Post by Ayen on Mar 12, 2012 17:23:28 GMT -6
Developed and published by Agetec, Fighter Maker hit stores in 1999 offering what was a unique concept at the time, giving player the ability to create their own fighter and their own moves on top of the 20 fighters already in the game by default. Despite this the game performed poorly, so how could a game with such promise go so terribly wrong? Let's find out.
The game starts right off taking you to the title screen, after pressing start we have our main menu which consist of Normal Mode, VS. Mode, Options and of course Edit Mode where you can create your own fighter. Nice, keeping it simple. After clicking on either Normal or VS. Mode we have our Character Select screen and introducing the fighters of Fighter Maker, they are:
That guy who's on the cover, some woman in a Japanese dress deal, a shirtless guy with a white beard, Skullomania from Street Fighter (Skullomania from Street Fighter!?), a cheap Albert Wesker knockoff and it just goes and on and on from there.
NONE of these characters are given names. Not one. You go to select one and enter a fight you won't see a name above their health bar. As far as gameplay goes this has to be the most boring fighting game I ever laid eyes on. Not to mention repetitive. On top of that the characters all look bland, they sound bland and the areas look bland. By stage three I was already bored with it, by stage five I just had to get away. Time to see how well the Edit Mode holds up.
Profile: Well this is pretty cool. You have nine slots to fill up; name, hometown, birth date, sex, blood type, hobby, occupation, fighting style and creator. I'm assuming 'creator' is asking for the creator of the above fighting style. All right, let's make a fighter:
Name: Maricul
Hometown: Aircano
Birth Date: 1446. 11. 12. (I AM IMMORTAL!)
Sex: Female
Blood Type: 0
Hobby: Violin Playing
Occupation: Prostitution
Fighting Style: Anything Goes (Martial Arts) didn't have room to finish.
Creator: Happosai
Now we go to body to work on appearance and see... We're limited to the 20 default fighter models and can't customize them in the least. Not even color. That's disappointing. Guess I'll have to settle for the cute Japanese girl in blue as Maricul's base.
After that you have your 'motion' which consist of your basic movement, hits, throws and win/lose poses the character can make. Each has a preset list available which you can edit and you can make your own from there. This is where things start to get complicated and if you don't have patience, I suggest finding another game.
For motions we have sequence numbers, numbering each sequence which can also help later on with combos. Three buttons are at the top next to the sequence number which are motion, config and name. Motion takes you to the menu to create your movement, config sets the command to launch (which control buttons to use) plus how much damage it inflicts and name of course names the movement. There's also a timer on the bottom right of your screen to show you how long the movement runs for.
While on the motion editing screen you can press the start button to display or hide the Controller Bar, what the Controller Bar does is allow you to control the flow of the motion you're creating. The buttons are just the kind of thing you'd expect to find on a remote with copy at the end for duplicating a pattern which you can later paste into the Management window. The Management window, being the window that appears after you select motion on the edit screen.
From there you can modify each individual pattern in whatever motion you're creating. P stands for pose, F stands for Frame, W stands for Wave (selected speed for a body part) and the Z, X and R at the end are for setting the coordinates of the model's range from the beginning to the end of the motion. You can also set the camera's position of your model at any time in motion by pressing the Triangle button and selecting one of the many camera angles available on the menu that pops up. In addition there's a Custom Angle allowing you to set the camera yourself according to your preference.
Then you have Logic and Test. Logic is setting up movements that would be used in battle between computer controlled opponents in a variety of circumstances. Test mode is just that, a way to test your newly created character when they're finished.
As you can expect it's a time consuming process which can take a while but that wouldn't bother me as much if it was a worthwhile investment. But the reason this game fails is because there is hardly anything left to do once you finally finish making a character. You have two modes; single and multiplayer. That's it. And as I said before the actual fighting in this game is bland so it's not worth the investment to go through all of these motions just to have your own fighter.
So, would I recommend it to gamers? Well that depends. Do you like fighting games with actual characters that have back stories? Fighting stages that are pleasing to look at? A handful of modes to play around in, like say a story mode with each character having their own unique story with an ending and all? If you answered yes to any of those questions then don't get this game! Because it's not going to offer you any of that. It's a fighting game that tries to be unique through its Edit Mode but then forgets that once you make a character, you might actually want to do something with it.
It's an oversimplified game with an overcompensating mode which only real revolutionary aspect going for it is how you can make the moves. I guess if you like various fighting styles and moves you could find some enjoyment out of the game from watching the moves you create come to life but other than that the game doesn't offer anything worth the time it takes to create the character.
And that's Fighter Maker. I hope this review has been helpful to you and enjoyable. This is ToriJ signing off wishing you a great week.
