MATHRUS character blog [Cheeses Side Plot]

 TODAY’S CHARACTER IS…

MATHRUS


Before We Start

MATHRUS… yeah this guy uh, ok im going to be direct with this, this fella right here might be the hardest thing i had to research for a while, not only is he severely overhyped but also has little to no media! So to make it easier I'm just going to count the media that depicts him as what he should be, a virus. I'm not using any of that eldritch god bullshit, because that's all literally made up by powerscalers (I checked). Basically, I’m going to use any informational video about Mathrus I can find, as well things like fan recreations of how he should be as a playable character, the cheapie scale to compare him with other cheapies, and literally anything else I could find that works.

This was first an actual blog, Mathrus vs Badware, but after realizing I actually didn't really want to research an asym game with 900 statements I decided to turn this into a character blog.

Without anything else to add, let's start!


ALSO FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!!!

Background

“Round 1. FIGHT!”

The year was 1999. Fighting games were everywhere, from the buzzing Arcades to the beloved home consoles like the SNES, Mega Drive, and PlayStation. You couldn’t go far without finding a brawler ready to take your quarters or your afternoon! Well… everywhere except one place: computers. Sure, PC had its share of games, but fighting titles were rare and often clunky compared to their console counterparts. That’s when a small team of passionate developers (geeks), known as Elecbyte, decided to change that. Their goal? To create a flexible engine that would let anyone build their own fighting game, and in doing so, they ended up shaping a piece of gaming history that still thrives today.

They created…

M.U.G.E.N 

M.U.G.E.N is a game engine that lets you upload your own characters, stages, music, and basically… anything! After all, one of the many meanings of the Japanese word “mugen” is “infinite”, a fitting name for something that offers endless creative possibilities. And believe me, that’s no exaggeration. You could have Goku fight Superman, Peter Griffin throw down with Homer Simpson, or even Galactus battle… Ronald McDonald?.

The freedom players had when creating chars (that’s what M.U.G.E.N. creators call custom characters) was nothing short of mesmerizing.

But with great freedom… comes great chaos, and sometimes, that chaos can be explosive.

Something like… a nuke.

Literally speaking…

A-Bomb was released to the Mugen forums, a character so unfair that it just kills your character using a single input, this sparked outrage, frustration, but most importantly… fascination, and so the term “Cheapie” was born, characters that are unreasonably unfair, impossible to win against, meant to be op for the sake of being op, but obviously this led to a chain reaction, you see, ego is a big thing, and when you see someone having something stronger than yours… you want to surpass them, by any means, and this hit the cheapie circle like a meteor.

Hundreds of people set to make the strongest character EVER in mugen history, one to one, strong characters were made to counter previous ones, and free for all, they reached the extreme of deleting files in the game, using external executable files to run code, or even rewrite the game ENTIRELY!, this event was known as “The Cheapie War”, which would reach terrible heights, if someone didn't stop them they would eventually keep on evolving and evolving characters, something had to be done, SOMEONE had to step in…

Mathrus… was made.

It is said that his coming ended the cheapie war ENTIRELY, due to how incredibly powerful he was, because he did not limit himself with just code and files, no no… he could actually harm your pc ITSELF, leaving it entirely useless, because after all, everyone would make a new character after losing to him, but without a PC, who could actually face him?.

This set controversy and fear on the community, promising to never start the cheapie war once again in fear of something like this ever happening again, and Mathyrus? Well, it's said only his creator holds to its file, not sharing it to anyone due to how dangerous this could be in the wrong hands, after all, legends say he was so strong he took out the power of AN ENTIRE TOWN!.

The whereabouts of where Mathrus is right now is uncertain, some say to have the original, others say that its fully lost media, that did not stop people from making lesser renditions of Mathrus, safer options just to showcase what this entity could maybe do.

But at the end of the day, Mathrus is probably still out there, waiting, patiently expecting for some other fool to look for him, for people to start yet another cheapie war, for he knows, he will eventually strike again… when the time comes.

