well, it is a demon after all, so in-lore it's scary af, even if as a summon/enemy in the game it isn't particularly disturbing from player's perspective
all this means is that mathrus is actually beyond dragon tier. having surpassed the limitations of its code, ascending into a being of conception, feeding off the fear and disdain of mugen players who cross paths with any cheapie.
New Tier Idea, MIND-Tier: A character that isn’t even in MUGEN. It lives beyond the realm of MUGEN, and is instead playable only in the mind of those horrified by it’s conception.
Ironcommando here. _sigh_ ...yes I created A-Bomb and I deeply regret kickstarting the cheapie war. Technically, the very first cheapie was 2nd Death Star, whose creator (TROY aka mapelao) allowed me to use its code in A-Bomb, but it was a private creation and A-Bomb wasn't. Thus, A-Bomb got the publicity and subsequent infamy of being the instigator of the cheapie war.
If anything, the Cheapie War seemed totally inevitable. And it being kickstarted by an atomic bomb feels so symbolic and cool. Thank you for the comment and it was fascinating to learn about your other works/projects!
I didn't know I would get to see the man himself, a founder of instakill script that escalated into MUGEN arms race (as a terms I use for the fact I didn't even know that much about MUGEN) Just like how the WW2 ended from sheer devastation of Atomic bomb, MUGEN cheapie war ended from the escalation reach the phase where one actually condemn their enemy to the pointy end of malware file. *And it not even a real thing, just a demonstration of what unholy hell they're about to do (The culprit won't, but god damn people has no contexts back in the day right?)*
Y’know, you ask ‘why WOULD someone make damaging malware in a free to play fighting game?’ and to that I say, I could EASILY imagine some morally bankrupt hikkokomori sweatlord who’s really mad at people online and so he makes something that could permanently damage someone’s computer and even spread in their local network in a way that makes it look like they started it like ‘heh, that’ll show em’
people doing malicious things for their own amusement isn't that surprising. if mathrus was real, i wouldn't be surprised at all, people used to send emails full of trojans and malwares back in the day just because lol
rather than creepy I simply find it hilarious that the arms race of overpowered MUGEN fighters escalated to a point that people were just making straight up malware
"my character has an unbreakable shield that can block any attack" "yeah well my character has an infinitely sharp blade that can cut through any shield" "my character can steal your bank account information"
@@SpookeyGael sadist zero literally crashes your computer, mugen is amazing because it's the only medium where you could properly display how boundless and reality controlling a character is by having it mess with your game lol
That's one of the names of Ced Soum, dude is responsible for also creating the Phantom Ronald McDonald series (like Phantom Donald Very Hard and Phantom Donald Elisir but that one got abandoned/cancelled)
I used to believe computer viruses jump-scaring, 4th wall-breaking exe videos that just show up on your screen for no reason. Worst virus encounter ive ever had was a bunch of dialog boxes and a background that warned me that i was infected
The worst virus I've had was I think some form of Trojan, whatever it did caused pixels on my screen to "melt" or "distort" or "die" temporarily, for whatever reason. Though, it was very easy to remove with just some basic anti-malware and the good ol' "show this in files" and task manager trick. (Also when I was very young I had one of those fake ransom viruses that I over-reacted to, that my IT uncle removed swiftly.) (I suspect he works in IT.)
The worst virus I've had was probably a crypto miner, it just ran in the background and ate up all my free CPU cycles but would turn itself off if I launched Task Manager. Using an external program called Process Tamer let me catch the miner doing its thing (ie. maxing out my CPU in the background), but my antivirus still wouldn't detect it, probably because it had disguised itself as (or just infected) svchost.exe, which is a real system file I couldn't just delete. What eventually worked was restarting in Safe Mode and using a USB stick with a special portable virus scanner to get rid of the miner without damaging anything else. The second worst was a piece of adware that installed a bunch of crappy programs I didn't ask for which constantly pestered me to "buy the full version", and it also changed my browser's homepage and default search engine repeatedly even when I tried to change it back. Fortunately it was easy to remove, I think the only reason why I got that one was because I was a young kid and didn't really know what I was doing. Since I'm now the go-to "computer guy" among my relatives, I've also been asked to help out with a few infected PC's. One had a virus which would actually remove or disable your antivirus program (if I remember correctly) and detect if you were trying to install a new one, responding by forcing the OS to shut down. No joke. Again, the solution was Safe Mode and a portable antivirus on a USB stick. Speaking of which, I'd also encountered a virus which would specifically infect USB drives by setting all the real files on it to "hidden" and replacing them with doppelganger shortcut files which would execute the (also hidden) malware program. My brother was trying to put some movies on a USB stick and was frustrated because it kept creating shortcuts instead, so he called me in to take a look. I thought he was just being a dum-dum who doesn't know how to copy files properly, but nope, that was a virus. Becomes obvious if you turn on "show hidden files". At that point, you can actually remove it manually and restore the original files, or just wipe the whole mess by formatting if you don't want to bother. But yeah, that's about it. I've never encountered anything more dangerous than that, on my PC or others. I've certainly heard of such, though - backdoors which let hackers access your PC remotely, keyloggers that can snatch passwords by recording your keyboard inputs, and ransomware that encrypts all your files and demands that you send money to an anonymous account or bitcoin wallet within a certain time limit in exchange for a decryption key. Viruses that do nothing except corrupt system files to prevent your PC from booting probably exist, but I'm guessing they're relatively rare since the hacker responsible doesn't gain anything from that, other than "the lulz". In any case, simply knowing about all this crap certainly made me a lot more paranoid about computer safety lol.
Because modern viruses don't want to be seen, they leech your life's entire information without ever being discovered. Because they're made to make money. Worst one I had came with a game that had a hidden bitcoin miner in it, which made my GPU overheat to the point of needing to replace some parts. And cryptobros keep trying to justify installing malware on every person's PC
Based on my short stint resarching the cheapie community, the MAN in MAN Dragon stands for metropolitan area network. Each tier of Dragon was separated by how much it could spread as a computer worm with the weakest being LAN tier and the strongest being WAN tier. Also, insert Spongebob "There I am, Gary" meme at 9:35
@@MetaScrubGamingjust don't be stupid again by posting stuff without much logic and misinformation, ok? Dragon-tiers never were confirmed considering Ced never really explained them properly. But I am sure Dragon-tiers aren't a mere hoax and that some of them might be real. You just don't understand it and prefer to continue being ignorant without knowing much about a certain topic (for attention I'm guessing)
@@Mysterious1007 Where tf is this coming from? M8, it's all theoretical, if a real "Dragon Tier" existed, literally any society would be hard pressed to either steal its code to use it against people or stomp it into inexistence. Besides, a "Dragon Tier" being real would draw the attention of many if not all of the worlds' media. When people are afraid, genuinely afraid of something, they lash out against it, and root it out. Don't go around making accusations when your entire point is based on "it _might_ be real." Please keep in mind that not everyone shares your mind, man.
@@azazelblackfire816 what are you even talking about, the described effects of dragon tiers are very replicable you don't see many these days because the methods they used to destroy computers were patched or removed over the years, the reason countries aren't rushing to copy this is that destroying a computer is pointless its better for them to use spyware that sends back information instead
I'm surprised someone hasn't just made a real Mathrus already. It's a popular character with the most broken moveset out of all broken movesets in a game where people can make ANY character they want, and people just, haven't made it?
@@bestaround3323 Well I'm mainly surprised some creative individual hasn't adapted his capabilities to give him a Dragon Level without making him Malware. Be a lot less cooler than the actual nonexistent Mathrus but at least it would be something.
