Chances are, you’ve probably played on several games created by the M.U.G.E.N graphics engine. 2D fighting classics such as Street Fighter and Paws of Fury were originally developed on it. Today, the M.U.G.E.N engine is enjoying something of a revival due to the great old-school cartoon style characters you can create with it. Note however, that this download is for the design engine and you’ll need to be familiar with DOS programming to use it. There is one game included simply called “M.U.G.E.N” although it’s only intended as a demo to show you what you can do with it.

M.U.G.E.N is essentially a DOS based 2D graphics design engine designed by Elecbyte (now defunct) and was originally released in 1999. It allows anyone to create characters, stages and other game objects through interpreted text files, graphics and sound compilations and it also supports various types of audio formats such as MP3, ADX, OGG and MIDI for sound effects. The engine is currently setup primarily for fighting game development but several other game types have been developed using it, including shoot-em-up’s and platform games.

The official Elecbyte website has disappeared meaning M.U.G.E.N is now hosted by a developer who has renamed it “WinMugen” which is basically a hybrid of the original engine designed to work with Windows. For those familiar with programming, there are full instructions about how to use the engine in several README files contained within the download.

If you’re nostalgic about the games you played in the arcade as a kid, and are willing to learn a bit of coding to create your own, this is exactly the tool you need.