DONG DONG NEVER DIE
Original Release: Zhang Qiang, 2009, PC
A madcap yet solidly-made fangame fighter that's an absolute blast
Dong Dong Never Die (PC, Zhang Qiang, 2009)
Where to Buy: Freeware - download at archive.org
Review by: C. M0use
Clearly the finest Chinese gaming product ever made, Dong Dong Never Die artfully fuses pirated elements and its own unique content into something really special that outdoes a good deal of the catalog of commercially developed 2D fighters.
The story of the game's development reportedly begins in China in 2006, when two friends who worked as programmers decided to create a fighting game in the manner of the best stuff from the likes of Capcom and SNK up to that point, but with simpler move inputs. Every character in Dong Dong takes some other famous fighter as their base as far as move set goes, but nearly every special move is a simple quarter- or half-turn.
"EZ Fighter" with stolen characters is far from what the game ended up being limited to, however. To give it a unique twist, the developers did mocap of themselves and a bunch of people they knew to create digitized characters in the manner of Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game. It uses a rather obscure-outside-Asia fighting game maker called "2D Fighting Maker 2nd" from Enterbrain (thus their logo at startup), which was released in 2001 and I believe only in Japan ... Dong Dong pushes this rather primitive engine to its absolute limits, and apparently even hacks in some things it wasn't originally capable of.
The end result is actually very playable without any kind of learning curve, yet offers up a ton of variety as character styles often require one to vary their approach considerably. And that's before we even get to the fun non-stop absurdity that saturates the game in its own unique personality despite pirating move sets and music from very obvious sources.
The original release in 2009 had just a handful of characters, but over the years it has added an expansive roster as well as online netplay options. The simple engine only allows for it to have a straightforward "story mode" with only a very basic intro and ending, but the fun of the game is simply in seeing all the crazy super attacks and win poses it has to offer while experiencing the slightly-janky-but-still-smooth gameplay.
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