M.U.G.E.N

M.U.G.E.N (also known as Mugen, MUGEN) is a very popular 2D fighting game engine intended to provide users with all levels of game designer knowledge to build their own customized fighting game, or to simply enjoy the creations made by its large worldwide community. Offered to everyone for FREE, this combat engine has so far been used to create hundreds of fighting games with their own custom fighters, backgrounds, and gameplay systems, with many of such games achieving high acclaim for eye-catching visuals, addictive gameplay, and innovative gaming design.

Originally developed by Elecbyte in the summer of 1999, this popular freeware release has grown to include many interesting gameplay modes (Arcade, Team Arcade, Team Co-op VS, Team VS, Survival, Survival Co-op, Training, and Watch) and features until the entire project was put to ice in the 2nd half of 2015.

The versatility of this game engine which was built using programming language C, Allegro Library, and SDL library has empowered many creators to create eye-catching replicas of their favorite characters from other media. This can range from simple recreations of single characters to the fully developed fighting games featuring characters from films, TVs, books, and video game series such as Dragon Ball, Super Mario, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, Sailor Moon, and many others. But in addition to such gaming projects, users of M.U.G.E.N have also used this tool to power their dreams, creating many unique characters and games that greatly enriched the so-called “Mugen Community”.

In addition to the customized art that can completely change the look of each game, M.U.G.E.N users are also encouraged to delve deep into the fully open-source code of the engine and fully customize their project with brand new game features. This, of course, requires a deep knowledge of game programming and advanced knowledge of programming language C. In its basic form, this game engine supports customizable fonts, sound effects, stats bars, characters, backgrounds, resolution support of between 240p and 1080p, seven gameplay buttons per character, combo editor, customizable intros, cut scenes, and outros, and a powerful sound engine with no limits of sound samples per character.

Projects created using MUGEN Environment are subject to the specific license that prevents making these games into commercial products. So as long as creators are willing to continue offering their games for free, M.U.G.E.N represents a great starting point for creating a fully featured and fun 2D fighting game.

M.U.G.E.N fighting game engine app is 100% FREE and can be used on all modern versions of Windows OS. Even though the project was abandoned by the devs before the release of Windows 10 and the latest Windows 11, this app can work on that OS without any major issues.