We Built a Street Fighter-Style Game in One Day - With AI

Here is something we did not expect to be writing about this week. On 12 July 2026, our team at NextGen Training Academy sat down with an idea in the morning and, by the end of the day, had a complete, playable, retro arcade fighting game live on the internet. Not a prototype. A real game, with eight fighters, super moves, an announcer shouting over chiptune music, and online 1v1 where you send a friend a link and they drop straight into your fight. We called it NextGen AI Arena, and you can play it free right now.

The reason we are sharing this is not to show off a game. It is to show what a single day with the right AI tools now looks like, from a small training academy in Kota Kinabalu. If we can do this, the everyday work sitting on your team's desk is very much in reach.

The idea

We wanted a fun way to make a point we keep making in our workshops: AI is not just for writing emails. It can build things. A 16-bit fighting game felt like the perfect stress test, because a fighter needs a lot to work at once - characters, animations, hit detection, combos, a CPU that fights back, sound, music, and menus. Get all of that running in a day and nobody can tell you AI is only good for summaries.

Claude wrote the code

The entire game was coded by Claude, Anthropic's AI coding agent. We described what we wanted in plain English and iterated: the fighting engine, the chain combos and signature abilities, the best-of-1, 3 and 5 round modes, the three CPU difficulty levels, and, the part that surprised us most, working online 1v1 multiplayer where one player hosts and shares a link. There is even a WhatsApp share button built in so you can challenge a friend in two taps. No game studio, no team of engineers - just clear instructions and a lot of iteration.

Higgsfield generated the art, music and voice

Every visual and every sound came from Higgsfield AI. In total we generated 43 assets: the pixel-art sprites for all eight fighters, six animated stages, the super-move effects, the retro chiptune soundtrack, the sound effects, and the arcade announcer voice. Nothing is stock. One of the stages, KK Waterfront, is a Kota Kinabalu sunset with Mount Kinabalu in the background, and there is a NextGen Lab stage too. The eight fighters are original mascot characters, each themed on the brand colours of a famous AI tool, and the eighth is a deliberately overpowered pixel-art version of me as the arena's meta boss.

Live the same day

By evening it was online and shareable. It runs in any browser with no download, works on phones with touch controls, and supports a keyboard or a gamepad on a laptop. You can try it on our Play page at nextgentrainingacademy.com/play, or go straight to the game at frosty-raven-468.higgsfield.gg. Best of five, KK Waterfront, you against a friend - go.

What this means for a Sabah business

A game is a flashy example, but the lesson underneath it is very practical. The gap between an idea and a working thing has collapsed. The quote you spend two hours formatting, the report you rebuild every month, the little tool you always wished your business had - these are now a conversation with an AI, not a budget line and a three-week wait. If a training academy in KK can ship a game in a day, your team can absolutely automate the boring parts of their week. This is exactly what we teach, hands-on, in our Vibe Coding program.

And yes, we can build one for you

There is a real service behind this. NextGen builds custom branded games and gamified reward systems for companies: a sales leaderboard that makes hitting targets feel like play, a branded mini-game for your booth or product launch, or a team-building battle with your own colours and mascots. NextGen AI Arena is simply the live demo. If you want your KPIs, your event or your team engagement gamified, message us on WhatsApp and we will scope it with you.

Go play first, though. Then imagine your logo on the title screen.