Does anybody remember M.U.G.E.N.?
PostPosted:Wed Apr 26, 2006 1:10 am
While I was looking up pixel art tutorials, I ran across Mugen again. For those that don't remember, Mugen was a highly customizable 2D fighting engine created by Elecbyte that was typically used for ripping characters from various 2D fighters to create insane matchups (e.g. Setsuna of Last Blade 2 vs. B. Orchid from Killer Instinct) and atypically used to create original 2D fighters.
However, by 2003 Elecbyte announced that Mugen development hit a "snag", and then shortly afterwards Elecbyte vanished.
Since Mugen was a closed-source project, the scene effectively died. So I thought.
I found out through a Wikipedia article (god bless that site) on Mugen that there are three revival projects, one closed-source and two open-source:
Rhakys is the closed-source project, with it's latest release dating back to Oct 10, 2005 and news dating to Apr 6 of this year. It looks the most promising so far.
OpenMugen is one of the open-source projects, it has a new demo as of Mar 20 of this year and seems to be comparable to Rhakys. It boasts three ports: Windows, Linux, and Xbox.
Mugen.net is the least promising, with no demo to date.
In addition to those projects, apparently the original Mugen has been ported to Xbox by a project called XMugen. Between XMugen and OpenMugen, it seems that XMugen is the more powerful. It certainly would have the highest compatability with old files, since it's the original Mugen.
I haven't gotten the chance to check these downloads out yet, but they sound promising. Mugen is the best freeware fighting engine I know of, and I'm glad to hear it isn't dead yet.
It's news like this that gives the homebrew scene life, I think.
However, by 2003 Elecbyte announced that Mugen development hit a "snag", and then shortly afterwards Elecbyte vanished.
Since Mugen was a closed-source project, the scene effectively died. So I thought.
I found out through a Wikipedia article (god bless that site) on Mugen that there are three revival projects, one closed-source and two open-source:
Rhakys is the closed-source project, with it's latest release dating back to Oct 10, 2005 and news dating to Apr 6 of this year. It looks the most promising so far.
OpenMugen is one of the open-source projects, it has a new demo as of Mar 20 of this year and seems to be comparable to Rhakys. It boasts three ports: Windows, Linux, and Xbox.
Mugen.net is the least promising, with no demo to date.
In addition to those projects, apparently the original Mugen has been ported to Xbox by a project called XMugen. Between XMugen and OpenMugen, it seems that XMugen is the more powerful. It certainly would have the highest compatability with old files, since it's the original Mugen.
I haven't gotten the chance to check these downloads out yet, but they sound promising. Mugen is the best freeware fighting engine I know of, and I'm glad to hear it isn't dead yet.
It's news like this that gives the homebrew scene life, I think.