The Favorite Fighters 2.5 - Story Mode (Akuma)
0"...in the final chance to become the Favorite Fighter? The definition of "favorite" is a preferred object compared to similar ones, so is it implying that the victor of this unholy multiverse tournament is someone's preferred character? I mean, yeah, because Akuma is best boy in Street Fighter, yes? Who am I kidding, I'm overthinking things again."
Made by several folks from 2D Fighter Maker forum site "Fighter Maker HQ", The Favorite Fighters is perhaps one of the most games of all time. Featuring a variety of characters, from characters from pre-existing fighting game franchises to original creations altogether, the game's premise (from the intro) begs the question onto which of these fighters are the best.
This second(? Third? This game has the "2.5" moniker for a reason lol) revision of this crossover slugfest adds in two defensive mechanics: the ability to guard cancel and retaliate with a special move, and the ability to, during a knockdown, skip wakeup animations and retaliate with a special move.
This game is also pretty weird. Besides inputs being jank occasionally (skill issue on my end or the game not properly reading inputs? either way i am not getting a dp as a combo ender lol), the game just kinda feels weird - this is mostly a personal thing and will depend on person to person, but chaining attacks just feels unnatural. Hitstun could also be weird at times - you could even combo heavy attacks into themselves under circumstances (for example I accidentally did a misinput and was able to combo Akuma's close heavy punch into a crouching heavy punch) easily, which is an act not seen in any fighting game (barring heavy attack autocombos or links with strict timing)
Besides this, what we have here is an okay fighting game that feels straight up from some M.U.G.E.N compilation. Assets such as stages and music were made from pre-existing fighting games (akin to custom stages from the aforementioned fighting game engine). The mis-matched character sprites (each based on a different game) also adds up to this charm too. At the very least, the game's characters function with similar mechanics, similar to several M.U.G.E.N characters (in M.U.G.E.N, there exists character styles that closely mimic Marvel vs. Capcom gameplay, for example). This game was made before M.U.G.E.N became popular (last updated around 2008, back during the WinMUGEN days and before the popular 1.x versions were released), so I think that they were aiming for this approach.
So overall? This game is both jank and meh at the same time. I can't really bring myself to end with a proper send-off, this is truly one of the most fighting games of all time.
https://archive.org/details/the-favorite-fighters-2-5/
This game is pretty inconsistent to boot - while it could crash in subsequent attempts to run the game, it could sometimes function normally. To be fair, all 2D Fighter Maker 2nd games (such as this one) could randomly crash (especially in modern OSes), but crashes in this game happens more than usual. Either way, it's best to take the archive's instructions under advisement, and to keep a copy of the original .RAR file just in case things go south.
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