The Death of Mega Man

Keiji Inafune left Capcom some many months ago, and it seems as though that has pissed Capcom off more than I had hoped. I pondered what would happen to our favorite blue bomber once its creator left. I assumed Capcom would continue making great Mega Man games and little would be lost. If anything I thought maybe a new director would breathe a little life into the series. I of course, couldn't have been more wrong.

Capcom as far as I can tell has all but decided that Mega Man is no longer a viable mascot character. Admittedly, his games haven't sold well the past few years apart from the DLC games of Mega Man 9 and 10, and in Japan Battle Network is a really strong series. As a whole though, the Mega Man property is not nearly as lucrative as it once was.

Despite that, I believe there is something more to this story that fans will never really know. Just how badly did Keiji piss Capcom off? I mean, he really must have upset them greatly. After he initially left, Mega Man Universe was immediately cancelled which was supposed to be a sort of Little Big Planet meets Mega Man. It was pretty far in development too, they had trailers for it, and even a pseudo release date planned. Now that didn't really register with me too much at the time as far as just how badly Capcom is trying to keep Mega Man titles off the shelves.

Just this past week Capcom cancelled Mega Man Legends 3 on the 3DS. They were going to release a demo to see how viable the game would be before actually finishing it. However, they never even let the demo get released to see how well it would do. That strikes me as very fishy. Initially they said to the fans that if the Mega Man Legends 3 demo got enough attention and downloads that they would make the full game. Why suddenly deviate from that plan and pan the game? It makes NO sense. But ok, whatever, the Legends series was probably the least lucrative of all the Mega Man spinoffs, I get the decision.

However, it's this last bit of news that strikes me as odd. Capcom just earlier today announced a follow up to Marvel vs Capcom 3, called Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3. They also released the names of the new combatants the game will have. Before I mention who is in and who isn't let me tell you that Capcom had polls on their website of characters people wanted to see, and more often than not Mega Man or Mega Man X would appear in the top 5 for the Capcom side of the game. He is, however, nowhere to be found on the new version of MvC3.

What strikes me as REALLY fishy about the choice to leave him out though, is who they put in. They put in Virgil from Devil May Cry. WHY? They are rebooting the Devil May Cry series, GOD knows if Virgil will even BE in that reboot. So we have Zero in MvC3 who was put in before the Keiji fiasco and Dante, but no Mega Man who is the star of his series but they add Virgil? At this point, it's a blatant snub.

Clearly there is no question to me now that Capcom has lost faith in the Mega Man brand as it stands now. Whether we ever see Mega Man again is something I doubt heavily, but it IS Capcom after all and rarely do they ever let a series die off. But this is a rather strange series's of occurrences against Mega Man. If I had to make bets, I would say one of two things will happen.

1. Capcom is going to revamp Mega Man into something brand new yet familiar like they did with Street Fighter 4.
2. We never see Mega Man again.

What I'm 99% sure of is we'll never see Mega Man 11, or a new Mega Man X. The Zero series on handhelds died several years ago so we won't see that again either. Hopefully, I'm wrong and we see Mega Man soon. He's my second favorite video game character of all time. I enjoy every Mega Man game made apart from the Battle Network games, and I could play Mega Man games through a Mega Man 100 if that ever happened.

It saddens me to think he may be gone. Honestly, it kills me inside as a gamer to think it. The way of gaming as I knew it is dying off making way for FPS after FPS. If they make a Mega Man FPS I'll probably assassinate myself. I know there's a fan game of a Mega Man FPS, that doesn't count. Like music though, what you grow up with ends up being what you like most and all the new stuff is crap. I feel video games will have the same stigma among people. Despite my bias, I think gaming fans can agree that watching Mega Man get sent to his unceremonious death is very sad.

*21 Charge Shot salute*