Hey there, i really like this video, very informative and pretty cool research! I am one of the people that is part of the cheap community and actually an old friend of Ced. We are not with him anymore nowadays because he had, let's call it "questionable" behavior. I was promised a Supernull version of Mathrus back then and that was as far as even our knowledge goes in that regard. Fact is, Mathrus does probably exist... but not as a Dragon tier character and only as a Supernull but even that is not safe to assume since i never got this version of it. MAN dragon was refering to the threat level btw, lower tiers would be LAN or WAN which means the "affection range" of the character. Dragon tier is highly hypothetical and as far as i know, we never got actual proof of any Dragon tier character. Still, the little community that used to be with Ced, me included still discovers new things to this day which is very nice. Another thing that might be of interest is that the infamous screenshot of Mathrus was first ever shown to us around 2014-2016 or something i believe, in the skype group we used to have and the poster was indeed someone named Urak but since we never properly interacted with him, i cannot say for sure who Urak is or if he exists. I hope this little wall of additional information can be give at least a few answers to some of the questions :)
I honestly love creepypasts insights like this. Just something fun about discovering some rumored horror story or nightmare inducing rumors that somehow attracts me to learn about it. Of course there are always those easy and cheep .exe creepypastas, but ones like this is very fun, or any that has a root in some real world incident or the illusion to one. I love them actually creepy.
I think viruses are spooky to me because my parents anti virus had an alarm when i was really young. It went of while i was asleep one night and really scared me.
It should've been evident that the character was the most evil thing ever conceived for MUGEN. I mean, its name can be broken down into MATH + viRUS. Math and viruses are the two most evil things in existence. It's only obvious Mathrus would be evil incarnate.
I beg to differ, math is in no way "evil." It's just annoying to be forced to learn it and *everything* it entails. Viruses, if we're solely speaking of electronics, are indeed malicious, but I don't see them as anything over "Ruiner of livelihoods." While I am a Nihilist and do not believe that "evil" is anything more than how humans define particularly malicious actions/ideas, or just anything that bothers them slightly really, I can use the terms' definitions to label horrible things, as such I will say that the most evil thing in existence is humanity, as we are inherently able to do bad things, make horrible decisions, and be malicious. This does not imply humanity is solely evil, as with everything in this hypothetical example, duality is set to true, and humanity is capable of doing more than just "bad things." All in all, if you were just chirpin' on the internet, then you have every right to ignore this reply, but I strongly urge against not reading it, as you will leave with nothin' to chew on metaphorically. I genuinely would like a nice discussion on these topics, or any topic really, and would love to see your perspective on the matter.
I'm not gonna lie. Mathrus is still a legendary virus in the M.U.G.E.N. community. I'm still surprised that this is still memorable for being a Legendary Virus character for the game.... Especially different from the other cheap characters.
Kind of befitting they're known as "dragon" tiers. Mythical creature that supposedly existed long ago, causing untold amounts of destruction, but no real evidence can be found for them? Very much earns its title.
Funnily enough, Mathrus may have been a creepypasta, but it is based on the very real problem of "Serial Escalation". There is always someone willing to cross the line from "Absurdly OP Character", to outright crafting Malware designed to destroy someone else's computer, as well as doxxing the victim in the process. ...So in a sense, Mathrus may not have been real, but it made people aware of "How Far is _TOO FAR?"..._
Yes, but a particularly plausible one, inspired by MUGEN's "cheapie wars" which actually happened and DID in fact include characters that used exploits to break the game and execute files, it's just that none of them were actually meant or able to destroy the target's PC. However, as the video mentions, a player made Noxxy made and showcased a custom character named "Mathrus' Brother" to prove that is, in fact, POSSIBLE to create a character that literally executes malware on your computer. The catch is that it needs admin privileges and immediately gets spotted by any antivirus program, so it still couldn't break your PC unless you're really, really stupid or let it execute on purpose to see what happens.
@@backwardslongjump nice to hear that! though honestly there's a lot of things about even that demo that could be improved upon :P there's just not enough people really trying to prove malware chars being feasible so i quickly threw a few demos together
I remember playing mugen with my cousin, all summer long we usually got on our laptops, looked for the most broken and overpowered characters downloaded em tested them out to see who's character picked was the most powerful. Most of them scared the hell out of us because some of them were really loud screamers tho.
Even though that mathrus is a complete hoax, it does give an idea that we cant continue to climb up the ladder of cheapness. Nukes and nulls are fairly common, and supernulls are aplenty. But never i think that making such a character that can outright break your system is ever a good idea. Personally i do love the cheapie war cause it does insert stuff that isnt common in MUGEN back in the day. There's characters that can defeat A-Bomb, characters that can defeat omega tom hanks, characters that can defeat chuck norris, and even characters that can defeat crazy catastrophe and beyond. It makes MUGEN a 2D Fighting lab. an engine created to either let you enjoy watching matches that you like to see, or experiment with it. It have been fun while it lasted. Hopefully we all wouldnt agree on making a weapon of compurized destruction like the rumor of mathrus.
Now, Reimu makes sense. TW: Touhou nerd rant Reimu literally has an ability in the Touhou series' canon: the Musou Tensei, or otherwise known as the Fantasy Nature. Due to her ability to float, she can quite literally float away from reality and float away from her responsibilities, making her quite literally untouchable while her bullets home in. The series literally had to nerf this attack by turning it into a timed spellcard bc anyone who fought her while she used this ability instantly fucking died. Yeah.
As someone who was once part of cheap community before, it crazy to belive the concept of this character would of sparked a major impact during the cheap wars, kind of like an urban legend in the community or something like that.
I remember reading of this fabled horror story of a cheapie while already being freaked out or intrigued by other infamous cheapie edits like jumpscare-filled eerie red hyper reimu mcdonald guanyin edits....or a video between one of those and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN defeating them, to see this extensive investigation of this myth is really cool to watch, specially to know that it was indeed just a myth and even onow the origin of the weird dragin in the picture. Oh, and also cool that someone made a proof of concept that makes it real, talhough I find it cool and funny that they went with straight up MEMZing your Windows 7 VM rather than making it look like a creepypasta.
Shoutout to HelloMyNameIsAAA's version of Mathrus. And also, I was pretty impressed with your Premiere Pro recreation of Mathrus. I could tell immediately that it was essentially Creepypasta footage, but it was still pretty well made.
7:57 Hey, that's me! Thanks for including my post in your video, I'm really tickled to see it here! Cool video! Mathrus has always been such an interesting subject ever since I first heard about it. I always figured it was just some creepypasta, but I really love it as a concept. A fighting game character that felt as though the only way to defeat its opponent was to destroy the entirety of where it was stored. It's a very potent idea. I think you did a pretty good job covering it. MUGEN is a bit nostalgic for me, as I used to watch a lot of MUGEN videos when I was really young. I wonder what hearing about Mathrus would have made me feel like at that age.
I never cared about mugen till i watched this video, its interesting how some small things have such a dense lore, i think mathrus was suposed to be a mugen ARG, but i think its creator (aka utsofanboy24000) canceled it before it could become smt bigger.
You know, us (the mugen community) think the same. Because, The End of the World was a ARG and a dragon tier too. Btw, Mathus is not the most powerful malware in mugen.
Yeah, and The Wyoming Incident with БЕЗНОГNM are ARGs too, perhaps? Hoaxes, rumors, myths and alternative reality games are different things. And most of the modern "ARGs" are just internet puzzles. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth's quest for unlocking The Keeper is the proper ARG, unlike most of the New
Fun fact! The characters at 1:21 were both made by the artist Kazecat. There's a variety of characters under his belt, you should check them out if you wanna add something cursed that won't damage your PC!
Creator of one of the joke Mathrus there, damn, what a rabbit hole I was into lmao, and yes, the Mathrus I did is loud af. Honestly, Mathrus really existing or not is not that relevant, but it is a major personification of virus characters so that people could meme on the concept. Those definitely existed, and yes, at least one such thing appeared on warehouses that prompted them to take decisions on the matter. This can happens on other communities based on a customizable engine, like that Friday Night Funkin' example, so they had to be wary of those too. The whole ''A-Bomb started the cheapie war'' only happened because it is one the first character who defeated the likes of no hitbox characters, and had code from a then private character. Because people wanted to defeat them for so long, as those existed since the beginning of MUGEN, it become clear that one author one day or another will pull off the tricks. If it wasn't for Mapelao or ironcommando, it could easily have been somebody else as authors found exploits related to the engine, so the funny nuclear bomb is often said to be the character that started it all. I had to mention that a lot of events related to cheapies happened on WinMUGEN, as all of the exploits that were allowed, those are fixed in more recent builds of the engine. It didn't stop authors from trying recently, and some succesfully did cheapies there, but major roadblocks were met, and there is definitely awareness that things could go too far and accidentally unleash hell on MUGEN, so we hope that viruses won't appear in those tho. Great video, and some of the people who had ''ties'' with Mathrus have done a comment on the video that I am friends with, so I had to put my two cents on it too. Note: The author of the video liked this comment and correcting a few mistakes removed the like so pretend that it exists until next time.
