Hell yeah. I don't have any dedicated programmers yet, but the more the merrier when the time comes.
Also, traditional aspect ratio wins over the HD zoomed look. I was kinda hoping it would.
Incoming wall of text about a different project I was considering:
Spoiler, click to toggle visibilty
I've been playing a ton of Dragon's Crown recently. So much that it's cutting into my commission time, and it's costing me money because of it. It's that good. Being the art guy that I am, I've been paying especially close attention to the graphical splendor the game keeps throwing at me. It's a piece of art, and I love it. Aside from the fantastic visuals, I'm quite keen on the gameplay. I've been playing it while thinking about Red Earth, and wondering if such a thing would be possible in a closed MUGEN environment. Somewhere between four and eight playable characters engaged in what is essentially a boss rush arcade mode. Maybe eight to ten unplayable characters that fill the screen like the bosses of Red Earth, but with the visual oomph of Dragon's Crown's massive enemies. That much I know is more than possible.
Red Earth's leveling system is what I wonder about, though. How would one manage that in MUGEN? Are experience points trackable in an arcade playthrough? A password system that shows up at the start of the round a la the typical MUGEN groove select seems like the most likely candidate for such a feature. At the start of the first battle, the option to either input a password to keep previous level progress would show up. Either input one and jump from a lv. 1 grunt to the lv. 17 wrecking ball you built in the last playthrough, or skip that option and start from scratch. Gain experience throughout the playthrough and be given a password for your current level upon each victory. Is that even doable? An option to automatically save progress and do away with the whole password system would be great, but seems like a much more complicated thing to even try to accomplish. Then you might also want the option to reset stats, which would be a whole new challenge.
Granted, the levelling would take the form of slight health increases, damage buffs, and such moreso than completely changing move properties or adding new ones altogether. A few of those would be nice, yeah, but the simple stat boosts seem like the best route to take. Probably stick with one weapon design across all levels in lieu of using a ton of helpers for different swords or something. Supers would be best handled like Red Earth's items, I think. Maybe not. I dunno. Level cap of 20 or so to cut down on the elaborate coding?
Visual style would, considering my current fascination, be almost exclusively inspired by Dragon's Crown. A bit of FFTactics, a bit of Battle Fantasia, and a bit of D&D:SoM. Some Frazetta, some God of War.... a dash of basically all the fantasy tropes. But mostly Vanillaware stuff, because it rules. Haha. Subject to change, obviously.
Basically Red Earth 2. Input?