“K.O”

Experience & Skill

Ok so… let’s just address the elephant in the room, Mathrus really… doesn't have any experience in fights.

OK I KNOW, A M.U.G.E.N CHARACTER WITH NO FIGHT EXPERIENCE SOUNDS CRAZY, I AM AWARE…but it is true

Look, you could argue and be generous with Mathrus and use the videos of matches he had in youtube… but those aren't him, those mathrus are just copies, lesser versions, not the real one, so it wouldn't count for experience.

“But didn't he stop the war!?” well… yeah, but not in a way you would think, you see, he never really fought anyone during the war, he never went against the other cheapies, he never got out there as a free to download character even, the war only ended, because of… hype moments and aura, yeah no deadass, it was out of sheer fear of what could happen if they kept crossing the line, so they just calmed and thus the war ended.

But from what we DO know about the actual Mathrus is that, as a cheapie, will ALWAYS go for the kill first, like, 0 seconds waited, no business, straight to the point. We could also assume (IF we go by the clone videos) that he's also a spammy son of a bitch, spamming shit like if his life depended on it, so thats… something.

Oh and I guess he's a good hacker, I mean, he took the energy from an entire town, but he didn't really do much aside from it.

Abilities

Mathrus Physiology

Its no surprise Mathrus itself is not something… tangible per say, but rather a character made to destroy your operating system, and while yes you can interact (somehow) with him, it's only through M.U.G.E.N, any other way showing simply like a file, therefore he's, y'know, made of code. More than that, even as a character he has shown that his real scope is… kinda weird, having some sort of “non-existent physiology”, since, well, he can bite with a “non-existent mouth”.

Thanks to this very weird state of being made out of data and following the logic of M.U.G.E.N battles, and also just ignoring rules, he can for example have super armor, regenerate his life and energy meter, and even if his Regen is overcome he can just fucking DIE and come back anyways.

This also means obviously he doesn't need basic needs like oxygen, food, water or sleeping, for he is literally just code.

Oh and apparently he's a horror that can't be understood and transcends our plane of reality???? More on that later.

Cheapie Powers

Now this is interesting, you see, while not something Mathrus has done himself per-say (see Before The Conclusion), due to most cheapies having specific stuff that nearly every single one (that is high on the scale) can do, I will give Mathrus the benefit of the doubt and give him the common stuff done by cheapies, not every single ability though, since some have unique abilities that no other cheapies have.

This set of abilities include:

  • Data/Info manip (can be layered): A very common thing every cheapie has is the ability to manipulate the code/info of the game itself, and into very dedicated levels too!, like even using external files to M.U.G.E.N itself that still affects the game, even affecting the code of the opponent to turn it into the default dummy setting. Some even have the ability to prioritize their code above the others. Oh and they can fill something with useless data, that's neat.
  • Power Null: Something usual too is to turn the opponent rather useless, it can be done when the fight starts, during it or before it even begins from the character select screen.
  • EE (info level): Some cheapies are able to erase the character files even from the character select screen.
  • Death Manipulation: Cheapies love ending the fight as soon as possible, and clearly this also means obliterating the enemy frame 1 as soon as possible, leading to being able to just KILL the opponent instantly.
  • Time Manipulation: A common ability used by cheapies is that of simply turning the timer to 0… that's very much it.
  • Movement Manipulation: it's kinda simple, they can just, y'know, change your movement.
  • Intangibility/NPI: As stated, most cheapies are able to OHKO characters that don't even have a hurtbox, meaning that you could not interact/touch it. This also means other cheapies lack hurtboxes.
  • Summoning (possibly): now this is kinda weird, but you can argue that it's some sort of summon due to how it works and what it implies to force your PC to download a char and get it into your M.U.G.E.N
  • Resistance to all of the mentioned haxes: sometimes cheapies come with a built in anti-virus/program that negates any attempt at messing with their stuff.