I find it incredibly funny that the discourse around the MUGEN a-bomb parallels the real thing, down to Oppenheimer-esque discussions on the ethics of creating such a device.
@@SlurpeeBoy9999 The person who made a-bomb commented on the video with 2.6K+ likes. The .png bomb definitely is iconic, and yes, there is parallels between the evolution of MUGEN cheapies and IRL weaponry, and a point is reached that is considered too far. The comments on this post is referencing Oppenheimer and it is hilarity incarnate.
Really well made and informative. The Cybershell video got me interested in this, but you actually answered all the questions I had about this mystery. Thanks!
I respect your wish to not be rude to the person you tried to search into. It is a slippery place than to look into somebody's past on the internet, especially at a time when privacy wasn't as important as nowadays. I think you have a good mindset, to be cautious as to not spit out personal information and to be open to remove such details if the original person ask. :)
Tbh, privacy was cared about way more in the past than it is now online. Social media is just "dox yourself!" the website every time, and on the rare ones where you aren't expected by the site to dox yourself, the conventions become that you're untrustworthy if you won't give out enough info to be doxxed.
Something similar is happening in Rivals of Aether currently, they have these characters which are mostly funny and slowly people are making instant kills counter. It is likely people will try crazy things before long if things continue as they are.
Imagine if a user there uploaded what seems to be a joke version of MATHRUS, only for it to be A REAL VERSION OF THE CREEPYPASTA, just because some blackhat hacker/programmer thought "it would be funny."
Ah, Kasenfanboy/Utsuhofanboy....that's a name I haven't seen in a while. I forgot all about it until I watched this video. I don't remember much but I think I did watch his videos a while back.
First accurate video I've seen someone make on this, I still have some of Ced's 4shared characters on my WINMUGEN. It's a shame this guy left the internet, he also had an alias Cichol which he used to publish his characters. Mathrus as well as the few other dragon-tier characters to originate from his friend circle weren't published for obvious reasons, but characters as powerful as anti-malware and frost were uploaded, some of which I still have access to. Wish I could go back and make an archive of all of them!
Something about a Touhou fan being linked with a character so destructive, it can literally kill your computer seems oddly poetic. Sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time Touhou fans made a malware.
As someone who used to be deep within the MUGEN community back in the day, and especially on the Cheapie side of the community... most of this checks out. In my case, I was mostly part of the Cheapie community purely for the creativity in the code and the ways people would come up with it, and less so for the arms race aspect. Truth be told, many of the users mentioned in this video (and even some of those shown in the comments you showed in the video) are other users I have interacted with in the past. Granted, some of those interactions were minor, and I highly doubt some of them even remember who I am (I don't even remember what handle I used back then), nor do some of them care to. Even today, I still find it interesting how a lot of Cheapies seem to exist purely for aesthetic purposes first, actual strength second, even if some of those 'aesthetic purposes' involve modifying MUGEN itself in some way, if not aspects of the user's computer. Which is, well, what this video is about. I have spoken to Ced Soum in the past, though the bulk of my interaction with him was when the Null method had just been discovered. Truthfully, I even planned on making my own Cheapies during this time: I spoke to the guy himself and he taught me how to do it specifically, even sending me a custom version of Kung Fu Man specifically to use as a template for Null tier characters. The only reason I opted out was because I was using MUGEN 1.0 and I didn't feel like installing WinMUGEN since I had already spent the bulk of my years using it by that point and I wanted to test the new software. That was also around the point that I had begun to lose interest in MUGEN, interest that wouldn't be regained until much later. That was the last time I spoke with him, and I hadn't spoke with him during the Mathrus incident, since I had also lost interest in DeviantArt as well, which itself was a popular site for Cheapie creators at the time. Though given how invested he was in the Cheapie war and how he was often involved in the discovery of new tiers at the time, many of which got _very_ involved and _VERY_ questionable in their coding, I have little reason to disbelieve his story that one of these Cheapies bricked his PC upon launching MUGEN. On the subject of Mathrus itself: I'm still willing to view it as MUGEN's "Bigfoot", if that makes sense. It's a figure that, while some people swear by its existence, others are more skeptical. Some still hail it as the Strongest Dragon Tier Cheapie™, while even other people in the Cheapie community write it off as a myth. If you ask me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I obviously view much of the stories as being rather exaggerated (I say stories as plural, some people say it shut down his dorm room, others say it shut down the college, and then there's the one about it shutting down the city power, probably others I haven't heard of), but I'm not willing to write off the possibility of Mathrus existing. Maybe the _specific_ character Mathrus as presented in the story didn't exist, but it doesn't mean he _can't_ exist. Dragon Tiers that brick your PCs absolutely can exist, and there are some that probably do. There are Cheapies that can modify your background using much weaker code. Hell, there exists video footage of an Anti-Malware tier MUGEN character, ironically befitting the name, killing a PC-wiping malware, with the author even claiming that a Dragon version of the character exists. As for why they aren't shared... it should be pretty obvious. They're not so much characters as they are computer-bricking malware disguised as characters, and in most cases I presume, distributing malware is super illegal. It may sound reasonable then that some of these creators would be willing to share these "characters" to people who end up asking to use them safely... but this is the MUGEN community we're talking about here. Pretty much every character that gets shared, gets leaked. If a computer-bricking character was found to be uploaded somewhere like the MUGEN Archive, the community wouldn't hear the end of it, and especially with the way social media is, the press would *not* be positive. *TL;DR:* Was a minor part of the Cheapie community, knew most of the names in this video, Mathrus may or may not have existed, Dragon Tier characters are real, sharing malware is bad. I may have been out of the game for a while, but I hope some of this information helps!
-Even my WC3 World Editor screencap is still present.- MrCarterM here, the screencap of the WC3 World Editor is from Titan Land: Wrath of The Lich King. It has NO DIRECT CONNECTION to the MUGEN Mathrus.
"why would someone make damaging malware in a free to play fighting game?" The most obvious thing I can think of is to force the devs to put more restrictions on what people can make.
Legit, these people were going further and further and further and further. There was no end. It's like if it were possible to program the MUGEN character to physically kill the opponent player, they would make it.
NGL, the idea of Mathrus could honestly work without the cheapie and DEFINIETLY without the malware I imagine it as some kind of insane boss character, more humanoid than what it was mocked up to be. Just this very time he brings his insane power down to a player's level, seeing if they're worthy enough to not be instantly crushed then and there. Win, you live. Lose, well you know. As a matter of fact I think we somewhat saw a glimpse of that with a creation from The_None in the form of their Giygas, pulling off creepy insane boss shit without any malware to speak of.
1:20 strange to see a couple of the Crushing Force roster in a vid that will be seen by a boatload of people who know about Mugen, but I am impressed to see them in a more public vid never the less.
If I remember Some Ordinary Gamers said that Virtual Machines could still have a risk of malware leaking. So I guess you should run a Virtual Machine in a Virtual Machine lol
FWIW, that's not the felhunter model from that WC3 map, it's just the felhunter model from World of Warcraft. That's why the WC3 felhunter you showed pics of is lower poly/not the same as the felhunter from WC3, so the custom map isn't actually related (you can tell the difference by looking at its front-facing claw/tusk things having a sharp bend in the WC3 map version from how low poly it is, but not the mathrus version). It's just the WoW felhunter tinted red like the rest of the pic.
