Mega Man, known as Rockman in Japan, is an action-platform video game developed
and published by Capcom for the Nintendo Entertainment System. The first game of
the Mega Man franchise and original video game series, it was released on
December 17, 1987 in Japan, and localized for North America in December
1987 and Europe in May 1990, respectively. Mega Man was produced by a
small team specifically for the home console market, a first for Capcom, who
previously focused on arcade titles. The game begins the struggle of the
humanoid robot and player-character Mega Man against the mad scientist Dr. Wily
and the six Robot Masters under his control. Mega Man‍ '​s nonlinear
gameplay lets the player choose the order in which to complete its initial
six stages. Each culminates in a "Robot Master" boss battle that awards the
player-character a unique weapon. Critics praised Mega Man for its overall
design, though the game was not a commercial success. Mega Man established
many of the gameplay, story, and graphical conventions that define the
ensuing sequels, subseries, and spin-offs. It is also known for its high
difficulty. The game has since been included in game compilations and
rereleased on mobile phones, console emulation services, and PlayStation
Portable. Plot
The genius Dr. Light and his assistant, Dr. Wily, co-create the humanoid robot
Mega Man alongside six other advanced robots: Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb
Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man. These robots were designed to perform
industrial tasks including construction, demolition, logging, electrical
operations, or labor in extreme temperatures, for the benefit of
Monsteropolis's citizens. Dr. Wily grows disloyal of his partner and reprograms
these six robots to aid himself in taking control of the world. Dr. Light
sends Mega Man to defeat his fellow creations and stop Dr. Wily. After
succeeding, Mega Man returns home to his robot sister Roll and their creator, Dr.
Light. Gameplay
Mega Man consists of six side-scrolling platformer levels freely chosen by the
player. In each level, the player-character, Mega Man, fights
through various enemies and obstacles before facing a "Robot Master" boss at
the level's end. Upon defeating the boss, the player assimilates the Robot
Master's signature attack, or "Master Weapon", into Mega Man's arsenal for the
rest of the game. Unlike the standard blaster, the Robot Master powers have
limited ammunition replenished by collecting ammunition cells dropped by
defeated enemies at random. Enemies also drop energy cells that replenish Mega
Man's health gauge. While the player is free to proceed through the game in any
order, each Robot Master is especially vulnerable to a specific weapon, which
encourages the player to complete certain stages before others. The player
can also revisit cleared levels. 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. Mega Man also features a scoring system where
players score points for defeating enemies, and earn extra points for
collecting power-ups from fallen enemies and for clearing each stage, this is
only game in whole Megaman series by other Megaman games not to induced. When
all six Robot Master stages are completed, the seventh and last stage
appears in the middle of the stage select menu. 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. Development
Before Mega Man, Capcom primarily made arcade games, and their console releases
were mostly ports of these titles. In the mid-1980s, Capcom made plans to
develop Mega Man specifically for the Japanese home console market. They
decided to bring in fresh, young talent for the small team, including artist
Keiji Inafune, a recent college graduate who started on the Street Fighter team.
Inafune recalled that the Mega Man development team worked extremely hard
to complete the final product, with a project supervisor and lead designer who
sought perfection in every possible aspect of the game.
The development team for Mega Man consisted of only six people. 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. He was also
responsible for rendering these designs into graphical sprite form. "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." Inafune was
influenced by the eponymous protagonist of Osamu Tezuka's manga Astro Boy in his
Mega Man designs. Mega Man is colored blue due to the NES console's technical
limitations: the color has the most shades in the console's limited 56-color
palette, and the expanded selection was used to enhance Mega Man's detail.
Although he is often credited for designing the character, Inafune insists
that he "only did half of the job in creating him", as his mentor developed
the basic character concept before Inafune's arrival. The basic sprites for
Roll and Dr. Light were created before Inafune joined the project, and the
designs for Cut Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Guts Man were in process. Aside from
normal enemies, Inafune's first character was Elec Man, inspired by
American comic book characters. The artist has commented that Elec Man has
always been his favorite design. The designs for Dr. Light and Dr. Wily were
based on Santa Claus and Albert Einstein, respectively; the latter
character was meant to represent an archetypal "mad scientist".
The team decided to incorporate anime elements for the game's animation.
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." The
gameplay for Mega Man was inspired by the game rock-paper-scissors. The
project supervisor wanted a simple system that offered "deep gameplay".
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. Mega Man was originally able to crouch, but the team
decided against it since it made players' ability to determine the height
of onscreen projectiles more difficult. Naoya Tomita began work on the Mega
Man's scenic backgrounds immediately after his Capcom training. Tomita proved
himself amongst his peers by overcoming the challenges of the console's limited
power through maximizing the use of background elements.
Mega Man was scored by Manami Matsumae, who composed the music, created the
sound effects, and programmed the data in three months, using a sound driver
programmed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi. The musical notes were translated one by one
into the computer language. Matsumae was challenged by the creative limits of
three notes available at any one time, and when she was unable to write songs,
she created the sound effects. 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 extended to many characters throughout the series. Before
finalizing the name, Capcom had considered names such as "Mighty Kid",
"Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Man". 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."
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.
Reception Critics received Mega Man warmly, though
the game sold poorly. AllGame described the NES version of the game as a
"near-perfect blend of action, challenge and audio-visual excellence" and awarded
it five stars, their highest rating. Lucas M. Thomas of IGN described the
game as an "undeniable classic" for the NES, noting its graphics, innovative
weapon-based platform gameplay, and music. 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". GameSpot writers
Christian Nutt and Justin Speer identified the game as a "winner in
gameplay" granted its "low-key presentation". Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com
likewise outlined it as a "charming start for the series". Whether positive
or negative, Mega Man has been commonly received as very difficult. IGN's
Casamassina found the game the hardest in the franchise, and among the hardest
titles on the NES. IGN's Thomas observed that its combination of high difficulty
and short length hurt its replayability. According to 1UP.com, the
"Nintendo-hard" Mega Man bosses set the game apart from its two immediate and
more popular sequels. Total! retrospectively characterized the game
as "an overhard and unenjoyably frustrating platform nightmare".
