Zan Evolution Butouden - Tumblr Posts

Got bored while making Shun sprites so I put together a few things with her and Fanhua from @zanzanryu 's Zan Evolution Butouden:

Shun (the one in the purple uniform) sprites are obviously mine, Fanhua (the one in the red dress) belongs to @zanzanryu.

+ an outfit swap bc i like to draw my ocs in different outfits:

Who is one of your favorite characters in Zan Evolution Butouden?

This was a nice thing to wake up to; my first ask (not counting joke asks from my sibling). I might take a while to answer, but that's because I may have forgotten how to speak like a normal person... lol

When I first played it, I was not very good at performing half-circle motions (I can do them fine usually, but I play M.U.G.E.N. and all that on keyboard, which is a whole other problem) – most characters in Z.E.B. have at least one move with that motion, so it reduced who I could play as down to only a few characters (from my recollection; Taka Hoppa, Warsnite and Sinkage? May have forgotten someone, though). I'm quite good as all three, I think – I know some easy high-damage combos as Sinkage, specifically – but early on I almost exclusively played as Taka, despite not usually going for charge characters. I'm still pretty good as him; I found that in the corner his supers can combo into each other for some big damage, which is neat.

Now that I've got the hang of half-circles, though, I play as Fanhua the most – she kind of reminds me of my OC a little, so it's the closest I can do to playing as her (for now, teehee...); and her moveset is also just really fun to use. One thing that Z.E.B. does that I like is that characters have quite large movesets – Fanhua has seven special moves herself (and I think the least any character has is Warsnite's four) – so I can vary my playstyle and combos by quite a bit.

Sorry if I rambled on for a bit, I've never had a proper ask before and I got excited, lol. Your game is very fun and well-made, though, and your character designs are neat! I look forward to seeing how Ciara's moveset plays out!

Reblogging this on my main blog bc I guess it's kinda relevant? Also I intended to put this on this blog in the first place but realised it too late oops 🤭

Just found out that @zanzanryu made a tier list for their M.U.G.E.N. game, so I decided to try and come up with one:

i have never done a tier list before so this might be completely stupid, sry

Explanations/insane rambling under the cut:

(The early descriptions might sound a bit too critical, but it doesn't mean I don't like this game or these characters! Every game needs a worst character, and it doesn't necessarily mean that they're badly made or not worth playing!)

D Tier/Bottom Tier – Warsnite

As someone who used to main Warsnite purely because of easy move inputs (half-circles are hard on keyboard, I use an Xbox controller for the game now, though), I definitely feel like he has a harder time doing things that the rest of the cast can do without much effort. He has less specials than the rest of the characters (only four, five if you count the airborne version of his projectile, which functions exactly the same (the average amount of specials is about seven)), consisting of a pretty standard projectile in his Power Beam, the okay-in-combos-but-hard-to-utilise Hundred Mech Punch, the slow and easy-to-dodge Warquake, and System Shock; a move that I haven't found a single use for (it looks like some kind of energy shield, but he gets hit out of it by everything? it's also too slow to combo with...). He has some movement options with his air-dash – which is unique to him – but is generally not a very viable character.

(What's kind of funny about this is that Warsnite is actually one of the bosses of the game; fought after Fengyun and before Fran and Sinkage.)

C Tier/Below Average – Spike Fraser & Taka Hoppa

This is the tier where I put characters who I thought are okay, but just a notch below the rest of the cast. Spike is quite a slow character with good damage, but I've found that he struggles to close the distance with his enemies; his Dynamite Tackle doesn't cover much distance, and his Dynamite Dropkick has him land lying down, giving it quite a bit of endlag and leaving him vulnerable to some OTG attacks.

Taka, meanwhile, is a charge character – not necessarily a bad thing, but compared to the others, he has much less to do (Wendy does a lot better in combos, and Fengyun is only a charge character when in his Defensive Stance). He can combo his Fists of Fury super into his Gigaton Punch one in the corner, which isn't a very common occurrence in the roster and deals quite good damage, but most fights I've had playing as him take quite a struggle to win with.

B Tier/Mid-Tier – Most of the roster lol

These are just the characters that I found as unexceptional – not boring, but nothing about them stands out as particularly powerful or particularly weak. There are some characters I haven't played much as (mostly Antbyte Scout), so I put them in this tier, as well.