I remember a few people taking the username Mathrus back in my IMT days. I think i wrote him off as a joke and i could never get anyone to code my cheep Dr Manhattan sprites, no one ever had time. No one ever had time to code any of my Green Lantern Lucario sprites either................. Fun story. All of my reworked sprites for my update of Sniper Joe were destoryed when my pc was infected by Russian malware. It ended my time with Mugen... Now that i think about it, it probably was a chraracter i was tricked into downloading by someone who just was trolling me. Ended up screwing up my BA too and threw off my whole life path.
I haven't ever heard or seen the game "Mugen" before but the way you made this video got my attention enough to watch the entirety of it. Also love the Hajime no Ippo meme 😆❤
@@backwardslongjump I'm currently rewatching the anime so seeing the sawamura fight out of nowhere bamboozled me. I thought i switched tabs or something 😅 Please keep it up!
Obviously the reason Mathrus is impossible to find is because it requires specific characters to be downloaded. The code is split into multiple unassuming characters and 1 stage that uses a fake image that looks like a normal image but is actually a special file type that can execute code. Pretty much anyone could encounter Mathrus if you get unlucky and have the puzzle pieces for it to occur. Of course there's so many characters and stages it would be virtually impossible to find it today right?. If the total of your characters and stages exceeds the number required for Mathrus, nothing happens. The math portion of the character's name comes from the method of executing it. You need the right characters, the special execution stage to trigger the code and the correct number of other stages and characters to add up to a specific number. The reason It executed on the day it was first released is because that day is special, setting the PC time to that particular day may yield something interesting IF you happen to have the right characters and the stage regardless of how many other characters or stages you have.
Interesting, I thought someone did make a character that is malware. I have never heard of MUGEN by the way. Before you dropped the bomb about Mathrus being a creepypasta, I was just then thinking that this sounds like an SCP.
Ah Ced, that's a name I hadn't heard of in a long time. I talked with him on Skype back in the day. I remember he was into cheapies, but had no idea he was a pioneer of these kinds of cheapies. Eitherway he's retired now and should just be left to his own devices.
I could just imagine someone asking their friend to have a LAN party and play Mugen, then have the FBI knocking on their door because they found evidence he's a South American drug lord. Then having to explain to them that their friend pulled a prank on them while playing MUGEN.
The bit where you test Mathrus on the pc, I was watching it in the middle of the night and I ended up muting it early and then closed it when the visuals overall got extremely disturbing. Who the hell makes malware that creepy looking? Edit: Watched it next morning and the bit that scared the hell out of me was fake and edited. That was really well done
I love the video's soundtrack, bouncing from Ultrakill to even Fear and Hunger 2... it feels like such an odd thing to focus on but I just love it the whole way through.
It’s about time someone made a video on Mathrus. Ever since Cyber Shell mentioned it it’s had this mysterious place in my mind. Sadly I’m not too knowledgeable on Mugen apart from it being around for 20 years now. Also, I would really like a time frame of when cheapie wars took place because I’m thinking late 2000’s but it seems Mathrus might be more recent, coming from 2015.
I need someone to make mathrus. This is my first introduction to the game, and now i yearn this to exist. Someone please make this and make it terrifying.
The first very “character” that caused this whole mess is the most poetic thing to tell us about war and the escalation of development of weapons or is the equivalent of it or represent it due to it’s literal existence of what it’s based off.
I love that the scariest character model they could come up with for malrus is a WoW Warlock summon
well, it is a demon after all, so in-lore it's scary af, even if as a summon/enemy in the game it isn't particularly disturbing from player's perspective
Ngl, it is horrifying when you don't know it is from WoW.
Fellhound to be more correct )
I was looking for a comment like this
It's just an adorable demon dog to me
all this means is that mathrus is actually beyond dragon tier. having surpassed the limitations of its code, ascending into a being of conception, feeding off the fear and disdain of mugen players who cross paths with any cheapie.
New Tier Idea, MIND-Tier: A character that isn’t even in MUGEN. It lives beyond the realm of MUGEN, and is instead playable only in the mind of those horrified by it’s conception.
By that concept, Roko’s Basilisk was a MUGEN character all along
@@flarflecakesshut up. Stop doing what people did to things like the backrooms. Adding to unnecessarily to things.
H.P. Lovecraft made the best MIND-Tiers
@@flarflecakes *Ah, so instead of a virus, it has become a mental virus, a memetic hazard, if you will.*
Ironcommando here. _sigh_ ...yes I created A-Bomb and I deeply regret kickstarting the cheapie war.
Technically, the very first cheapie was 2nd Death Star, whose creator (TROY aka mapelao) allowed me to use its code in A-Bomb, but it was a private creation and A-Bomb wasn't. Thus, A-Bomb got the publicity and subsequent infamy of being the instigator of the cheapie war.
If anything, the Cheapie War seemed totally inevitable. And it being kickstarted by an atomic bomb feels so symbolic and cool.
Thank you for the comment and it was fascinating to learn about your other works/projects!
I didn't know I would get to see the man himself, a founder of instakill script that escalated into MUGEN arms race (as a terms I use for the fact I didn't even know that much about MUGEN)
Just like how the WW2 ended from sheer devastation of Atomic bomb, MUGEN cheapie war ended from the escalation reach the phase where one actually condemn their enemy to the pointy end of malware file.
*And it not even a real thing, just a demonstration of what unholy hell they're about to do (The culprit won't, but god damn people has no contexts back in the day right?)*
My man basically dropped a nuke, and within the aftermath he said: "🥺I'm sowwy."
A little uncalled for, but the joke fits perfectly in this context…
@@hirammontesdeoca3826 Well, the nuke was dropped over 15+ years ago, and I've changed a lot since then.
@@majorblitz3846 I didn't even found the OTH Killer script, it was TROY who did. He allowed me to use the script in A-Bomb.
Y’know, you ask ‘why WOULD someone make damaging malware in a free to play fighting game?’ and to that I say, I could EASILY imagine some morally bankrupt hikkokomori sweatlord who’s really mad at people online and so he makes something that could permanently damage someone’s computer and even spread in their local network in a way that makes it look like they started it like ‘heh, that’ll show em’
Ah, yes. Sonic Gather Battle, but MUGEN and more insane.
@@chuckycharliepeeper-oni9392 I'm not sure this counts as more insane than that...that was full on malware and spyware. its pretty equal except real.
People are petty, there is no more complex explanation required
people doing malicious things for their own amusement isn't that surprising. if mathrus was real, i wouldn't be surprised at all, people used to send emails full of trojans and malwares back in the day just because lol
the word is hikikomori, and also i agree
rather than creepy I simply find it hilarious that the arms race of overpowered MUGEN fighters escalated to a point that people were just making straight up malware
"my character has an unbreakable shield that can block any attack"
"yeah well my character has an infinitely sharp blade that can cut through any shield"
"my character can steal your bank account information"
And the last one was a hoax, but people get so scare shitless they declare permanent ceasefire
@@SpookeyGael sadist zero literally crashes your computer, mugen is amazing because it's the only medium where you could properly display how boundless and reality controlling a character is by having it mess with your game lol
"my character fucking fries your motherboard yeah parry that bitch"
Yeah nah the "Cheapie War" is possibly the funniest thing to happen on the Internet but almost no one knows about it
It's really matching that the creator of a malware that can literally destroy your computer is named utsuhofanboy
i guess you could say the damage it does on your computer is *nuclear*
Laugh.
You could say the arms race started with a nuke and ended with a nuke
From N.B. (Nuclear Bomb) to N.B. (Nuclear Birb)
That's one of the names of Ced Soum, dude is responsible for also creating the Phantom Ronald McDonald series (like Phantom Donald Very Hard and Phantom Donald Elisir but that one got abandoned/cancelled)
hi
I used to believe computer viruses jump-scaring, 4th wall-breaking exe videos that just show up on your screen for no reason. Worst virus encounter ive ever had was a bunch of dialog boxes and a background that warned me that i was infected
same
The worst virus I've had was I think some form of Trojan, whatever it did caused pixels on my screen to "melt" or "distort" or "die" temporarily, for whatever reason.
Though, it was very easy to remove with just some basic anti-malware and the good ol' "show this in files" and task manager trick. (Also when I was very young I had one of those fake ransom viruses that I over-reacted to, that my IT uncle removed swiftly.) (I suspect he works in IT.)
The worst virus I've had was probably a crypto miner, it just ran in the background and ate up all my free CPU cycles but would turn itself off if I launched Task Manager. Using an external program called Process Tamer let me catch the miner doing its thing (ie. maxing out my CPU in the background), but my antivirus still wouldn't detect it, probably because it had disguised itself as (or just infected) svchost.exe, which is a real system file I couldn't just delete. What eventually worked was restarting in Safe Mode and using a USB stick with a special portable virus scanner to get rid of the miner without damaging anything else.
The second worst was a piece of adware that installed a bunch of crappy programs I didn't ask for which constantly pestered me to "buy the full version", and it also changed my browser's homepage and default search engine repeatedly even when I tried to change it back. Fortunately it was easy to remove, I think the only reason why I got that one was because I was a young kid and didn't really know what I was doing.
Since I'm now the go-to "computer guy" among my relatives, I've also been asked to help out with a few infected PC's. One had a virus which would actually remove or disable your antivirus program (if I remember correctly) and detect if you were trying to install a new one, responding by forcing the OS to shut down. No joke. Again, the solution was Safe Mode and a portable antivirus on a USB stick.
Speaking of which, I'd also encountered a virus which would specifically infect USB drives by setting all the real files on it to "hidden" and replacing them with doppelganger shortcut files which would execute the (also hidden) malware program. My brother was trying to put some movies on a USB stick and was frustrated because it kept creating shortcuts instead, so he called me in to take a look. I thought he was just being a dum-dum who doesn't know how to copy files properly, but nope, that was a virus. Becomes obvious if you turn on "show hidden files". At that point, you can actually remove it manually and restore the original files, or just wipe the whole mess by formatting if you don't want to bother.
But yeah, that's about it. I've never encountered anything more dangerous than that, on my PC or others. I've certainly heard of such, though - backdoors which let hackers access your PC remotely, keyloggers that can snatch passwords by recording your keyboard inputs, and ransomware that encrypts all your files and demands that you send money to an anonymous account or bitcoin wallet within a certain time limit in exchange for a decryption key. Viruses that do nothing except corrupt system files to prevent your PC from booting probably exist, but I'm guessing they're relatively rare since the hacker responsible doesn't gain anything from that, other than "the lulz". In any case, simply knowing about all this crap certainly made me a lot more paranoid about computer safety lol.
Because modern viruses don't want to be seen, they leech your life's entire information without ever being discovered. Because they're made to make money.
Worst one I had came with a game that had a hidden bitcoin miner in it, which made my GPU overheat to the point of needing to replace some parts. And cryptobros keep trying to justify installing malware on every person's PC
only virus I ever got just slowed down my computer and downloaded opera web browser for some reason
Based on my short stint resarching the cheapie community, the MAN in MAN Dragon stands for metropolitan area network. Each tier of Dragon was separated by how much it could spread as a computer worm with the weakest being LAN tier and the strongest being WAN tier. Also, insert Spongebob "There I am, Gary" meme at 9:35
My fighting game character is so strong it caused 50 billion dollars in damages.
I somehow appeared in a vid too but ehhh, I still don't like the whole dragon tiers thingy lmao
@@MetaScrubGamingjust don't be stupid again by posting stuff without much logic and misinformation, ok? Dragon-tiers never were confirmed considering Ced never really explained them properly. But I am sure Dragon-tiers aren't a mere hoax and that some of them might be real. You just don't understand it and prefer to continue being ignorant without knowing much about a certain topic (for attention I'm guessing)
@@Mysterious1007 Where tf is this coming from? M8, it's all theoretical, if a real "Dragon Tier" existed, literally any society would be hard pressed to either steal its code to use it against people or stomp it into inexistence. Besides, a "Dragon Tier" being real would draw the attention of many if not all of the worlds' media. When people are afraid, genuinely afraid of something, they lash out against it, and root it out.
Don't go around making accusations when your entire point is based on "it _might_ be real."
Please keep in mind that not everyone shares your mind, man.
@@azazelblackfire816 what are you even talking about, the described effects of dragon tiers are very replicable you don't see many these days because the methods they used to destroy computers were patched or removed over the years, the reason countries aren't rushing to copy this is that destroying a computer is pointless its better for them to use spyware that sends back information instead
KUNG-FU MAN
*_VS_*
*MATHRUS*
- Famous pictures before disaster.
Basically
silly billy vs demon core 😂
@@JoonCrest-sk4on dude what
Coughing Baby vs Hydrogen Bomb
Imma be real, I want to see a stand alone version of the mathrus clip you made.
replying to boost this comment i genuinely think the editing in that vid is insane
@@hohe476 agreed.
Same here
totally
almost though that was the actual mathrus footage in the start
Thank you. This is the best compliment I could receive
Mathras revealed and seeing it was a felhunter was like if the main monster in a horror movie was built up over an hour just to be a grunt from Halo
oong
ooooo like the rake?
to be fair felhunters didnt fuck around in OG wow
I'm surprised someone hasn't just made a real Mathrus already. It's a popular character with the most broken moveset out of all broken movesets in a game where people can make ANY character they want, and people just, haven't made it?
Because it isn't just "a broken character." It is literally malware, and making a real one is a terrible Idea.
@@bestaround3323 I think it's pretty easy to figure out he means a "real" one that isn't malware dude. Pretty basic deduction to make.
@@bestaround3323 Well I'm mainly surprised some creative individual hasn't adapted his capabilities to give him a Dragon Level without making him Malware. Be a lot less cooler than the actual nonexistent Mathrus but at least it would be something.
@@minecraftperson8412malware isnt cool but i get your point
Uh there are fan made versions that have moves
Hey there, i really like this video, very informative and pretty cool research! I am one of the people that is part of the cheap community and actually an old friend of Ced. We are not with him anymore nowadays because he had, let's call it "questionable" behavior. I was promised a Supernull version of Mathrus back then and that was as far as even our knowledge goes in that regard. Fact is, Mathrus does probably exist... but not as a Dragon tier character and only as a Supernull but even that is not safe to assume since i never got this version of it. MAN dragon was refering to the threat level btw, lower tiers would be LAN or WAN which means the "affection range" of the character. Dragon tier is highly hypothetical and as far as i know, we never got actual proof of any Dragon tier character. Still, the little community that used to be with Ced, me included still discovers new things to this day which is very nice. Another thing that might be of interest is that the infamous screenshot of Mathrus was first ever shown to us around 2014-2016 or something i believe, in the skype group we used to have and the poster was indeed someone named Urak but since we never properly interacted with him, i cannot say for sure who Urak is or if he exists. I hope this little wall of additional information can be give at least a few answers to some of the questions :)
I honestly love creepypasts insights like this. Just something fun about discovering some rumored horror story or nightmare inducing rumors that somehow attracts me to learn about it. Of course there are always those easy and cheep .exe creepypastas, but ones like this is very fun, or any that has a root in some real world incident or the illusion to one. I love them actually creepy.
Before he dropped the bomb about it being a creepypasta, I was just then thinking that it sounded like an SCP.
I think viruses are spooky to me because my parents anti virus had an alarm when i was really young. It went of while i was asleep one night and really scared me.
Was it the pig squeal alarm? I don't have experience with that one, but I've heard of and observed it
It should've been evident that the character was the most evil thing ever conceived for MUGEN.
I mean, its name can be broken down into MATH + viRUS. Math and viruses are the two most evil things in existence. It's only obvious Mathrus would be evil incarnate.
@@NerdTheDemonAAH
I beg to differ, math is in no way "evil." It's just annoying to be forced to learn it and *everything* it entails. Viruses, if we're solely speaking of electronics, are indeed malicious, but I don't see them as anything over "Ruiner of livelihoods." While I am a Nihilist and do not believe that "evil" is anything more than how humans define particularly malicious actions/ideas, or just anything that bothers them slightly really, I can use the terms' definitions to label horrible things, as such I will say that the most evil thing in existence is humanity, as we are inherently able to do bad things, make horrible decisions, and be malicious. This does not imply humanity is solely evil, as with everything in this hypothetical example, duality is set to true, and humanity is capable of doing more than just "bad things."
