Capcom Japan used to run their website like they were fans of their own games. Contrast this to whatever modern corporate website you have now that is largely impersonal and doesn’t give you anything but the minimum. Certainly, you can still find businesses running websites that want to approach you as a person and as a fan, like Falcom’s in most cases, but more often than not they’ve become cold. Capcom’s http://www.capcom.co.jp/newproducts/consumer/dash, or Mega Man Legends Series’ Homepage, used to be a website that I visited numerous times during the first tens after stumbling upon it, but nowadays that link goes directly to a 404 error site. Luckily, someone managed to use the Waybackmachine to archive the site multiple times, but as with usual, a number of the images have their hyperlinks dead.
Seeing as I started my hobby of saving a lot of images from the Internet in case sites or users would vanish, this Mega Man Legends page was probably my first attempt at archiving images. Needless to say, a lot of images without their proper content are jarring, but gladly text is easier to archive than images. This post contains all the most relevant images regarding illustrations and similar stuff, with marketing material and such still being mostly available at Waybackmachine.
Mega Man Battle Network is known for its unique battle system that hasn’t been replicated outside its sequel series, the Lego Ninjago: Spinjitzu Smash Flash games, with one of them outright ripping sprites for testing purposes, and to a lesser extent in One Step From Eden. All these mentioned titles don’t really replicate the polish Battle Network had, mostly because the team went through numerous iterations during the first game’s development and managed to polish it up in the second and third game. The three last games in the main series sadly don’t do justice to the combat system, and it’s all because Battle Network‘s combat system maintains a very delicate balance that’s very easy to break in terms how well it works. Think of the many versions of Tetris that change the shapes and number of tiles per shape, and you get the gist of it.
A standard field layout, with red being the player side and blue the enemy side
At the base of the Battle Network combat experience lays two elements; movement and resources. As every game’s battlefield is a grid of 3×6 panels, most often initially split as 3×3 for player and opponents, movement becomes impossibly crucial. The 3×3 area is a combination of multiple factors, one being that it is both claustrophobic and roomy enough to allow swift motion from one panel to another. Motion between panels is animated through a zip, where the characters sort of teleport between the panels. While you could have a character jumping or running, or just doing away with the animation, the zipping has a small frame of animation that deactivates and actives the hitboxes on each panel.
Timing becomes incredibly important, as in some games successfully avoiding enemy attacks might require high-level of movement management, though rarely frame accurate. Because of this the play often gets hectic as the player is required to navigate panels, or whole lines and rows of panels, to which opponents’ attacks land all the while trying to land your own hits. The 3×3 panel layout is perfect for this, as it keeps the area wide enough that going from one corner to another requires moving four panel’s distance, as there is no moving in angles. It allows wide enough variety in enemy attack patterns as well as options to escape to enforce quick movements without necessitating for the player to move too far. Perhaps it’d be better to showcase a video, and then go deeper why the system works the best in its most famous form.
A very simple, very easy battle, where the player still has to mind the Mettaur and Ghost’s movements. Instead of using Battle Chips, he chooses to delete the Mettaur by Buster. While doing this, he blocks the Ghost’s attack, in which it moves in front of the player and licks him, By positioning in front of the Mettaur, the Ghost has to retreat. Longplays are a nice way to grab a small segment and just embed from a certain timecode onwards.
4×4, the layout One Step From Eden uses is one panel line and row too big, as traversing the area becomes too large for fast-paced action. Even if movement speed was raised, it’d still be an extra panel to traverse Not only that but the balance breaks as there is no longer a central panel. All attack patterns can become far too widespread. 2×2 would be too small on the other hand and too limiting in every sense, which is the case with Mega Man Star Force, as it effectively butchered the play by limiting the player to one row of movement while enemies have 5×3 area to cover. Moving only left and right is not nearly as engaging as full-range of movement. One of the main issues that end up popping up also from a larger grid stems from the player’s need to scan a much wider area for enemy action. With 3×6 you have large enough space to keep an eye on everything that’s happening, yet with larger fields require splitting attention due to wider spread space, enemy patterns and landing attacks. The issue is inverse in smaller grids, where you end up having less space to keep an eye, which also has to simplify the patterns.
While One Step From Eden flows well, it’s hampered by its expanded field
The full range of movement there is with the caveat that the player can only move in X or Y axis in Battle Network. Allowing the player to move diagonally would break the balance, though in larger fields it might become a necessary addition. The 3×3 layout and up-down, left-right movement offers a balance between the player being able to effectively navigate all those safe zones while leaving the chances of player cornering himself by mistake or making bad judgement calls. 4×4 or larger does contain the same thing, but again that extra low and line build that safety margin too much, making balancing the attack patterns and movements that much more difficult.
The 3×3 panel is perfectly balanced to offer tile-based movement that isn’t too widespread or too tight. It’s an optimal solution.
All this of course can only be supported by the resources, which are aplenty. First is, of course, the selection of weaponry in form of Battle Chips, which go from single-row attacks to multi-panel X-shape shots. A standard Virus opponent often has only one form of attack and defence, though sometimes this defence is just moving. The Viruses are thus paired with other types that either compensate each other weaknesses or pose a challenge for the player in terms of panel navigation. Some Viruses have passive defences that must be circumvented in an indirect manner, some have none. For example, there is a Virus that has a shield in front of it that prevents direct damage from ahead and moves towards the player area. Once it reaches its area limit, it puts the shield on the player side and causes gradual damage via Poison. Early on the best method for the player to deal with this Virus is to use a Wide Sword, a close-range attack that does 1×3 area of damage in front of the player, the player being in the centre. Other times the player finds himself against a tree Virus that recovers HP faster than the player might be able to dish out due to the panels having a beneficial element. Thus, either cracking or literally burning the grass off from the panel the tree is standing of negates this effect.
Bosses often had extra shielding or similar gimmicks. Here, the player probably tries to limit the Boss’ movement through cracking the panels
Resources like these change how the player must meet the battles, at least until the player unlocks game-breaking combos and other fun post-game content. Combining action games’ fast movement, albeit in a more limited sense, to an RPG standard rock-paper-scissors Elemental system makes the resources an essential part of the play, and managing to design and develop these resources makes or breaks the whole system. Not only does the player have to have access to a wide variety of solutions to a single combat problem through the selection of Battle Chips, but also have them balanced so that these strategies must be changed from time to time.
The Battle Chips selection changes as the series grows, and many of the staples get dropped in favour of new Chips. This has caused numerous balance issues, as many high utility Chips are dropped in subsequent games and their replacements are not nearly as useful. While this forces the player to adopt new tactics for each game, the truth is that the selection of weaponry does determine how well the battles are fought, and how enjoyable the play ends up being. While there are a couple of hundred of listed Chips and their combined Program Advances, the majority of these Chips end up being copies of each other in different strength. This is of course to give the player chance to use the same family of Chips in stronger form as enemies become tougher and acquire more HP fat. This is another standard RPG mechanic though, much like how Final Fantasy has Fire, Fire 2 and Fire 3, so does Battle Network have Cannon, HiCannon and M(ega)Cannon.
The selection of these battle resources allows the players to express themselves and their favourite ways of battle. While others prefer the straightforward Cannons, others might aim for more damage with combinations of Chips. One method would be to use Area Steal, which takes one 1×3 area from the enemy side and turns it into area player can enter. This temporary steal deprives the opponent panels to move in and greatly expands the player’s movement options. This disrupts the opponent’s movement options while greatly increasing the player’s. Either side can, in effect, steal all of the opponent’s side bar the one they are standing on, causing what’s called an Area Lock. This is extremely useful in games where Battle Chips randomly hit enemy panels for damage multiple times. Area Locking an enemy to a single panel forces all the hits to concentrate on one panel, causing e.g. a hit worth of 80 repeating on one panel five times, causing total damage of 400. Add Chips that increase damage per hit, and the damage increases significantly.
