The game received average reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings.[5] IGN said, "when you actually put the character into the game, controls are pretty tight and solid", and concluded, "Fighter Maker is one of the most unique software packages on the PlayStation. I'm guessing we're going to see a ton of websites dedicated to characters gamers have created, uploaded with the handy-dandy DexDrive. The competition between friends is going to be fierce. Who can create the coolest, most utilitarian character in the game?"[12] GameRevolution gave it a mixed review, a few weeks before the game was released Stateside.[10] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 25 out of 40.[8]
2D Fighter Maker 95 (FM95) was released for Windows prior to ASCII's departure from gaming. Unlike its PlayStation counterparts, this version focused on 2D-style gameplay, allowing the user to create and import their own characters, sounds and graphics into the engine, allowing for far more flexibility and range than the PS versions. The program was pirated and fan translated to English and released on the Internet, where it found a large following amongst dojin game makers and the M.U.G.E.N. community.
2D Fighter Maker 2nd (FM2K) was released by ASCII's successor company, Enterbrain. An update to the original version, FM2K allowed for a greater amount of expansion and extension than FM95, revising much of the original engine to allow more options while adding a menu-based system for clarity. As with the previous version, it became wildly popular amongst the dojin communities in Japan. Again, piracy and a fan translation followed, though the second version has yet to meet with the success of the first, primarily due to the large amount of M.U.G.E.N. communities already in operation as well as the incomplete translation of the FM2K software and documentation. A re-translation of this engine was created by WindowsLogic Productions in August 2022 and posted on the Internet Archive.[25]
Fighter Maker (FM for short), known as 3D Fighter Maker in Japan, was one of the few PlayStation games that ran at 60 fps, mainly due to its simplistic graphics. Part of Agetec Inc.'s Designer Series, it is 3D-based and allows users to create custom moves for their fighters. Despite the unique concept, the game received very bad reviews as there was little to do once a fighter had been created. A custom made character occupies an entire Memory Card. This game is also known for having one licensed character, Street Fighter EXs Skullomania (named Skullo Mania in-game), complete with original move list.
Fighter Maker 2 (3D Fighter Maker 2 in Japan, FM2 for short) for the PS2 was another entry in the Designer Series from Agetec Inc. It was released in November 2002. It is similar to the original, but with more advancements in character design, movement, and attacks. As with the first, the game was met with lukewarm reviews, mainly due to its cumbersome interface and the lack of bells and whistles that were featured in most fighting games at the time.[1]
The inherent novelty of Fighter Maker 2 is that it gives budding game designers a little taste of what it's like to build the most basic of fighting games--down to even the smallest of animations. But that novelty will quickly fade once you discover the poorly designed interface, a somewhat limited create-a-fighter feature that's far less robust than similar features found in wrestling games, and a distinct lack of clear information on how to properly use certain modes. Indeed, all of this may even go so far as to completely dash some people's aspirations of becoming a game designer, and those who are willing to tackle the incredibly high learning curve will still find Fighter Maker 2 to be time consuming, if nothing else.
Though the focus of Fighter Maker 2 is creation, there's a prebuilt fighting game already included, but let's get this out of the way: It's pretty poor in comparison to most fighting games, due to its simplistic nature, and you probably won't be able to play it for more than a few minutes before boredom sinks in. Granted, the characters featured in this mode and the gameplay mechanics are included for demonstration purposes only, to give you an idea of what a character should play like and how he or she should animate, but it's definitely not a redeeming feature in Fighter Maker 2.
The editing feature in the game is essentially broken down into three different sections--appearance, animation, and sequences. In the appearance section, you can change the sex, clothing, hair, face, and a few other aspects of your character, but there's a surprising lack of variety in just about every customizable category. The fact that there isn't a weight adjustment feature is also severely limiting, because it doesn't allow you to create some of the most well known video game characters. Instead, you're left with a generic ninja or kung fu master, all of which are the same size.
The animation mode in the create-a-fighter option is easily the most intimidating aspect of the game. Not only do you have to animate your character, but you have to do so using key-frame animation, which essentially means that every frame of animation is edited manually. It's not particularly difficult to learn how to use this mode, but making even the most basic animation look somewhat decent can be very time consuming.
The animations you create can then be used in the sequence mode, which is where you can turn them into actual moves. The sequence mode also lets you determine how and when certain attacks can take place, how much damage they inflict on an opponent, and their range of effect, among other things. Unfortunately, this mode can be a little confusing at first simply because it's not entirely clear what it is you're supposed to be doing, and the manual offers very little help since it doesn't define some of the more mysterious options displayed on the screen. The absence of detailed information on the individual modes and the poorly designed interface, which just clutters up the screen, make the editing options in Fighter Maker 2 a chore as opposed to a meaningful experience into the world of a game developer.
Unfortunately, Fighter Maker 2 won't win any points from a visual standpoint either. The game has poor character models that look as though they were ripped straight from an old PlayStation game, complete with muddy textures. The backgrounds are also pretty mundane and sport the infinite fighting-plane visual technique seen in the earlier Tekken games, where the characters never actually come any closer to the objects in the environment. It's worth noting that the game does maintain a brisk frame rate, but given the bare-bones look of the game, there's no reason it shouldn't.
As for the sound, there really isn't much there. You'll hear all of the generic sound effects used in just about every single fighting game to date as well as an equally uninspired soundtrack that admittedly works well with the environments that the characters are fighting in, but that's about it.
Fighter Maker 2 does give some insight into what it's like to develop a fighting game if you're willing to spend a number of hours to effectively integrate all of the game's features. It just takes far too much time to perform the simplest of functions, and while the key-frame animation feature gives you a lot of freedom, it would have been better if it were a little less time consuming. In the end, Fighter Maker 2 will probably intimidate most of the people who are genuinely interested in the creation aspect of video games.
A series of games developed by ASCII Corporation and published by Agetec and Enterbrain. It consists of four games, 2D Fighter Maker 95 and 2D Figher Maker 2nd (Both 2D games for Microsoft Windows) and Fighter Maker and Fighter Maker 2 (3D games released for PlayStation in 1998 and PlayStation 2 in 2002 respectively).
This game provides examples of: