Post by Muramasa on Jul 28, 2006 13:28:27 GMT -8
I really hate to lie out of my ass, but seeing large amount of new articles has inspired me to write one of my own. Ok, ok, I've never really been the article writer for this site, but regardless, sometimes you just gotta expand your horizons. Do a little more than quickly scribble out a filler with the same punchline. So, in the spirit of all things good and holy and with a creamy filling, I'll do a review of something I like.
I enjoy playing fighting games. I've kept up with the fighting game scene for a while now ever since I've played the original Street Fighter 2 in the arcades. And I'm sure I've seen my fair share of fighting games too. From Guilty Gear to Power Instinct Matrimelee and from Mortal Kombat to Tobal No. 1, I'm sure I've seen a lot and almost close to saying I've seen it all. Perhaps my facsination with this phenomena stems from the fact that I enjoy the killing, that's why. All memes aside, I probably enjoy the stress of being in a situation of fantastic one-on-one conflict. That is to say, I could easily start a fight out on the street with a few well placed words and perhaps some kerosene, but I wouldn't be able to shoot fireballs out of my hands or jump 80-feet in the air or taking a hit to the side of the head with a broadsword and still survive it. And if that doesn't make sense, just tell yourself I'm compensating.
So, during a crazy time in my youth when I was playing King of Fighters between classes in high school, my facsination for fighting games only grew. Incidnetally, I also had a thing for RPGs too, and upon hearing about RPGmaker, I was all over trying to get that too work. Of course, given my patience and competency level, nothing really came out of that, but I did find a neat little program called MUGEN. MUGEN is a game engine that would allow one to make 2d fighting games. Made by the now defunct Electbyte, MUGEN had a decent surge of popularity amoung fighting game enthusiasts (ie those guys I played with I guess) until Electbyte decided to move all further updates to the Linux engine, and then seemingly disappear off the face of the planet altogether. MUGEN allows novice programmers to basically create fighting games, given they have the time and talent to create sprites and then make these said sprites "fighting game" functional. Obviously, that was asking for way too much from humanity, so most MUGEN games generally consisted of sprites ripped from other games anyways, with changes ranging from giving Gambit the ability to teleport to allowing Ken to indefinately combo his weak kick into another weak kick. Fun times for everyone.
During that time, I did manage to compile a decent collection of characters for MUGEN. Most of the characters I had were rips from games I cared to have interest in. Still, there were some original characters that were interesting and ALMOST effective, until they fought Version 32432543265903 of evil Ryu. It's these characters I tended to enjoy playing the most. These characters would forever be lost in data due to an unexpected format several years ago. I never cried so hard since I lost my pet bird, Puff. I thought I would never see them again.
Or so I thought.
The year is now 2006, a long way from those times in high school, but I can tell you one thing certainly came out of those years passing: bit torrent. By happenstance, I managed to find a link to torrent that would have, as far as I have seen, the largest selection of MUGEN characters. The entire thing was over a facking gig if that says anything. I've been spending some time playing around with some familiar characters as some new ones that I never knew even existed. And that brings us to the point of this article.
There are approximately 750 characters on this particular MUGEN. With the help of my brother, I plan on reviewing characters that are original, or at least the ones that seem slightly interesting. I could try reviewing all 750, but I figured the tedium of seeing another review of Kyo Kusanagi Version 30 would take it's toll on you, the reader. I do this for your sake. And with my usual, take up a thread for my own benefit, each new will be a new review of another character. The secondary purpose of this primary post is to also give me standardize format in which I would review all these characters. This is for my sake.
The format(this will be the format I will follow for now):
Name of character - No brainer of course
Game/Sprite of origin - I'm pretty sure no one will care, but sometimes it's interesting to find out where a character originally came from. Sprite of origin will be used if the character is an "edit" of an existing character
Fighting game statistics and or tactical information - Any information pertaining to style of fighting, techniques, or tactics, will go here. I'll try to keep the lingo on the high side, so you will be hearing about frames, buffering, chaining, wake ups, pokes and what not here. Just ignore this section if that's not your thing, which incidentally, I'm pretty sure 90% of this sites demographic will ignore which also, incidentally, is comprised of a total population of 10 people...
Review/Rants/Raves - This is probably going to be the meat of the character. I'll place a generalized review here, and score the character based on several categories. The ratings themselves will comprize of an adjective or some general thought followed by a justification:
Aesthetic Appeal (Ugly, Not Bad, Decent, ect ect)- This category is where I become a graphics whore and complain about how ugly the character looks
Function Factor (poorly made, incredibly cheap, gimp, ect, ect) - This character is where I look at how well designed this character was. Or basically, I pretended that this is a real fighting game and determine how much this character fools me into thinking that this is an actual functional character.
Glitch Factor (Mr. Freeze, levitator, ect, ect) - This is where I tell you how broken programming is. I'm not going to look at fine details, having a character disappear off-screen for 3 seconds then causing the game to crash should be a good enough clue.
Anecdotal info - If I have any stories pertaining to this character, I might just include it.