A Tier/Above Average – Fanhua, Sinkage & Ninewave

These three characters stand out as particularly strong to me (although Fanhua is my main so I may be a bit biased 🤭), each in their different ways. Fanhua has a very solid moveset – she has so many options to work with, her combo game is very good (one of the few characters that I've found to have two specials that can combo into each other; Elbow Reach into Fierce Upper carries all of my combos, lol), and she has a very useful super with her Butterfly Flip (which also has a very cool animation).

Sinkage, I feel, is strong mainly due to one move; his Rise Cutter. It's a strong move that's great as an anti-air, combo ender, even as a punish tool – and the super variant, Rush Cutter, can even combo into itself (it uses a lot of meter, but you can combo three Rush Cutters together, then a strong Rise Cutter, and end with a light one. Nearly takes the whole lifebar). His other moves are good, as well – Bio Charge Knee is great for comboing, and Bio Solar is like Warsnite's System Shock but with actual purpose (although I still have found he gets hit out of it quite often) – but Rise Cutter is definitely what bumps him up to this tier.

Ninewave is an odd character, in that I considered putting him in B or even C tier before. I myself am not good as him – I've always had a preference for faster characters who can do long, complex combos, which Ninewave is not good at – but I can't deny that he is a very good character. His zoning is easily the best in the game – of his four(-ish) specials, three are various projectiles that, when used together, make him very hard to approach (especially as someone who always forgets to use the evade button). He also has Force Destruction – a Kikosho-like super that gives him completely free movement as the effect is out if it connects. This move alone can make his combos brutal – possibly the highest in the game (he's the only character I've found to have a 100% combo so far).

S Tier/Top Tier – Fran Brocken

So, I've recently started playing as Fran, and wow, she is so fun. I already knew she was tough – I made the dumb decision to take her on at max-level CPU as Taka Hoppa, and it was rough (I think Fran Vs. Taka might be the most imbalanced matchup, right now) – but I don't think I really understood how tough she was until I started playing as her...

Movement-wise, Fran is definitely the fastest character in the game – she's the only character to have a wall-jump, which sends her at a ridiculously good angle (has amazingly good horizontal distance, makes keeping her in the corner impossible), and her ground speed makes her very hard to catch up with. She also has an air projectile, Red Air X-Slash – not only is it fast and goes at an angle that no-one else's does (also one of only two characters to have an air projectile – the other being Warsnite, funnily enough), but it also sends her up and away, making it surprisingly good defensively (she can also do it during her back dash, because back dashes count as jumps in this game). For defence, she also has a counter move (although I don't end up using it a lot) and her Red Dash Tackle is a good move to do out of block. Her Hurricanrana Crush is a very scary jumping command grab – it moves fast and far, and with a large unblockable hitbox that can catch airborne opponents (it can even be comboed from Red Dash Tackle!) and seems to be able to interrupt every other move, it has no reason to deal as much damage as it does. And her Red Rain of Berlin super (really cool name, btw) is equally as scary – it's powerful, long-distance, near-instant, and amazing as a reversal, a combo ender, or even as a way to close the distance (the knockback at the end even brings the enemy towards you, so you can hit them with a little OTG combo if you're fast enough). With such strong moves, Fran Brocken might be too strong, even as a boss (it's telling that I consistently struggle against her more than the actual final boss, Sinkage).

Btw, haven't mentioned it yet, but I have actually been using Zan Evolution Butouden for making Shun rather than any basic M.U.G.E.N screenpack, purely because the current one I have downloaded is too big for my brother's laptop to run. I'm probably gonna try and download a simpler one, soon, but for now at least I can have my character fight against the roster.

Showed up in the same outfit? One of us will have to change...

Did more Shun stuff today (I've been going to the library every day it's open, lol). I've actually reached the point where I'm ahead in my coding now; I can't really add anything new to her until I make more sprites.

Some of the new things that have been added are: two special moves; her Shang Xian Yue and Er Qi Jiao (I actually added Er Qi Jiao yesterday, then completely recoded it today), her heavy punch + an alternate version when done after light punch (it's too slow to combo normally, so it skips a few frames. I actually added this version entirely in Notepad, lol), a taunt/intro animation, and a few extra alternate colours.

(ft. a simplified palette based on the colour restrictions of the Neo Geo Pocket!)

The Zan Evolution Butouden July update came out, so that's pretty much all I've been doing today...

Thought I might share a neat combo I worked out as my main, Ciara Lowell. She's a grappler character with a chain grab, which I always enjoy.

