Fighter Maker

by PS1

Product Features

• PS1

Product Details

• ASIN: B00001ZUNR
• Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 0.5 x 5 inches ; 4.8 ounces
• Media: Video Game
• Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #40,466 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

GameSpot Review

There have been countless fighting games over the years, some technical, some fantastic, but none have ever offered you the option to create your own moves. With Fighter Maker, you're put into the developer's seat and given complete control over how your character fights. While, in concept, this is a novel idea, Fighter Maker struggles with serious design flaws that prevent the game from reaching its potential.

Fighter Maker could be described as having two different parts. There's the fighting aspect of the game and the design aspect of the game. Those of you who don't want to deal with the tedious character creation process can simply jump into the horribly bland fighting game, at least for the entire six levels that it offers before you've beaten the game. There are no hidden characters, no end boss, and you only fight a fraction of your available characters before the game is over. The edit mode lets you tweak every aspect of your fighter, such as stance, attacks, victory dance, and throws. Once you've tweaked your character to your liking, you can try the moves out in a test session. If that works out well for you, you can set the logic behind the character; in other words, you can determine how a computer-controlled version of your character will react, percentage-wise, in response to his opponent's current activity.

The edit mode suffers from some serious problems, turning a seemingly simple control scheme into a nightmare. It creates motions with a series of frames, all of which you must edit one by one. While you're editing a frame, you can move each joint of your character's body on three different axes. Unfortunately, once you've moved a body part, it turns into an overly simple wire-frame version, which makes it all too easy to lose track of exactly which direction the body part actually faces. Accidentally making your character's head face the wrong way or the backs of their knees point forward only adds to the frustration. In addition, you can only copy and paste one frame at a time instead of being able to copy or move a series of frames. This makes character turnarounds or running throws almost not worth creating. Throws are especially time consuming, as you must edit not only your character's movements, but your opponent's as well. Unfortunately, both bodies don't appear on the edit screen at the same time, so you must constantly switch back and forth to ensure that everything lines up between characters. Also, while you are at liberty to create fantastic, unreal attacks, you can't create projectile attacks.

The phonebook-sized manual is bland and too vague in all the essential areas. It boasts that creating a move is as simple as making a beginning frame and an end frame, and that the game will generate all the in-between. While this is for the most part true, the computer isn't exactly good at filling in the missing frames, and as such, all the motions created this way end up looking unnatural, and in some cases, they look completely impossible. So you're forced to spend a tiring amount of time generating all the frames essential to creating your move. And once it's done - I assure you - it won't look as good as you'd hoped.

The graphics are plain and unappealing. Aside from Skullomania of Street Fighter EX fame, or a character that looks very much like Starman from Pro Wrestling on the NES, the characters look generic and are without any real personality. What's worse is that you're forced to choose from the unexciting premade cast, instead of creating a fully custom look to your character. Not much can be said for the backgrounds, as they're mostly barren, plain, and unimaginative. The character-select screen is boring, the loading screen is pitifully lame, and the menu selection screens follow suit. Fighter Maker becomes a better game when you put it on mute. The sound is humdrum - you hear music only during fighting sequences, while the sound offers an annoying frequency of cheesy effects.

Neither mode is good enough to stand on its own. The edit mode is confusing, frustrating, and in the end, self-defeating, while the fighting mode is lackluster, boring, and laughably short. The game comes with a distinct fighting style for each fighter, which can be loaded from the CD and modified in the edit mode. Most of the moves are lifted directly from one of the Tekken games, with a few pleasant exceptions. The ironic part is that there are so many moves already in the game that unless you know some exotic fighting style or have a crazy imagination, the move you'd want to create is already included in the game in some form.

Surely developers don't create fighting games using a PlayStation controller, and Fighter Maker successfully drives that point home. The joy achieved from creating a nice-looking kick is short lived once you realize the countless hours of mundane tweaking you spent creating it. And while the ability to create tailored movements is certainly appealing, in application it's exceedingly difficult and is sure to frustrate you to the point that you'll never want to toy with the edit mode again. And, once you've lost the desire to tweak your character, the below-average fighting mode certainly won't keep you playing. --Ben Stahl
--Copyright ©1999 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot is prohibited. GameSpot and the GameSpot logo are trademarks of GameSpot Inc.

Product Description

This is the game Fighter Maker for the Playstation 1. This game may not come with the original case and instructions. We stand by our products and offer a 60 day guarantee. If a game does not work within 60 days from the time you receive it we will gladly exchange it for you.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars More like Fighter Changer., July 30, 2000

By 

Erik James (Orono, Me USA) - See all my reviews

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:1.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Fighter Maker (Video Game)

As i first looked upon the cover and saw a game that i wanted to believe as being what i was always looking for, sadly i was mistakin. The game is very standard. simple backgrounds, yet fitting for the martial arts genre. Many different styles of fighters with certain distinguishing stances and strikes. when you begin play, you fight a couple characters, and the game seems alright, untill you kill a few more and it's over. NO story line with the fighters you have, no real point except the fighting, very sad. I looked past that expecting the fighter designer to raise up where the regular game seemed to drop off. When you begin to create your own fighter you soon realize that you can only use the characters that already exist, so the chance of variety is quickly killed off. The idea is very good, and it could have been done alot better. Making a fighter is very long and complex, definately not for the average gamer. Overall: Too much work for such little result.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Hope you have a lot of free time, November 29, 1999

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Fighter Maker (Video Game)

This game takes forever to get into. There is a VERY basic fighting game already programmed in but that won't hold your attention at all. To really enjoy this game, you need to first completely understand all of its functions first. And I'm not talking about a cursory reading of the manual. You really have to know what your doing. You go in and frame by frame program the moves for your character and the opponent. If you're a budding programmer out there who thinks they can challenge the programmers of various fighting games, here's your shot. But it will take you a while.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Listen to me, June 27, 2000

By A Customer

= Durability:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars  = Educational:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Fighter Maker (Video Game)

Ok I can understand the merit of these bad reviews, but I think your being overly critical. Forget the regular game as it is lame, no doubt;but, the edit mode is deep and provided me with the most enriching experiance I ever had in front of a Television. THIS GAME TAKES TIME! Plain and simple. I felt the so called "professional critic" missed the boat on this game entirely. Fighter maker is for an intelligent creative gamer who always fantasized about making a fighter with moves dreamt up from his own brain. This is where this game DELIVERS! Look beyond the obvious design flaws(like not being able to edit the appearance). Look forward to the upcoming RPG maker, imagine creating your own RPG!