Call it a dead wish, but I truly hope that one day, someone or some team decides to randomly remake Sonic gather battle, without the shitty malware, so that we can play it once more.
Fun fact! I forget if it was the original people behind SSmB or a team that really liked it, but a team is currently working on a smash flash 2 mod called Sonic Smash Bros 2! A bunch of characters, some new game mechanics, and even a story mode is gonna be there!
@@Terumimi Funny enough I had an idea for a Sonic platform fighter similar in concept to Sonic Smash Bros, but because I have no experience with video game creation I don't know if I'd ever make it a reality.
Great video! The Sonic Gather Battle situation never ceases to frustrate me because IT WAS NEARLY EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED FROM A SONIC FIGHTING GAME (dare I say from a Sonic spinoff period) and I was actively following its development since before SAGE 2016....and I vividly remember the day that everything happened....still heartbreaking to this day. Hopefully someone out here could potentially revive that project or create a fangame similar to it, just, you know, without the malware. Also felt the need to mention the Freedom Fighters MUGEN games by MUGENHunter, a series of heavily KOF-inspired Sonic fangames made in the MUGEN engine where, unlike Sonic Gather Battle, the creator (as far I know) actually made all visual assets themselves and DIDNT ACT LIKE A COMPLETE LUNATIC OVER THEM
Thanks for mentioning us even though you were not happy with what we made. Online modes are not easy to make, especially for fighting games. Even capcom struggled with delay based netcode before rollback became the standard. At the time, we were 2 people learning gamedev in the midst of a global pandemic.
The whole sonic gather battle thing reminds me of those fake anti-piracy screen videos we would get a few years back, except that those were meant as harmless jokes, gather battle was actual malware made with malicious intent. What the actual fu*k
34:52 I can tell you from firsthand experience that sonic gather battle's far from balanced a lot of characters (especially the unlockables) had really really spammy moves that even the ai would throw out themsevles so it would make it harder to unlock them, I remember when the game was still in development about 7 - 8 years ago i complained in the discord server how Ichigo's fight was too hard so they made an update that spawned in 5 of him and made them spam the exact same move (which was also unlbockable) and it would either kill you instantly or knock you off the stage, it was a really scummy move from the developer(s)
Sega once took down a Sonic fan game (Sonic Omens) because the developers were trying to make a profit off said fangame. No doubt the original Smackdown could've been at risk if they used THAT to profit. ArcForged could have easily used their donations with a generic "help us make better games!" banner because they HAVE made an original project: Head 2 Head, with another on the way called Origin of Storms
Sonic Omens is the most hated Sonic fan game as well as much controversial since everyone thought it was going to change the Sonic franchise but then again Sonic fans act like every Sonic fan game is ground breaking for the franchise.
At 21:00, I think it's way too demanding to expect an online mode out of a fangame. Online takes a ton of work to pull off, and I think it's perfectly okay for a fangame to not have it, even if it's a fighting game.
That's totally fair. I definitely underestimated how difficult it would be to code in netcode. It can be a tricky slope to navigate, and that kind of effort can sometimes be better put elsewhere for fangames like these.
@@anoobdissects It can depend on dedication. It can be surprising on how if a thing is made on an engine easy enough to work with and how passionate the fans are, an online mode can just be slapped on to a game that did not have it (Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a Jet Set Radio spiritual successor made on Unity, got an online mode slapped onto it via modding that works surprisingly decently, so now you can have fun and vibe out in modded in maps like SA1's Emerald Coast). This being said, for fighting games they need to be designed with online functionality first. Rollback Netcode is the easiest to implement (relatively), but a game needs to be designed for that first and foremost, otherwise adding in rollback takes in a ton of effort and in some cases you basically have to remake the game from the ground up internally, which gets harder to do the more and more characters you have in a game. However, I'd probably still level criticism at Arc Forge for wanting Sonic Smackdown to have a scene and instead of implementing rollback netcode at the earliest opportunity they just kept adding in characters. iirc, I think the reason it was never implemented was that they were running into serious technical debt in how they programmed the game, making adding in any sort of online functionality even harder. So like... I don't wanna be too mean but it just feels like an incompetent mess all around. Main point I'm trying to get at is that if there's a community filled with passionate people more than willing to get things implemented into a game, it's the Sonic Fangame Community.
the midi music in sonic battle LEN is honestly just kind of a cultural difference. the fangame/doujinsoft scene in japan has a lot more continuity from the 90s (when basically any downloadable game had to use midis to keep a reasonable filesize) to now, so a lot of longstanding creators are just still using midis (especially since a lot of them compose their own music and have made it an artform in their own right) and newer creators that got into the scene from playing existing doujinsoft will just go with the flow a lot of the time (especially since a lot of those established composers release their midis for free use - i don't recognize that time distortion theme but i wouldnt be shocked if its one of them)
Always thought sonic smackdown was a little too unpolished to take seriously as a “real” game. Big the cat reusing the fucking animal crossing villager’s idle animation from smash is WILD lol
Brawly reusing Mii Brawler’s idle animation from goddamn Smash Bros alone gave it away from me And the worst part is, that’s just the tip of the iceberg (Vector has Bowser’s F-Smash and Eggman has DK’s Up-B, just to name a few)
Between the reused animations and blatant lack of any facial expressions, it’s a really hard game to sell. Kinda hope they lock in and give it some life and identity
Can't believe you managed to make a video about Strange Sonic Fighting Games and NOT talk about the MUGEN KING Sonic The Freedom Fighters. Then again. The Sonic The Freedom Fighters games probably need their own video.
Though I would recommend censoring the blood sparks, it really gets annoying, and theres so many of them, just go into the character's .def files, and change any 10, 11, 12, or anything else, remove the initial 1, it really just looks ugly, and changing it is truely a better thing.
To answer your question from 0:31, it's because making fighting games is HARD. There's so much you need to do to make it playable, and even more to make it actually feel good to play. When I initially saw Sonic Smackdown was an asset flip, I totally understood why they did that (even if my conclusion was 'well I can just play UMVC3'). Sonic Duel being a brawl modpack is fair. There's so much that goes into a single character. It's especially messed up because everyone who knows about gamedev will say to do art last but good animations are so integral to a fighting game feeling good to play.
Ong like they talk about these games as if they’re made by professionals and that it should be up to some standard of quality, also they keep mentioning a fanbase having a defacto fighting game with a huge fan base and tournament scene but I’ve never seen that happen to any fanbase
Smackdown feels like the peak of what i wanted from a sonic fighting game, cause FUCK man, if the MVC2 port hype says anything, people YEARN for the MAHVEL. I personally dont care that they're ripping off other fighting game moves considering the majority of the fandom for years was just ripping off things they liked like dbz to put into their fan content; Nazo unleashed being basically a corner stone of fan animations. But yeah their dev teams dumb
Sad there's no coverage on Super Sonic Knockout. I remembered it from seeing the thumbnail, but good video regardless! It's also very lovely of you to preserve Lost Ending Neo. I truly think it had the potential to be outstanding.
Thanks for talking about sonic battle len, i've literally never heard of it and as both a sonic fan and fan of a LOT of fighter maker 2 games, this is a great surprise for me! (which btw, if you thought 2dfm was outdated by that time, plenty of new japanese indie fighters still use it, with a couple even getting arcade releases!) And it feels great to finally see someone mention how smackdown is like 90% reused assets, and learning that even the creators of it tried saying it's a proof of concept for sega to hire em is so scummy when they barely designed even two character's movesets, and don't do anything that any team at sega could do for a new sonic fighter. At least their original games look/play good. Also, it's really not expected for small project games to have online, especially for fighters, probably the hardest type of online to develop because for most indie stuff you'd need to start development with it in mind as it's not easy to just plop online on to something for small teams. A game i'm a little disappointed to not see here is sonic the fighter blitz, that game is like if a modern 2d sequel to sonic the fighters! it's so refreshing to see a sonic fighter with great original sprites, and even acknowledges STF's mechanics. Just a shame that the original dev couldn't keep working on it, but it has been slowly continuing with a new team.
@@backslash_bks I'm not complaining! I'm glad it's continuing at all! Just for some reason thought it was worth mentioning it changed teams, I'm obviously looking forward to what's to come with hyper!
28:53 Hey wait a second... I've got A LOT of opinions on this topic, but firstly, in the past I did work on an Emerl moveset, that ultimately ended up going nowhere and I believe that the one in the old version is actually a mix of mine and someone elses/ At one point I offered to work on Sonic Duel as I still had plans of working on Emerl and was also working on PMEX Remix, but unfortunately my mental health took a nosedive (as did my already miniscule animation skills) and I stopped Brawl modding, barely contributing anything to the community as a whole. Funnily enough it's from Brawl Modding that it was particularly easy to tell that Sonic Smackdown reused animations, a lot of Amy's animations are actually from Ike of all characters Sonic Smackdown is such a shame, I wasn't aware of the prior controversies so I personally excused a lot of the animation ripping, since I felt it's really the only way a game of this size and scope could be made. It's still fun but I'm no good with real Fighting games (also rip Gemerl not getting to be his own character (though this was before IDW made him more separate from Emerl)) Personally I think that the reason we don't get a lot of fanmade fighting games comes down to MUGEN. Now I'm heavily biased here but this mostly comes from it typically being praised as some kind of masterpiece, but "Sonic Battle HD" is something I blame a lot for this (honestly I wanted to, and still might, make a video on a similar topic to this myself) Much like old versions Sonic Duel it's a collection of characters that weren't made by the person who "made" the game, though unlike Sonic Duel it lacks the same kind of direction and actual character work Majority of the characters use the "JUS arranged style" one that (Doesn't play like the actual JUS game, and) focuses on super flashy one button autocombos, essentially "jingling keys, the fighting game" Despite being constantly heralded as a "Sonic Battle remake", it plays nothing like battle, and the roster is absolutely bloated with fanon DBZ ripoff and reskin characters, with 31 different Sonics and 12 Shadows, over half of the roster is very unimaginative fanon, not to mention the absence of Gamma, Beta (Who has a really cool Mugen character!) and Charmy being hilariously oversized due to the source he was ripped from If it wasn't obvious, I'm not a fan, but this kind of MUGEN fangame is very common, it's always a shame when I'm looking ar SAGE stuff to be met with the same character builds I've seen 100 times before, not to mention that there's a lot of Super Smash Flash 2 mods that have incredibly similar mindsets To be honest it's not entirely HD Deluxe's fault (Though I'm not a fan of how Mugen builds like these are put behind adwalls) there are creators and players who overhype it, and those are the ones who claim it as a Sonic Battle remake (I'm a fan of Loki FES but the clickbait is atrocious) The situation with Gather Battle sucks, because I actually played safe versions of it and it was incredibly fun. I've recently tried to get it working again, but it simply doesn't work on Windows 10, major shame Leemena didn't really have any right to do what they did though, those sprites were mostly not even theirs There are two fighting fangames that I really do think are pretty well made and worth a look, though both of them I believe are no longer being worked on, Super Sonic Knockout, a unique platform fighter that's pretty solid, though the video settings are rough, and Sonic Battle Chaos Greed, a Mugen game, though one that has modifications to the base engine, and has characters fully made by the same creator, in the style of Battle with some additions to movesets and new characters, not to mention a lengthy arcade mode and bosses I hope the fighting game scene can evolve somewhat, I know there's a Sonic the Fighters 2d remake, and my friend TheStoryTeller is working on a Sonic Battle remake in between his own projects so maybe things are looking up Also remember Super Sonic Bros?
I agree with you so much about the Mugen fangames in the Sonic Fandom. As someone who was in the Mugen space for a pretty long time at one point, there's a reason why it's all but dead now, and I've got a bone to pick with the dozens of copy-pasted Sonic Fighters that have been made under its name. In fact, during the planning stages, there was originally supposed to be a section of this video dedicated to all the crappy "JUS-styled Mugen Compilation" games, but was cut for the sake of not over bloating the video. Chaos Greed, Knockout, and Sonic Smash Bros (I think that's the game you were referring to at the end?) are all games that I've heard of and played. While Sonic Bros is...to put it nicely...tragically dated, I definitely enjoyed the first two and have plans to them in a sequel video (Along with this Sonic the Fighters Blitz game I've been hearing about).
@@anoobdissects Funnily enough I typed Sonic Smash Bros first and then corrected it thinking I got it wrong It sucks that a lot of the really good stuff doesn't have much of a following, I'm sure if they were more popular SSN and Chaos Greed would have fan continuations by now This video actually got me to try and play SGB again and I got it working after hours of setting up a VM but oof the lag makes it borderline unplayable
It has a virus where after the Ghosts show up after completing a few stages and kill Sonic in an unavoidable cutscene, it would slowly delete all the files of your computer, including System32. In a way, it kills your computer.
@mario-oc2if Yet, the FBI doesn't acknowledge it as a cyber threat, unlike the Sasser virus, which actually caused havoc on an international scale. Therefore, the suspect is still free and at large.
Knowing so many people enjoyed my Unofficial SBLEN update is pretty inspiring. I'll definitely reupload the last version I worked on for all of you. I honestly hadn't realized the link died until very very recently.
Aren't we forgetting the de facto Sonic fighting game, ULTIMATE ROBOTNIK DUELS? I'm a Big Arm main myself, I tend to pivot towards grapplers. It has a bad matchup with the Egg Scorcher but luckily its players are rare.
Here's hoping someone manages to get a DRM-Less version of Sonic Gather Battle and we can enjoy that game again, without the risk of getting your IP Stolen and whatnot. Because damn, it was such a good, damn game.
i remember back when the sonic gather battle drama went down and having to warn my friend in freshman year not play it and sure enough he didn't listen and the rest I'm sure you can piece together what happened. i never understood the constant drama in communities around that time, 3DS modding community, Smash, Pokemon, even Paper Mario, hell even the switch modding community, a lot of these are arguably still pretty crazy currently, but back then i feel like all of them were at their all time peak of wildness, I'm probably missing more but my god this is a trip down memory lane lmao
Yo, take a look to sonic robo smash, its like a smash bros fangame with sonic characters in the sonic robo blast 2 style, its looking pretty good but it isn’t out yet!
Look, all I'm saying- If a person wants to make a Sonic Fighting Fangame, I feel like a remaster or sequel to Sonic Battle would be a good start but that's just me. Or y'know what Sonic Gather Battle was well executed, maybe someone (WITHOUT PUTTING ANY KIND OF VIRUS IN THE GAME) could do a game similar to that. (If anyone is reading this, feel free to use my ideas. I'm probably most likely not the first one to say this anyways.)
To clarify something, asking someone to link the build of SBN 3.1 isn't a great idea since youtube tends to delete links automatically. If you can manage to get it, that's great, but there's no guarantee you even see the comment.
Does anyone remember a Sonic Fighting Fangame that was sprite based and worked kinda like a fast beat em up? It had really good sprite work too, you could even play as super Sonic as his own character and I think it primarily used Adventure Era music. Can’t remember its name.
This was such a good watch. I have a lot things i want to say. First off theres another version of sonic LEN that was released a few years ago by someone else, basically the same idea as what you were doing but it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was called Sonic strikerz. Don't know too much about it but might he worth checking out at very least to see what version of the game they used. Second After some digging I did find out that the whole donation controversy from Sonic smackdown was caused by a misunderstanding. Basically when you upload something to itchio the default option will have the game set for asking for donations when you hit the download button until the dev changes it themselves. You don't normally see this on other fan games, the reason being that this is only the default if you have payments set up on itchio, after that it'll default the donations prompt on your future projects and because the dev had previously uploaded their own original game before sonic smackdown it got hit with the prompt until they eventually turned it off. At least that's my understanding of the situation after some digging. Third if i can recommend some other interesting sonic fighting games I'd definitely say check out sonic the fighters blitz, sonic Jo rush, and Sonic Ultima. Sprry for the long comment 😅
Honestly I think the video is a smidge harsh on Smackdown. Not on the devs because they definitely deserve flack for their PR and I really hope this is a case of amateurs getting in over their heads and that they'll learn from it but on the game itself. Programming original movesets that would completely fit the characters is a lot to ask of a fangame team, especially considering from what I can tell, this was their first fully completed game. They likely were still learning the ropes of development and figured rather than being stuck spending hours and hours trying to figure out why a homing attack they're attempting to code is instead shooting someone off into the sky at mach 3 that porting movesets that at least fit the characters' personalities and vibe would probably be for the best. And really, this video kind of illustrates why a dedicated Sonic fighting game is so difficult to make and why we haven't seen even an official one since Sonic the Fighters. You'd need to implement a gameplay style that pays proper respect to the games with a feel that brings them to mind but can also work with traditional fighting game mechanics. Something like Dragon Ball works for fighters because really breaking it down, fighting games can be fast, frantic and flashy. You just dial it up a bit to embody Dragon Ball and implement dashing and Ki charging and you generally got it down. With Sonic? I don't know how you balance a homing attack while still having that same satisfying feel as the 3D games, how you make a boost attack work or even just implementing a flow. I mean maybe an arena fighter would be neat because then you could have slopes and springs but then there's the matter of how fast these guys can go, flight and gliding. Even Sonic Battle which got this mostly right struggled.
You bring up a lot of good points! I think there's definitely a case to be made that a fan game reusing concepts and moves from pre-existing games isn't a bad thing at all. Like I said in the video, I don't think the game being an MvC clone on its own is a bad thing, and even with the movesets, had they only been a quarter or even half of the character's kit, I probably would've been willing to cut it a lot more slack. It's the idea that a good chunk of their kits are taken from other fighters that really loses me, but that still doesn't make it a bad game, just one that ends up being a bit lacking for me personally. I also agree that another big reason for the lack of fighting games that wasn't mentioned in the video was how difficult it really is (It's probably also the reason you don't see a lot of successful indie fighters nowadays, but I digress). Definitely something I want to acknowledge in a future sequel to this video. Thank you for commenting!
@@anoobdissects I can definitely understand, especially considering just the amount of praise Sonic Smackdown has received. Hopefully with the new version they strike a happy medium between moves pulled from other fighters and original attacks.
Great video! I'm glad you talked about the travesty that is SGB- I still can't believe that all went down. If you want to talk about _more_ weird Sonic fighters there's technically the one made in MUGEN that has Ren and Stimpy as playable characters (yes, I'm 100% serious), but I have no idea if that game is even online anymore. It may be abandonware at this point!
I hope that in the sequel you will mention two games that are technically the same but one is a continuation of the other: Sonic The Fighters Blitz. The game is made in the IKEMEN Engine (a fanmade open-source expansion of the infamous MUGEN engine) that turns Sonic The Fighters into a more traditional fighting game while still keeping its original idea in mind (limited shields, temporary hyper mode, you get the drill). The bad news is that the original Blitz was cancelled in January of 2023 because its developer lost motivation in working on it, but the good news is that the project is now being handled by a new team that is working on adding what the original project had in mind and much more. For the time being, this new project (called Sonic The Fighters Blitz: Hyper Edition) has added several new features such as tag fights, along with also the inclusion of Honey the Cat as a new playable fighter.
From my experience, the game can be kind of weird with certain technical aspects, likely due to how old its engine is. If the game is making it to the opening cutscenes but is crashing before you can reach the character select screen, I've found that reopening the game until it gets to the CS screen usually does the trick. If the game is just straight up closing immediately after being opened, it can help to make sure that the parent directory is specifically named "sonicbattlelen" or "SonicBattleLEN" since I know the game crashes if it's not set as that.
4:35 Words on Top and Bottom: BRAVE DARKNESS SURVIVAL FINALIZE REBELLION ANOTHER FORBIDDEN HATE EVIL FUTURE LIMITED TIME DISMAY? CHAOS FATE PHANTASMAGORIA ENDLESS OBLIVION? THREATEN WHO FAKE? SOUL MIX DOOM JUSTICE? Just thought it'd be funny to point this out. Also as someone who grew up mostly with the RPG Sonic fangames this was a very interesting watch. Good video.
I've actually seen a recent fangame using fighter maker. Pokemon Close Combat released not too long ago, and it's still getting updates. It's very basic, but pretty solid and with some really smooth animation. As for a fighting game for a potential part 2, you should really check out Sonic the Fighters Blitz - Hyper Edition. It's a sort of sudo-remake/reimagining of the original Sonic the Fighters, but as a 2D fighter instead of a 3D one. It's IKEMEN GO-based, and it's really well-made. The controls and game feel are surprisingly smooth.
Man, what I wouldn't give to have Close Combat get more coverage (although not too much so it doesn't potentially get itself in Nintendo/TPCi's crosshairs)
I still think Smackdown is the best Sonic fighting game. Sure, the PR is bad but that can be ignored to an extent if you just wanna play the game with friends and the characters are not COMPLETELY unoriginal. Theres still plenty of moves that the fit the characters well and they're fun to play either way so at least for me - it's the best one we got
Not completely Sonic related, but you should check out Sega vs Capcom. It's a fan game that's a 2v2 tag fighter similar to Tatsunoko vs Capcom or MvCI. Sonic is the only Sonic character and it's still early in development but it looks very polished.
I will say, what I think is the de facto Sonic fighting game is an official game, with a fan-made patch. Sonic the Fighters recently got a community update that rebalances characters, mostly the hidden ones (most notably Metal Sonic), and added a NEW character, mechless Eggman. The fighter was unfinished, but still works.
@25:03 They were serious? If they wanted it to be a proof of concept, it needed to be original, not have other fighting game animations and stuff. You want Sega to publish your game, they'll be glad to here your pitch, probably, as long as it wont risk them getting sued.
I would love another video. MUGEN based Sonic fighting games like Freedom Fighters, and all the one-button supers are pretty bizarre in their own right as well, but wow, **this** was bizarre.
The *way* ArcForged asked for money was kinda scummy, but it makes sense because they have their own original IP's that they're making. I think one is called Head2Head. Using a Sonic Fan Game is gross, but I don't think asking for funding isn't inherently a bad thing. I also personally dont mind the character's having copied moves from other games. Chaos's Venom move still had to be animated from scratch and programmed in. If it gave us a roster as big as they gave, i don't mind.
25:08 I don’t think allowing donations is bad. And from what I can remember with the Sonic Omens fiasco, Sega doesn’t mind fan projects getting support through patreon or whatever. As long as there aren’t anything locked away from you until you do donate.
I'm pretty sure there are more Fighting Game Maker 2 games than just that MLP one, there's a Yume Nikki fangame (Dream Kombat), a Kemono Friends doujin game (Kemono Friends FIGHT and it's sequel Kemono Friends FIGHT S), a doujin game crossing over Touhou and Higurashi (Zoku Sonohigurashi vs Touhou Universe 2), and of course the infamous Dong Dong Never Die.
@@Hijiri_MIRACHION Oh yeah, I realize that there were probably more Fighter Maker 2 games that were less well known. That was just me exaggerating for the sake of one my dumb jokes haha.
@@anoobdissects To be fair, MLP is probably the most recognisable Western property adapted to FGM2. Even if it is exaggerating, I at least wanted to point out certain FGM2 games I have encountered over the years. Dong Dong Never Die isn't really based on anything either (the plot is inspired by the Terminator films and Mario's in the game, but that's about it), it's an original fighting game from China that is infamous in certain circles. It even has an updated version called Dong Dong Never Die: Judgement Day, which rebalances the game and adds Inugami Korone, a VTuber from Hololive.
I wonder if anybody was able to rework the build for Sonic Gather Battle and remove all of the malicious stuff in it. The game does look fun and I do want to try it out, but I don't want to get a virus from a fangame.
1.1d is the last version that doesn’t have the drm, and you can use a tool called frickmena to play 1.5 without triggering the drm Doesn’t work on windows 10 though
I’m gonna plug and say: give Sonic The Fighters Blitz Hyper Edition a shot! It’s a pretty well made 2D Remake of Sonic the Fighters, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it! I believe it’s also still being worked on, but what is given is a really good experience!
oh i remember sonic gather battle so well. being an autistic kid online in the 2010s i had some odd interests, and 2 of them happened to be sonic and computer viruses. my virus fixation had already passed at that point, but i was extremely fixated on sonic, so you just know that sonic gather battle was something i absolutely ate up. i actually didn't know about it's full backstory till i watched this video, so thank you for including it here. i'd also like to mention some other tidbits of interesting info about it you didn't include, not too much, and very quickly: first off, the general search terms of "cheat" and "hack" weren't the only terms that would trigger the malware. there was one more, much broader term, being "mod". this meant that if you so much as had the game open while looking up a mod for a video game, or even something as general as a body mod, it would trigger the malware. also, another thing you didn't mention that i find really interesting is the fact the game was known to be vm aware. you couldn't run the game on a virtual machine, as the game would know, and instantly close itself. i believe someordinarygamers found a workaround to this in his video on sonic gather battle, but i had to have watched that video like 5 years ago at this point, so i wouldn't be able to remember if it was him or another youtuber who made a video about it. the solution i believe was to run it through something called a gaming vm, which i have never heard of up to and after that point, and so don't know anything about. so yeah, the whole thing is really interesting. unfortunately coverage of it isn't as vast as it is for viruses like wannacry, memz, or even gaming viruses such as rensenware, or creepy viruses such as msmajor. its super disappointing, because i bet there'd be more coverage on it and more people opening it up to see how it ticks if it just worked on vms.
20:21 it also doesn't help that any time you provide feedback about it, you're greeted with the usual "it's free" excuse, like free/fan games are exempt from criticism. SRB2 wouldn't have grown if it wasn't for the constant criticism of it's many flaws (like the style and the level design at the time), and now it's a gem. 24:31 lmao, control freak, at least he didn't turned into LeemenaDan/SonicFan. SvsLF2/SGB was such a dumpster fire, it's good that people keep talking about it. Don't let this idiot get away with it, since he's trying to re-release that game again.
would you imagine my surprise when i see my brother in this video as the person who LITERALLY MADE 3.1 might ask him if he still has a copy of the game idk lmao
Sonic Gather battle was something else I remember watching and playing the game but never knew the creator did it because of stolen assets like what was bro thinking that's just dumb bro 😅😭
MMZ ost bg music?? new sub, also insert "you missed fighters blitz" comment here haha (But fr its great!) edit: OH! also there's a veery new project called sonic chaos battle (IIRC), looks promising! but it's in a very early stage. as of now it's got 3 characters
It is a shame that Sonic Smackdown does heavily rely on fighting game references for the majority of the moveset without doing a lot to "sonic-fy" them, as i think using the reference is not necessarily a bad thing.........if they're used as a template (some moves like sonic's Light Speed Dash is nice, but i wish there was more stuff like that) Comparing this to Idol Showdown, a 2D fighting game fan game for the vtuber group Hololive, like yeah that game also uses fighting game tropes and homages, but at least they try to theme it around injokes/stream moments to make said references less obvious (Ex. Korone's whole moveset is basically Ryu (or just a lot of shoto characters in general), but stuff like Korone's Tatsu (or in this case, her chainsaw move) is a lot faster and have a bit more forward force motion than Ryu's Usual Tatsu Move, so it's different enough for you to not notice at first)
For sure! I will admit that I was probably too harsh on some of the games featured in this video looking back, but I still think that Sonic Smackdown really suffered from its lack of creativity.
Imagine being myself one who worked to try make one fighting game of sonic in the past and failing, i mean, failing miserably, and see a style of mugen never go forward but some characther by glaudiacloud,and it is a pain i try to not return to mind, but nowdays even i makybe have the skill, i dont have the time or manpower to make sprites to try do someting with minimum quality. I Worked on what was Called Sonic freedom fighters Delta, Later renamed to Only Sonic Battle (F), that was based on a even more old fan game, Sonic Freedom Fighers, Mugen made By Mugen Hunter from Early 2k until 2012 (the last know version SSF2_Plus), see what smackdown could do and failed, yeah, it is sad
Hey my friend the person that made the 3.1 of Sonic Battle Len make a Re relase Check the chanel and put the link in description PD: I don't speak English
The best Sonic fighting game we had is Sonic the fighters it had a nice polygonal style, had a banger soundtrack, and was a very fun experience when I played it. Damn these Sonic fighting game fan makers be stingy as hell. You don't even own the IP.
When I was 12 I liked Sonic Gather Battle it was really attractive and really good it was like Sonic Battle 2 but if it had had a sequel but it's a shame that its creator created a virus and an IP grabber we play his game because people steal these sprites that he created it himself but it's sad that now it's been 8 years since the Sonic community has not had a single fighting fangame.
So I'm NOT the only person left in the multiverse that still remembers Sonic Battle Lost Ending Neo?
Immediately one of the games I've played a lot during my youth
I vividly remember playing it but i never could remember the name
found out about it like half a year ago through some m.u.g.e.n author
Sonic Gather Battle actually looks like a really fun game, why the hell did its creator have to be a psychopath
it was
Call it a dead wish, but I truly hope that one day, someone or some team decides to randomly remake Sonic gather battle, without the shitty malware, so that we can play it once more.
@@basiytheboy agreed
And here I am being the only person who remembers Sonic Smash Brothers Beta.
far from it, SSmB was fun asf as a whole lmao.
Fun fact! I forget if it was the original people behind SSmB or a team that really liked it, but a team is currently working on a smash flash 2 mod called Sonic Smash Bros 2! A bunch of characters, some new game mechanics, and even a story mode is gonna be there!
@@Terumimi Funny enough I had an idea for a Sonic platform fighter similar in concept to Sonic Smash Bros, but because I have no experience with video game creation I don't know if I'd ever make it a reality.
I remember once
Meeeee I was hoping he'd talk about it
Great video! The Sonic Gather Battle situation never ceases to frustrate me because IT WAS NEARLY EVERYTHING THAT I WANTED FROM A SONIC FIGHTING GAME (dare I say from a Sonic spinoff period) and I was actively following its development since before SAGE 2016....and I vividly remember the day that everything happened....still heartbreaking to this day. Hopefully someone out here could potentially revive that project or create a fangame similar to it, just, you know, without the malware.
Also felt the need to mention the Freedom Fighters MUGEN games by MUGENHunter, a series of heavily KOF-inspired Sonic fangames made in the MUGEN engine where, unlike Sonic Gather Battle, the creator (as far I know) actually made all visual assets themselves and DIDNT ACT LIKE A COMPLETE LUNATIC OVER THEM
Thanks for mentioning us even though you were not happy with what we made. Online modes are not easy to make, especially for fighting games. Even capcom struggled with delay based netcode before rollback became the standard. At the time, we were 2 people learning gamedev in the midst of a global pandemic.
yall are great
The whole sonic gather battle thing reminds me of those fake anti-piracy screen videos we would get a few years back, except that those were meant as harmless jokes, gather battle was actual malware made with malicious intent. What the actual fu*k
34:52 I can tell you from firsthand experience that sonic gather battle's far from balanced a lot of characters (especially the unlockables) had really really spammy moves that even the ai would throw out themsevles so it would make it harder to unlock them, I remember when the game was still in development about 7 - 8 years ago i complained in the discord server how Ichigo's fight was too hard so they made an update that spawned in 5 of him and made them spam the exact same move (which was also unlbockable) and it would either kill you instantly or knock you off the stage, it was a really scummy move from the developer(s)
Sega once took down a Sonic fan game (Sonic Omens) because the developers were trying to make a profit off said fangame. No doubt the original Smackdown could've been at risk if they used THAT to profit. ArcForged could have easily used their donations with a generic "help us make better games!" banner because they HAVE made an original project: Head 2 Head, with another on the way called Origin of Storms
Sonic Omens is the most hated Sonic fan game as well as much controversial since everyone thought it was going to change the Sonic franchise but then again Sonic fans act like every Sonic fan game is ground breaking for the franchise.
tbf omens team totally deserved that,like for real these dudes are just disgusting people
This was like 3-2 years ago they added bonus to their patreon that people can get beta versions of sonic 2020
Nothing ever happened with Sonic Omens as far as I know. Only the Streets of Rage fangame was taken down due to monetization.