Battle Network needs to limit access to these resources so that the player can’t have the perfect build all the time. This is realised first in making a Folder with a set limit of 30 Battle Chips. You can’t have less or more. By doing this, the player is forced to insert multiple different strategies into the Folder, often in a way where combinations of Chips can also work on their own, if necessary.
An example of similar Chips and Codes in a Folder
Secondly, all Chips have a letter code that limits what the player can choose in one go. Unless multiples of the same Chip is selected, no Code can be mixed and matched, outside the *-Code. For example, the player could have Cannon A and Cannon B or Cannon B and Bomb B, but not Cannon A and Bomb B. This locks the player from having all the strategies at his and at the same time but also introduces the chance of having only one Chip they could choose of they build their Folder without much thought. The amount of same Chips per Folder varies between games, with the first game allowing ten of the same, second game dropping this to four, third game rising it to five, and the sixth game introducing the idea of each Chip having a megabyte size, with larger Chips only be allowed a lower amount. Higher ranking Chips are more limited, with Giga Chips only allowed one entry per Folder.
Thirdly, the player can only access five Chips from his library via Custom screen at the start of a battle by the standard. The importance of having a Folder with large amounts of the same Chips, or same Code letter, becomes pressing depending on the player strategies. The player has to live with the selection the random number generator has given him until about ten seconds pass as dictated by Custom Gauge. At this point, the player can access the selection screen again, where he can choose another set of Chips, with the used one replaced with Chips from his Folder. The cycle between Custom screens is called a turn, though by standard a turn can last as long as the player wants. Under certain conditions, the Gauge can be fastened up or slowed down. In certain games, it becomes a puzzle element, where specific battles must be done under a turn limit and the Custom screen is opened automatically when the Gauge has filled up.
Custom Screen open at the beginning of a battle, with BN3’s Boss visible
The player can affect the number of Chips in their selection during the Custom screen by using the Add command rather than selecting any Chips. In the first game, it adds five more Chips to the Custom screen, with another use adding another five. This wasn’t the best system, as you’d lose all the additional Chips the turn you chose to use something. It wasn’t much fun. The second game introduced a change to the Add system, where the player had to sacrifice up to five Chips in the Custom screen to gain access to additional Chips. This Add system totalled to a maximum of ten, but the addition was permanent for the rest of the battle. This made the risk and reward already presented by the random choices as you might find it necessary to sacrifice stronger weaponry for a wider selection. It also expanded turn-by-turn options dramatically. The number of Chips available could be affected with outside effects, like Styles that changed the player’s element and weapons, but also via Customisation blocks that would become available in the third game. These ended up as the only options for the player to expand the selection, as the Add function was removed. However, this also removed the added risk and reward option, and further limited the maximum amount of chips from 10 to 8, drastically changing the nature and the balance of the battles themselves.
The balance in a combat system that heavily relies both on certain kind of spatial movement and a large variety of resources and conditions. The first game doesn’t exactly use the system the best, with everything being more or less unpolished. By the third game, the balance between damage output, method variety, hit patterns, additional conditions, panel elements and more extensive character customisation that affects all these directly made the balance stand on its tiptoes, but perhaps ultimately also showcased how well the developers understood it all.
The Navi Customizer from BN3 further expanded how the players could play and with what strategies
All these things have to tick in proper sync to work, something that the staff of the later games didn’t understand as well as the previous team. For example, removing the Add option might not seem an important decision, but it nevertheless favoured few types of approach more in character customisation and Folder building over others. Chip selection, or rather designing how the Chips would work is nothing short of do-or-die, and sadly from the fourth game onwards, the Battle Chips were never quite balanced, often teetering on practically useless to game-breaking on their own. Of course, the enemy selection had to be on par with this, which again became an object of inquiry as the games went on, with some enemy patterns being simply not fun. The system lends itself for challenge battles well enough, though it became questionable when Battle Network 5 introduced Liberation Mission, a combination of turn-based strategy with turn-limited battles. While others enjoyed the challenge they posed, its attempts to shake the combat experience by putting the player in the middle of the field, sandwiched by two enemy sides, didn’t work out all that well. These combat scenarios became janky and even more dependent on proper Chip selection that forced players to farm certain kinds of resources, putting far too high emphasize on the Chips themselves rather than having a combination of player’s action parts and collecting.
Some of the higher level player-VS-player battles showcase strategies that aren’t used all that much in single-player campaign, and they can end up being relatively boring to watch and slower-paced than in-game matches. Balancing the Chips selection between single and multiplayer play is rather hard, as some Chips ended up useful only in one area or the other
The system itself is nearly perfect. At its core, it’s something that only a video game can do, similar to Tetris. However, because it is reliant on how the resources are designed and managed, it is very easy to screw up. Despite the first and the last three games managing to screw up this balance nicely, the wide variety of Battle Chips and their combinations despite other system changes also means the players can and will find ways to cheese the system. As such, the best way to expand the system is not to change the absolute core of the system, that is the movement and the 3×6 grid, but to expand on resources and the ways all the combatants can make use of them.
This is probably one those things where Battle Network truly failed in its play. While most of the enemies were Viruses, majority of the standard Bosses didn’t utilise Battle Chips until later on. Instead, they all have their own gimmick and are designed around them. However, if the Bosses would’ve had similar access to at least a proper Folder of their own in addition to their specialised field, the games could’ve been a step more challenging as well as throwing a wrench to the player’s gears at times. This might’ve taken away from the uniqueness of each of the bosses, though evidently, developers agreed the Bosses should use Battle Chips at least to a limited amount.
Secondly is that most storyline End Bosses simply don’t conform to the established rules. They are largely inanimate and despite their hype, end up being lacklustre due them becoming an issue of hitting their weak point, which is often covered until certain phases. Incidentally, post-game Bosses end up being far more entertaining in their difficulty and methods, as they break the rules just enough to be unique all the while having all the same benefits most other characters, including the player’s, have on the field. Bass is probably the best example of this, as his level of strength is relative to the game he is in. Initially being covered by Dream Aura that requires 100HP worth of damage, Bass gains new patterns and strikes in each subsequent title relative to the overall balance and content of the game.
While BN3’s Bass BS isn’t the most difficult version of him, in many ways it is one of the more iconic ones. This Japanese voice-over here describes its attacks and a method to beat him. The battle here showcases some creative use of Battle Chips, as well as FolderBack, a Giga Chip that restores all used Battle Chips back to usable state. It happens to be the most broken Chip across the series
The system doesn’t lend itself to be modified and replicated in large fashion without a complete overhaul. Any change to the core requires a total change to effectively every part of the system to achieve a similar balance. This is one of the reasons why Battle Network didn’t spawn copycat series despite its popularity, as any game that might use a system derived from it would instantly be called out. Star Force tried to adapt some of the core mechanics, but it didn’t pan out all that well. Player movement is one of the most fun aspect of the system, and reducing it to one dimension made everything else having to compensate for this, which they can’t. The system was already robust in the first game, though unpolished. Be it by design or happy accident, this prevents similar iterations and alterations that something like Dragon Quest would lead to.
For better or worse, Mega Man Battle Network combat is still unique since nothing quite like it has turned up. Perhaps it’s better that way, as the system was already explored and almost broken under Capcom, and variations of it have not succeeded to the same level. This, combined with the whole thing not being to everyone’s taste, probably means we’ll never see it outside few oddities once in a decade until Capcom decides to re-release or remaster the Battle Network games. Here’s hoping for that Phantom of Network remake.
I can’t decide whether or not we live in an era where we are demanding authors’ and artists’ works to be untouched by outside forces, or we demand changes to these works for whatever reasons. I don’t really care either way, but the blog’s standpoint is that if a work is by one primary author, it should be left alone by external forces and be allowed to contest in the marketplace just as any. If the work is by a team effort, then it is subject to the hierarchy and decisions of that hierarchy, for better or worse. In video games, it’s rather common to see consumers demanding one of a game’s creator’s position to be the highest priority, that a game franchise should not continue because its perceived primary force is either in a bad position or abandoned. At the same, the same consumers keep consuming games that have the original teams long gone and don’t give a one damn about who’s in charge and what’s being done by whom.
