Teal Swan wrote:We do not fear the unknown, we fear what we think we know about the unknown.

Over the years, I have become rather obsessed with characters that don't follow the typical creation process. Characters that have the potential to be destructive, in every sense of the word, characters that can be exploited and turned into a weapon that no other would ever want to encounter. These are characters that have begun to infest my life, and in turn, become an addiction. An addiction that I continue to feed by seeking out the mysterious, the unexplained, and the undesirable.

Some of these, we are all quite familiar with, they are names we've seen time and time again, and in fact, at least one of them, we have used repeatedly (in most cases). But then there are those in this collection, we dare not to touch. There are those in this collection, we do not understand, and probably never will. When we finally encounter them, we begin to ponder and question "why?", why would anyone make such a thing, and to what goal, to what purpose?

We don't know. We wish we knew, we wish we could understand the complexities behind these, but we just can't. Some of the brightest minds from the MUGEN community, are still at odds, questioning, arguing, and conflicting with each other against why these things even function, and how are they able to do what they do.

For now, we don't have the explanation. While we have the results of these efforts, we do not have the understanding of how they came to be or why. We can only look from a distance, or try them out ourselves.


If you dare to tread deeper into this collection... I implore you, tread lightly. Some of these creations can actually cause serious problems, such as:

1. Corrupting other characters in your roster.
2. Corrupting your MUGEN game.
3. Crashing/Freezing your computer.

Now, onto the previews...


"MADO" by PKRS (it no longer exists on his site and cannot be recovered through wayback machine) is a character similar to ones like "00N" or "AAASSX" or "00X00X". However, unlike all of those, this one is based on the sounds and effects of WindowsXP/Vista/etc. Keep in mind though, the coding of this character is still designed to break other characters, it just has a new skin. In fact, based on checking different sources, "MADO" is the precursor to "AAASSX".


"00N" (aka "*") and "AAASSX" (aka "ADS", aka "AxAyAzSSX", aka "<> ( 0)<>/2" or "Angle Draw Sphere") are two more characters from my collection (both by PKRS) that can be both CHEAP, and I'm not just talking like insta-kill dumb crap cheap, but like... abuse the system and break the game kind of cheap, but also can be fair, depending on the palette. So yeah, two more characters which are well... things, and these things are insanely fascinating to just watch and even have in general. As you can imagine, the more I saw stuff like this, the more addicted I got to being like "but... how does this even work!?!?". So yeah, if this is your cup of tea, then by all means, drink up, cause these things are fascinating.


"#PASSWORD" by MeltChoco999% is a WinMugen ONLY character that seems to emulate the effects of a password input screen from old video game systems, such as the NES, Gameboy Color, etc. Outside of that, I've yet to actually figure out much about it. I believe once you find the password, it is supposed to do something else, but other than that, I don't know. I think there might be quite a few "passwords" this thing uses in order to do different things, such as play music, corrupt files, etc.


One of the many characters by p0008874, I don't know what it actually does, aside from overriding the MUGEN engine by forcing it to load into a fullscreen (within the screen itself) character that plays a video and music. There are characters similar to this one, which will actually corrupt other characters in the pack, but from my experience with this, it doesn't corrupt anything, just plays a video for no apparent reason.


While not included in my collection, this is one the many characters similar to what p0008874 does, that can override the system itself, and prevent anything else from happening. Its a very complex creation, but all it does is override every other character in the roster and turns them into Kizuna AI, and then plays a music video. Its rather odd, but just something I'd thought you'd like to see as an example of the damage that these characters can do.


CopyAssist is a character that is similar to Metamon (which is basically just Ditto if it was a MUGEN character), to where it can copy any other character that it goes against. However, unlike Metamon, this one is specifically designed to stop null-type/cheap-type characters, by disabling their abilities, and then using those abilities for itself. Its rather genius, and its a damn shame that most of the characters like this, only work on WinMugen, as they make use of the DisplayToClipboard function and abuse the % variable. As you may notice, Dark Donald in this, can no longer regenerate his health anymore, all thanks to CopyAssist disabling it.


So you might be looking at this and being like "okay, so what's the deal? its just some edit of another character, so what?" Well, this character, has a built-in system, that allows it to modify its own stats and settings. In other words, in-game (usually before the match begins when AI controlled), allows this character to change how fast it is, how big it is, if it can fly, if it is invincible, if it does more or less damage, and so on. Think of it as an in-game cheat menu for this specific character. Its INSANELY clever, think of it as "Training" by Stupa, but on a whole new level. In fact, Training is also included in this collection, simply because if someone were to fiddle with the code, they could create an unkillable, super-cheating, ridiculously impossible to beat character. This character, unlike Training, thoroughly exploits these options, but unfortunately, only does it before every match, so the exploits are entirely random. I'm hoping to find someone that can make this character even cheaper, and have them exploit the commands in-game, and any time the opponent tries to do anything, it'll immediately pause the game and run its exploit to prevent it (such as any time the opponent uses a projectile, it'll immediately make itself immune to projectiles, etc). For now, its AI is very random, but fascinating to fight against and even better to train against. This is by far, one of my all-time favorite creations to have come across.


"% (The End)" by MHZ is a character that was previously known for destroying people's computers. Quite a few people from the Japanese and Chinese communities made these creations, and they were often so destructive (especially the WinMugen variations) that they would literally wipe entire hard drives and corrupt OS software with the usage of .bat files and other loading methods. It was a horrifying time, especially since a bunch of these also infected your computer with viruses. Fortunately, MHZ reworked their entire character, so now all it does is crash/freeze your computer, rather than destroy it. Basically, it will hog as much memory as possible, the longer it is running, in an attempt to kill anything that it is put up against.

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My collection of strange, unexplained, unwanted, and downright confusing characters. Keep in mind, there are always more I can add to this, but for now, without bogging it down with the millions upon millions of Touhou, Donald, Orochi, and other edits that just go batshit insane, here are other characters that deserve more of a spotlight.

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Unfortunately, none of these characters were packed seperately, so the file size is very large (approximately 5.4GB).

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Known for doing a wide variety of edits to characters that make them insanely cheap (some of them can even override the MUGEN programming itself, and some can corrupt characters), p0008874 is a noteworthy creator to include in this collection of anomalies. There's a huge variety of things in here, so be very careful what you mess with.


Here are some different YouTube channels that used to, or still showcase and explore these odd/cheap creations.

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Be careful, but enjoy.