Mega Man | |
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![]() North American box art |
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Developer(s) | Capcom |
Publisher(s) | Capcom |
Designer(s) | Akira Kitamura |
Artist(s) | Keiji Inafune |
Composer(s) | Manami Matsumae
Yoshihiro Sakaguchi |
Series | Mega Man |
Platform(s) | Nintendo Entertainment System, PlayStation, mobile phones, Virtual Console, PlayStation Store |
Release date(s) | |
Genre(s) | Action, platform |
Mode(s) | Single-player |
Rating(s) | |
Media | 1-megabit ROM cartridge, CD-ROM, download |
Mega Man, known as Rockman (ロックマン) in Japan, is a video game developed and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). It is the first game in the original Mega Man series and the entire Mega Man franchise. It was released in Japan on December 17, 1987, and was localized for North America in December 1987 and for Europe two years later.
The plot begins the everlasting struggle between the heroic, humanoid robot Mega Man and the evil scientist Dr. Wily. The game establishes many of the gameplay conventions that would define the original Mega Man series as well as its multiple subseries. A standard action-platform game, Mega Man features a somewhat non-linear setup whereby the player can choose the order to complete its six initial stages. With each "Robot Master" boss defeated at the end of a level, a unique weapon is added to the player's arsenal to be used against enemies. Mega Man was developed by a small team of people, which included significant involvement from artist Keiji Inafune. The game was produced specifically for the home console market, a first for Capcom, who had previously focused on arcade titles.
Mega Man was critically well-received for its overall design and has been noted for its high difficulty. Although it was not a commercial success, the game was followed by an abundance of sequels and spin-offs that are still being released to this day, many of which utilize the same graphical, storyline, and gameplay setups instituted by the 1987 game. Mega Man has since been included in game compilations and has been re-released on mobile phones and console emulation services. An enhanced remake for the PlayStation Portable (PSP) was released in 2006 with the title Mega Man Powered Up, or Rockman Rockman (ロックマンロックマン) in Japan.
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The plot for the English localization of Mega Man entails the events after the co-creation of the humanoid robot named Mega Man by the genius Dr. Wright (named Dr. Light in later titles) and his assistant Dr. Wily.[11] The two scientists also create six other advanced robots: Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, Bomb Man, and Guts Man. Each of these robots is designed to perform industrial tasks involving construction, demolition, logging, electrical operations, or labor in extreme temperatures, all for the benefit of mankind in a location known as "Mosteropolis".[12] However, Dr. Wily grows disloyal of his partner and reprograms these six robots to aid himself in taking control of the world. Dr. Wright sends Mega Man to defeat his fellow creations and put a stop to Dr. Wily.[11] After succeeding, Mega Man returns home to his robot sister Roll and their creator Dr. Wright.[13]
Mega Man presents the player with six stages designed in the side-scrolling platformer genre. The stage select screen allows the player to freely choose from these six stages, which can be replayed if they are cleared. The player, as Mega Man, fights through various enemies and obstacles in every stage before facing a "Robot Master" boss at the level's end. The player's health, represented by a gauge on the left side of the screen, can be replenished by picking up energy cells randomly dropped by enemies.[11] Upon defeating a Robot Master, the player assimilates the Robot Master's signature attack (or "Master Weapon") into Mega Man's arsenal for the rest of the game.[12] Unlike the standard blaster, the Robot Master powers have limited ammunition which must be refilled by collecting ammunition cells also dropped by defeated enemies.[12] While the player is free to proceed through the game in any order, each Robot Master is especially vulnerable to a specific weapon, encouraging the player to complete certain stages before others.