Mega Man as a franchise is a great example of this. The first game’s original team effectively broke away, with only the core who wanted to do a sequel worked on the second game on their free time, and the third game had a producer who didn’t know what was going on so Keiji Inafune had to pull triple duty. The rest is history, with Inafune effectively being the only guy who worked on the first game and was coined as the Father of the franchise, until Mighty Number 9 hit the corner and the consumer opinion changed vastly. Still, the franchise has numerous games that have been worked by stupid amount of different people and some of the most acclaimed games have been developed by someone else other than Capcom, namely Minakuchi Engineering and Inti-Creates.
The Game Boy Mega Man titles, or Rockman World titles, were not developed by Capcom. Outside the second game, they were handled by Minakuchi Engineering, a game developer that mysteriously vanished around 2002. Due to developers going uncredited as part of branding and recognition, their website could only claim to have worked on over forty titles, including Mega Man X3. It wasn’t a practice to showcase who developed the game in the Japanese game industry, and as such none of the games until Mega Man Zero show any names or branding that would contradict Capcom. As far as the customers and the reviewers knew, the Game Boy games were developed by Capcom themselves. The second World game (I’ll just call the GB Mega Man games as World games from hereon) was developed by Japan System House, another dead developer, but one that has less favourable reputation. They later restructured into Biox Co., Ltd, and then into JSH Co, only to change back to Biox in 1997. GDRI has a list of titles confirmed they worked on.
We’ll never know the real reason why Capcom switched their developers for the World games few times around, but looking at the quality of World 2 game, it’s most likely that the sad quality of programming and designing was the main reason. The game was put into developed right after the first game and released five months later. Programming is one thing, but sound effects being completely off, sound being tinny hell and the whole package smelling like cheap chop job, it’s no wonder Capcom would turn back to Minakuchi Engineering. They became Capcom’s most important second team with Mega Man then, handling the rest of the Game Boy games, The Wily Wars and the aforementioned MMX3 before Inti-Creates took their spot. While World 3 is still about as uninspired as the previous games on the Game Boy, the fourth and fifth games have been praised for their quality and design, as well as taking some steps to try innovating with the franchise a bit.
I doubt anyone will contest me too eagerly if I claim Mega Man to be rather static franchise. For each series entry, there’s not a whole lot room for innovation as much as there is for improvement. Giving Mega Man a charged shot was more or less a natural evolution of ramping up his ready arsenal, with Rush being normal evolution of the Item Weapons. Giving Mega Man a a slide improved his mobility, but also allowed more complex stage designs and enemy patterns. Small changes like these seem that much more significant, when the core game play was effectively perfected on the first go. Understanding limitations and how to work with them isn’t anything special for original creators, as pretty much all of the changes Mega Man has seen in its franchise run are by from other than original creators. They’re also an example how someone else, like a third party developer, can understand the idea better than the originator, and understand the customer wants and needs that much better. Mega Man (World) 4 has two things that elevates this title above its three predecessors; Item Replicator is a way for t he player to gain items that would might want and need, alleviating the lack of resources with new type of resource in P-Chips. Collected Chips can be turned into Lives, different kind of restorative Tanks and so on. Item Replicator would go down as something that would appear in later games, like Mega Man 7. It’s a surprising major change, but not as major as the second improvement; proper cut-scenes with higher production values than most in the series. While Mega Man games have had introduction and ending sequences, in-game cutscenes have been rather sparse. World 4 had short, to the point scenes moving the game along in certain points. While nothing world changing for video games, Mega Man always asked for something like this, and after this the series would see far more of these story sequences, for better or worse. There are other small tweaks that change how the player has to approach the game, e.g. the charged shot now has a kickback that will mess with jump trajectories and can push Mega Man off a ledge.
Even a small thing like completely changing how the Stage Selection screen looks and functions gives a massive change in tone. Rather than presenting a static four faces (or the standard eight in NES games,) Mega Man (World 4) opted to use a selection wheel with the stage view underneath. This is one of those small improvements that stack upon each other, until few games later the you have completely different kind of game in your hands. The core of the game hasn’t been touched, but everything else has been improved in a way or another.
Minakuchi Engineering understood after their first take how Mega Man games are at their core play out, how the stages need to be structured to present the player a puzzle-like challenge that more often than not requires dexterity and action. Perhaps even better than Capcom did, as after World 4 Capcom was more or less gearing up for the SNES entries. The last portable hurrah for the original series of Game Boy games would end up being the best in the franchise, with Mega Man (World) 5 changing some of the series’ established structures more Capcom has done at any point in the franchise history to this point. If Capcom wanted to shake things up drastically, they’d make a new series. Minakuchi Engineering understood how Mega Man functioned and now they could go and break it.
World 5‘s largest change is straight on the box itself; Mega Man now had a rocket punch as his main charged weapon. Dr. Wily didn’t end up being the villain of the game and the robots you fought were aliens. While the game plays like a Mega Man game in two dimensions should, it wasn’t chained down to the small progression any more. The Mega Arm, or the Rock’n Arm, doesn’t function like other standard weaponry. With purchasable upgrade it can grab items and enemies, meaning you can launch it to an enemy and keep causing it extra damage it would otherwise not receive due to the invincibility flicker. The Arm also has to return after being launched, meaning the player has to mind themselves for that period when they can shoot anything. While on the surface this seems like standard small addition, in a Mega Man game it breaks the slow gradual change in design, and the same applies with the Special Weapons, which now have far more wildly different applications. Both World 4 and 5 have some stages that you can tackle through different paths, and NES games already introduced few select hidden rooms for items, but Minakuchi Engineering ramped this up, and Capcom ramped this up again in Mega Man 7. Hell, if you look things in proper light, you’ll see that Mega Man 7 was very much influenced by the Game Boy titles. Starts with four stages selectable at the start, hidden room galore, Item Replicator, Mega Man has access to a weaker Rocket Punch with his armour, more and more cutscenes and more attempts to break away from the established moulding.
This is applicable to whatever form of entertainment. As long as you have someone who understand the underlying functions and structure, the original creators/authors are not required. That’s a big caveat, but something that anyone willing could be able to pull off as long as they’re willing to learn the ropes. World 4 is like a safe bet, not shaking the boat and showcasing a well-made meal everyone can enjoy, though it won’t blow anyone’s taste buds. World 5‘s meal would be still as expected, but the new chef prepared it with ingredients and new preparations methods that heighten the taste and texture.
I can’t wait to see when will Konami finally produce a new Metal Gear game to see how the franchise will be handled. Give it five or six more years, the Japanese game industry seems to have a habit to let a franchise lay silent for a period after some kind of hard negative event has taken place. Nevertheless, perhaps a Mega Man -like game with the grabbing mechanics and all that which World 5 made itself so good would’ve been a better option. There are always more room for more 2D action games.
So there’s a new Mega Man collection coming out, this time adding the Mega Man ZX games into the Mega ManZero collection. I’m not sure how many remember, but the Zero games got a collection on the Nintendo DS, for better or worse, and they contained a mode that made the game easier across the board in order for the player to have an easier time so he’d see the story from start to finish. The original games were more or less intact, except with the connectivity thing with later Mega ManBattle Network games. Throw ZX games and you have a set of games people have been asking for some time.