Hacking/Virus

As a cheapie himself Mathrus has obviously various virus/hacking capabilities, after all, it's goal is to attack your OS directly, how does he do this is certainly unknown, but doing it he's fully able to destroy your computer, and, on a bigger fucked up scenario, take out the power of your entire city, after all, he is a MAN (Metropolitan Network) size threat, so it's normal his scope is so big.

Some other stuff that he can do are:

  • Even bank account info damn

Creation

Somehow, Mathrus is fully able to create stuff to use as an attack!, like bullets, missiles and uh… the fat man nuke???

Fire Manipulation

He can create pillars of fire to use as an attack!... Yeah that's about it, not really a lot to explain.

Explosion Manipulation

Mathrus is also able to cause explosions out of thin air!... But with a drawback, he can't really control where they appear, I don't really know how but it is kinda pathetic. But hey he can spam it at least!

Shape-Shifting

I can't lie this looks really raw, but yeah he can grow wings to fly high up and even use it to do a nasty drop.

Energy Attacks

Because why the fuck not right? Mathrus can just do some Dragon Ball bullshit and do energy attacks, like the one in the gif, and also stuff like an attack similar to the BFG that shatters into small explosions on impact, and also a mega Fuck You laser.

4th Wall Awareness

He knows you are there oh how scary shiver me timbers.

Pain Manipulation

Using his amazing aura (yeah sure) he can cause waves that makes you feel pain owww owchie :(

Blood Manipulation

Scary…..

Felhound abilities (Before The Conclusion)

Due to his original model being one of a Felhound of WoW, I considered adding those to the count since other people just kinda do it, if he can get this will be discussed later.

  • Magic Sense: Felhounds are able to sniff out magic, mostly to find stuff.
  • Power Null/Life Absorption: with the two tendrils they have, the Felhounds can drain out the power of its victim and even eventually their life.
  • Cloning: Pretty self explanatory, Felhounds have the ability to multiply themselves. Or it's just sex, idk man.

Death Manipulation

He can just… kill you, yeah no like, just, you die, simple as that… except for the fact that SOMETIMES IT JUST DOESN'T WORK AT ALL. (To be fair it's a counter but like it fucking sucks ass)

Feats

Overall

  • Became one of (probably only one that matters in the grand scheme of things) the most known M.U.G.E.N urban legends.
  • Was able to singlehandedly put an end to the cheapie war.
  • Is stated to be the strongest M.U.G.E.N character a lot
  • Also Mathrus is an insane fucking pull for a rap battle.

Power

  • Fucking WHAT.

Speed

Durability

  • Got fucking beat by an elephant lmaooo
  • Could hypothetically survive other attacks from cheapies.

Scaling

OTHER CHEAPIES

Due to being a Dragon Tier it means he's above every other single section of the cheapie scale, after all he is constantly stated to be the strongest, so it's not too crazy to think he scales, right?... (See Before The Conclusion)

Weaknesses

I'll try to say this the most nice way possible, this dude is not that much.

To begin with he has no fight experience, and the only time we see him fight through a lesser weaker version he's just a spammer.

Then his Regen isn't even that good because you can kill him before it even does effect, but not only that, he has NO resistances, at all! You could argue he would have those in the cheapie hax list, but I will explain that in a bit, to make things worse, HE DIED TO AN INFO ATTACK!, I mean fuck just look up a bit and you will see him fumbling TO AN ELEPHANT.

And it's not like he is just depending on his strength, no no, I mean he's kinda hax-y right, surely he can… he can't do nothing if his opponent is stronger than him.

And finally, he's moveless, like, I mean it in a literal way he doesn't move an inch, the only time he does is in the recreation, but every other time he just stands still and drops the nuke.

Before the Conclusion

Does he actually scale to other cheapies?

If you read what I just said, you would have figured out what I think of this, but if not, I'll put it rather simply… he doesn't, like, at all.

See the issue is that for there to be any sort of scaling you would need at the very least a fight, trade blows, see who's stronger, can you see the issue here? Yeah, Mathrus never fought before, and his recreation constantly dies to other cheapies, like look ok I get it, he's “the strongest M.U.G.E.N character”, but that doesn't mean anything when his own story says that he was never shared around people, and that his whole existence is a myth due to no one being able to get the real one (if it even exist that is).

