Yes, this is real footage of me playing Dissidia. I haven’t played it much since Zidane is only level 1 here (I recorded this for a friend, actually) but you can see just how I fail so far.

I like fighting games more nowadays, but I’m always shy around them. I’m a fairly average gamer in skill as it is, but it’s fighting games especially that I don’t do well in. All the unique button combinations and techniques were always difficult to grasp. After constant beatdowns at the hands of my friends in Street Fighter II I thought I’d never bother with it again… until many years later (around 5 or so years ago) when I borrowed my friend’s copy of Soul Calibur II. I think I held onto it for months until I finally got my own copy of the game and gave it back to him, but still… Although I got quite decent playing, I’m still stuck in the realm of fighting mediocrity.

And here’s might be why, using Dissidia: Final Fantasy as my basis for this.

1.) I always play the easiest/high tier characters
Let me get this out of the way first; I’m not a Cloud nor a Final Fantasy VII fan, but I tend to run him a lot if I go through Dissidia’s arcade mode… why? Because he’s just so darn easy to use. I can start a bravery attack from far out and likely catch my enemy off guard… same goes with his HP attacks. Plus, his unique trait is to be able to smash his enemy like a baseball, all the way to the other side of the stage. You can just mash away if cloud in the early going, with the occasional dodge thrown in; It’s not really that hard.

Cloud is my highest level character so far, maybe because I did his story on my bonus day, but still. He’s easy to use.  Fortunately I’m not alone on this, since multiplayer matches are riddled with Cloud everywhere, even if it’s partly to do with his rabid fanboyism that I oh-so-dislike.

Yet, I’m still not that good with him.

2.) I always play on the easier difficulties
Even moreso in Dissidia is the fact that I already find the slightly higher level fights to be fairly difficult. (Though, because this is more of an RPG Fighter than a normal fighter the situation is kind of different.) I spend most of my time earning PP in normal arcade mode because of the fact that I find it easier. That, or when I’m not grinding I’ll shoot the enemy down a couple of levels and just have some fun beating on them.  I usually don’t take up a great challenge all that often.

3.) I’m a button masher

Yes, it’s true.  When it comes to FPSes, I spray.  When it comes to fighters, I mash.  Whenever it’s time to attack I start mashing the circle button, or the square button, or whatever button I need to mash to get whatever done. I’m not even paying attention as to whether or not I actually have to press the button or not. All I know is… I know which button to press… just not when. (Unless, of course, it’s an EX burst)

4.) I use spam attacks

You know how I like to fight? I pick Ryu and it’s all obvious from there. Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Hadouken! Shoryuken! (Whoops) Pretty much the same thing in Dissidia. Once again with Cloud, I use his aerial attack that initiates a chase all the time. Attack, if miss attack again, hit, chase, attack again, rinse, repeat, etc… It’s quite sad. Same goes with Terra and Blizzara. Attack, attack again, attack again, attack again, etc… I’m starting to think that Terra can be quite cheap in that sense, too

5.) I fail at comboing
And finally, this probably goes without saying that if I mash and spam, I can’t combo. Well… sometimes I can; I once found a basic little air combo while playing Melty Blood: Act Cadenza but that’s about it. I can maybe pull off two attacks in a row, but that’s it. I’m too busy spamming Terra’s Blizzara to care though.

So yeah, that’s the skinny.  I suck at fighters. Dissidia is a different beast of its kind, though, and you can’t compare it directly to other fighters, but the same basic elements apply. It doesn’t matter that you can air-dash around massive environments and sent people a hundred feet in the air with a single buster sword swing.  Still, I have fun with Dissidia, despite my suckage.

I’m getting better at it, anyway.

Fighting games are quite the genre of its own.  One on one fights in which you try to bust out absolutely insane combos and memorize complex button combinations make it one of the more difficult and more competitive types of games out there.  I remember back in the days; I was so bad with Street Fighter II that I couldn’t even throw a Hadouken.  The game when it initially made its way to the SNES was a hit with all the boys at school.  They would go home and that’s all they’d play.

Other companies started to break through the mold to try to challenge CAPCOM, and now we have quite the selection of different fighting franchises: SNK’s King of Fighters, Namco Bandai’s Soul Calibur, Guilty Gear and so on.  From that spawned crossovers into comic books (the ever-popular Marvel VS. Capcom) and franchise vs. franchise offerings. (Capcom VS. SNK)  However, as far as crossovers go, there’s a lot of untouched ground.  Enter M.U.G.E.N.

M.U.G.E.N. is a highly-customizable fighter; In fact, with the exception of one stage and one character, it’s all custom content.  Could you ever imagine Megaman taking on Sol Badguy in one of Tsukihime-inspired Melty Blood‘s locales?  Anything can happen in M.U.G.E.N.  If you look on YouTube you can find countless people boasting off their character roster that literally goes into the thousands, taking up gigabytes and gigabytes of hard disk space. (For the M.U.G.E.N. obsessed, you will likely need a good sized hard disk, or clear off a bunch of old crap.)  This started off as a DOS game; The developers abandoned a later Windows port that was eventually patched by the community to keep it going strong.

I mean, how else can you hold a “battle of the fatty foods” and pit Ronald McDonald against the Colonel?

A handful of characters and stages can be found anywhere online, as well as “screenpacks” that can change the look of the interface into something that caters to your interests.  Everything can be easily added into the game with just a simple file edit.  Many characters have been created multiple times for each version that they appear in. (Such as a Marvel VS. Capcom Ryu seen here.)  Some people even go out of their way to create characters that have never appeared in a 2-D fighting game before, such as characters from cartoons, anime, other games, and even (as you’ve seen above) fast food mascots.

There really isn’t much to say about M.U.G.E.N, other than the fact it plays like a whole bunch of 2D fighters put together. Like other games it follows a “6 buttons and a joystick” control scheme, although what the buttons do is different depending on the character and its creator.  Most characters come with a text file showing their commands, although you might have to sift through some Japanese on some of them. (As long as you can figure out each command, though.)  If you’re a fan of fighters and you haven’t heard of this game, though, you’re missing out.

Hyper Combo finish!

M.U.G.E.N. cannot be found “officially” anymore, but you can download any version (winmugen plus is recommended) from http://randomselect.piiym-net.com/

A database of websites containing characters, stages, and custom screenpacks can be found at http://www.mugen-infantry.net

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