What’s to write about this? Capcom has been collecting Mega Man games into bundles for a solid decade now, excluding the few earlier Anniversary collections that we got for PS2, GameCube and Xbawks. No, scrap that, let’s count them in. Ever since those collections, Capcom has been releasing old Mega Man games collected in each generation, except the Battle Network and Legends series. Legends is stuck with copyright hell thanks to Capcom using licensed drinks and labels in it, and due to Sony’s asinine Classics line rule, they can’t just remove these from the games and release as-in; they need to be as they were when they were first released on the PlayStation. Sure, we got the DASH games for the PSP, but only in Japan, hence the use of DASH instead of Legends. Without the two extra shoulder buttons, there’s some wonky controls about. We’ve never seen DASH since in a compilation, just as digital downloads, and Battle Network hasn’t been around at all. Maybe that series is stuck with license hell as well, considering the TV show and shitloads of other stuff regarding it were tightly wound together those (glorious) years. A compilation of sorts with online play would surely make many fans happy enough to blow their loads.
I bet your ass there are people who want that Zero bust just to hotglue it
Capcom Test is a term used when people assume Capcom is throwing something cheap out to test waters. While this has some credibility, the fact is that Mega Man doesn’t need its waters tested. They already know that there is demand, at least towards collections. Mega Man 11 showed that a game with relatively low budget compared to their hard, big hitters can and will make its money back as longs as it is competently made. Capcom hasn’t come out with any news whether or not they’re even considering developing Mega Man X9 despite teasing it in that one remix soundtrack CD (that was a letdown.) While some would argue that Evil May Cry 4‘s re-release was to test waters, we know from the director that he had made an ultimatum; he was given DMC5 or he’d walk out. At that point there were no waters to test, but perhaps what Capcom was testing was if there was enough demand for a higher budget. Game itself would’ve been made anyway. RE:make2 on the other hand needed to testing, after all Resident Evil is pretty much second only to Monster Hunter and even that is debatable after World, which in itself was carefully testing waters by dropping numeric from the title and opted for a subtitle instead, just in case if the game would crash and burn, meaning they could do a “real” Monster Hunter 5.
Let’s pose the question; if Capcom Test is a real thing, what are they testing with Mega Man Zero/ ZX Collection? The first answer might be that they testing whether or not there is enough demand for a new ZX game, as some would argue that the story needs to be concluded somehow in order to tie it properly to Legends. That really doesn’t hold much water, as Legends itself was left unfinished, and Capcom never greenlit Legends 3 despite all the public shit that was going on about it a decade ago. Theoretical ZX3 or whatever bullshit they add to the end (ZXA is ZX2 by all means) and would let the developers almost complete free reign to take the whole non-linear format to new directions. After all, these Montezuma’s Revenge-clones are still very popular. This collection won’t test how much demand there is for the Zero series, I doubt any of the fans would like to see Zero revived again for a fifth entry.
No, if they’re testing anything it is how much fans are willing to dish out, testing out how much pain carrying that loaded wallet causes. For this particular release Capcom Japan online store is going all out and releasing the previous Collections again in a box that has a separate space for Z/ZX collection. Y’know, get all the games (except Legends, spin-offs and Battle Network) in one major box.
Classics Collection, those X Collections, MM11 and free slot for Z/ZX. PS4 has its own as well, but Japan only, as usual with these
Capcom hasn’t really overstayed its welcome with these constant Collections yet, but they’re at the utmost limit now. If they were to publish a Legends Collections, they really should make it a complete package with all the missing titles, like Mega Man’s Soccer, Mega Man and Bass and its WonderSwan sequel, translated Rockboard and why the hell not throw that Chinese-only Rockman Strategy. I’m sure you can already tell that I’m not exactly looking for this particular release, but it does support the notion that Capcom is still riding on nostalgia wave instead of putting their goal to produce a new, high caliber Mega Man for whatever real reason. Inafune’s shadow can’t be that long, that there is nobody willing take the position and say We have a classic, long franchise with a ready install base we can easily expand by hitting some of the current trends all the while pushing the envelope on the franchise.
Mega Man innovated themselves from time to time. X, Legends, Battle Network, Z and ZX are all significantly different from the Classic series, and even then each sub-series changes the formats game-by-game basis. While I fully expect some kind of Mega Man game to be made based on the current cartoon, it seems Capcom is treating it like they treated Street Fighter The Movie in that it works as a promotional vessel rather than an adaptation. I would like to say that Capcom can’t coast on collections much longer, but the reality is that fans and consumers interested in the franchise will buy these collections every time a console generation shift hits around the corner, and if a special version like the above or the one with all the trinkets, there will be customers buying it. Fans find themselves in a vicious cycle of thinking that if they don’t show support, no more future entries in Mega Man will be made, but at the same time, you’ve already bought and played these games two or three times over and Capcom still isn’t putting out anything new. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The customer loyalty is still there and that probably is ultimately what will keep all these afloat for now. Special edition packages with craploads of stuff in them have always been a thing, slowly I have to question if that is becoming the only reason Mega Man collections are selling? Despite the franchise now lacking a face, the emotional contact is still there. Zero series has especially fanatic cult following, claiming it being the height of the franchise’s 2D game play design. They’ve been asking for ports of the series ever since the last collection on the DS came out, but apparently the originals and that port aren’t enough. Then again, maybe that goes to the other collections as well. Perhaps people really are just abandoning their old machines every single generation. Maybe Capcom should just start releasing collections every generation and never make a new game, as they seem to make a decent buck with each of them.
Capcom is coming out with Rockman X DiVE that’s making its rounds, but goddamn if people aren’t sick of beloved franchises getting a mobile game rather than a full-blown, big budget title. A proper entry, if you will. Just look at how happy Breath of Firefans were about BoF6. While mobile titles can be massive successes, thus far none of them have been considered as “true” installments into a franchise. Then again, we did get that social mobile game Rockman Xover, which was less than ideal entry in the series, and was largely lambasted people who didn’t end up sucking on Capcom’s dick. Only so many companies have managed to strike true with their mobile games, and the Big C is not one of them. X DiVE has budget behind it, it has good assets and lots of work put to make it the best kind of mobile Mega Man X game it could be, which kinda says to us that the hinted new entry in the series rather than X9.
Capcom really lost the ball by not announcing a new Classic or X series game. They didn’t even need to have it released yet, just have the info out, some concept art and nothing else. Keep the heat going on, but often fans will just take anything they can grab and roll with those, but only for so long.
Capcom recently updated their sales data in their Game Series Sales section, and with that we saw Mega Man gaining one more million units sold from 34 million to 35 million units since February 2019. That’s three million more units since June 2018. Their Annual report from the end of last, year, which I have a post about, stated that Mega Man 11 performed well. We could read between the lines that they were expecting it to perform worse, but the Blue Bomber still has some pulling power. With the cartoon series running, though not exactly making the biggest splash out there, the franchise has resurfaced again, much like how Devil May Cry made the news once more. Devil May Cry 5 performed a lot better, and if we’re completely honest, is the better game of the two. It was ambitious project that was true to the core gameplay but also pushed the 3D Action games just a little bit further once more. Mega Man 11, as much as the game is loved, did end up somewhat a shelf warmer. Compared to DMC5, MM11 is a lacklustre title. It was too safe a title.
It is because of Mega Man X Legacy Collection that the series gained one more million sales. Mega Man 11 sold some 870 000 units, so previous digital titles and X Legacy Collection must cover the rest. This is how Mega Man ultimately worked ever since the X-series was released. The Classic-series may have solidified the series’ status as an icon. Good games, to which Capcom would churn up sequel after sequel year by year, until they put the franchise in ice.
Neither Mega Man 11 or Mega Man X Legacy Collection sold one million units, as they don’t appear on Capcom’s Platinum million titles sold list. I don’t know Mega Man Battle Network 4 has sold so many units, it’s the very bottom feeder of the franchise itself. However, outside the NES era of games, most of Mega Man had one more or more sub-series running side by side. At best, Capcom offered 2D Action, 3D Action and RPG under Mega Man brand name during the busiest days of the franchise, and even more if you were in Japan.