So yeah basically, he was never in a fight with any cheapie, his title is weird and will be discussed later, and finally his lesser version is a fodder to mostly all the cheapies (plus the big feats are massive outliers against his own feats).

Does he really get the usual cheapie hax?

Now this one is kinda tricky, you see, usually I would use the same argument as to why he doesn't scale to the feats, we never saw him in action and we don't even know what he can do aside from “fry your PC”, maybe he's a one trick pony, maybe not, who knows!, but at least we can give him the benefit of the doubt thanks to most cheapies having the same stuff as a basis, like for example null overflow, %f and %n, so for research values, it's fine to give him the abilities, but if you don't wanna that's fine too.

Oh and resistances is a different thing since he is weak to some stuff he's meant to resist if we use the hax, like the info attack listed in weakness, so yeah.

And what about the Felhound abilities?

Yeah no, I'm going to be direct, I added them solely because most people try to sneak it in, and I kinda had to mention it, but the best thing you can argue is that Mathrus used the design of a Felhound of WoW, and that's about it.

So yeah, no reason to let him have the abilities when there's no info about him having them.

Ok but isn't he the strongest M.U.G.E.N char EVER!?

This. Oh my god this.

Ok so I'm going to use this section to talk about multiple things that are wrong at once, starting with the biggest elephant in the room.

“Mathrus out scales every M.U.G.E.N char due to being the strongest”

I swear to GOD if I hear this ONCE FUCKING MORE, look I know powerscaling is fun sometimes, I enjoy powerscaling niche things for example, but please, pretty please, remember that not everything was made with intentions of being used in a “vs”, start seeing statements with the context.

What do I mean with this? Oh well it's simple, his statements of being the strongest of them all, are ALL heavily context dependent, do you know why he's “the strongest?” No it's not because he's a godly being who can punch out 70 multiverses in one go, it's because he's a cheapie who doesn't care about winning against the opponent and goes directly to fuck your PC, people who portray him as the strongest tend to overlook that he's only called that because he's the strongest cheapie, not strongest in a vs way, but strongest in a fucking malware way.

Basically to say this in a more collected and simple way, no, Mathrus title of the strongest wasn't given because he's strong as fuck, but rather because he ignored the rules of what a cheapie is and instead of targeting the opponent using code and fancy ways of overcoming each other, he just killed your PC, after all, without a PC you can't boot up M.U.G.E.N again can't you?.

“But isn't he above the mortal plane”

Be so fucking for real right now big dawg… this is clearly a one off statement backed out by literally nothing, calling this an outlier should be an insult to outliers man what are we doing.

Ok but being more serious, it's basically a baseless statement that contradicts everything we know about Mathrus just to make him see spooky and powerful, the truth is this is unusable due to the lack of context and how it's obviously something a powerscaler made like let's be honest for a second.

“But didn't he power up the sun!?”

Well yes he did actually, but I wouldn't personally give it to him, he took a lot of time to achieve this and the way he did it is kinda vague for me to buy, but if you want, that's cool ig.

“What is meant by ‘Information’?”

As you’ve probably noticed, throughout this blog a word is brought up a lot, “information” this “information” that, so what do we mean by this? Well simply put just the ones and zero of code, assuming you could technically make these actual Informational attacks in like maybe a real world setting, but considering this never happens at all, well… It’s not actual information, rather just Code Manipulation/Erasure.

“Isn't he faster”

Look I tried to give him something but I really can't find anything, most of the time in any accurate representation you can find around he never moves once, always staying in the same spot, the only time he moves is in recreations and that's about it, lol.

“But the M.U.G.E.Nverse-”

There isn't really a M.U.G.E.Nverse, while yes some chars have lore, some even connecting with each other, not everything happens in the same universe, having lore doesn't mean M.U.G.E.N suddenly has a overall lore verse, it's not even like a SCP scenario, it's just, a fighting game, and that's about it. (This doesn't mean chars can't have good feats, but it's probably to just use whatever happens inside of the game and info/lore descriptions rather than just using whatever).