Also the rankings from the four arcade run I've already done today:

Being kooky with Ciara again:

I saw the AI cancel Clutch Spiral into Carnival Suplex once and now I go for it all the time...

Just finished my tenth arcade in Zan Evolution Butouden, here are my scores:

Honestly didn't expect to do so good with Taka, as I'm not very good as him; but placing high with Ciara and Sinkage were not surprising to me at all. I've also now played as more than half of the entire roster (there are eighteen characters in total), and have found some new potential mains!

I might do a tier list of how good I am as these characters sometime...

↑ hey look that's me ↑

Zan Evolution Butouden - Online Play: Zanryu Zan (ZanZanryu) vs Ciara Lo…

Did another tier list on Zan Evolution Butouden, since I'm more familiar with the game now, and a few new characters have been added since my last one:

(Also I based this one more off my personal ability as the characters, rather than competitive viability. This is because I know nothing about competitive viability and was talking complete nonsense in my last list.)

Explanations/unrelated ramblings below:

S Tier – My Mains (and just good characters)

Fran and Sinkage are both bosses (and the final two at that), so it's not a surprise that they're tough. I've actually figured out some TODs as Fran against the lower health characters (i.e. Fanhua, Ranmaru and Fran herself), and while Sinkage's Rise Cutter loops no longer work as well, the addition of an elbow drop output from it makes it still a very deadly move.

Ahh, Ciara, my true main... How I love spending two meters to take an enemy's entire healthbar just because they dared to jump in my presence. Her chain grabs are just really satisfying, too, and unlike anything I've seen in any other characters I've had. (and not a full-circle motion in sight!)

A Tier – The ones I'm comfortable with

A few of these characters (Zanryu, Renmia and Jacob) are shoto-like, and therefore quite easy to learn and get good as. They're all still pretty interesting to play in their own ways: Zanryu's got enough extra tools to distance his playstyle from the typical shoto, making him more of an aerial dominator (his Air Nova Strike especially, makes his air play very hard to challenge), and Renmia's moveset is like a fusion of a shoto and Terry Bogard, making her more familiar to play, and a good beginner character.

I feel like, if I gave him more time, Casben could be in S Tier. A lot of his kit feels very powerful (in earlier builds I remember his jumping knee being able to loop into itself very easily), and both of his supers are very good (his handspring is always a very tricky cross-up when the CPU does it, but a complete whiff when I try -_-). The only thing holding him back is that I play more as everyone else, lol.

Taka is in a weird spot, where I feel like he as a character isn't that strong, but my skill can kind of make up for it? I don't know, I've had a tendency to accidentally main low tiers in other games (the first character I picked up in Sm4sh was Little Mac, and I also mained Ganondorf), and with his smaller moveset and limited combo potential, Taka feels like this to me. But I'm actually pretty competent as Taka – he's one of the few characters I can chain both supers into without an OTG, and I win most fights where I play as him.

B Tier – ...I'm okay, I guess.

I know I used to main Fanhua, but the more I play as her, the worse I get, it feels... I think my main struggle are that her Elbow Reach isn't a special move anymore, and that her rekkas don't combo (or I just can't get the timing for them :P).

Ranmaru is a character I wish I was better as, because her moveset seems so cool, but all of her inputs are half-circles, and I play on keyboard half of the time (and I'm inconsistent with half-circles even on controller). She even influenced Uta a bit (Hissatsu Shinobi Cho was very much based on Ranmaru's Elbow Dive – before I played Ranmaru, Uta was going to have "Zan'eichu", which was basically just Andy's Zan'eiken).

C Tier – Yeah... I'm losing this one

wendy I'm so sorry I love your design so much I just can't play charge characters pls don't hate me...

Leo's pretty neat, I guess; his moveset is like a Joe Higashi/Sagat fusion, with an added TC and rekka. I just never really played either of those characters much, so I don't know what to do with him.

D Tier – I have no idea what to do with these people

I've not played as any of these characters much (except for Warsnite), so I'm not at all familiar with their movesets... I tried to fight Zanryu (the person, not the character) as Feng Yun once and got folded in half immediately. I've never even attempted Spike, Antbyte or Ninewave.

I honestly can't believe I used to main Warsnite... His airdash is cool, but he's otherwise the complete opposite of what I usually go for in a character – he's got the smallest moveset in the game (which is okay, I just like having more options), and is the slowest, heaviest character. I've seen him do, like, one cool combo, and even then; it was the CPU doing it on me, and it spent one meter for damage I can outmatch with Fanhua for zero.