My Little Pony: Fighting is Magic, is your atypical MLP fighting video game. (I say "atypical" because it's one of the few that are actually GOOD and not run by greedy cooperate business men who actually tempt me into buying into their cheap antics). Personally, I'm not a fan of the fighting genre. Based on opinion and observation, I find the fighting community to be full of toxic competition and many sore losers who are shown to the front door long before a round is over. The games for me are too complex with thousands of mediocre combos and silly statistics that are practically pointless the second you realize spamming buttons works just as well. I have a copy of Fighting is Magic because I found it in the very early entries of Equestria Daily's "news". It still works and runs in its "Tribute Version" which I've discovered to be the most stable version out there (others are filled to the brim with bad OCs, sprites, and terrible animations).

But what was I doing with a fighting game? I honestly don't know; I was bored. Nonetheless, I wanted to change things up and hopefully have a good time. Yeah, something like that. 

Now, at the time I downloaded this game, I was on my original laptop. Desktop 1.0, the "Big Blue"; I've wrote about it many times before (see my "Eulogy"). However, I only played for about 5 minutes before realizing I don't play fighting games and I really should go back to playing Assassin's Creed I or something else to my speed. One (or two) years later, I found myself digging through my external and discovered it had been collecting dust along with Stranded Deep 0.01 and FNAFWorld 1.0. So, for old times sake, I decided to boot it up and give it another shot. Around this time, I was on my second laptop, Desktop 6.0 (Black Chromium), but after a night of falling through floors in Ubisoft's, "Assassin's Creed: Unity", my laptop was exhausted and needed a few days off. 

Gladly, I gave it; so in turn, I looked to Desktop 4.0 (The Typewriter) for help. The Typewriter has been my essential writing computer for the last year and had been the birthplace of many fanfictions and art alike. The downside, (it used to be called, "the Brick") is that it runs on the horrendous Windows XP and is capped by its extremely under-powered hardware. So I had to find a game (that was still on my external) that was able to run on a pocket calculator. Most of the games I had on me were from the 7th generation of consoles and still don't run quite right on my regular computer, so those were immediately out of the query. FNAFWorld had resolution issues and I really didn't feel like playing Scott Cawthon's, "There is No Pause Button" for the sake of beating it at least a hundred times. That left Fighting is Magic; and, to my surprise, it ran rather nicely on "the fossil" with the exceptions of continuous lag issues and the occasional crash because of its simple stupidity. 

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Fighting is Magic: Tribute Edition, is probably the only game I know that can be both GOOD and BAD at the same time. It's well made, and that's good; but it's also really punishing and extremely frustrating for the smallest imperfections (and that's bad). The bots in the game are so incredibly hard at first, there is literally no reason to push any further. Like most fighting games (even of this era), once you get trapped in a corner, you might as well give up. Spamming buttons won't break you free and trying to grab the enemy won't do anything (not that it's a feature in Fighting is Magic). I'm seriously still stuck on what to do and I've finally been blessed with finishing the game. Characters are difficult to use and the only well-balanced ponies to choose from is Rainbow Dash. Yeah, there's only one. There's no reason to bother with any of the other characters because they're either next to impossible to master or so incredibly ridiculous that even the bots don't know how to use them (Pinkie Pie). To my understanding, there are unlock-able characters like Derpy and Gilda, but I'm not too keen on replaying the game until my keys fall off. 

Many of the fighting styles for each character is actually rather similar. Rainbow Dash feels like the first character implemented in the game as she has the most well-rounded move set around. Everypony else feels like some sort of clone that've been tweaked just enough to be unique. Some ponies have to be taken down up close and others have to be kicked around from afar, but they still maintain a similarity that rings throughout the roster.

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Overall, it's a fun little game with a lot of cool little kicks in it to keep it alive. It'd be really nice to see if they still use it for competitive use at BronyCon (although, by now, I'm sure they're using the more recently published, "Them's Fighting Herd" for a more stable experience). If you intend on experiencing this game for yourself, be sure to use a controller or something similar. Pressing Diagonally on a keyboard is difficult in tense situations (you'll probably be spamming keys anyway). Link to the EQD page down below (hopefully it's still up).

(^^vv<><>BA)

-RealityPublishing

EQD Page: https://www.equestriadaily.com/2014/02/fighting-is-magic-tribute-edition.html