Also no, having Goku in your game doesn't mean you suddenly scale to Goku be so fucking for real.

Why do I sound so angry during this blog???

Idk man you try to research a character that you only heard praises about and insane matchups just to find out he's a fraud.

(Don't take my anger seriously, it's for comedic purposes, I actually had fun researching this)

Conclusion

LOW-BALL:

  • Strength: City level.
  • Speed: Immobile/below human level.
  • Durability: Same as strength.

MID-BALL

  • Strength: Town level.
  • Speed: Relativistic.
  • Durability Same as strength.

HIGH-BALL

  • Strength: Planet to Star.
  • Speed: Relativistic.
  • Durability: Same as strength.

HAX HE SHOULD HAVE

  • Inexistent Physiology/Informational Form.
  • Hacking/Virus capabilities (Information Manipulation).
  • Creation.
  • Fire Manipulation.
  • 4th wall awareness.
  • Blood Manipulation.
  • Shape-Shifting.
  • Explosion Manipulation.
  • Pain Manipulation.
  • Energy Attacks.
  • Death Manipulation.

HAX HE COULD HAVE

  • Cheapie common abilities.
  • Data/Info Manipulation (layered).
  • Power Nullification.
  • Existence Erasure.
  • Time Manipulation.
  • Movement Manipulation.
  • NPI.
  • Intangibility.
  • Summoning (debatable).

HAX HE SHOULDN'T HAVE

  • Felhound abilities.

Matchups

Mathrus vs Sonic Gather Battle DRM ghosts

Suggested by my very good friend Hollow, I was shocked I didn't think of this myself but I kinda mess with it a lot, character made to cheat his way into winning vs anti cheating method, both working as viruses/malwares, it's a simple matchup but I really like the simplicity of it, plus, researching Sonic's gather battle would be funny I can't lie.

Mathrus vs MissingNo

Another fun matchup, there's not a lot going on for connections but I just really like the vibe around it, I think researching MissingNo can be fun depending on what you use, nothing more to say, just a nice one.

Mathrus Vs Idiot Virus

Suggested by my other very good friend Sumika, this one is actually really funny, it's basically virus that takes itself too seriously vs virus that takes itself not seriously at all, it also adds that Mathrus is aware of the YAAI virus.

This is mostly a matchup Sumika likes, and honestly I don't see anything wrong with it, it's surprising that the Idiot Virus has actual lore to research and a “canon”, nice.

Mathrus Vs The Dragon

Another thematic matchup, two myth viruses who had a search put on them, trying to find the origin of it (or if it even exists), both also are very conscient of what they are, mess with the PC, and even have a weird connection of both being related to dragons while not really being one (Mathrus is a dragon tier while Smile Dog is called The Dragon).

I do like this matchup, and I would pay to see Smile Dog getting any way of visibility in the Vs community because he's like one of my favorite Creepypastas ever, but also this is a fucking stomp, Mathrus RUN dude.

Mathrus vs RED

What, huh?????

Well uh, I guess both are… red…??? Who the fuck came up with this, what else is there on the list?.

Mathrus vs Bonzi Buddy

Fucking sure why not.

Mathrus vs Gojo

I… I guess they really are the strongest huh?

Mathrus vs SCP 682

Ok no really, who the fuck is making these

Mathrus vs SCP 3812

Im sorry WHAT

Mathrus vs Scarlet King

WHAT ARE WE DOING

Mathrus vs Zalgo

WHO THE FUCK IS IN CHARGE OF MAKING THE MATCHUPS

Mathrus Vs Godzilla Ultima

PLEASE STOP

Mathrus Vs THE ONE BELOW ALL


Final Words

Even if it doesn't look like it, I did enjoy making this blog. It was fun to look into a character so niche, and I truly hope he gets an actual fair matchup.

Now, the actually interesting time, I can't keep running away from it, so it's time to say what's my next character blog.

NEXT TIME.

Click me brah

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