It could be fun and I don't think it'd be impossibly hard to program.  I'm a novice at programming myself and such a task seems massive but a more advanced programmer might.

Well, even if you haven't done it, that is an absolutely brilliant idea, Sk8!  Props for that!  Like I said before, I can't imagine what that programming would be like, but I'm glad that  someone in the business at least gave thought to it.If you could actually pull that off, that what be an awesome game.  About using other AG company's characters, though, I thought esentially all of you were in it to keep this genre going and why stop a great game from happening by holding on to your character?  Personally, I think if anyone barred you from doing that, they'd be doing everyone a disservice.

Just to clarrify a little heer, Smash brothers isn't quite your conventional beat em up like Mortal Combat or soul Calibur. the game has a sort of semi 3D view, you can jump around platforms and other stuff in the arenas, do absolutely crazy things in mid air, and most of all, the object is not to deplete your opponent's energy but to knock him/her out of the arena (usually with some very weerdly timed air combos).

the view alone, with jumping quickly around a 3D arena and flying in 3D would be fairly challenging to represent in audio, particularly as at the moment, with the possible exception of the savage gambit, we don't have any audio beat em ups at all.

However, as I've said before, i really like the notion of an audio beat em up, and I deffinately would be interested in seeing match ups like old man Stanly vs Superliam, or lord vector vs vs packman.

remember though that all the characters in the smash brothers games are owned by one company, nintendo, and even when there are company cross ups such as Snk vs capcom these have to be very carefully worked out before hand.

Knowing what their humer is like though, I'm fairly certain some devs would be interested in getting together for such a game (Liam urven himself once suggested doing a supreme commander Ather vs X1 game, which is deffinately a step in the right direction). but i think it probably would need to have a lot of in put from all the devs involved, not just in the voice acting side but in the programming side as well, to make sure that their characters were being used in a game they approved of.

The game play is definitely not 2-d. You could still have a cross over. You'd use the arrowkeys for moving, and also use them to do different a and b attacks. As dark said, the moves would be very hard to represent. Something of the sort on a smaller, less action packed  scale could work(I.E. less complicated levels and not such a complex amount of moves).
The savage gambot is a good beat-em-up, but we need something where you move around a bit more. I designed a small program that I still have where it's 2d and 2 player. Each player has a base on opposite sides of the playing field. The playing field is 10 spaces wide and these bases are 2 spots wide. Players can not enter other player's bases. You can hit eachother by simpley running into eachother, and you can shoot eachother for more damage. You can load 2 bullets in a gun, and you reload in the farthest area of your base. You can shoot and be shot from your base. The guns have a range of 5.
It's a nice little system, the only problem is that the two players have to be on the same keyboard. I may try to work out some amount of artificial intelligence so you can fight the computer, which brings up a whole nother hard part of designing ssb.
I still like this kind of idea, I think it'd be a good start for a ssb-based audio game!

the game sounds nice Sk8, I'd like to give it a try when you get it sorted out.

Personally, I do generally prefer to explore a large game world or story on my own rather than playing against other people, but then again, sinse I've only had an unrestricted net connection ever sinse I moved out of uni in may, I haven't had alot of experience at competative gaming against a large number of people.

the view of Smash brothers is very hard to describe. Yes you do move forward and backwards towards and away from your opponent, but the arena moves in 3D, and thus you can be anywhere in it even while moving forwards and backwards. The best analogy is probably that your two characters are always facing each other, but are moving round intside a giant bowl at the same time.

yes, this makes the game incredibly complicated, and in fact I find it visually completely unplayable (as I do with just about everything in 3D).
s movement forward and backwards and ranged attacks like fireballs or throwing weapons.

One project I considdered with Agm was a version of Barbarian 2, an old game for the comador 64 computer of the 1980's which was a sort of mix betwene beat em up and exploration, but I couldn't think of a way of creating your various high and low attacks with Agm building blocks.
As for an audio beat em up, there are two ways of doing it that occur to me. either the way Sk8 said, with something shades of doom style and complete 8 way movement, or something in 2D similar to streetfighter or original Mortal combat, with high, medium and low attacks (easily represented in audio), as well

Nothing wrong with monster alien thingies.

actually, all the recent talk about mega mec has got me thinking that a gear (or mek if you prefer), piloting beat em up game would be very nice in audio.

any audio help such as targiting could be part of your machines weaponry systems, and even things like upgrading your character (that is your machine), with extra damage or speed, or even additional moves would be possible in this genre as well.

Hmmm, I didn't know anything about Mega mech either until I asked in that topic. It turns out Mega mech is a turn based stratogy board game where you control various units of mechs and other vehicles on a board made up of hexagons. It sounds very cool, particularly the large amount of background about the batletech universe that goes behind the game, but check out the appropriate topic for more info and some links.