All in all, if you were just chirpin' on the internet, then you have every right to ignore this reply, but I strongly urge against not reading it, as you will leave with nothin' to chew on metaphorically. I genuinely would like a nice discussion on these topics, or any topic really, and would love to see your perspective on the matter.
Insert stupid dream music*@@NerdTheDemon
I'm not gonna lie. Mathrus is still a legendary virus in the M.U.G.E.N. community. I'm still surprised that this is still memorable for being a Legendary Virus character for the game.... Especially different from the other cheap characters.
Kind of befitting they're known as "dragon" tiers. Mythical creature that supposedly existed long ago, causing untold amounts of destruction, but no real evidence can be found for them? Very much earns its title.
Man, mail pipebomb was such an OP character back in the day.
Too bad it's baby tier now compared to the current meta.
3:40 hey i recognize this ambience sound, it's the Fear & Hunger 2 main theme for those who were wondering
Good ear! And good taste in games!
in love with the editing for the "showcase" of mathrus. reminds me of another supposed dragon tier of giygas
How does that one work?
@@gl1tchygreml1n it's supposedly a LAN tier cheapie? but it's really just what the creator claims it to be.
6:20 I can't stop laughing beacause of that metal sound, it keeps on reminding me that Freddy humping gif 😭
Same
And the fucking roblox explosion sound afterwards LMAO
Example: kids playing with toys and there toy is better then there's but the other kid makes they character overpowered
“My character will never die!”
“You will though.”
So... To summarize.
Don't read if you haven't watched the whole video--
Mathrus is just a Creepypasta? Gotcha
Funnily enough, Mathrus may have been a creepypasta, but it is based on the very real problem of "Serial Escalation".
There is always someone willing to cross the line from "Absurdly OP Character", to outright crafting Malware designed to destroy someone else's computer, as well as doxxing the victim in the process.
...So in a sense, Mathrus may not have been real, but it made people aware of "How Far is _TOO FAR?"..._
@@Victor-056 Pretty messed up if i do say so myself
Yeah that’s what I’m thinking
Yes, but a particularly plausible one, inspired by MUGEN's "cheapie wars" which actually happened and DID in fact include characters that used exploits to break the game and execute files, it's just that none of them were actually meant or able to destroy the target's PC. However, as the video mentions, a player made Noxxy made and showcased a custom character named "Mathrus' Brother" to prove that is, in fact, POSSIBLE to create a character that literally executes malware on your computer. The catch is that it needs admin privileges and immediately gets spotted by any antivirus program, so it still couldn't break your PC unless you're really, really stupid or let it execute on purpose to see what happens.
F you I read this without watching the whole video
pretty cool video. honestly i never get tired of seeing new videos about mugen lore. :D
Thank you! Your Dragon-Tier Cirno video is actually what got me invested in this rabbit hole! It’s very very impressive
@@backwardslongjump nice to hear that! though honestly there's a lot of things about even that demo that could be improved upon :P there's just not enough people really trying to prove malware chars being feasible so i quickly threw a few demos together
6:55 The hammer caught me off guard. Other than that, thank got my recommendations had you in them. Instant sub.
"Oh your character can hack my pc?, mine is a fucking nuke"
"But thats already been made"
"Oh, no, you misunderstood me, its a literal nuke"
I remember playing mugen with my cousin, all summer long we usually got on our laptops, looked for the most broken and overpowered characters downloaded em tested them out to see who's character picked was the most powerful. Most of them scared the hell out of us because some of them were really loud screamers tho.
Even though that mathrus is a complete hoax, it does give an idea that we cant continue to climb up the ladder of cheapness. Nukes and nulls are fairly common, and supernulls are aplenty. But never i think that making such a character that can outright break your system is ever a good idea. Personally i do love the cheapie war cause it does insert stuff that isnt common in MUGEN back in the day. There's characters that can defeat A-Bomb, characters that can defeat omega tom hanks, characters that can defeat chuck norris, and even characters that can defeat crazy catastrophe and beyond. It makes MUGEN a 2D Fighting lab. an engine created to either let you enjoy watching matches that you like to see, or experiment with it. It have been fun while it lasted. Hopefully we all wouldnt agree on making a weapon of compurized destruction like the rumor of mathrus.
Now, Reimu makes sense.
TW: Touhou nerd rant
Reimu literally has an ability in the Touhou series' canon: the Musou Tensei, or otherwise known as the Fantasy Nature. Due to her ability to float, she can quite literally float away from reality and float away from her responsibilities, making her quite literally untouchable while her bullets home in. The series literally had to nerf this attack by turning it into a timed spellcard bc anyone who fought her while she used this ability instantly fucking died. Yeah.
As someone who was once part of cheap community before, it crazy to belive the concept of this character would of sparked a major impact during the cheap wars, kind of like an urban legend in the community or something like that.
The moment I saw it use a warcraft demon as the sprite I just rofled.
is just the Warcraft 3 model lmao
I remember reading of this fabled horror story of a cheapie while already being freaked out or intrigued by other infamous cheapie edits like jumpscare-filled eerie red hyper reimu mcdonald guanyin edits....or a video between one of those and THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN defeating them, to see this extensive investigation of this myth is really cool to watch, specially to know that it was indeed just a myth and even onow the origin of the weird dragin in the picture.
Oh, and also cool that someone made a proof of concept that makes it real, talhough I find it cool and funny that they went with straight up MEMZing your Windows 7 VM rather than making it look like a creepypasta.
reading "red hyper reimu mcdonalds guanyin" is QUITE something
damn- didnt think the one person who has supposedly have proof of the existence of the mythical mathrus was a true touhou fan
massive W B)
Shoutout to HelloMyNameIsAAA's version of Mathrus.
And also, I was pretty impressed with your Premiere Pro recreation of Mathrus. I could tell immediately that it was essentially Creepypasta footage, but it was still pretty well made.
I'm surprised there's even ONE image of Mathrus, unless you were expecting it there's no way you could've captured it
Really good deep dive! You need more subs.
fr
7:57 Hey, that's me! Thanks for including my post in your video, I'm really tickled to see it here!
Cool video! Mathrus has always been such an interesting subject ever since I first heard about it. I always figured it was just some creepypasta, but I really love it as a concept. A fighting game character that felt as though the only way to defeat its opponent was to destroy the entirety of where it was stored. It's a very potent idea. I think you did a pretty good job covering it. MUGEN is a bit nostalgic for me, as I used to watch a lot of MUGEN videos when I was really young. I wonder what hearing about Mathrus would have made me feel like at that age.
Tales of Mathrus and other Dragon-tier cheapies sounds like it'd be a great setup for an anime villain for some kind of show set in a video game.
"Ustuhofanboy"
"Kasenfanboy"
Ah, a man of culture i see
There are like 6 separate Touhou hijacks/cameos in this video, it's insane
I never cared about mugen till i watched this video, its interesting how some small things have such a dense lore, i think mathrus was suposed to be a mugen ARG, but i think its creator (aka utsofanboy24000) canceled it before it could become smt bigger.
You know, us (the mugen community) think the same. Because, The End of the World was a ARG and a dragon tier too.
Btw, Mathus is not the most powerful malware in mugen.
Yeah, and The Wyoming Incident with БЕЗНОГNM are ARGs too, perhaps? Hoaxes, rumors, myths and alternative reality games are different things. And most of the modern "ARGs" are just internet puzzles. The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth's quest for unlocking The Keeper is the proper ARG, unlike most of the New
calling any sort of myth an arg, absolute zoomer take
@@magicsoul7964please tel me the uninformed what is the Most dangerous/biggest malware
@@dkskcjfjswwwwwws413atleast read the other replies lmao
Fun fact! The characters at 1:21 were both made by the artist Kazecat. There's a variety of characters under his belt, you should check them out if you wanna add something cursed that won't damage your PC!