If you were wondering, Mega Man 2 is the best selling title in the franchise
I would argue that outside the NES days of Classic series, when it showcased quality game design and tight controls in comparison to some of the schlock the NES and (especially) Famicom had, Mega Man‘s strength later on relied on its multiple approaches and titles on the market at the same time. Capcom did manage to avoid brand confusion by clearly having different kind of visual flavour across the board. The core mistake between Mega Man and Mega Man X is, really, that the two look too similar. X simply looks an older, edgier take on Mega Man. Which he arguably is, but that was the 1990’s. That was par for the course and I love it. Each subsequent Mega Man was different enough to tell the difference, even at their games, but recognisable enough to say that they were, indeed, a kind of super fighting robot.
Mega Man is a multimedia franchise, make no mistake about it. Despite the games are its main product and lot of the side pieces like comics and toys were there to support the sales of the games themselves, Mega Man saw its most success when you had a little bit of everything out there. Mostly in Japan, sure, but that really reflects the nature of the franchise world wide; the little bits of that everything that West ever got was cherished by the fans like nuggets of gold. When Hitoshi Ariga’s Mega Man Megamix got its English release, the fandom celebrated like no other. This wasn’t the first bit of comics Western world got from Mega Man, but it sure was one of the most wanted.
How did Mega Man gain all those millions of sales since the last update without neither of the two big releases hitting platinum sales point? I told you that already; combined sales of multiple products. Whether it is because 2D action games just don’t have the same market pull they used to, or because Mega Man had become such a standard for the genre that despite their high quality they’re seen as run-of-the-mill titles or just because the franchise’s envelope can’t be pushed all that easily like DMC’s, one Mega Man title hitting that platinum point in the current era of video game market must have something significant behind it.
On the other hand, Capcom could go the true and tested route, put together a standard Mega Man title like MM11 and comp it with something that’s a bit different. If they were brave, which they might actually become with these increased sales, they might even try to make a new sub-series that would break the mould. Love it or hate it, Battle Network was a smash hit. Legends, not so much. Still has a stupidly dedicated cult following, who still keep hope for Capcom reviving Mega Man Legends 3.
Maybe that would be a decent pull, start the project from scratch and make it play better than what Gaist Crusher did. If you didn’t know, Legends 3‘s engine and very basic gameplay was more or less directly lifted and heavily adapted for two-part game series, which never really went anywhere despite having a cartoon and toys that interacted with the games. I’ve got fewposts from 2013 (Christ that’s old and they’re terrible) about Gaist Crusher but never got around getting the second game and reviewing it. I guess I lost my interest in seeing how the series did, just like the Japanese kids it was aimed at.
Capcom could just go full stupid and release Mega Man titles like usual, throwing compilations left and right all the while not really considering how to grow and further the franchise. You know what? Give Mega Man Legends the REmake2 treatment. Take the base elements of the game, expand on the whole connected underground tunnels concept, polish and fully upgrade the gameplay, add more optional parts and possible modifications, explore further the concept of Rock being able to turn black rather than just have it a an interesting joke element (I’m pretty sure this ultimately evolved into the whole Black Mega Man and Synchro concept in Battle Network) and make the game look like a real Saturday morning cartoon it was clearly mimicking.
I can always dream.
Still, with these sales, Capcom probably will be making few Mega Man titles in the future, that much we wager to be certain. If they want to revive Mega Man properly rather than just with one game and collections, Mega Man X9 is probably high on their to-do list.
It’s been about eight years since we got a proper Mega Man game, though I’d go further back to pin point a true “new” title in the series. This isn’t the first time the franchise has been revived either, with the 8-bit throwbacks essentially serving the role and Battle Network being a kind of total reboot that essentially allowed a new generation to enjoy a Mega Man branded product. However, Mega Man 11 might be closer to the throwbacks, but thematically and in intention it leans more towards reintroducing the franchise to the field. As such, there’s three takes I could use to review the game; developer intention, as a Mega Man game and as a standalone title. However, splitting or choosing just one felt awkward. So rather than overthinking how to make this one stand out or be something special, I’ll just go in without much worries and say this straight out of the gate; Mega Man 11 is a good Mega Man game, but ultimately runs short compared in this modern era of games.
If you’ve played any of the NES Mega Man games, you know what you’re getting into, and MM11 is best argument against MM9 and 10 in that you don’t need to use throwback bit-graphics in order to make a “true” Mega Man game. The controls are tight, responsive and work exactly as you’d expect. The amount of control over Mega Man is perfect and pretty much everything can be put on the player in damage and death department. The PS4 version has the most control lag, with Steam and Xbox versions coming at top, which can only be blamed on Sony wanting to add too much post-processing on their games on PS4 Pro. Switch is somewhere between, closer to Xbox’s and that’s fine. Unless you’re crazy over NES-CRT level responsiveness, you’re more or less boned and should go for the Steam version. That’s probably the only significant difference between the versions, outside Switch’s Amiibo support that gives you items mid-game. It’s a nice idea, but really sucks when you realise how haphazardly it’s been implemented, much like in every other game out there.
For those who haven’t played a Mega Man game, the formulae is simple and solid. You’ve got eight stages, each with a Boss you have to defeat in order to advance to the final stages. You gain each Boss’ weapon and they have rock-paper-scissors mechanic going on, one being weak to another. Back when games were more or less strict on the progress, Mega Man was a breeze of fresh air, and modern stage-selecting was more or less inspired by the franchise. The franchise is famed for being difficult, but this has always been hyperbole at best. The six NES titles are easy enough for a five-years old to beat. The right word would be challenge, where the game offers some obstacles you to tackle, but with some try and experience, you’ll beat them in no time. The stages are overall designed to have a combination of environmental hazards combined with stage enemies, sometimes moving and sometimes stationary, which also gives all the stages their own little gimmick to work with.
The stages, of course, are the main meat themselves. Sadly, the game’s design did not escape the usual fire-water-grass thematic that has been overused in the series far too often. This time we’re getting both spikes-in-water and an ice stage, which shows that despite the series having almost a decade long hiatus and thirty years of history to learn from, the new dev team ultimately had to resort to recycling some old ideas. We’ve seen pretty much everything at this point in the franchise, from water purifying facilities to cityscapes, from forests to ancient stone temples and even space stations, thematically Mega Man is all spent. It doesn’t really offer anything new, and veterans feel it. Each stage offers their own challenges, like the aforementioned spikes-in-water stage that emphasizes on careful control. Each of their gimmicks should drive the player skills higher in order to beat the final fortress levels, but ultimately these stages don’t take all the advantages the eight main stages offer. The difficulty and challenge doesn’t exactly ramp up drastically, especially now that there is a total lack of Capcom gauntlet. A Capcom gauntlet is an old term for stages that come at a later stage in a game, where the player is unable to return or retreat to recover items, having to resort with whatever limited resources is found during the gauntlet. Boss Rush has always been part of this, with an additional twist or two in the mix. Mega Man games excelled in this by the natural design. However, Mega Man 11 allows the player to access the previous stages and create items between each of the fortress stages, making the gauntlet completely neutered. The ramping up element is now gone.
This of course begs the mention of the game’s gimmick, the Double Gear system. The stages have been designed so that there is no need to use use either Speed or Power function to beat them. Speed is naturally the more useful of the two, as its slow-down effect makes everything much more easier. The Power in itself is largely useless outside few situations, and is mostly used to use the powered up versions of the Special Weapons. However, because of all this the system works more or less as a build-in cheat, which can be further powered up with purchasable items. The game meanders between trying to appease people who want a more pure Mega Man experience and people who go all out, and ultimately doesn’t exactly fulfill the necessities to use the Gears. Even the speediest or smartest sections of the game are easy without the use of Speed Gear, and Power Gear makes some of the Special Weapons just absolutely bonkers, being able to wipe the screen of enemies, shield or not. That said, the weapons themselves are pretty well designed and balanced, again fitting pre-existing moulds in the series e.g. utility weapon, movement option attack, full-screen weapon, a barrier and so on. Their powered-up versions, as mentioned, are overkill in most places, and make mid-stage bosses a laughing stock.
