Behold The Greatest Fighting Game Ever

Gameplay - 8/10

Storyline - 6/10

Graphics - 7/10

Game Score : 21/30

Welcome to another Friday video game review here on In The Mind Of My Mind. Today we will be looking at a game that is very near and dear to my heart; Mugen. M.U.G.E.N (also known simply as MUGEN) is a freeware 2D fighting game engine designed by Elecbyte, written in C which originally used the Allegro library. The latest versions of the engine now uses the SDL library. The engine uses 4 directional keys along with 7 buttons for gameplay (X, Y, Z, A, B, C and Start), in order to accommodate six-button fighters which use three punches, three kicks and a start button. However, characters do not necessarily use all seven buttons, nor need to follow a traditional six- or four-button format. At most, two human players can control characters, with others being controlled by the engine's AI (including Watch Mode, a demo mode where the computer controls all characters). In addition, several game-play modes are available via the main menu. Mugen can be anything and everything you ever dreamed about in a fighter...

Elecbyte released the customizable fighting game M.U.G.E.N in 1999. The engine was originally released on July 17, 2001. Beta versions of it were made to work on MS-DOS, Linux and Windows platforms, distributed through their website. The engine allows users to insert created characters, background stages, and other game objects through interpreted text files, graphics, and sound compilations to create a functioning fighting game similar to commercial games. While the engine is set up primarily for fighting game development, several other game types have been developed using it, including shooter and platform style games. Officially, Elecbyte claims to have forgotten what the acronym M.U.G.E.N stood for, but the readme documentation states that its meaning referred to the days when the engine was meant to emulate shooting games as opposed to fighting games. The meaning of "mugen" in Japanese, "unlimited", may have influenced the naming. Despite its dual status as an engine to make games and a game itself and Section III of the readme file accompanied with the engine, demos of the engine have also made their way into magazines, usually exhibiting a large variety of works from various creators. Games Radar named M.U.G.E.N as one of the "12 weirdest fighting games ever", as did GameSpot.

While many may say Mugen was faulty, glitchy and poorly done I ask them to point out one fighting game that didn't have its own glitches, infinites or problems. Even then, if you can find such a game one also has to consider that a team if not teams of people worked on that game so you can't fully judge Mugen in that regard as typically it is one or two person who work on a copy for themselves. The main selling point of MUGEN besides being free obviously was the unforeseen potential that it had being fully customize-able. I have seen people put characters in the game from the likes of Shaquille Oneal to Mario. You could literally put anything or anyone into the game for your amusement. I remember the immense hours of toil and care me and my friend MHOP put into creating our copy. It truly is a rewarding and satisfying feeling essentially making your own game and watching others partake in it as well. Scouring the internet for characters, testing and debugging glitches, putting in stages and customizing the layouts of the game, just literally hours of hard work that provided even more hours of enjoyment for not only us but others as well. With that being said given my little history lesson behind MUGEN and its origins feel free to check out this game play footage of it in action. If you like what you see or want to just try it out for yourself you can download it with these links. Just copy and paste each one and download the individual parts through your web browser.

Mugen (The-R Edition):

Part 1. http://www2.zshare.ma/i8ehmdxw9pam/MUGEN.part01.rar.html

Part 2. http://www2.zshare.ma/xxrcbvun992k/MUGEN.part02.rar.html

Part 3. http://www2.zshare.ma/p8zta504ihe7/MUGEN.part03.rar.html

Part 4. http://www2.zshare.ma/1vupyp8hji17/MUGEN.part04.rar.html

Part 5. http://www2.zshare.ma/t1ird6gym4n6/MUGEN.part05.rar.html

Part 6. http://www2.zshare.ma/vnzolc4jnxqk/MUGEN.part06.rar.html

Part 7. http://www2.zshare.ma/37l6kg9n8ces/MUGEN.part07.rar.html

Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion of the game and any possible characters you would have put in you own personal copy of Mugen if you had the chance...