Looks like that C&D might’ve been a blessing in disguise. Not only is Friendship is Magic creator Lauren Faust in the Mane6 dev team, they now has access to the engine that helped make Skullgirls. Before all this, Mane6 was using Fighter Maker 2000, an old program they had to tinker with to get it to do what they wanted for their My Little Pony fighting game, Fighting is Magic. MikeZ, the creator of Skullgirls, offered to give Mane6 the Skullgirls Engine, also called the Z Engine. They declined the offer since development was very far long and porting would require starting from scratch.

Well, the C&D essentially made them start from scratch (minus the ponies of course). So now the option became available and the team can make a game using all the techniques and effects the Z Engine has to offer.

Unlike other fighting games out there, Mane6 was creating a game using quadrupedal characters — the ponies in other words. Only game with a four-legged character I can think of is Amaterasu in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, and there’s a good chance that it might’ve been a bitch to deal with. In the case of bipedal characters, attacks and hitboxes are programmed vertically. What Mane6 was doing required things to go horizontally, hence why they had to do some funky stuff with FM2k. They detail more of what they can do in an FAQ on their blog. Even with ponies being removed from the game, they’ll still be using four-legged characters, as evidenced by the image above.

Non-official artwork by artist Gats. Click to go to the artist’s page.

Onto the Lab Zero side of things, the team put in a new initiative — that they can meet this goal, they’ll make Robo Fortune a full character. Before this, Robo Fortune was just a voice pack, acting as an announcer for fights. They also presented another goal to give her a stage and story mode as well if they can reach $750,000. They met that goal too, and Robo Fortune will have her own stage and story.Robo Fortune won’t be just a simple palette swap though. She’ll have her own moveset and play style as well.

Things got a little scary early this afternoon when the Indiegogo site went down, concerning many who wanted to donate but couldn’t and having the clock possibly tick away with nothing coming in. Service was restored shortly thereafter. As of this writing, Lab Zero has amassed $757,857 with 6 hours left on the clock. Needless to say, this is one very successful campaign for the many parties involved.