projectile based game with dodge and counter systems.

Youtube – Patchouli

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2k0uAf0beFM

The other problem is the resolution. It is possible to play on higher resolutions, but unless the characters are updated in higher quality, most characters will look like crap because the characters look like they belong on a handheld system. Anything bigger than 640 by 480 makes characters look awful. Its bearable up to there still.

Some game companies still don't like people using their work on MUGEN, but the big companies such as Capcom and SNK Playmore don't care much about it anymore. There is supposedly disapproval of MUGEN from the creators of Melty Blood and Queen of Heart but these tend to be not enforced.

Where to obtain MUGEN?

MUGEN is available from many websites by simply using google. If you are using Windows XP or newer, you need the new user created version called WinMugen or LinuxMugen if you're using Linux. The best place to get it is from esnips. Just search for mugen and you get many results. For characters, just type mugen <name> and you tend to get a result. There are some more difficult to obtain characters sometimes. There are numerous sites out there dedicated to MUGEN. Its just a matter of which one you prefer.

Esnips website - http://www.esnips.com/

TIP: Don't buy custom versions from eBay, you can obtain it from esnips or other websites.

REMEMBER, if your MUGEN isn't at least 2 GB, you aren't taking advantage of the system to do whatever you want >.>