This early release differed from most fighting games, though, by offering only one 'official' character, Kung Fu Man, and a single stage. The first public MS-DOS beta release of MUGEN came on July 27, 1999. Taking inspiration from a PC Korean Street Fighter 2 hack known as SFIBM, Elecbyte decided to change course from a shooter to a 2D fighting game engine. The team was originally experimenting with creating an engine to handle the rigors of so-called shmup games but found that it just wasn't living up to what they had hoped to create.

MUGEN began life just before the turn of the century as a PC-based side-scrolling shoot-'em-up title, created by a small company called Elecbyte. That program is MUGEN, derived from the Japanese word for 'infinite,' which is an appropriate name for a program that provides near limitless potential for players to create new fighting games and characters.

Ultimate review: The best fighting game on any Nintendo systemEven within a genre known for character-merging crossovers, there's one two-decade-old game that reigns supreme when it comes to pitting a wide variety of characters against one another.

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