Reviews are going to be hopefully short and sweet. I won't have time to play them for too long to enjoy every single inane nuiance of any given character, but I'll try to be thorough as possible. Included below is an image of roster for those curious.
Looks like I gotta alot of work ahead of me.
I enjoy playing fighting games. I've kept up with the fighting game scene for a while now ever since I've played the original Street Fighter 2 in the arcades. And I'm sure I've seen my fair share of fighting games too. From Guilty Gear to Power Instinct Matrimelee and from Mortal Kombat to Tobal No. 1, I'm sure I've seen a lot and almost close to saying I've seen it all. Perhaps my facsination with this phenomena stems from the fact that I enjoy the killing, that's why. All memes aside, I probably enjoy the stress of being in a situation of fantastic one-on-one conflict. That is to say, I could easily start a fight out on the street with a few well placed words and perhaps some kerosene, but I wouldn't be able to shoot fireballs out of my hands or jump 80-feet in the air or taking a hit to the side of the head with a broadsword and still survive it. And if that doesn't make sense, just tell yourself I'm compensating.
So, during a crazy time in my youth when I was playing King of Fighters between classes in high school, my facsination for fighting games only grew. Incidnetally, I also had a thing for RPGs too, and upon hearing about RPGmaker, I was all over trying to get that too work. Of course, given my patience and competency level, nothing really came out of that, but I did find a neat little program called MUGEN. MUGEN is a game engine that would allow one to make 2d fighting games. Made by the now defunct Electbyte, MUGEN had a decent surge of popularity amoung fighting game enthusiasts (ie those guys I played with I guess) until Electbyte decided to move all further updates to the Linux engine, and then seemingly disappear off the face of the planet altogether. MUGEN allows novice programmers to basically create fighting games, given they have the time and talent to create sprites and then make these said sprites "fighting game" functional. Obviously, that was asking for way too much from humanity, so most MUGEN games generally consisted of sprites ripped from other games anyways, with changes ranging from giving Gambit the ability to teleport to allowing Ken to indefinately combo his weak kick into another weak kick. Fun times for everyone.
During that time, I did manage to compile a decent collection of characters for MUGEN. Most of the characters I had were rips from games I cared to have interest in. Still, there were some original characters that were interesting and ALMOST effective, until they fought Version 32432543265903 of evil Ryu. It's these characters I tended to enjoy playing the most. These characters would forever be lost in data due to an unexpected format several years ago. I never cried so hard since I lost my pet bird, Puff. I thought I would never see them again.
Or so I thought.
The year is now 2006, a long way from those times in high school, but I can tell you one thing certainly came out of those years passing: bit torrent. By happenstance, I managed to find a link to torrent that would have, as far as I have seen, the largest selection of MUGEN characters. The entire thing was over a facking gig if that says anything. I've been spending some time playing around with some familiar characters as some new ones that I never knew even existed. And that brings us to the point of this article.
There are approximately 750 characters on this particular MUGEN. With the help of my brother, I plan on reviewing characters that are original, or at least the ones that seem slightly interesting. I could try reviewing all 750, but I figured the tedium of seeing another review of Kyo Kusanagi Version 30 would take it's toll on you, the reader. I do this for your sake. And with my usual, take up a thread for my own benefit, each new will be a new review of another character. The secondary purpose of this primary post is to also give me standardize format in which I would review all these characters. This is for my sake.
The format(this will be the format I will follow for now):
Name of character - No brainer of course
Game/Sprite of origin - I'm pretty sure no one will care, but sometimes it's interesting to find out where a character originally came from. Sprite of origin will be used if the character is an "edit" of an existing character
Fighting game statistics and or tactical information - Any information pertaining to style of fighting, techniques, or tactics, will go here. I'll try to keep the lingo on the high side, so you will be hearing about frames, buffering, chaining, wake ups, pokes and what not here. Just ignore this section if that's not your thing, which incidentally, I'm pretty sure 90% of this sites demographic will ignore which also, incidentally, is comprised of a total population of 10 people...
Review/Rants/Raves - This is probably going to be the meat of the character. I'll place a generalized review here, and score the character based on several categories. The ratings themselves will comprize of an adjective or some general thought followed by a justification:
Aesthetic Appeal (Ugly, Not Bad, Decent, ect ect)- This category is where I become a graphics whore and complain about how ugly the character looks
Function Factor (poorly made, incredibly cheap, gimp, ect, ect) - This character is where I look at how well designed this character was. Or basically, I pretended that this is a real fighting game and determine how much this character fools me into thinking that this is an actual functional character.
Glitch Factor (Mr. Freeze, levitator, ect, ect) - This is where I tell you how broken programming is. I'm not going to look at fine details, having a character disappear off-screen for 3 seconds then causing the game to crash should be a good enough clue.
Anecdotal info - If I have any stories pertaining to this character, I might just include it.
Reviews are going to be hopefully short and sweet. I won't have time to play them for too long to enjoy every single inane nuiance of any given character, but I'll try to be thorough as possible. Included below is an image of roster for those curious.
Looks like I gotta alot of work ahead of me.