Creator of one of the joke Mathrus there, damn, what a rabbit hole I was into lmao, and yes, the Mathrus I did is loud af.
Honestly, Mathrus really existing or not is not that relevant, but it is a major personification of virus characters so that people could meme on the concept. Those definitely existed, and yes, at least one such thing appeared on warehouses that prompted them to take decisions on the matter. This can happens on other communities based on a customizable engine, like that Friday Night Funkin' example, so they had to be wary of those too.
The whole ''A-Bomb started the cheapie war'' only happened because it is one the first character who defeated the likes of no hitbox characters, and had code from a then private character. Because people wanted to defeat them for so long, as those existed since the beginning of MUGEN, it become clear that one author one day or another will pull off the tricks. If it wasn't for Mapelao or ironcommando, it could easily have been somebody else as authors found exploits related to the engine, so the funny nuclear bomb is often said to be the character that started it all.
I had to mention that a lot of events related to cheapies happened on WinMUGEN, as all of the exploits that were allowed, those are fixed in more recent builds of the engine. It didn't stop authors from trying recently, and some succesfully did cheapies there, but major roadblocks were met, and there is definitely awareness that things could go too far and accidentally unleash hell on MUGEN, so we hope that viruses won't appear in those tho.
Great video, and some of the people who had ''ties'' with Mathrus have done a comment on the video that I am friends with, so I had to put my two cents on it too.
Note: The author of the video liked this comment and correcting a few mistakes removed the like so pretend that it exists until next time.
I find it incredibly funny that the discourse around the MUGEN a-bomb parallels the real thing, down to Oppenheimer-esque discussions on the ethics of creating such a device.
@@SlurpeeBoy9999 The person who made a-bomb commented on the video with 2.6K+ likes. The .png bomb definitely is iconic, and yes, there is parallels between the evolution of MUGEN cheapies and IRL weaponry, and a point is reached that is considered too far. The comments on this post is referencing Oppenheimer and it is hilarity incarnate.
Really well made and informative. The Cybershell video got me interested in this, but you actually answered all the questions I had about this mystery. Thanks!
The clip of the michael I made at 2:51 lowkey jumpscared me lmao.
Incredible video, keep up the good work.
I respect your wish to not be rude to the person you tried to search into.
It is a slippery place than to look into somebody's past on the internet, especially at a time when privacy wasn't as important as nowadays.
I think you have a good mindset, to be cautious as to not spit out personal information and to be open to remove such details if the original person ask. :)
Tbh, privacy was cared about way more in the past than it is now online. Social media is just "dox yourself!" the website every time, and on the rare ones where you aren't expected by the site to dox yourself, the conventions become that you're untrustworthy if you won't give out enough info to be doxxed.
Something similar is happening in Rivals of Aether currently, they have these characters which are mostly funny and slowly people are making instant kills counter. It is likely people will try crazy things before long if things continue as they are.
Imagine if a user there uploaded what seems to be a joke version of MATHRUS, only for it to be A REAL VERSION OF THE CREEPYPASTA, just because some blackhat hacker/programmer thought "it would be funny."
Instant kill counters are only funny if you die too
THE RIVALS OF AETHER CHEAPIE WAR :fire:
@@victoralexandervinkenes9193 okay, but it would be.
Ah, Kasenfanboy/Utsuhofanboy....that's a name I haven't seen in a while. I forgot all about it until I watched this video. I don't remember much but I think I did watch his videos a while back.
Mathrus looks like he belongs in Primal Rage as a secret boss.
It's been awhile since I've last seen a mugen lore video drop, honestly great stuff and hope to see more in the future :D
First accurate video I've seen someone make on this, I still have some of Ced's 4shared characters on my WINMUGEN. It's a shame this guy left the internet, he also had an alias Cichol which he used to publish his characters. Mathrus as well as the few other dragon-tier characters to originate from his friend circle weren't published for obvious reasons, but characters as powerful as anti-malware and frost were uploaded, some of which I still have access to. Wish I could go back and make an archive of all of them!
I'd argue that they weren't published because they didn't exist (in dragon form, anyway) lol
*No Computer monitors were harmed in this video*
Something about a Touhou fan being linked with a character so destructive, it can literally kill your computer seems oddly poetic. Sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time Touhou fans made a malware.
RENSENWARE EYYY
The world is a canvas for touhou fans to paint and sculpt as their own
As someone who used to be deep within the MUGEN community back in the day, and especially on the Cheapie side of the community... most of this checks out. In my case, I was mostly part of the Cheapie community purely for the creativity in the code and the ways people would come up with it, and less so for the arms race aspect. Truth be told, many of the users mentioned in this video (and even some of those shown in the comments you showed in the video) are other users I have interacted with in the past. Granted, some of those interactions were minor, and I highly doubt some of them even remember who I am (I don't even remember what handle I used back then), nor do some of them care to. Even today, I still find it interesting how a lot of Cheapies seem to exist purely for aesthetic purposes first, actual strength second, even if some of those 'aesthetic purposes' involve modifying MUGEN itself in some way, if not aspects of the user's computer. Which is, well, what this video is about.
I have spoken to Ced Soum in the past, though the bulk of my interaction with him was when the Null method had just been discovered. Truthfully, I even planned on making my own Cheapies during this time: I spoke to the guy himself and he taught me how to do it specifically, even sending me a custom version of Kung Fu Man specifically to use as a template for Null tier characters. The only reason I opted out was because I was using MUGEN 1.0 and I didn't feel like installing WinMUGEN since I had already spent the bulk of my years using it by that point and I wanted to test the new software. That was also around the point that I had begun to lose interest in MUGEN, interest that wouldn't be regained until much later. That was the last time I spoke with him, and I hadn't spoke with him during the Mathrus incident, since I had also lost interest in DeviantArt as well, which itself was a popular site for Cheapie creators at the time. Though given how invested he was in the Cheapie war and how he was often involved in the discovery of new tiers at the time, many of which got _very_ involved and _VERY_ questionable in their coding, I have little reason to disbelieve his story that one of these Cheapies bricked his PC upon launching MUGEN.
On the subject of Mathrus itself: I'm still willing to view it as MUGEN's "Bigfoot", if that makes sense. It's a figure that, while some people swear by its existence, others are more skeptical. Some still hail it as the Strongest Dragon Tier Cheapie™, while even other people in the Cheapie community write it off as a myth. If you ask me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I obviously view much of the stories as being rather exaggerated (I say stories as plural, some people say it shut down his dorm room, others say it shut down the college, and then there's the one about it shutting down the city power, probably others I haven't heard of), but I'm not willing to write off the possibility of Mathrus existing. Maybe the _specific_ character Mathrus as presented in the story didn't exist, but it doesn't mean he _can't_ exist. Dragon Tiers that brick your PCs absolutely can exist, and there are some that probably do. There are Cheapies that can modify your background using much weaker code. Hell, there exists video footage of an Anti-Malware tier MUGEN character, ironically befitting the name, killing a PC-wiping malware, with the author even claiming that a Dragon version of the character exists. As for why they aren't shared... it should be pretty obvious. They're not so much characters as they are computer-bricking malware disguised as characters, and in most cases I presume, distributing malware is super illegal. It may sound reasonable then that some of these creators would be willing to share these "characters" to people who end up asking to use them safely... but this is the MUGEN community we're talking about here. Pretty much every character that gets shared, gets leaked. If a computer-bricking character was found to be uploaded somewhere like the MUGEN Archive, the community wouldn't hear the end of it, and especially with the way social media is, the press would *not* be positive.
*TL;DR:* Was a minor part of the Cheapie community, knew most of the names in this video, Mathrus may or may not have existed, Dragon Tier characters are real, sharing malware is bad.
I may have been out of the game for a while, but I hope some of this information helps!
-Even my WC3 World Editor screencap is still present.-
MrCarterM here, the screencap of the WC3 World Editor is from Titan Land: Wrath of The Lich King. It has NO DIRECT CONNECTION to the MUGEN Mathrus.
