Mini-Review: Mugen Universe

For this class, I created a custom fighting game for us to play by the name of Mugen Universe. The game was easily creatable in a short amount of time due to use of the Mugen Engine. Mugen is a freeware 2D fighting game engine designed by Elecbyte in 1999. Usually written in C, Mugen allows creators to download visuals, sprites, music, full stages and characters from the internet to create the ultimate amalgamation of 2D fighting games. Many creators are dedicated to bringing existing stages and characters into Mugen for use, while others will create insane joke edits that break the game. Some talented creators have even created some fully functioning characters from scratch!

A large portion of the Mugen community is dedicated to purely serious creation, but there is plenty of humour as well. The absurdity of Iron Man fighting Fat Albert and losing is just too funny for most people to pass up. While this is rare, some Mugen creators even create entire fighting games from scratch! Like the team behind Hyper Dragon Ball Z, a Mugen projected created entirely from scratch.

For someone like myself who passionately loves the fighting game genre, I thought the class might enjoy playing a game so silly and absurd, and watching my classmates genuinely enjoy the project just made me so happy. It wasn’t an exceptionally unique game, but watching people play and smile just brought a big smile of my own onto my face.