Fighter Maker

• Release Date: 1999
• Genre: Fighting
• Style: 3D Fighting
• Similar Games: Tekken (PlayStation), Kensei: Sacred Fist (PlayStation), RPG Maker (PlayStation)

Game Description

Great fighters are made, not born! That's the underlying concept behind Agetec's new brawler/construction kit Fighter Maker, a quasi-game that's sure to have amateur game programmers squealing in delight. Is Virtua Fighter not your style? Does Tekken make you sick? Then take on the world and design your own hardy crew of fighters and then pit them against your best buddy's!

Fighter Maker features a complete 3D character posing system -- think of it as a simplified version of Kinetix's Character Studio R2 for 3D Studio MAX. But you'll need to sit down and read the manual to make your fighters look good as the construction kit is a powerful one, and you may get bogged down in the sheer number of choices you have to make.

Those choices are made in the Edit mode. Not only will you give your fighters detailed profiles outlining their past histories, fighting motions and logical AI, you'll also have the freedom of creation by selecting one of 20 different models and editing everything from wardrobe and muscle tone to hair and skin color! You can alter your fighters' poses to make them standup after being taken down or begin fighting from a crouched position. There's even a series of fixed positions and wrist combinations!

Once the character standing before you on the screen looks like the fighter of your dreams, its time to program a series of devastating fighting moves and combinations! Choosing anything from basic movements (166 unique patterns) and hit sequences to throws, crouching dashes and downward attacks, selecting the right moves and understanding how they work is vital to your fighter's success. There are over 800 different moves in all! You'll also want to balance damage values between high, midlevel and low attacks as well as combination lengths, fighting delays and your fighter's position after a move is executed (back towards the opponent or facing him).

If creating your own fighters sounds a little on the complicated side of things, don't worry -- the developers have included a 68-page manual that thoroughly outlines various details as well as in-game help menus and demonstrations. So, punk, what are you waiting for? Snag a few extra memory cards, plug in a second controller and butt heads with the industry's best. Are you a true-blue Fighter Maker?

Roots & Influences

As part of Agetec's designer series, Fighter Maker allows players to create their own unique fighters and moves from a Tekken-based standpoint. Fighter Maker contains a custom-made character named Skullomania from Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha and Akira.

Review: Overall

Let's face it -- from the day you played your first fighting game, you've always wanted to tweak something, get rid of those cheap moves, fix up some sloppy animation and make the game more fun. But unless you were the member of a fighting game development team with a documented game engine and design tools, you were straight out of luck. However, Agetec has delivered unto us a fighting game that's more than a mindless beat-em-up: it includes a full-fledged construction set that lets you dive in and start making your own fighting game.

Fighter Maker includes several modes of gameplay. You're able to duke it out in a standard Arcade mode, Versus mode or you can enter a Create mode where you can set up your own fighting game masterpiece by assigning moves, altering appearances and selecting the mentality of your very own fighter. Is it easy? Nope. Is it fun? Oh yeah.

For starters, you'll probably want to pick one character to refine and find a blank memory card to store him or her. The game gives you the bodies of twenty fighters to use, then allows you to modify existing moves or create them from scratch. You're able to customize every single aspect of character motion from standing poses to winning taunts, so we hope you've got a lot of time on your hands to animate the whole kit and caboodle.

Animating moves is surprisingly easy, as long as you're used to working in 3D. The system uses Inverse Kinematics like in Character Studio and you're able to pick a body segment and rotate it with a few button presses. Copying and pasting poses are simple, and the interface is pretty robust. You'll need to keep changing the camera angle to align certain moves, though -- a four-view split-screen (a la 3D Studio MAX) would have been much appreciated. Another minor annoyance is encountered when animating throw moves -- you need to animate the thrower and throwee separately, and keeping both characters' limbs aligned can be something of a headache.

The engine interpolates nicely between animation key-frames set by the user and keeps everything cooking at a steady 60fps. Move previews are instantly available, and provided you know what you're doing and have basic animation skills, can look extremely professional. Backgrounds are a little dull and the characters' low polygon counts show the limits of the PlayStation hardware.

But how does it play? The included fighter (created with the game's tools) is passable -- control is crisp and characters move well enough. What's important to mention is that how the game plays is entirely up to you; with enough time, you could theoretically create a game that rivaled Virtua Fighter.

All in all, Fighter Maker contains infinite depth to create your own fighting game masterworks -- whether or not you've got the patience to sit down and learn it all is up to you. If you're looking to create your own fighting game for under $50, this is certainly a good place to start.

Review: Enjoyment

If motion editing is your bag, you can not go wrong with this one.

Review: Graphics

Good, but not great. Player models are colorful but are remarkably low-polygon.

Review: Sound

Rather trite droning music, but solid sound effects.

Review: Replay Value

With over 800 moves, there's plenty to come back to. Editing gives this title infinite replayability.

Review: Documentation

A beefy 68-page manual goes into explicit detail on the systems' operation.

Production Credits

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