Hornet Man/Ironcommando's version

''One of the few non-cheap characters made by Ironcommando, Hornet Man is a custom-sprited character with a gameplay style and combo system similar to his Dancing Banana. He can attack with homing hornets and exploding bees and cover the opponent in honey or poison them to weaken them, and he also comes with a brutal A.I. Unfortunately, this character is unfinished, as he has several missing Normals and gameplay bugs.''

Gameplay


Hornet Man is a six-button character, using the, and  buttons for kicks and the ,  and  buttons for punches, with a gameplay style and combo system similar to the same creator's Dancing Banana. In addition to his standard Normals, he has alternate Normals which can be activated by pressing an attack button while holding. Though he has only two Hypers, he has several Specials, along with an unique mechanic which allows some of his Specials to be charged by holding down the button used to activate the Special after inputting the directional input, and if the button is held down for long enough (when Hornet Man starts flashing), releasing the button will activate a more powerful version of the Special. He also has two throws, of which one of them is activated by pressing + and the other by pressing  + while near the opponent. Unfortunately, this character is unfinished, as his crouching and  moves and his aerial,  and  moves are missing, and their animation is a placeholder animation with a single frame of Hornet Man's idle animation with no attacking hitboxes, and several moves and features that were listed in the Readme are not present in the character. Because the creator retired from M.U.G.E.N, it's extremely unlikely the character will ever get finished.

Hornet Man uses a variation of Chain Comboing, and he can chain light attacks into medium attacks into heavy attack, but he can also incorporate his alternate Normals, which are slightly stronger than their counterparts and thus also have to be chained from their counterparts, in combos, which allows for easy combos. He can't chain Normals into Specials, but he can chain Normals and Specials into Hypers with a few exceptions. He can also chain his Hypers into each other for massive damage. Because several of his crouching and aerial Normals are missing, his comboing is mostly limited to ground combos, and he can't perform Aerial Raves either because his Launcher is missing. To compensate for his fairly lenient comboability, the damage his attacks deal is fairly now, which means he has to rely mostly on comboing. He has a damage dampener which reduces the damage of moves based on the amount of hits in a combo, but it only reduces damage by a small amount. The majority of his attacks deal no chip damage, including his Hypers, and the ones that do, which are mostly only Specials, deal a neglegible amount of chip damage, putting him at a disadvantage against opponents that block frequently. With certain moves, he can inflict two passive temporary status effects on the opponent, which are honey, which reduces the opponent's mobility, and venom, which stuns the opponent while they gradually take damage. The status effects can be used to the player's advantage to cripple the opponent, and the moves that inflict them can be charged to increase the duration and effect of the status effects.

Hornet Man's Specials and Hypers are a mix of projectile attacks (although they aren't attributed as such) that either track down the opponent or cover the opponent in honey and quick and long-ranged melee attacks. Some of his Specials aren't chargeable, which is likely because the character is incomplete, and the duration for charging an attack is fairly long, and because Hornet Man must stand still while charging an attack, it's unlikely for the player to successfully perform a charged attack because the opponent can easily interrupt the charge, unless they're inflicted with a status effect. A lot of his Specials track the opponent's position, which means they can be used to set up combos, interrupt attacks or finish off an opponent with low Life, and the hornet and bee Specials can trap an opponent, allowing for Hornet Man to attack them while they're being attacked by the hornets or bees (save for Fury Swarm which has Hornet Man stand still for the duration of the Hyper to prevent cheapness), and these moves gain additional benefits against opponents covered in honey, but the bees or hornets can be destroyed by attacking them and only one group of hornets or bees can be onscreen at the same time. Because the character is incomplete, there are obviously a few bugs present. After using Fury Swarm in the air, Hornet Man will stand in the air and can move or use any of his standing or crouching attacks while airborne, except for his standing move which will warp Hornet Man to the ground as if the attacks was used on the ground, until Hornet Man jumps, gets knocked down or uses his standing  move. His Hornet Blitz can miss against idle opponents even if it appears to hit. Using any of his missing aerial Normals will change Hornet Man's animation to a frame of his idle animation with no hitboxes, which can actually be abused to make Hornet Man invincible for the remainder of the jump, though he can't attack until he lands.

Hornet Man has a custom A.I. which is fairly brutal like the same creator's Dancing Banana; it often attacks relentlessly and performs decent combos whenever it gets the chance to, often using hornets to set up combos or honey to slow the opponent and make it easier to attack them, and it also uses Hypers whenever enough Power is accumulated; the A.I. can easily do a lot of damage and overwhelm players. However, he rarely doesn't attack or tries to charge up a Special, leaving him vulnerable to attacks. Unlike Dancing Banana, Hornet Man's A.I. isn't configurable.

Trivia

 * Each of Hornet Man's palettes is based on one of the Robot Masters from Mega Man 9.
 * Hornet Man was going to have three palette modes, as evident in the Readme but they were never implemented into the character. The palettes that were supposed to be the palettes with the palette modes are placeholder copies of the default palette.
 * The tenth palette would have Mega Man's colors, and it would have no damage dampener and have all chargeable Specials activate their charged version without needing to charge.
 * The eleventh palette would have Proto Man's colors, and it would have no damage dampener, negate chip damage while blocking and have a higher Attack, but slightly lower Defence.
 * The twelveth palette would be a gold-colored palette, and it would have no damage dampener, negate chip damage while blocking, have no limit on the amount of bees that can be onscreen and have all chargeable Specials activate their charged version without needing to charge.
 * One of Hornet Man's grabs has a sound effect taken from an infamous scene from the 2006 version of the movie The Wicker Man, where Nicolas Cage exclaims "NOT THE BEES!!" while getting tortured with bees.