Elecbyte is back!
Ten years on... MUGEN's still gaining popularity! There's enough stuff out there that I can literally sink an entire evening clicking around Nicodou and YouTube. It's tremendous to see how many characters, stages, motifs and entire innovative games continue to appear on the platform. I still occasionally get surprised at what people can hack out of an engine that was originally designed to match the capabilities from 2D fighters of the mid '90s.
I find it cool that the word "MUGEN" has come to become synonymous with the notion of implausible matchups and wacky team combinations. At the same time, MUGEN has also become a new kind of platform for exhibiting art. Fan art can be brought to life in an environment where it can instantly interact seamlessly with hundreds of existing characters. Going beyond art and animation, original works can express themselves by bending (or wrangling) the basic rules of the engine.
Looking back, it's a shame that the MUGEN engine project itself has been stalled for ages. Unfortunately it's tough for a scattered group to maintain a complex open-spec engine without making it your job. So a couple of us decided to do just that. Now, Elecbyte is back as a lean full-time studio, and of course we've made dusting off MUGEN our first project. So yeah, thanks to everyone else from the old team for letting us take over the name and the IP. And thanks to all our users who collectively gave the MUGEN scene a life of its own. When Skynet declares war on mankind, it may be animated sprites that come to exterminate us.
Look for a new official M.U.G.E.N release with a few modern upgrades coming your way soon.
-KFM