Skip to content

IkemenGO / M.U.G.E.N - General Guide

IkemenGO is a fighting game engine and the spiritual successor to the dead projects Ikemen and M.U.G.E.N. It strives to be compatible with games made for those engines.

IkemanGO Github

IkemanGO Wiki

IkemanGO Webpage

Where to put the games

IkemenGO Ikemen and M.U.G.E.N games should be put under the retrodeck/roms/mugen/ directory.

What file formats are supported?

.mugen

Does IkemenGO require BIOS or Firmware?

No

All M.U.G.E.N and IkemanGO games have their own input bindings

As every game it's own unique instance and input bindings they need to be manually rebound per game so they fit how the game works and how you want to play. These bindings are usually set in the interface or in the file <gamename>/save/config.json.

Information

  • The games need to be uncompressed to a folder.
  • Games made for IkemenGO have a higher success rate than those made for M.U.G.E.N.
  • Each game is its own self-contained game, and no overarching settings exist.
  • Depending on the age of the game you want to play it could require less or more tinkering.
  • M.U.G.E.N have existed since the 90s and some incredibly old games might not run at all without heavy tinkering.
  • You will need to make the game executable.

Example folder structure of a IkemanGO game

~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/chars/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/data/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/external/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/font/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/sound/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/stages/
~/retrodeck/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen
Notice the runnable Ultimate Dank Fighter Mugen.mugen

IkemanGO Games

This How-to is for games that are made with IkemanGO

  • Extract the game if it is compressed into a new folder under roms/mugen/.
  • Rename the folder so it is called <gamename>.mugen in the end of it.
  • Open the game folder and see if the Ikemen_GO_Linux file is there in the root of the folder.
  • If the file is there rename it to <gamename>.mugen.
  • Make the game executable.
  • Note that BOTH the Ikemen_GO_Linux file and the game folder are now called the same <gamename>.mugen.

The game should now be detected and runnable from RetroDECK.

Example on renaming:

If the game is called Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO rename the Ikemen_GO_Linux file & the games folder to Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen

/roms/mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen/Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen

The Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen file exists within the Ultimate Dank Fighter IkemanGO.mugen folder.

Ikemen_GO_Linux is missing:

If the Ikemen_GO_Linux is missing in the games folder you can download it from the IkemanGO Github under releases called Ikemen_GO-<latestversion>-linux.zip.

Open up the .zip file and extract ONLY the Ikemen_GO_Linux file into the game directory and rename it as stated above.

M.U.G.E.N Games

Read the M.U.G.E.N Convertion Guidelines