Besides the weapons taken from the Robot Masters, the player is able to pick up a platform generator item known as the "Magnet Beam" in Elec Man's stage.[11][12] Mega Man also features a scoring system for defeating enemies. Extra points are earned by collecting power-ups from fallen enemies and a bonus is awarded for clearing each stage.[11] When all six Robot Master stages are completed, the seventh and last stage appears in the middle of the stage select menu.[11] This stage, known as the "Wily Fortress", is a chain of four regular stages linked together, each containing at least one new boss. During these final stages, the six Robot Masters must also be fought again in a predetermined order before the final confrontation against Dr. Wily.[12][14]
Prior to the development of Mega Man, Capcom was primarily known for creating arcade games, with many of the company's releases on consoles being ports of these titles. In the mid-1980s, Capcom made plans to develop Mega Man specifically for the Japanese home console market.[15][16] The developer decided to bring in fresh, young talent for the project's small group of people, including artist Keiji Inafune, who had recently graduated from college and joined the Street Fighter team.[15][17] Inafune recalled that the development team for Mega Man worked extremely hard to complete the final product. According to the artist, his superior and lead designer on the project wanted to achieve the game's perfection in every possible aspect.[18]
Inafune designed and illustrated nearly all of the game's characters and enemies, as well as the Japanese Rockman logo, box art, and instruction manual. Inafune was also responsible for rendering these designs into graphical sprite form.[15][18] "We didn’t have [a lot of] people, so after drawing character designs, I was actually doing the dotting for the Nintendo," Inafune stated. "Back then, people weren’t specialized and we had to do a lot of different things because there was so few people, so I really ended up doing all the characters."[15] Inafune was influenced by the eponymous protagonist of Osamu Tezuka's manga Astro Boy in his designs for the game.[17][19][20][21] Although he is often credited for designing the hero Mega Man, Inafune insisted that his mentor at Capcom already had the basic concept of the character made when he joined the company and therefore "only did half of the job in creating him".[22] Mega Man was colored blue due to the technical limitations of the NES. The console only has 56 colors in its pallette, the color blue having the most shades. Therefore, Mega Man was illustrated with different shades of blue to make him more detailed.[15] The team decided to incorporate anime elements into the game. Inafune explained, "[Mega Man's] hand transforms into a gun and you can actually see it come out of his arm. We wanted to make sure that the animation and the motion was realistic and actually made sense. So with Mega Man, we had this perfect blending of game character with animation ideas."[15] Aside from normal enemies, the very first character Inafune designed was Elec Man, drawing inspiration from American comic book characters.[22] The artist has commented that Elec Man has always been his favorite design.[23]
The gameplay for Mega Man was inspired by the game rock-paper-scissors.[15][16] Each weapon deals a large amount of damage to one specific Robot Master, others have little to no effect against them, and there is no single weapon that dominates all the others. The production team chose a music motif when naming characters in Mega Man due to the worldwide recognition of music. They began with the main characters: the protagonist's original name is Rock and his sister's name is Roll, a play on the term "rock and roll". This type of naming would later be used with many characters throughout the rest of the series.[15][16] Before finalizing the name, Capcom had considered others such as "Mighty Kid", "Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Man".[16][19] When the game was localized for distribution in America, Capcom changed the title of the game from Rockman to Mega Man. This moniker was created by Capcom's then-Senior Vice President Joseph Marici, who claimed it was changed merely because he did not like the original name. "That title was horrible," Marici said. "So I came up with Mega Man, and they liked it enough to keep using it for the U.S. games."[24] 1UP.com's Nadia Oxford attributed this change to Capcom's belief that American children would be more interested in a game with the latter title.[20]
Critical reception for Mega Man has been favorable. Lucas M. Thomas of IGN described the game as an "undeniable classic" for the NES, noting solid graphics, innovative weapon-based platform gameplay, and good music.[25] IGN editor Matt Casamassina proclaimed, "Mega Man is one of the best examples of great graphics, amazing music and near-perfect gameplay rolled into one cartridge".[26] GameSpot writers Christian Nutt and Justin Speer identified the game as a "winner in gameplay" granted its "low-key presentation".[14] Jeremy Parrish of 1UP.com likewise outlined it as a "charming (if slightly rough) start for the series".[27] Mega Man has been commonly received as very difficult. Casamassina found the game to not only be the hardest in the franchise, but one of the hardest titles available on the NES.[26] Lucas observed that its combination of high difficulty and short length hurt its replayablity.[25] 1UP.com's Kat Bailey perceived the "Nintendo-hard" bosses found in Mega Man to be what sets it apart from its two immediate and more popular sequels.[28] Mega Man has additionally received various honors from gaming journals and websites. IGN listed the game at number 30 on its "Top 100 NES Games of All Time".[26] Nintendo Power ranked Mega Man at number 20 on its "100 Best Nintendo Games of All Time" in its 100th issue in September 1997, then at number 61 in its "Top 200 Games" in its 200th issue in February 2006.[29][30] The British magazine The Games Machine awarded it the "Star Player" accolade after its launch in PAL regions.[31][32]