Sonic Omens (unfortanately) wasn't the game that was taken down. Your probably thinking of Sonic Eclipse.
At 21:00, I think it's way too demanding to expect an online mode out of a fangame. Online takes a ton of work to pull off, and I think it's perfectly okay for a fangame to not have it, even if it's a fighting game.
That's totally fair. I definitely underestimated how difficult it would be to code in netcode. It can be a tricky slope to navigate, and that kind of effort can sometimes be better put elsewhere for fangames like these.
@@anoobdissects It can depend on dedication. It can be surprising on how if a thing is made on an engine easy enough to work with and how passionate the fans are, an online mode can just be slapped on to a game that did not have it (Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, a Jet Set Radio spiritual successor made on Unity, got an online mode slapped onto it via modding that works surprisingly decently, so now you can have fun and vibe out in modded in maps like SA1's Emerald Coast).
This being said, for fighting games they need to be designed with online functionality first. Rollback Netcode is the easiest to implement (relatively), but a game needs to be designed for that first and foremost, otherwise adding in rollback takes in a ton of effort and in some cases you basically have to remake the game from the ground up internally, which gets harder to do the more and more characters you have in a game.
However, I'd probably still level criticism at Arc Forge for wanting Sonic Smackdown to have a scene and instead of implementing rollback netcode at the earliest opportunity they just kept adding in characters. iirc, I think the reason it was never implemented was that they were running into serious technical debt in how they programmed the game, making adding in any sort of online functionality even harder. So like... I don't wanna be too mean but it just feels like an incompetent mess all around.
Main point I'm trying to get at is that if there's a community filled with passionate people more than willing to get things implemented into a game, it's the Sonic Fangame Community.
+Parsec carries
Shocked there was no Sonic The Fighters Blitz mention here; since it seems to be the most recent sonic fighting game I've seen around
Ooh I’m definitely gonna have to be on the lookout for that one in a future video
Still can’t believe Gather Battle added malware onto your computer and added your IP to a list just so people don’t steal sprites
the midi music in sonic battle LEN is honestly just kind of a cultural difference. the fangame/doujinsoft scene in japan has a lot more continuity from the 90s (when basically any downloadable game had to use midis to keep a reasonable filesize) to now, so a lot of longstanding creators are just still using midis (especially since a lot of them compose their own music and have made it an artform in their own right) and newer creators that got into the scene from playing existing doujinsoft will just go with the flow a lot of the time (especially since a lot of those established composers release their midis for free use - i don't recognize that time distortion theme but i wouldnt be shocked if its one of them)
@@porygonlover322 oh that’s actually really interesting to hear about! Thank you for the brief history :D
Always thought sonic smackdown was a little too unpolished to take seriously as a “real” game. Big the cat reusing the fucking animal crossing villager’s idle animation from smash is WILD lol
Brawly reusing Mii Brawler’s idle animation from goddamn Smash Bros alone gave it away from me
And the worst part is, that’s just the tip of the iceberg (Vector has Bowser’s F-Smash and Eggman has DK’s Up-B, just to name a few)
Between the reused animations and blatant lack of any facial expressions, it’s a really hard game to sell. Kinda hope they lock in and give it some life and identity
Can't believe you managed to make a video about Strange Sonic Fighting Games and NOT talk about the MUGEN KING Sonic The Freedom Fighters. Then again. The Sonic The Freedom Fighters games probably need their own video.
Huh, I actually haven't heard of that one up until now. I'll have to be on the look for it, so thank you for the suggestion haha
@@anoobdissects Yeah. It's quite the trip. The sprites alone are worthy of discussion.
Though I would recommend censoring the blood sparks, it really gets annoying, and theres so many of them, just go into the character's .def files, and change any 10, 11, 12, or anything else, remove the initial 1, it really just looks ugly, and changing it is truely a better thing.
To answer your question from 0:31, it's because making fighting games is HARD. There's so much you need to do to make it playable, and even more to make it actually feel good to play. When I initially saw Sonic Smackdown was an asset flip, I totally understood why they did that (even if my conclusion was 'well I can just play UMVC3'). Sonic Duel being a brawl modpack is fair. There's so much that goes into a single character. It's especially messed up because everyone who knows about gamedev will say to do art last but good animations are so integral to a fighting game feeling good to play.
Ong like they talk about these games as if they’re made by professionals and that it should be up to some standard of quality, also they keep mentioning a fanbase having a defacto fighting game with a huge fan base and tournament scene but I’ve never seen that happen to any fanbase
Smackdown feels like the peak of what i wanted from a sonic fighting game, cause FUCK man, if the MVC2 port hype says anything, people YEARN for the MAHVEL. I personally dont care that they're ripping off other fighting game moves considering the majority of the fandom for years was just ripping off things they liked like dbz to put into their fan content; Nazo unleashed being basically a corner stone of fan animations.
But yeah their dev teams dumb
Sonic the fighters blitz hyper edition
Sad there's no coverage on Super Sonic Knockout. I remembered it from seeing the thumbnail, but good video regardless! It's also very lovely of you to preserve Lost Ending Neo. I truly think it had the potential to be outstanding.
Thanks for talking about sonic battle len, i've literally never heard of it and as both a sonic fan and fan of a LOT of fighter maker 2 games, this is a great surprise for me! (which btw, if you thought 2dfm was outdated by that time, plenty of new japanese indie fighters still use it, with a couple even getting arcade releases!)
And it feels great to finally see someone mention how smackdown is like 90% reused assets, and learning that even the creators of it tried saying it's a proof of concept for sega to hire em is so scummy when they barely designed even two character's movesets, and don't do anything that any team at sega could do for a new sonic fighter. At least their original games look/play good.
Also, it's really not expected for small project games to have online, especially for fighters, probably the hardest type of online to develop because for most indie stuff you'd need to start development with it in mind as it's not easy to just plop online on to something for small teams.
A game i'm a little disappointed to not see here is sonic the fighter blitz, that game is like if a modern 2d sequel to sonic the fighters! it's so refreshing to see a sonic fighter with great original sprites, and even acknowledges STF's mechanics. Just a shame that the original dev couldn't keep working on it, but it has been slowly continuing with a new team.
We're doing our best
@@backslash_bks I'm not complaining! I'm glad it's continuing at all!
Just for some reason thought it was worth mentioning it changed teams, I'm obviously looking forward to what's to come with hyper!
28:53 Hey wait a second...
