GangstaWar was a head-to-head fighting game released in 2005.
"Grab your 2 prefered weapons and go for a fight!"
© 2005 GangstaWar
In 2004, I developed a head-to-head fighting game engine using Macromedia Flash; it was mostly based on Capcom's Street Fighter II model, including Hadouken-like combos, and an opponent controlled by the computer. My prototype was called Super Crossover Fighter, because it used existing characters and backgrounds from different game series like SNK's Fatal Fury (Garō Densetsu), The Last Blade (Bakumatsu Roman Gekka no Kenshi), and of course Capcom's Street Fighter, similar to the Mugen game engine project. I think that the prototype played very well, looked smooth and felt responsive.
At this time, I shared most of my prototypes and experiments in the Flash Kit Community Forums, a famous Flash developer resource site. Aaron Wong, an entrepreneur who was active in the video games industry, founder of GirlGaming and DressUpWho, noticed my prototype and contacted me to create a head-to-head fighting game called GangstaWar.
GangstaWar had a unique and original concept: users could create an account on the (now offline) GangstaWar website and fully customize their GangstAvatar. They had the freedom to modify every aspect of its appearance, including tops, pants, shoes, hats, jewelry, glasses, and more. The customization options were extensive, with some GangstAvatars ending up resembling characters like Batman or Spider-Man.
Users could also equip their GangstAvatar with 2 weapons chosen from a selection of 50, ranging from swords and shurikens to rifles, shotguns, rocket launchers, grenades, chainsaws, flamethrowers, and baseball bats. Once fully equipped, users could challenge and fight other players' avatars in head-to-head battles, reminiscent of Street Fighter. Victories often led to leveling up and enhanced bragging rights.
After crunching the numbers, it turns out that users could create a staggering 1,682,903,040,000 unique GangstAvatars, including weapon combinations! O_O It's Over 9000!!
While working on this game, I collaborated once again with Claude 'yota' Tachnakian: he drew the backgrounds, the artworks, and a great amount of outfits and weapons following my templates. With his help, I could focus on the game itself: get the GangstAvatars together, animate them during the fights, create sounds (also for the different weapons), and code the game in ActionScript. It was released in 2005, and had its success.
Aaron Wong contacted me again in 2008 about Hungry Bears, a cooking game about bears eating pancakes.
"I love the details. Sound effects for the different weapons, shell casing stay on the ground, facial expressions during different moves and while getting hit."
"Graphically it's spot on: it moves perfectly, and is very fluid. This is one of the best thing I've seen in ages."
Check out some of my other similar projects: