Mega Man is a gaming franchise developed
by Capcom. The series centered on the
titular little
blue robot boy who had a blaster mounted on his arm. He was created and
named Rock by benevolent roboticist Dr. Thomas Light
as a lab assistant, along with his “sister”, Roll, and their robot
dog, Rush. Additionally,
humanoid robots known as the Robot Masters were
created by Dr. Light to assist humanity in the year 20XX. However, Dr. Light’s rival,
Dr.
Albert Wily, reprogrammed several of Dr. Light’s robots to assist him in
taking over the world. Reluctantly, Dr. Light converted Rock into Mega Man in
order to stop Wily and the renegade robots.
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| Dr. Light and Mega Man. |
By the mid-1980s, Capcom had
established itself as a leader in the arcade game market. However, they were
looking to expand their operations from arcade games and ports to original
games made specifically for the Japanese home console market. They created a
small team of only six people tasked with creating a game that would set itself
apart from their previous arcade offerings: director Akira Kitamura,
producer Takashi
Nishiyama, programmer Nobuyuki
Matsushima, and artists Yasuaki
Kishimoto, Naoya Tomita
and Keiji Inafune.
That game would end up becoming Mega Man.
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| Mega Man in-universe schematics. |
Unlike
other games whose concepts were basically decided by a single person, Mega
Man was instead a collaboration between all involved. However, Kitamura did
come up with a particular set of rules that governed the game’s overall design
that he came to while playing different games and studying what they did there:
1. All
of the sages should be cleared within an hour and offer some kind of
replayability.
2. Players
should be able to select whatever stage they liked in whatever order they
wanted.
3. Weak
little enemies should appear in waves of 3 or 4, avoiding mixing up enemy types
whenever possible. Each member of the wave would have a different difficulty in
being defeated, with the last one being the easiest to skew the player’s
perception of the game’s overall difficulty. Enemy placement and terrain would
determine the difficulty of each area.
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| Cut Man, the original hero of the series. |
Originally,
the Robot Master that became known as Cut Man was envisioned to be
the protagonist of the series. Kitamura imagined being able to use the
boomerang-like scissors on his head to cut down enemies and obstacles during
progression. Gradually, more and more Robot Masters with varying abilities came
to mind, and he decided instead of limiting the player to one power,
they should be able to take the ability of all the defeated Robot Masters. A
system was then put in place inspired by the game “Rock, Paper, Scissors” where
certain Robot Masters would be more vulnerable to the powers of another (or
empowered by them, depending). Along with Cut Man, the other featured Robot
Masters were Elec Man
(electricity), Fire Man
(fire), Bomb Man
(bombs), Ice Man (ice),
and Guts Man (super
strength). 8 were originally planned, but memory limitations forced them to
stick with 6. Additionally, there were two other robots to face—Yellow Devil and Copy Robot—and a boss
rush before getting to Wily himself.
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| A cavalcade of robots and sceintsits. |
The designs
for the robot characters came from anime influences; in particular, Mega Man
largely looked like Astro
Boy while Roll was based on the titular character from Candy Candy. Mega
Man’s initial blue coloring was selected simply because blue had the most
variations available on the Nintendo Famicom’s (also known as the Nintendo
Entertainment System) limited palette that allowed the sprite’s movements
to show clearly, and it was neither an aggressive nor weak color. Matsushima,
inspired by Tokusatsu
action shows, came up with the idea that Mega Man should change color based on
what Robot Master ability he had equipped (after the notion of showing the icon
of the weapon on his helmet had to be abandoned). The designs for Dr. Light and
Dr. Wily were based on Santa Claus and
Albert Einstein,
respectively.
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| Mega Man using Cut Man's ability. |
When coming
up with Mega Man’s name, the options of “Mighty Kid”, “Knuckle Kid” and
“Rainbow Man” (based on his color changing) were considered. Ultimately, they
decided on a music motif for the names (you noticed their names were Rock and
Roll, didn’t you?), and called him Rockman. Music was also key in the game’s
experience, courtesy of the score composed by Manami Matsumae. She
created thematically appropriate songs for each Robot Master’s stage while only
limited to three notes at any one time. She was also responsible for creating
the game’s sound effects.
Rockman
hit store shelves on December 17, 1987 in Japan. The game was a run and gun
side-scrolling platformer where the player had to blast their way through waves
of enemies and maneuver across treacherous terrain to reach the Robot Master at
the end and acquire their power. Unlike Rock’s primary weapon, the Rock Buster
(or Mega Buster), the
Robot Master powers had a limited ammunition and needed to be replenished via
random item drops by defeated enemies. Players could select any level in any
order, and even revisit completed levels. Revisiting Elec Man’s stage, for
instance, awarded Rock with a platform generator known as the Magnet Beam. Defeating
all 6 Robot Masters unlocked a 7th stage where Rock encountered the
Robot Masters again, two new Boss fights, and Wily himself.
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| The legendarily bad American box art for Mega Man. |
Capcom’s
sales department didn’t have faith in Rockman’s ability to sell, but
their minds were soon changed by its performance in Japan. An American
localization was quickly commissioned, with Capcom’s then-Senior Vice President
Joseph Morici
having the name changed to Mega Man because he didn’t like the original
title, and it was felt American children would be more interested in the game
if called that. Additionally, new box art was quickly
whipped up within 6 hours that has gained infamy in gaming circles for not
only its poor quality, but its inaccuracy. The art featured a wildly
disproportioned older Mega Man rather than a boy, in yellow and blue and
holding a gun. It would become known as one of the worst game covers of all
time, and Inafume has blamed it for the game’s relatively poor North American
performance. That, coupled with minimal advertising, meant it relied on word of
mouth to eventually become a sleeper hit.
While sales
didn’t meet Capcom’s expectations, they allowed the crew to develop a sequel. Mega
Man 2 released on December 24, 1988 in Japan, retaining many of the core
elements of its predecessor and beginning the trend of 8 Robot Master bosses.
New features included an Energy
Tank used to refill Mega Man’s health at any time and a password system
that allowed players to save their progress. The game ended up a huge success,
going on to sell over 1.5 million copies worldwide and being critically praised
by gaming publications. Even the North American release received better-looking
box art (although still featuring Mega Man holding a gun).
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| The ever-expanding Mega Man franchise. |
Mega Man
had gone on to become one of Capcom’s top (though often neglected)
franchises, boasting 11 entries in his main series along with several spin-off
series and appearances in other games. It was only natural that he would soon
make his leap into other media—and Saturday mornings…