I've got A LOT of opinions on this topic, but firstly, in the past I did work on an Emerl moveset, that ultimately ended up going nowhere and I believe that the one in the old version is actually a mix of mine and someone elses/
At one point I offered to work on Sonic Duel as I still had plans of working on Emerl and was also working on PMEX Remix, but unfortunately my mental health took a nosedive (as did my already miniscule animation skills) and I stopped Brawl modding, barely contributing anything to the community as a whole. Funnily enough it's from Brawl Modding that it was particularly easy to tell that Sonic Smackdown reused animations, a lot of Amy's animations are actually from Ike of all characters
Sonic Smackdown is such a shame, I wasn't aware of the prior controversies so I personally excused a lot of the animation ripping, since I felt it's really the only way a game of this size and scope could be made. It's still fun but I'm no good with real Fighting games (also rip Gemerl not getting to be his own character (though this was before IDW made him more separate from Emerl))
Personally I think that the reason we don't get a lot of fanmade fighting games comes down to MUGEN. Now I'm heavily biased here but this mostly comes from it typically being praised as some kind of masterpiece, but "Sonic Battle HD" is something I blame a lot for this (honestly I wanted to, and still might, make a video on a similar topic to this myself)
Much like old versions Sonic Duel it's a collection of characters that weren't made by the person who "made" the game, though unlike Sonic Duel it lacks the same kind of direction and actual character work
Majority of the characters use the "JUS arranged style" one that (Doesn't play like the actual JUS game, and) focuses on super flashy one button autocombos, essentially "jingling keys, the fighting game"
Despite being constantly heralded as a "Sonic Battle remake", it plays nothing like battle, and the roster is absolutely bloated with fanon DBZ ripoff and reskin characters, with 31 different Sonics and 12 Shadows, over half of the roster is very unimaginative fanon, not to mention the absence of Gamma, Beta (Who has a really cool Mugen character!) and Charmy being hilariously oversized due to the source he was ripped from
If it wasn't obvious, I'm not a fan, but this kind of MUGEN fangame is very common, it's always a shame when I'm looking ar SAGE stuff to be met with the same character builds I've seen 100 times before, not to mention that there's a lot of Super Smash Flash 2 mods that have incredibly similar mindsets
To be honest it's not entirely HD Deluxe's fault (Though I'm not a fan of how Mugen builds like these are put behind adwalls) there are creators and players who overhype it, and those are the ones who claim it as a Sonic Battle remake (I'm a fan of Loki FES but the clickbait is atrocious)
The situation with Gather Battle sucks, because I actually played safe versions of it and it was incredibly fun. I've recently tried to get it working again, but it simply doesn't work on Windows 10, major shame
Leemena didn't really have any right to do what they did though, those sprites were mostly not even theirs
There are two fighting fangames that I really do think are pretty well made and worth a look, though both of them I believe are no longer being worked on, Super Sonic Knockout, a unique platform fighter that's pretty solid, though the video settings are rough, and Sonic Battle Chaos Greed, a Mugen game, though one that has modifications to the base engine, and has characters fully made by the same creator, in the style of Battle with some additions to movesets and new characters, not to mention a lengthy arcade mode and bosses
I hope the fighting game scene can evolve somewhat, I know there's a Sonic the Fighters 2d remake, and my friend TheStoryTeller is working on a Sonic Battle remake in between his own projects so maybe things are looking up
Also remember Super Sonic Bros?
I agree with you so much about the Mugen fangames in the Sonic Fandom. As someone who was in the Mugen space for a pretty long time at one point, there's a reason why it's all but dead now, and I've got a bone to pick with the dozens of copy-pasted Sonic Fighters that have been made under its name. In fact, during the planning stages, there was originally supposed to be a section of this video dedicated to all the crappy "JUS-styled Mugen Compilation" games, but was cut for the sake of not over bloating the video.
Chaos Greed, Knockout, and Sonic Smash Bros (I think that's the game you were referring to at the end?) are all games that I've heard of and played. While Sonic Bros is...to put it nicely...tragically dated, I definitely enjoyed the first two and have plans to them in a sequel video (Along with this Sonic the Fighters Blitz game I've been hearing about).
@@anoobdissects Funnily enough I typed Sonic Smash Bros first and then corrected it thinking I got it wrong
It sucks that a lot of the really good stuff doesn't have much of a following, I'm sure if they were more popular SSN and Chaos Greed would have fan continuations by now
This video actually got me to try and play SGB again and I got it working after hours of setting up a VM but oof the lag makes it borderline unplayable
Hmmmmm I wonder why Sonic Gather battle is unavailable, truly a mystery
It has a virus where after the Ghosts show up after completing a few stages and kill Sonic in an unavoidable cutscene, it would slowly delete all the files of your computer, including System32. In a way, it kills your computer.
@@X2011racer WOAH WHAT that's actually insane
@mario-oc2if Yet, the FBI doesn't acknowledge it as a cyber threat, unlike the Sasser virus, which actually caused havoc on an international scale. Therefore, the suspect is still free and at large.
@@X2011racer Truly a mystery....
Sonic Battle OST my beloved
Knowing so many people enjoyed my Unofficial SBLEN update is pretty inspiring. I'll definitely reupload the last version I worked on for all of you. I honestly hadn't realized the link died until very very recently.
i miss when super sonic knockout was still being worked on
Aren't we forgetting the de facto Sonic fighting game, ULTIMATE ROBOTNIK DUELS?
I'm a Big Arm main myself, I tend to pivot towards grapplers. It has a bad matchup with the Egg Scorcher but luckily its players are rare.
I totally forgot about that!!! One of the coolest ideas out there
Here's hoping someone manages to get a DRM-Less version of Sonic Gather Battle and we can enjoy that game again, without the risk of getting your IP Stolen and whatnot. Because damn, it was such a good, damn game.
i remember back when the sonic gather battle drama went down and having to warn my friend in freshman year not play it and sure enough he didn't listen and the rest I'm sure you can piece together what happened. i never understood the constant drama in communities around that time, 3DS modding community, Smash, Pokemon, even Paper Mario, hell even the switch modding community, a lot of these are arguably still pretty crazy currently, but back then i feel like all of them were at their all time peak of wildness, I'm probably missing more but my god this is a trip down memory lane lmao
Yo, take a look to sonic robo smash, its like a smash bros fangame with sonic characters in the sonic robo blast 2 style, its looking pretty good but it isn’t out yet!
This was a great video, I'd love a part 2 (especially for some juicy Sonic Ultima coverage 👀)
Wish there was some modified version of Gather Battle that took out all of that nonsense. It seems genuinely fun.
just play the old version.
Look, all I'm saying-
If a person wants to make a Sonic Fighting Fangame, I feel like a remaster or sequel to Sonic Battle would be a good start but that's just me. Or y'know what Sonic Gather Battle was well executed, maybe someone (WITHOUT PUTTING ANY KIND OF VIRUS IN THE GAME) could do a game similar to that.
(If anyone is reading this, feel free to use my ideas. I'm probably most likely not the first one to say this anyways.)
There's actually a game doing just that. Look at Sonic Battle Rush by FreeGilio
To clarify something, asking someone to link the build of SBN 3.1 isn't a great idea since youtube tends to delete links automatically. If you can manage to get it, that's great, but there's no guarantee you even see the comment.
The only game then you forgot is Sonic the fighters blitz hyper edition
sonic battle was not only really fun and unique but also gave us bunch of good sprites. Its a shame they never made offical modern version of it
Does anyone remember a Sonic Fighting Fangame that was sprite based and worked kinda like a fast beat em up? It had really good sprite work too, you could even play as super Sonic as his own character and I think it primarily used Adventure Era music. Can’t remember its name.
Would it be Sonic Battle Chaos Greed? That's the one that comes to mind for me.
This was such a good watch. I have a lot things i want to say. First off theres another version of sonic LEN that was released a few years ago by someone else, basically the same idea as what you were doing but it didn't seem to go anywhere. It was called Sonic strikerz. Don't know too much about it but might he worth checking out at very least to see what version of the game they used. Second After some digging I did find out that the whole donation controversy from Sonic smackdown was caused by a misunderstanding. Basically when you upload something to itchio the default option will have the game set for asking for donations when you hit the download button until the dev changes it themselves. You don't normally see this on other fan games, the reason being that this is only the default if you have payments set up on itchio, after that it'll default the donations prompt on your future projects and because the dev had previously uploaded their own original game before sonic smackdown it got hit with the prompt until they eventually turned it off. At least that's my understanding of the situation after some digging. Third if i can recommend some other interesting sonic fighting games I'd definitely say check out sonic the fighters blitz, sonic Jo rush, and Sonic Ultima. Sprry for the long comment 😅
Funny bit is a few years back I found a download for sonic gather battle and it's pretty aight
Honestly I think the video is a smidge harsh on Smackdown. Not on the devs because they definitely deserve flack for their PR and I really hope this is a case of amateurs getting in over their heads and that they'll learn from it but on the game itself. Programming original movesets that would completely fit the characters is a lot to ask of a fangame team, especially considering from what I can tell, this was their first fully completed game. They likely were still learning the ropes of development and figured rather than being stuck spending hours and hours trying to figure out why a homing attack they're attempting to code is instead shooting someone off into the sky at mach 3 that porting movesets that at least fit the characters' personalities and vibe would probably be for the best.
And really, this video kind of illustrates why a dedicated Sonic fighting game is so difficult to make and why we haven't seen even an official one since Sonic the Fighters. You'd need to implement a gameplay style that pays proper respect to the games with a feel that brings them to mind but can also work with traditional fighting game mechanics. Something like Dragon Ball works for fighters because really breaking it down, fighting games can be fast, frantic and flashy. You just dial it up a bit to embody Dragon Ball and implement dashing and Ki charging and you generally got it down. With Sonic? I don't know how you balance a homing attack while still having that same satisfying feel as the 3D games, how you make a boost attack work or even just implementing a flow. I mean maybe an arena fighter would be neat because then you could have slopes and springs but then there's the matter of how fast these guys can go, flight and gliding. Even Sonic Battle which got this mostly right struggled.
You bring up a lot of good points! I think there's definitely a case to be made that a fan game reusing concepts and moves from pre-existing games isn't a bad thing at all. Like I said in the video, I don't think the game being an MvC clone on its own is a bad thing, and even with the movesets, had they only been a quarter or even half of the character's kit, I probably would've been willing to cut it a lot more slack. It's the idea that a good chunk of their kits are taken from other fighters that really loses me, but that still doesn't make it a bad game, just one that ends up being a bit lacking for me personally.
I also agree that another big reason for the lack of fighting games that wasn't mentioned in the video was how difficult it really is (It's probably also the reason you don't see a lot of successful indie fighters nowadays, but I digress). Definitely something I want to acknowledge in a future sequel to this video. Thank you for commenting!
@@anoobdissects I can definitely understand, especially considering just the amount of praise Sonic Smackdown has received. Hopefully with the new version they strike a happy medium between moves pulled from other fighters and original attacks.
Great video! I'm glad you talked about the travesty that is SGB- I still can't believe that all went down.
If you want to talk about _more_ weird Sonic fighters there's technically the one made in MUGEN that has Ren and Stimpy as playable characters (yes, I'm 100% serious), but I have no idea if that game is even online anymore. It may be abandonware at this point!
Parsec is very location dependent, me and my friend live in California and find playing fighting games to be perfect delay and lag wise
Sonic smackdown...I always wanted to play this one, but sadly, my pc is weak.
I love long form content of any topic man
SGB lore goes so hard 😭😭😭😭
(16:08 song? 🤓☝)
I think it's Suitable Opponent from SA2.
@@anoobdissects thanks, also, amazing video as well.
Dong dong never die was also made in 2d fighter maker, also there was a pokemon fighting game made in it from (supposedly) old artists from the anime.
And ANOTHER ONE is currently being made right now! It's called Pokemon: Close combat, it's really good!
I hope that in the sequel you will mention two games that are technically the same but one is a continuation of the other: Sonic The Fighters Blitz.
The game is made in the IKEMEN Engine (a fanmade open-source expansion of the infamous MUGEN engine) that turns Sonic The Fighters into a more traditional fighting game while still keeping its original idea in mind (limited shields, temporary hyper mode, you get the drill).
The bad news is that the original Blitz was cancelled in January of 2023 because its developer lost motivation in working on it, but the good news is that the project is now being handled by a new team that is working on adding what the original project had in mind and much more.
For the time being, this new project (called Sonic The Fighters Blitz: Hyper Edition) has added several new features such as tag fights, along with also the inclusion of Honey the Cat as a new playable fighter.
There's actually quite a few fighter maker games still being made, most notably Axel City 2, which even has an arcade release.
When I try to start up Sonic Battle LEN the window just closes. Any help please?
From my experience, the game can be kind of weird with certain technical aspects, likely due to how old its engine is. If the game is making it to the opening cutscenes but is crashing before you can reach the character select screen, I've found that reopening the game until it gets to the CS screen usually does the trick. If the game is just straight up closing immediately after being opened, it can help to make sure that the parent directory is specifically named "sonicbattlelen" or "SonicBattleLEN" since I know the game crashes if it's not set as that.
4:35
Words on Top and Bottom: BRAVE DARKNESS SURVIVAL FINALIZE REBELLION ANOTHER FORBIDDEN HATE EVIL FUTURE LIMITED TIME DISMAY? CHAOS FATE PHANTASMAGORIA ENDLESS OBLIVION? THREATEN WHO FAKE? SOUL MIX DOOM JUSTICE?
Just thought it'd be funny to point this out.
Also as someone who grew up mostly with the RPG Sonic fangames this was a very interesting watch. Good video.
I've actually seen a recent fangame using fighter maker. Pokemon Close Combat released not too long ago, and it's still getting updates. It's very basic, but pretty solid and with some really smooth animation. As for a fighting game for a potential part 2, you should really check out Sonic the Fighters Blitz - Hyper Edition. It's a sort of sudo-remake/reimagining of the original Sonic the Fighters, but as a 2D fighter instead of a 3D one. It's IKEMEN GO-based, and it's really well-made. The controls and game feel are surprisingly smooth.
Not MUGEN. IKEMEN GO. It's a similar engine but has a LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT more capabilities, including online.
@@backslash_bks My mistake. Edited the comment to hopefully avoid confusion. Thank you for the correction.
Man, what I wouldn't give to have Close Combat get more coverage (although not too much so it doesn't potentially get itself in Nintendo/TPCi's crosshairs)
I still think Smackdown is the best Sonic fighting game. Sure, the PR is bad but that can be ignored to an extent if you just wanna play the game with friends and the characters are not COMPLETELY unoriginal. Theres still plenty of moves that the fit the characters well and they're fun to play either way so at least for me - it's the best one we got
Man i wish some one would like remake or hack Sonic gather battle to removed all of its bull shit because it genuinely looks interesting
Not completely Sonic related, but you should check out Sega vs Capcom. It's a fan game that's a 2v2 tag fighter similar to Tatsunoko vs Capcom or MvCI. Sonic is the only Sonic character and it's still early in development but it looks very polished.
I will say, what I think is the de facto Sonic fighting game is an official game, with a fan-made patch. Sonic the Fighters recently got a community update that rebalances characters, mostly the hidden ones (most notably Metal Sonic), and added a NEW character, mechless Eggman. The fighter was unfinished, but still works.
23:45 omg those were the daaaays
how has nobody tried to bypass the malware in SGB?
*Sonic Gather Battle is mentioned*
A Noob Dissects: *meniacal laughter*
This video is EXTREMELY underrated!
Who remember sonic smash brothers 💀🙏
I believe due to how somic characters are designed its hard to imagine what kinda fighting movies they gave cause they all have to turn into a ball
Have you tried downloading 3.1 from any sketchy links using a Virtual Machine?
@25:03 They were serious?
If they wanted it to be a proof of concept, it needed to be original, not have other fighting game animations and stuff.
You want Sega to publish your game, they'll be glad to here your pitch, probably, as long as it wont risk them getting sued.
I remeber Sonic Battle Mungen from Sage 2023. It was really cool. But it had way to many autocombos
I would love another video.
MUGEN based Sonic fighting games like Freedom Fighters, and all the one-button supers are pretty bizarre in their own right as well, but wow, **this** was bizarre.
The *way* ArcForged asked for money was kinda scummy, but it makes sense because they have their own original IP's that they're making. I think one is called Head2Head. Using a Sonic Fan Game is gross, but I don't think asking for funding isn't inherently a bad thing. I also personally dont mind the character's having copied moves from other games. Chaos's Venom move still had to be animated from scratch and programmed in. If it gave us a roster as big as they gave, i don't mind.
Sonic gather battle looks like a cool game. Too bad the creator got salty over sprites they don’t even own.
You forgot Sonic Freedom Fighters series from Mugen.
Ah, and there is another one called Sonic Ultima, it's pretty good.
Sonic Gather Battle was almost perfect, only thing holding it back was the creator and malware 😂
25:08
I don’t think allowing donations is bad. And from what I can remember with the Sonic Omens fiasco, Sega doesn’t mind fan projects getting support through patreon or whatever. As long as there aren’t anything locked away from you until you do donate.
I'm pretty sure there are more Fighting Game Maker 2 games than just that MLP one, there's a Yume Nikki fangame (Dream Kombat), a Kemono Friends doujin game (Kemono Friends FIGHT and it's sequel Kemono Friends FIGHT S), a doujin game crossing over Touhou and Higurashi (Zoku Sonohigurashi vs Touhou Universe 2), and of course the infamous Dong Dong Never Die.
@@Hijiri_MIRACHION Oh yeah, I realize that there were probably more Fighter Maker 2 games that were less well known. That was just me exaggerating for the sake of one my dumb jokes haha.
@@anoobdissects To be fair, MLP is probably the most recognisable Western property adapted to FGM2. Even if it is exaggerating, I at least wanted to point out certain FGM2 games I have encountered over the years.
Dong Dong Never Die isn't really based on anything either (the plot is inspired by the Terminator films and Mario's in the game, but that's about it), it's an original fighting game from China that is infamous in certain circles. It even has an updated version called Dong Dong Never Die: Judgement Day, which rebalances the game and adds Inugami Korone, a VTuber from Hololive.
I wonder if anybody was able to rework the build for Sonic Gather Battle and remove all of the malicious stuff in it. The game does look fun and I do want to try it out, but I don't want to get a virus from a fangame.
1.1d is the last version that doesn’t have the drm, and you can use a tool called frickmena to play 1.5 without triggering the drm
Doesn’t work on windows 10 though
I’m gonna plug and say: give Sonic The Fighters Blitz Hyper Edition a shot! It’s a pretty well made 2D Remake of Sonic the Fighters, and I’ve had a lot of fun with it! I believe it’s also still being worked on, but what is given is a really good experience!
oh i remember sonic gather battle so well. being an autistic kid online in the 2010s i had some odd interests, and 2 of them happened to be sonic and computer viruses. my virus fixation had already passed at that point, but i was extremely fixated on sonic, so you just know that sonic gather battle was something i absolutely ate up. i actually didn't know about it's full backstory till i watched this video, so thank you for including it here. i'd also like to mention some other tidbits of interesting info about it you didn't include, not too much, and very quickly:
first off, the general search terms of "cheat" and "hack" weren't the only terms that would trigger the malware. there was one more, much broader term, being "mod". this meant that if you so much as had the game open while looking up a mod for a video game, or even something as general as a body mod, it would trigger the malware. also, another thing you didn't mention that i find really interesting is the fact the game was known to be vm aware. you couldn't run the game on a virtual machine, as the game would know, and instantly close itself. i believe someordinarygamers found a workaround to this in his video on sonic gather battle, but i had to have watched that video like 5 years ago at this point, so i wouldn't be able to remember if it was him or another youtuber who made a video about it. the solution i believe was to run it through something called a gaming vm, which i have never heard of up to and after that point, and so don't know anything about.
so yeah, the whole thing is really interesting. unfortunately coverage of it isn't as vast as it is for viruses like wannacry, memz, or even gaming viruses such as rensenware, or creepy viruses such as msmajor. its super disappointing, because i bet there'd be more coverage on it and more people opening it up to see how it ticks if it just worked on vms.
"pair-sec"
I definitely agree that showdown is too similar to other fighting games , but it has slightly filled the void in my heart left by the lack of a MvC 4
MVC 4 exists and it's MVC Infinite.
20:21 it also doesn't help that any time you provide feedback about it, you're greeted with the usual "it's free" excuse, like free/fan games are exempt from criticism. SRB2 wouldn't have grown if it wasn't for the constant criticism of it's many flaws (like the style and the level design at the time), and now it's a gem.
24:31 lmao, control freak, at least he didn't turned into LeemenaDan/SonicFan. SvsLF2/SGB was such a dumpster fire, it's good that people keep talking about it. Don't let this idiot get away with it, since he's trying to re-release that game again.
Wait. No "Freedom Fighters", "Freedom Fighters 2" and "Sonic Freedom Fighters 2 Plus"?
would you imagine my surprise when i see my brother in this video as the person who LITERALLY MADE 3.1
might ask him if he still has a copy of the game idk lmao
Nice
Fighting games are awesome, especially the fanmade ones
A game does not need an online mode to be good.
The Only Comment That I Will Agreed With.
you should checkout the sega vs capcom fangame, it has sonic as a playable character and it looks promising
I still wonder if the people who were victims of the dev from Sonic Gather Battle sued them to hell & back
You forgot to mention super cosplay wars and arm joe as really well known 2d fighter makwr games
Uh... sonic: freedom fighters is a video game made in mugen 😐
Dong Dong Never Die and Super Cosplay Wars use Fighter Maker as well. You also should have covered Sonic Freedom Fighters by MugenHunter.
Also the original Terrordrome uses Fighter Maker too
Sonic Gather battle was something else I remember watching and playing the game but never knew the creator did it because of stolen assets like what was bro thinking that's just dumb bro 😅😭
I thought this had like 100k views at bare minimum, this is extremely underrated.
MMZ ost bg music?? new sub, also insert "you missed fighters blitz" comment here haha (But fr its great!)
edit: OH! also there's a veery new project called sonic chaos battle (IIRC), looks promising! but it's in a very early stage. as of now it's got 3 characters
Sonic battle rush**
at least, you didn't talk about that adult Sonic fangame that's technically a fighting game but way way WAY worse than you expect... ughhhh
You're talking about Project X love Potion aren't you
I'm still hoping for a Sega vs Capcom game!
Wasn't the last one the thing that got the creator sent to jail?
Don't think he did
It is a shame that Sonic Smackdown does heavily rely on fighting game references for the majority of the moveset without doing a lot to "sonic-fy" them, as i think using the reference is not necessarily a bad thing.........if they're used as a template (some moves like sonic's Light Speed Dash is nice, but i wish there was more stuff like that)
Comparing this to Idol Showdown, a 2D fighting game fan game for the vtuber group Hololive, like yeah that game also uses fighting game tropes and homages, but at least they try to theme it around injokes/stream moments to make said references less obvious (Ex. Korone's whole moveset is basically Ryu (or just a lot of shoto characters in general), but stuff like Korone's Tatsu (or in this case, her chainsaw move) is a lot faster and have a bit more forward force motion than Ryu's Usual Tatsu Move, so it's different enough for you to not notice at first)
For sure! I will admit that I was probably too harsh on some of the games featured in this video looking back, but I still think that Sonic Smackdown really suffered from its lack of creativity.
Imagine being myself one who worked to try make one fighting game of sonic in the past and failing, i mean, failing miserably, and see a style of mugen never go forward but some characther by glaudiacloud,and it is a pain i try to not return to mind, but nowdays even i makybe have the skill, i dont have the time or manpower to make sprites to try do someting with minimum quality. I Worked on what was Called Sonic freedom fighters Delta, Later renamed to Only Sonic Battle (F), that was based on a even more old fan game, Sonic Freedom Fighers, Mugen made By Mugen Hunter from Early 2k until 2012 (the last know version SSF2_Plus), see what smackdown could do and failed, yeah, it is sad
Itd be cool if u checked out sonic battle rush
Hey my friend the person that made the 3.1 of Sonic Battle Len make a Re relase
Check the chanel and put the link in description
PD: I don't speak English
I made a community post about it a while ago, but I just added it to the description.
I want to make a Sonic fighting game SO BAD AARRRGH
The best Sonic fighting game we had is Sonic the fighters it had a nice polygonal style, had a banger soundtrack, and was a very fun experience when I played it. Damn these Sonic fighting game fan makers be stingy as hell. You don't even own the IP.
Exists a 2d fanmade of Sonic the fighters made in mugen. Is called Sonic the fighters hyper edition.
@@sergiomendoza251 I meant be never talked about it in the beginning the video.
is there like a link to the game? i want to play it
im talking about sonic battle neo btw
@@aldarauchiha2544 there should be a link in the description for the video. Archive was a little weird for a while but it should be working now!
When I was 12 I liked Sonic Gather Battle it was really attractive and really good it was like Sonic Battle 2 but if it had had a sequel but it's a shame that its creator created a virus and an IP grabber we play his game because people steal these sprites that he created it himself but it's sad that now it's been 8 years since the Sonic community has not had a single fighting fangame.
they're sprite edits. you don't get to claim those are yours.
@@polocatfan oh ok
"fan made comics"
-post an image of a sprite sheet
😅