This means the game ends up being very easy to beat through the use of cost items rather than skill, but perhaps this is more or less about personal challenge than anything else. Mega Man games have always been welcoming, though the game does seem too accommodating rather than trusting the player to build enough skill to beat it. Resources are readily available for anyone to buy if the game puts a wall against you. The stages have some elements designed around some of the Special Weapons use, but their limited scope and length don’t make much use of them. The fortress levels even less so, and you can rely on Tundra Storm to wipe enemies off from distance.
Visually speaking, the game looks very much for the part. Colours are well used and detail can be found everywhere. There is a definitive Mega Man flavour to things, just aptly cartoony with clear and defined lines. It may not be the cutting edge of graphics technology, but it doesn’t need to be. The game stays true to the NES era’s designwork almost to a flaw, where certain amount of detail is lost on the designs. Backgrounds get the most detail overall, with some referencing past games. There is a definitive charm to everything, the same charm Mega Man used to carry. This carries to the Robot Master designs as well, with the Gallery mode expanding on their characters more than the game can properly convey on-screen. While pre-battle quotes have been around for a time now, the Gallery entries really make them shine even more. Mega Man & Bass’ CD Database gave a nice insight to all of the characters, but not to this extent.
The music, however, is t he game’s weakest point by far. It goes all techno on the soundtrack, with synth bweaaaing being the main instrument. It all ends in almost a cacophony, most stages ending up sounding the same and unmemorable. This is a far cry from previous’ games’ soundtracks, which made the songs stood out, either due to the more limited sound samples or simply because the songs were that superior. The pre-order downloadable soundtrack is not much better, opting the techno for nondescript jazz that sounds worse. Acid Man comes out the best in this, mostly due to the instruments working better with his theme, but overall you’d be better just muting the BGM and putting something better on. Rock and rocking kind of instruments have always sit the series much better, more so in the X-series. That said, sound effects are pretty much spot on and have an oomph to them, though Mega Man no longer makes a noise when he lands. In the NES games, there was a small te-det sound, which is absent here, but it’s something that isn’t all essential.
This review reads like a ramble, because trying to say anything definitive how it is fails to a point. The Mega Man 11 doesn’t innovate on the formula of the series and is a step back in terms of length and game design. However, on the other hand it is well made and intentionally open for everybody, concentrating on the core building blocks what makes a Mega Man game. However, that’s all it really is. We’ve seen this before. While there is a need for smaller games like this one the market now, retreading things once more like this works only once. Just as with Mega Man 9. If there is going to be a Mega Man 12, it must innovate, expand and push the envelope on Classic Mega Man as much as possible. As a standalone title, the game doesn’t exactly stand well against the swamp of other 2D action titles, but its sheer polish and execution ultimately lifts it just enough above the surface.
Funny that, this is the best song on the album. Otherwise it’s extremely disappointing
Generally speaking, I don’t do music album reviews, but for this once I’ll do a short exception; Rockman X Anniversary Collection Soundtrack is not worth the price. Outside the two versions of Give it a Shot and RE;FUTURE, the album’s pretty bland. Spending track space and time to remix six first games’ Boss Battle themes. These were clearly chosen because they could been easily selected over stage themes. If we’re completely frank, the Boss Battle themes are not the best parts of Mega Man series’ soundtracks. Most of these songs simply end up being grey background noise. This is a far cry from previous releases’ quality, like Chiptuned Rockman.
Speaking of reviews, you got two last month. I’m not exactly happy how either of them turned out (though I never am with my posts) and I know the end result of the Muv-Luv Kickstarter goods did give rather negative view. However, that’s mostly due to how high standards I tend to use in my reviews. If there’s something I see that could or should have been included or improved, I aim to mention it. If there’s a point of comparison to be made for improvements, I always aim to make that comparison. In that, the aim often is to give constructive criticism, the kind of I’d want to have. It’s no use calling things shit or terrible, it ultimately ends up meaningless jabber. While improvement suggestions are always welcome, those should never be expected unless separately requested. This may sound harsh, but the reasons why something may be lacking don’t matter, as this can lead into further questions. Too many times I’ve seen and experienced people pointing the lack of experience for a reason why something is lacking in design, which always follows with questions like Why didn’t you hire a professional then? or Why didn’t you find professional to help? The reasons, ultimately, don’t matter. They can make interesting trivia though.
The JoyCon review was approached the same way. However, a controller review has to take into account ergonomics, and this breaks the whole Why isn’t necessary question thing into the air. There I tend to look for why certain shapes were made in the form they are, and often the answer is to conform to the general shapes of hands. It’s not exactly the same question or reason, but close enough for some people to bring the point up.
Pachislot Rockman got announced and we’ve got our first look at some the characters somewhat recently. I’ll be doing a comparative review of Mega Man’s redesign, just like how I did one on the Man of Action cartoon design. While we don’t have multiple angles to use, the one in the linked page is more or less enough to get a good feeling what elements were incorporated across the franchise. Pachislot and pachinko machines tend to redesign characters, sometimes to very large extents, but often do keep the core aspects intact. To use an example, CR Cutie Honey has designs that combine some previous series’ entries into one with healthy dose of detailing. People who handled this knew what they were doing as well, as the bunny girl form is named Cutie Bunny.
As for the rest of the month, I’m planning a short overview on what are Lunatic Dawn and Exogularity booklets âge is self-publishing at Comiket. I should not be surprised that the fandom seems to have taken Exogularity as the title for some story or setting, when in reality Exogularity is rebranded Lunatic Dawn. Well, I guess that’s it, they’re both source books with different names. The actual post will have examples, of course, but that’s the gist of it.
You’ve probably noticed how weekend posts have been appearing on Sundays recently rather than on Fridays. This is me moving towards the new schedule I mentioned a month ago or so. I’ll take this chance to also mention that there’s no post next weekend, as I’ll be away. Truth to be told, I intended to write this post for Friday, but thanks to rain I fell ill. My fever’s not going down, and I’m actually writing this on a phone. You can see the irony here, as I’m giving you a Why despite my arguments above stating the contradictory. Well, I do think there’s a wide gap between a KS and this blog.
Remember to sharpen and oil your kitchen knives and such. Cooking will be much safer and enjoyable afterwards.
This week has seen slight avalanche of Mega Man related news. We’ve seen more gameplay and stages revealed from Mega Man 11, some footage of the cartoon has been made available, a Rockman pachinko was announced and Rockman X Mega Mission is getting a States-side released.
To start with Mega Man 11, the one thing I mentioned early on was that it looked like it’d hit the spots with controls and add some neat new controls. To use an official source, check this gameplay in Fuse Man’s stage. Early on there is a showcase for change in the sliding mechanics that gives more control to the player, where previously sliding was more or less dedication motion to a direction. Now, you can change direction mid-slide. This is accompanied with slight yellow sparking and a sound effect. The reason why I’m pointing this separately is because this is detail quality is build on.
Should I also mention that enemy explosions are very 1980’s?
With the introduction of Power and Speed Gear the game’s core play has changed to a significant degree. Previously this sort of elements would’ve been relegated to supportive role and mostly as gimmick function. In Mega Man 11, the Gears are part of the core design to make stages and enemies easier. It would appear that neither of them are not required to complete the stages, but are used to make them significantly easier at places. This is an extremely welcome decision, as it means the core Mega Man play design is left untouched for those who would rather have purist approach to the game.
This doesn’t seem to extend to the bosses to certain extent. The Fuse Man Boss fight we see around 13 minute mark, the normal pattern is something that’s easy to deal with. Its power attack is specifically designed to be taken advantage of with the Speed Gear, though without a doubt a player can beat the boss without the use of it. However, saying that you don’t need to use it doesn’t null the fact that the bosses patterns and attacks are designed around the Gears to a degree, effectively making them additional weakness to the normal Rock-Paper-Scissor weapon cycle. This isn’t a negative in itself, as all this means the Gears are more or less completely integrated to the overall design rather than bolted on top of standard Mega Man design. On one hand, hopefully this won’t mean that future Mega Man games all share different important gimmicks jammed on top of them, but on the other hand, can the Gears be recycled into future titles with revisions to it? Is the Classic series to become like the X-series, where each game has a new gameplay mechanic in form of Gears to X‘s armours? We’ll have to see.