"why would someone make damaging malware in a free to play fighting game?" The most obvious thing I can think of is to force the devs to put more restrictions on what people can make.
New phobia has been achived:
Fear of your friends using this character
Legit, these people were going further and further and further and further. There was no end. It's like if it were possible to program the MUGEN character to physically kill the opponent player, they would make it.
I wish you could upload the full video of how mathrus works because it would be so funny to prank someone or scare your little brother.
Wow, a thing about something I’ve never heard about dealing with a confusing creepypasta? Just the thing i can watch at 3:24 AM
You've never heard of Mugen????
NGL, the idea of Mathrus could honestly work without the cheapie and DEFINIETLY without the malware
I imagine it as some kind of insane boss character, more humanoid than what it was mocked up to be. Just this very time he brings his insane power down to a player's level, seeing if they're worthy enough to not be instantly crushed then and there. Win, you live. Lose, well you know. As a matter of fact I think we somewhat saw a glimpse of that with a creation from The_None in the form of their Giygas, pulling off creepy insane boss shit without any malware to speak of.
I really like your inclusion of the Fear & Hunger : Termina track, gives the video a great undertone.
1:20 strange to see a couple of the Crushing Force roster in a vid that will be seen by a boatload of people who know about Mugen, but I am impressed to see them in a more public vid never the less.
Seeing Kazecat’s work on a public UA-cam video was like getting slapped with a cold fish, I wasn’t ready lmao
It would’ve been a LOT cheaper to just use a virtual machine.
Okay but this is clearly the funner option
Heh, cheaper…..
If I remember Some Ordinary Gamers said that Virtual Machines could still have a risk of malware leaking. So I guess you should run a Virtual Machine in a Virtual Machine lol
One day I will make Mathrus real... maybe. But he will be a private character for obvious reasons.
@yurichiller Dragon I guess.
FWIW, that's not the felhunter model from that WC3 map, it's just the felhunter model from World of Warcraft. That's why the WC3 felhunter you showed pics of is lower poly/not the same as the felhunter from WC3, so the custom map isn't actually related (you can tell the difference by looking at its front-facing claw/tusk things having a sharp bend in the WC3 map version from how low poly it is, but not the mathrus version). It's just the WoW felhunter tinted red like the rest of the pic.
I remember a few people taking the username Mathrus back in my IMT days. I think i wrote him off as a joke and i could never get anyone to code my cheep Dr Manhattan sprites, no one ever had time. No one ever had time to code any of my Green Lantern Lucario sprites either.................
Fun story. All of my reworked sprites for my update of Sniper Joe were destoryed when my pc was infected by Russian malware. It ended my time with Mugen... Now that i think about it, it probably was a chraracter i was tricked into downloading by someone who just was trolling me. Ended up screwing up my BA too and threw off my whole life path.
we need a separate video of that mathrus edit. it’s cool as can be.
I haven't ever heard or seen the game "Mugen" before but the way you made this video got my attention enough to watch the entirety of it. Also love the Hajime no Ippo meme 😆❤
You are the first person to even mention Ippo! Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
@@backwardslongjump I'm currently rewatching the anime so seeing the sawamura fight out of nowhere bamboozled me. I thought i switched tabs or something 😅 Please keep it up!
Cool vid.
Really nailed Mugen's history in a short video like this. I've never heard of this character XD
6:36 i'm sorry but anytime i hear metal clanking like that I just think of freddy thrusting memes
Obviously the reason Mathrus is impossible to find is because it requires specific characters to be downloaded. The code is split into multiple unassuming characters and 1 stage that uses a fake image that looks like a normal image but is actually a special file type that can execute code. Pretty much anyone could encounter Mathrus if you get unlucky and have the puzzle pieces for it to occur. Of course there's so many characters and stages it would be virtually impossible to find it today right?. If the total of your characters and stages exceeds the number required for Mathrus, nothing happens. The math portion of the character's name comes from the method of executing it. You need the right characters, the special execution stage to trigger the code and the correct number of other stages and characters to add up to a specific number. The reason It executed on the day it was first released is because that day is special, setting the PC time to that particular day may yield something interesting IF you happen to have the right characters and the stage regardless of how many other characters or stages you have.
Interesting, I thought someone did make a character that is malware. I have never heard of MUGEN by the way. Before you dropped the bomb about Mathrus being a creepypasta, I was just then thinking that this sounds like an SCP.
I recognized that was the warcraft 3 fellhound from the first glance lol, glad to see it was eventually mentioned in the video
Ah Ced, that's a name I hadn't heard of in a long time. I talked with him on Skype back in the day.
I remember he was into cheapies, but had no idea he was a pioneer of these kinds of cheapies. Eitherway he's retired now and should just be left to his own devices.
I could just imagine someone asking their friend to have a LAN party and play Mugen, then have the FBI knocking on their door because they found evidence he's a South American drug lord. Then having to explain to them that their friend pulled a prank on them while playing MUGEN.
6:57 THE HAMMER HITTING THE SCREEN GOT ME DYING OF LAUGHING
The bit where you test Mathrus on the pc, I was watching it in the middle of the night and I ended up muting it early and then closed it when the visuals overall got extremely disturbing. Who the hell makes malware that creepy looking?
Edit: Watched it next morning and the bit that scared the hell out of me was fake and edited. That was really well done
using fear and hunger ost was a great idea
Bro I just joined the modding community a few months ago I didn't know we were making characters with malware
ULTRAKILL MENTIONED 2:22 LONG LIVE THE SPARE CHANGE
Didn't think this would be a mugen video at first glance. What a pleasant surprise.
that fell beast racked my mind and until you said warcraft it came to me.
it was/is a warlock summon in WoW as well.
Bro you popped in my recommendings! You are so good, the twists and the story Bravo!
I love the video's soundtrack, bouncing from Ultrakill to even Fear and Hunger 2... it feels like such an odd thing to focus on but I just love it the whole way through.
Imagine getting punched so hard, your pc get's a virus. That's a new level of skill issue.
4:30 ah yes, vore hell. Exactly what every iceberg needs
Now I understand how this got in my recommendations.
@@AriaLavinde understandable, have a great day
@@AriaLavinde"TARGET ACQUIRED"
~WX-78
@@AriaLavinde *what?*
2:14 It always feels weird hearing Ultrakill music outside of Ultrakill because I never expect it
Ironcommando2 is Oppenheimer
@@pumpbigid6065 I think you replied to the wrong comment
@@mixednarwhalULTRAKILL MENTIONED
It’s about time someone made a video on Mathrus. Ever since Cyber Shell mentioned it it’s had this mysterious place in my mind. Sadly I’m not too knowledgeable on Mugen apart from it being around for 20 years now. Also, I would really like a time frame of when cheapie wars took place because I’m thinking late 2000’s but it seems Mathrus might be more recent, coming from 2015.
You won yourself a subscription, loved the video even as someone who knows nothing about MUGEN
I need someone to make mathrus. This is my first introduction to the game, and now i yearn this to exist. Someone please make this and make it terrifying.
6:50 OH JESE THAT SCARED ME SO MUCH
7:31 HOLY SHIT PIZZA TOWER TV BOX, BRAINROT ACTIVATED
the discord mod sonic character nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing.
Yeeeah, the scary analog horror images mixed with him showing us his dumptruck is absolutely goofy as hell, i love it xD
@@pimppastry7700 Then you had a cut too the massive furries with dumptrucks.
The metal sound at 6:30😂 (refrence is pov standing still for 2 seconds on roblox)
6:10 ahh hell nah, they done gave the pc 800mg of benadryll 😭
The first very “character” that caused this whole mess is the most poetic thing to tell us about war and the escalation of development of weapons or is the equivalent of it or represent it due to it’s literal existence of what it’s based off.
Man... The mugen community has 3 character types
-The normal oned
-The p0rn ones
-The malwares
You forgot the meme ones
@@artemis1993the peak ones*
Totally ignoring the video (im at 2:34) putting Ultrakill OST in the A-Bomb introduction was a big fat W
Id never thought I would see a creepy entity in a heavily modded fighting game