Elecbyte

Elecbyte
The Elecbyte logo
Status	Inactive
Character Amount	2
Stage Amount	3
Website	elecbyte.com

Elecbyte is an independent team of software developers known for creating the M.U.G.E.N engine and the default content for it, including Kung Fu Man, Training Room and Mountainside Temple. They also created the concept for Suave Dude and Kung Fu Man's Girlfriend, though neither have been seen outside of Kung Fu Man's Arcade story (though Elecbyte does have a Suave Dude page on their website featuring the history of the blonde, suit-wearing villain).

Elecbyte is known to disappear abruptly for long periods of time, and is composed of an anonymous group of developers. Besides M.U.G.E.N, their only other released programs are developement utilities, such as PCXClean.

History

Elecbyte was founded by a group of developers from Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1998, as a "small software development team involved in various projects". Elecbyte released a steady stream of updates to M.U.G.E.N between July 1999 and April 2003, when a post was created stating that they had "hit a snag", but reassuring that M.U.G.E.N development had not been cancelled. However, the Elecbyte website became unavailable soon afterwards for unknown reasons.

Following a long absence, Elecbyte returned with an updated website and a new version of the M.U.G.E.N engine known as "M.U.G.E.N 1.0", though many doubted that these people were the real Elecbyte as their absence had been for many years. This updated website also featured a dedicated forum, a wiki, and a blog with signatures from Elecbyte's staff members, using pseudonyms to mask their identity. In October of 2009, Elecbyte opened accounts on social media sites Facebook and Twitter, though the Facebook page has since been deleted. Over time, Elecbyte continued to release updates to the (still) incomplete M.U.G.E.N 1.0, though on 18th January 2011, they released the finalised version of 1.0. Shortly after, they announced M.U.G.E.N 1.1 and began requesting alpha testers.

Once again, Elecbyte vanished, leaving 1.1 alpha 4 in the hands of the alpha testers. Due to lack of a public release, 1.1 alpha 4 was leaked on 3rd May 2013. The Elecbyte blog was updated a small time after, announcing the official release of 1.1 beta; whether this was because of the leak is unknown, but on 7th August 2013, 1.1 beta was released to the public, though Elecbyte seemingly vanished once again soon after in 2015.

Elecbyte's website is largely inaccessible as of September 2021, returning a 403 Forbidden error on all pages that are not direct links to files, such as the M.U.G.E.N documentation or images from the now-defunct blog, and attempting to send a post to any e-mail address on the site will be rejected. The only activity from Elecbyte since 1.1 beta's release is a single post on their Twitter page posted in 2016, promoting the Indiegogo campaign for Rotten Core. Rotten Core was meant to be the first commercial game to be powered by M.U.G.E.N (through an agreement with Elecbyte that allowed the commercial use, something typically prohibited by the license, as enforced by the stoppage of the BrokenMUGEN engine), but the game failed to meet the crowdfunding target.

Known members

• David / dfw
• K'Style / K
• KFM
• R

Creations

Characters

• Kung Fu Man
• Kung Fu Man
• Kung Fu Man
• Kung Fu Man 720

Stages

• Training Room
• Training Room 720
• Mountainside Temple

Miscellaneous

• Suave Dude*
• Kung Fu Man's Girlfriend*