Otherwise, the game seems to be coming together just fine. The run cycle’s still a bit jarring and visuals are still rather plastic, but overall Mega Man 11 looks like its been carefully crafted to be a good entry in the series. You don’t need a million dollar budget for that.
To stick with “base” Mega Man for a bit, the whole thing with Pachislot Rockman came pretty much out of nowhere outside the rumours, but for Western audience this means jack shit. You’ll be playing this only in Japan, and we don’t even have a cabinet pictures, just few low-quality magazine scans and an announcement pdf. The designs are all over the place with this, combining elements from all the mainline series into one. This is easiest to see with Blues/ Proto Man there, as he has that hair from his Battle Network version and glasses look like Star Force‘s Rogue dropped them by, with the Life Gem on his forehead and chest being something that’s prevalent in the X-series. I’m interested in seeing how they’ll include Mega Man series’ elements into pachislot, and how garish the machine will end up being.
Speaking of Mega Man X, Capcom has hinted that Mega Man X9 will be a thing. With the X Legacy Collection hitting store shelves early in Japan, the manual mentions that the story isn’t over yet. Mega Man 11 was teased in a similar manner. It’s good that Capcom decided to pack all the X games into one package, as there’s less nostalgia for the newer games in the series to pull in the audience. Mega Man Legacy Collection should’ve been one package as well, with the Game Boy titles with it, but those won’t be re-released anytime soon outside Virtual Console. Hopefully they’ll drop most, if not all pretenses that there’s some sort of deep and meaningful story in the series and concentrate on making a damn fine game with Sigma as the final boss.
Udon has also procured the license for Mega Man X: Mega Mission, a one-shot Hitoshi Ariga adaptation of the Carddass series of the same name. Sadly, it’s in full colour, so we’re going to miss the intended gray scale. I’m guessing they’re doing this because the previously coloured Ariga Mega Man comics sold more than their untouched originals. If you’re interested in checking what the original story was about, The Reploid Research Lavatory has you covered.
Then we have the cartoon, fully titled as Mega Man: Fully Charged. While it looks slicker than previously and this particular trailer drops all of Mini-Mega, who we see more in the US region only preview, the show’s pretty much Cubix remade. It says Mega Man on the tin, they’re forcing sprite graphics to tell a story, they’re even using cues from Wily Castle I theme from Mega Man 2, and yet it doesn’t look or feel what you’d expect from a Mega Man cartoon. Then again, like a broken record I am, this isn’t exactly an adaptation. This takes the idea of a good boy robot fighting evil robots with some general resemblance to its namesake. However, the more there’s footage, the less impressive the whole show looks. Neither the 3D or the designs look impressive, but seeing this isn’t supposed to be anything groundbreaking, it’ll get the pass by the viewers.
All in all, Capcom is gearing Mega Man for the next few years, and depending how all this goes, the franchise may become relevant again. It won’t happen overnight, but maybe in few years if things keep at a steady pace and all good things are taken advantage of.
The opening crawl of Mega Man X states that Mega Man X, the title character. is the first type of new robots able for independent thought, or to quote, has the ability to think, feel and make their own decisions. Right after this, the first rule of robotics is mentioned in a shortened form; A robot must never harm a human being. This is how the first rule was originally quoted, if not for verbatim. However, the full updated rule is as follows; A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. As such, the game directly states that all previous robots in the game franchise, have been under the rule of Asimov’s Laws.
Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics are a cultural cornerstone, as Asimov’s robot stories explore and make extended use of them. While they are capable of independent thinking, they are governed by the three laws. To what extend they are able to independently act and think depends on the level of the technology, but all are ultimately slaves to the three laws. However, as Asimov’s robots are based on logic rather than reason, these three laws are easy to get around with proper logic.
Each three laws override their predecessor, meaning the protection of human comes before the second law, fully quoted as a robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. This overrides the third and final law, which stahtes that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
In Mega Man, we see these three laws playing a role in how Rock becomes Mega Man. The canon states that it was his strong sense of justice that convinced his transformation from a household robot into a super fighting machine. What concept of ‘justice’ Rock had is unknown, but the result wanting to fight injustice, even if it required setting himself under threat and oppose commands from a human, Dr. Wily in this case, enforced the first law in form of no human being would be harmed. The logic here is that by opposing one human, Rock is able to prevent harm or injury of many more.
This, of course, is as according to the 0th Law of Robotics Asimov later added; a robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
Combined with the Asimov’s laws and the clear statement that X is the first robot able to independently think sets to stone the fact that all robots in the Classic series are slaves to pre-determined models that they can’t branch off from, and are slaves to the Three Laws of Robotics.
Within Asimov’s robots, the three laws have been embed into robots on mathematical level to their positronic brain. Without completely redesigning and reconstructing the positronic brain as a concept itself, these three laws can’t be removed. However, it is possible to remove a rule in descending order depending how advanced the robot needs to be, halving the needed brain size and pathways.
However, Mega Man robots don’t have positronic brains. Instead, they have micro-electronic brains, which seems be more dependent on the creator driven programming than the Three Laws. We can take two stances on the laws here; either the laws are universal among the robots, or that the laws must be implemented into them by design in each separate case.
If the laws are universal, we can assume that Dr. Wily was capable of creating some sort of separate method to circumvent the First Law, which would yield the whole Robot Virus Project. While not canon to the games, Hirotoshi Ariga’s Mega Man Megamix the Three Laws are circumvented by Wily implementing a separate chip that allows the original six Robot Masters to injure and harm humans by direct action. As such, it would not be necessary to change the design of function of the micro-electronic brain, when Wily has a ready made chip he can install into whatever creation he makes. This also assumes that the micro-electronic brain works in a similar fashion to the positronic brain.
The second take of course means that there is no standard template for the robots’ brains in Mega Man and are completely dependent on the coding skills of the creator. The basic hardware may be shared across the board, but the Laws themselves are not burned to the core design. This would give more leeway in how the robots function. After all, the canon states that Dr. Wily reprograms robots he capture, thus we can assume the basic template does not function similarly to the positronic brain, but the Three Laws are a software function.
Even without the Three Laws governing the actions of the robots, they would be slaves to the predetermined to the lines of code. This makes them nothing more than automatons, unable for creative thinking. However, with the existing Three Laws, a robot must be able to device ways to upheld the laws. When Proto Man tells Bass that he can’t defeat Mega Man, because he has nothing to fight for, this can be taken as Bass lacking the Three Laws. He is inert in how he fights, as his main drive is to defeat Mega Man. Mega Man, however is governed by the First Law, and knows that his lost would contradict said Law. Of course, this is more about the moral of the things, but the two don’t exclude each other.
However, there is a place that in-action provides context for Mega Man robots essentially functioning according to Asimov’s robots, including the functions of the positronic brain; the ending of Rockman 7. In here, when Dr. Wily reminds Mega Man that he is simply a robot and can’t harm a human being, the First Law kicks in and contradicts his actions, causing him to pause. This is a moment many Asimov’s robots go through, where the probability is calculated within the brains for the route of least harm at that moment. This was changed in the localisation, where Mega Man 7 has Mega Man stating that it is more than a robot, Giving Mega Man the Pinocchio syndrome is an interesting idea in itself, but it fights against what the series has established.
While the robots in Classic series seem to exhibit natural personalities, they are far closer to pseudo-personality, similar to Star War‘s droids. Droids have a pre-programmed nature that they can’t deviate from, exactly like Mega Man‘s robots. Both also accumulate data, which they can then make decisions on, but in Mega Man‘s case, they can’t learn without additional data to their coding. Hence, why Rock’s transformation process was more than just donning an armour and weapon; it required rewriting some of his core pseudo-personality.
