Fighter Maker

"I could have bought alot of burritos with that money, too"

Fighter Maker. Those two words together would surely bring a sparkle to the eye of any hardcore fighting game fan, right? Prepare to have the name of something that should be holy, dragged through the mud and possibly urinated on, metaphorically speaking. Agetec, also known as ascii (i believe). A company whose origins lay in second rate controllers and other system peripherals. What do you get when they try to make a game? Something awful, that's what you get.

gameplay: 5
While the actual ''maker'' part of the title is god-awful (and pretty confusing, especially to people who have no clue what any of it means), the fighting itself isn't that bad. Not great, but I've played alot worse. Similar controls/gameplay to Sega/AM2's Virtua Fighter series. It gets old quick, though.

story: 0
Story? You've gotta be kidding me. Sure, there are ''profiles'' for each character, but only in the edit part...and nowhere else is anything about anyone said other than their name, which is also only written maybe...one other place? SFEX Series' Skull-o-mania (an ARIKA character, folks, not a Capcom character....Street Fighter EX's new people weren't capcom designed) even makes a cameo, for some odd reason. I'm not familiar with his story in the EX series, but odds are it's nothing even similar to whatever his Fighter Maker plot is. Did I really just say plot? Hoo, boy, I kill myself sometimes. The character designs are actually better than VF, in my opinion. Of course, that's not saying much...look at Virtua Fighter :p A spikey haired blonde guy with a trenchcoat-ish jacket, a generic older karate master guy, a monk (complete with forehead ''dots''), a pale red haired girl who stole Anna Williams' haircut, and a few other weirdos make the line up. Story, though..heh...I have no idea.

audio/video: 5
The character models are average playstation fighting game models....they practically scream ''we were made in 97 or 98!'' but they weren't. There's clipping, naturally, especially on made up animations. That's a given, though ;) The backgrounds look like bland imitations of VF1-style backgrounds. That, too, was pathetic. The voice samples are hardly memorable...I can't remember what any of them sound like, actually. haha, the joys of Fighter Maker. Almost as fun as sarcasm, kiddos!

replayability: 3
I would say 1, but maybe...just maybe...someone, somewhere likes to make up their own moves and animations? That's where the replayability is at, my friends. Don't expect it to last long, though...one whole character is 15 blocks of memory card space ;)

buy or rent?
Rent, if you can find it. Fighter Maker (and it's ''counterpart,'' the PSX version of RPG maker by the same company) isn't for everyone...some may like it, others may not. I'm on the latter side...I hate it. Taco Bell could have gotten that money, not that god-awful game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 07/05/02, Updated 07/05/02