Mega Man garnered moderately low sales upon its release, although they were higher than Capcom had anticipated. With little press coverage save for a full-page advertisement in Nintendo Fun Club News, the game established itself as a sleeper hit with overseas fans thanks in part to word of mouth.[15][16][33] Inafune blamed its North American cover art for the game's lack of initial prosperity in that region.[15][17] This box art contains virtually nothing that can be found in the game: Mega Man himself resembles a middle-aged man rather than a boy, his costume is colored yellow and blue instead of being entirely blue, and he is holding a handgun instead of his arm cannon. Over the years, the cover art has become infamous in the gaming community.[14][16][34][35] It has been considered one of worst of game covers of all time by publications including GameSpy, Wired, and OC Weekly.[36][37][38]
While Mega Man was not a large commercial accomplishment for Capcom, the company decided to allow the development team to create a sequel ― Mega Man 2 ― for a Japanese release in 1988. The follow-up game proved to be such a success that it solidified Mega Man as one of Capcom's longest-running franchises.[15][20] Capcom would carry the same 8-bit graphics and sprites present in the original Mega Man for the next five games in the main series. Even though the sequels would progressively feature more complex storylines, additional gameplay mechanics, and better graphics, the core elements initiated by the original Mega Man remained the same throughout the series.[34] Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 would later revert back to the familiar graphical style set forth by this title.[34][39] The scoring system in Mega Man has not been present in any of its sequels.[34] One of the playable cahracters for the recently announced Mega Man Universe is "Bad Box Art Mega Man", who is the bizarre rendition featured on the American boxart of the original game.[40] The game's teaser trailer also depicts, alongside other Capcom characters, the classic 8-bit Mega Man.[41]
Mega Man has been re-released several times since its 1987 debut. It was included alongside Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 in the Sega Mega Drive compilation Mega Man: The Wily Wars, which is largely similar to the NES version but with enhanced graphics and arranged music.[14] Another adaptation of the game was released in Japan on the PlayStation as part of the Rockman Complete Works series in 1999. This version also features arranged music in addition to a special "Navi Mode" that directs the player in certain portions of the levels.[14] Mega Man was compiled with nine other games in the series in the North American Mega Man Anniversary Collection released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2004 and the Xbox in 2005.[42][43] A mobile phone rendition of Mega Man developed by Lavastorm was released for download in North America in 2004.[5] The game was given a separate mobile phone release in Japan in 2007, with an update in 2008 having the option to play as Roll.[6][44] Mega Man for the NES was reissued on the Wii Virtual Console service in Europe in 2007 and in North America and Japan in 2008.[7][8][9] Finally, the Complete Works version of the game was made available on the PlayStation Store in Japan in 2009.[10]
An enhanced remake titled Mega Man Powered Up was released worldwide for the PSP in 2006. The game features a graphical overhaul with 3D character models in a chibi-style with large heads and small bodies. Inafune had originally planned to make Mega Man look this way, but could not due to the hardware constraints of the NES.[45] There are two ways to play through the game: "Old Style" and "New Style". Old Style is comparable to the NES version aside from the updated presentation. New Style takes advantage of the PSP's entire widescreen and contains storyline cutscenes with voice acting, remixed music, and three difficult modes for each stage. This mode also adds two new Robot Masters (Oil Man and Time Man) and the ability to unlock and play through the game as the eight Robot Masters. The stages in New Style differ in structure from those in Old Style by having pathways only accessible by certain Robot Masters. Mega Man Powered Up furthermore has a challenge mode with 100 challenges to complete; a level editor for creating custom stages; and a mode to distribute fan-made levels to the PlayStation Network online service.[46][47] Mega Man Powered Up received mostly positive critical reviews, currently holding aggregate scores of 83% on GameRankings and 82 out of 100 on Metacritic.[48][49] The remake sold poorly at retail, but was later made available as a paid download from the Japanese PlayStation Network.[50][51] Capcom additionally translated Mega Man Powered Up into Chinese for release in Asia in 2008.[52]
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