Within Mega Man X era, Reploids are robots based on X’s design. X was sealed to test whether or not he would be reliable. How, is the question, with the Three Laws of Robotics being the answer. Without them, X must be tested based on his reason and morals rather than mathematical probability and logic. Whatever brain he has must be more advanced than positronic or micro-electronic, perhaps similar to gravitonic brain in Roger MacBride’s Allen’s Caliban series of books set in Asimov’s universe, which allow X to have empty pathways, which would then build during the testing. Funny enough, both the first Caliban book and Mega Man X were published the same year.
If we consider the Three Laws to be suggested, something that’s learned rather than implemented, the very nature of the created Reploid should be beneficial from the get go. This would put greater emphasize on the initial creation of the programming, especially seeing how Reploids are created as mature beings rather than educated. Think of the training the clone troopers get in Star Wars, which teaches them skills and ethics required. Similar flash training could be adopted for Reploids in faster pace, but this does not seem to be the case. As such, mental deficits and errors are at the hands of the creator.
The viral reason for going Maverick seems to follow two corrupting paths; removal of any resemblance of the Three Laws and corruption of the personality. I say resemblance, as they’re exactly like moral laws any human society has. They’re not set in stone, and can vary widely. Secondly, Dr. Wily is the origin of this virus, meaning its coding has to be tied to the original nature of Classic series robots. Because of this, the free-willed robots of the X-series will uphold their own morals, even if it would clash with the Asimov’s laws.
Reploids, despite most of them seen in-game being more animal in appearance, resemble Asimov’s advanced humaniform robots, where there would be no distinction between humanity and robots when advanced far enough. Many times over in the series, Reploids labelled as Mavericks simply wish to gain their independence from humanity. However, no Reploid group has been allowed to so, and it would even seem that Reploids are labelled as Mavericks for political reasons, giving hints how oppressive the human government is over mechanical life forms. There is large amount of story potential in here, something we’ll never going to see.
The true end realisation of Asimov’s humaniform robot, as discussed in Robots of Dawn, is seen in Mega Man Legends, where the civilisation the player sees considers themselves as humans and are generational, able to reproduce, live and die. In effect, outside the ability to customise one’s body, there is no distinction between human and artificial human life. Both the World and Master Systems are bound to the Three Laws of Robotics, as their prime directly is to protect humanity, and do not recognize Carbons, or Decoy’s in original Japanese, as humans. Furthermore, the Mother Units of the System are built with the positronic brain, as mentioned by the games, creating a very Asimov-like situation, where Mega Man Volnutt recognizes that Carbons are humanity through their nature. This enforces his First Law function to protect them, further explaining how he ends up being the one defending Carbons, especially after the Master, last living human being, enforced Volnutt’s logic through their discussions. The System’s other parts, however, still act according to the logic of Carbons being artificial, thus the First Law does not concern them.
It might seem that Reploids are the most advanced form of robotics in Mega Man series by this comparison. However, it does seem that the ultimate end of humanity and robots is to become one within the frachise, and whether or not the Three Laws of Robotics governs Carbons is not important at that point, as they have already become the legacy and successors of humanity.
After all that Virtual-On, I decided to revisit Mega Man games for the kicks. Playing the games back to back reminded me why the series was such a hit. Great music, great controls from the third game onward, steady progression and evolution of the concepts and their implementation, and tight level design. Well, most part, at least.
I’m not sure at what point Mega Man saw a change. It’s not clear-cut as to say that a particular game had a definitive paradigm shift that changed the MM formula, as each game gave a new twist in some manner. 2 introduced 8 bosses, E-Tanks and classical help items, 3 introduced sliding and Rush, 4 introduced chargeable buster and slight branches in the stages, 5 expanded on in-stage collectables with Beat and backup tanks, 6 had Rush Adapters and colour changes to stages depending whether or not you have BEAT letters collected, 7 introduced the initial Robot Master split to four, included a lot more support items and took some parts from the Game Boy Mega Man games, and 8 revamped all the stages to have a specific gimmicks.
Perhaps the existence of these gimmicks rather than concentration on the core of Mega Man ultimately drove the sales down.
The best example of this is Mega Man 8. While Mega Man stages are all about a certain kind of theme to them, with a gimmick or two in there, they’re usually either harmless or practices in moderation. Mega Man 1‘s Guts Man stage is an example of an early exception for this, as its moving platform segment is infuriating, but luckily relatively short. With the PlayStation era, we began seeing the inclusion of automated driving stages becoming a thing, culminating to one of the worst stages in the whole series with Mega Man X7‘s Ride Boarski. Similarly, X8’s Gigabolt Man-O-War and Avalance Yeti have driving stages as well. Two out of eight main stages were effectively wasted for driving.
The increase of gimmicks like these, be it Rush Adapters or driving stages, really didn’t do good for the series overall. While some argue that Mega Man 9 and 10 returned to the core of the series, they concentrated on the wrong aspects in overall terms.
The evolution of the series core concepts has always been slight changes to the controls and what initial tools the player has. Sliding was a solution for quick evasions and increased movement, which also gave the developers more options with enemy and stage designs. (In DLC Proto Man has the slide, when he previously had a dash. Gotta earn that nerd cred.) Charging shots increased damage output per shot, but it’s not necessary in all cases. Still, it allows both the player and the designers to tackle certain aspects in enemy design differently than with just the lemon shooter. Rush’s inclusion, while stemming from the mobility Items from Mega Man 2, again is a tool for movement and stage design options.
These could be considered three core additions to the series since the first game, and should always be there. However, at some point the series began adding too much unnecessary stuff without really compensating, and then you lost most of the good stuff with Mega Man 8 and its two sequels.
It says a lot that Minakuchi Engineering, the company in charge of the Game Boy games (par the second one) really made additions and tweaks to the formula work well, and Capcom’s stuff took some of it and ran with them in MM7 without really understanding why they worked. Well, outside the Item Replicator, which allows player to produce support items for a cost, but they screwed that over with MM8 by limiting the amount of bolts in the game to build items, and the removal of support items in general.
Mega Man 8 is really a weird game, it tried something different, but failed pretty badly.
Stage gimmicks, the constant addition of option tools and lack of emphasize on the core aspects is probably why the series stagnated as hard as it did. Mega Man 11 has an uphill battle to re-instate all the best elements from the first eight games while trying to ignore the two last ones. Let’s be honest with them, unmaking a decade worth of design and evolution in favour of nostalgia pandering was the very first misstep Capcom made with them, but this was the era of retro-lookalikes being the hottest shit on the block. Can’t really fault them for striking that trend. (This is also why Mega Man 2 was used as the base to model MM9 and 10 after, because nostalgia was rampart and the game has a deified status [Despite certain later games being objectively better.])
Cuphead showcased that the stigma 2D action games had during the naughts is more or less over. However, I hope Capcom recognises that Mega Man has ten games doing the same thing, with varying success. If Mega man 11 is to succeed, it should not pander to nostalgia. It needs to find the proper way to evolve the formula and make the best use of it. It should be more like GameBoy’s Mega Man IV than Mega Man 8 (or 9 and 10) in how it doesn’t forget to balance the core and new.
Certainly the fans will appreciate it just fine, but if it’s just another throwback for these fans, Capcom might a well quit making the game mid-way through. The announcement trailer does give some glimpses, that the core elements established by the first four games are in there to some extent. Charged shots and Rush are in there, with no movement slipping. Sure, the animations could use some work, but that’s always the case. Bolts are back, so we can assume Item Replicator is being implemented. There seems to be some sort of overcharge shot as well, meaning we’re going to see additions to the core formula. We can just hope that their implementation is decent at least, and the staff do not negate the core aspects of good level design first and foremost.
Mighty Number 9 is a great example of all the core elements missing quality to them.
Aaltomies 