Mega Man has additionally received various honors from video game journals
and websites. IGN listed the game at number 30 on its "Top 100 NES Games of
All Time". Nintendo Power ranked Mega Man at number 20 on its "100 Best
Nintendo Games of All Time" in its September 1997 100th issue, then at
number 61 in its "Top 200 Games" in its February 2006 200th issue. 1UP.com
included it in their "Top 5 Overlooked Videogame Prequels" and as number 17 on
its "Top 25 NES Games" list. British magazine The Games Machine awarded it
the "Star Player" accolade after its launch in PAL regions.
Legacy While Mega Man's release sales were low
overall, they were higher than Capcom's expectations. Inafune blamed the game's
poor performance in North American markets on its region-specific cover
art, which visualized elements not 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 having
his arm cannon. Over the years, the cover art became infamous in the gaming
community. It has been considered one of the worst game covers of all time by
publications including GameSpy, Wired, and OC Weekly. The cancelled Mega Man
Universe featured a "Bad Box Art" Mega Man playable character alongside the
classic 8-bit Mega Man. The "Bad Box Art" Mega Man design has since become a
playable character in Street Fighter X Tekken.
With little press coverage save for a full-page advertisement in Nintendo Fun
Club News, the game became a sleeper hit overseas spread by word of mouth. 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 1988
Japanese release. Many of the design elements cut from the original Mega Man
were included in the follow-up game. Mega Man 2 proved to be such a success
that it solidified Mega Man as one of Capcom's longest-running franchises. Due
to "overwhelming demand", Capcom reissued the original Mega Man in North
America in September 1991. Capcom carried the same 8-bit graphics and
sprites present in the original Mega Man into the next five games in the main
series. Even though the sequels progressively feature more complex
storylines, additional gameplay mechanics, and better graphics, the core
elements initiated by Mega Man remain the same throughout the series. Mega Man
9 and Mega Man 10 would later revert to the familiar graphical style set forth
by this title. The scoring system in Mega Man has not been present in any of
its sequels. According to GamesRadar, Mega Man was
the first game to feature a nonlinear "level select" option, as a stark
contrast to linear games like Super Mario Bros. and open world games like
The Legend of Zelda and Metroid. GamesRadar credits the "level select"
feature of Mega Man as the basis for the nonlinear mission structure found in
most multi-mission, open world, sidequest-heavy games, such as Grand
Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, and Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions.
Remakes and re-releases Mega Man has been re-released several
times since its 1987 debut. A version with enhanced graphics and arranged
music was included alongside Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3 in the Sega Mega Drive
compilation Mega Man: The Wily Wars. 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. 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. A mobile phone rendition of Mega Man
developed by Lavastorm was released for download in North America in 2004. A
separate, 2007 Japanese mobile phone release received a 2008 update adding
the option to play as Roll. Mega Man for the NES was reissued on the Virtual
Console service for three different systems: the Wii in Europe in 2007 and
in North America and Japan in 2008, the 3DS in 2012, and for the Wii U in 2013.
The Complete Works version of the game was made available on the PlayStation
Store in both Japan and North America. An enhanced remake titled Mega Man
Powered Up — known as Rockman Rockman in Japan — was released worldwide for the
PSP in 2006. The game features a graphical overhaul with 3D chibi-style
character models 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. Producer Tetsuya Kitabayashi stated that redesigning the
character models was a result of the PSP's 16:9 widescreen ratio. The larger
heads on the characters allowed the development team to create visible
facial expressions. "The concept for these designs was 'toys'. We wanted cute
designs geared towards little kids ... the kinds of characters that you'd see
hanging off of keychains and such," character designer Tatsuya Yoshikawa
explained. "Not only that, I made sure to tell the designers not to skimp on
any of the original Mega Man details. We wanted their proportions and movements
to be accurately reflected in these designs as well." As the size of the
remake's stages are not proportional to those of the original, the widescreen
ratio also presented the developers with more space to fill.
Mega Man Powered Up features two styles of gameplay: "Old Style" is comparable
to the NES version aside from the updated presentation, and "New Style"
uses the PSP's entire widescreen and contains storyline cutscenes with voice
acting, altered stage layouts, remixed music, and three difficulty modes for
each stage. This mode also adds two new Robot Masters. The NES version was
originally intended to have a total of eight Robot Masters, but was cut down to
six due to a tight schedule. Additionally, the remake lets players
unlock and play through the game as the eight Robot Masters, Roll, and Protoman.
The New Style stages differ in structure from that of Old Style, with some
pathways only accessible to specific Robot Masters. Mega Man Powered Up also
features a Challenge Mode with 100 challenges to complete, a level editor
for creating custom stages, and an option to distribute fan-made levels to
the PlayStation Network online service. Mega Man Powered Up received generally
positive reviews, with aggregate scores of 83% on GameRankings and 82 out of 100
on Metacritic as of May 2010. The remake sold poorly at retail, and was later
released as a paid download on the Japanese PlayStation Network digital
store and as a bundled with Mega Man Maverick Hunter X in Japan and North
America. Capcom additionally translated Mega Man Powered Up into Chinese for
release in Asia in 2008. References
External links Capcom global website
Official Rockman website Mega Man guide at StrategyWiki