Mega Man (character)
Mega Man, known as in Japan, is the title character and the main protagonist of the Mega Man series by Capcom. The character was created by Akira Kitamura for the first Mega Man game released in 1987, with artist Keiji Inafune providing detailed character artwork based on Kitamura's pixel art design.
In the original story, Mega Man is a humanoid robot created by Dr. Light as an assistant. When Light's colleague goes mad, Light repurposes Mega Man to battle the mad scientist Dr. Wily and his ever-growing army of robots, and stop them from taking over the planet by using their own special abilities against them. Utilizing his Mega Buster arm cannon and his ability to copy the special weapons of the boss robots he defeats, Mega Man must travel the world and traverse harsh environments in order to bring Wily's menace to an end. With the help of Dr. Light and his assorted cybernetic companions, Mega Man's eventual goal is to one day achieve everlasting peace for both humans and robots.
Mega Man has become one of Capcom's mascots, one of the company's primary original characters, and continues to be one of the video game industry's most recognizable icons. Having appeared on many consoles since the Nintendo Entertainment System, Mega Man has had a wide gaming audience. Mega Man's fictional universe can be divided into seven categories, each featuring different variations and incarnations of a robot boy hero. Although Rockman, or "Mega Man", is usually the name for the classic series, it can also be the Mega Man series of fictional works, or the group of adherently named main characters within.
The several spin-off series that have emerged over the past years, each one continuing the Mega Man storyline in some unique way, includes but is not limited to the Mega Man X, Mega Man Legends, Mega Man Battle Network, and Mega Man Star Force series. Mega Man has also appeared as a playable character in the Super Smash Bros. series. A resulting animated series was also produced originally in Japan as well as a number of toys, comics, and collectables available both in and outside Japan.
Conception and design
Although originally the names "Mighty Kid", "Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Battle Kid" were proposed, Capcom eventually settled on "Rockman". The word "Rock" in Rockman is a reference to the music genre rock and roll, and is meant to work in tandem with his sister robot, Roll. However, Capcom USA Consumer Products Division President Joe Morici localized the name from Rockman to "Mega Man" because he felt "The title was horrible." In addition, the original Mega Man titles intentionally incorporated a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" gameplay mechanic into defeating certain enemies. The pixel art for the character was created by the designer of the original game in the series, Akira Kitamura, and later turned into a refined illustration by Keiji Inafune. Kitamura originally intended Mega Man to be colored white, but instead settled on blue to make his animations more clear. Mega Man's design had a lot of little influences from various manga, anime, and tokusatsu shows, specifically Ninja Captor. Nobuyuki Matsushima, lead programmer for the original game, came up with the idea for Mega Man changing colors when his weapons changed. Inafune also cited Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka as a major influence for the character.During a special event at TGS 2007, Inafune commented on the creation of Rockman. "I'm often called the father of Rockman, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom," he explained. "My mentor, who was the designer of the original Rockman, had a basic concept of what Rockman was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him. I didn't get to completely design a Rockman from scratch until Rockman X. Back when the Super Family Computer was coming out, I was asked to give Rockman a redesign, so I created this character. But I realized that this design wouldn't be accepted as Rockman, so I had another designer create the new Rockman, and I worked on Zero to release him as the 'other main character' that would steal all the good scenes!"
The team decided to incorporate anime elements for the game's animation. Inafune explained, " 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 Rockman, we had this perfect blending of game character with animation ideas." Across the series Mega Man was given new skills to add more variety to the gameplay. For Rockman 6, after having implemented so many different mechanics to the gameplay of past entries, Inafune thought that Rush adapter assembly was inevitable. The artist struggled with the adaptor designs and ultimately found them to be unrealistic. According to Inafune, "If you think about it, they shouldn't be able to combine like this. It would be awkward if parts of Rush like his neck were left over after they combined, so what was I supposed to do?"
In the cover of the North American copies, Mega Man's appearance greatly differs from his original one. Veteran video game cover illustrator Marc Ericksen painted the North American box art of Mega Man 2, which included Mega Man firing a pistol instead of his trademark Mega Buster. Ericksen explained, "I didn't know anything about Mega Man, and I said to the art director, 'What is he shooting with?'... He said, 'Well, he must have a pistol, because I don't see a rifle.'... I said, 'So, a pistol? Do you want me to do a pistol?' And he said, 'Yeah, let's put a pistol in there.' So I did what I was told and I put the pistol in there. Add to the fact that they only had, like, a day and a half for me to do the painting and what you wound up with was not the greatest result. But certainly a result that was not my fault. I mean, they told me to put the pistol in his hand!"
Ruth Shiraishi, who voiced Mega Man in Mega Man 8, voiced X in Mega Man X4. Mega Man 8 and X4 were recorded in the same session and Ruth did not know her session was for two separate games. For X, Ruth believes that they altered her voice somewhat to sound a little older than Mega Man.
Appearances
In ''Mega Man'' video games
Mega Man's most notable appearances have been within his own self-titled games, beginning with Rockman for the Family Computer in 1987. This, and all future Mega Man games released in North America and Europe, would bear the title "Mega Man" due to Capcom USA's early decision to change the name. Prior to decision on the name "Mega Man" which was proposed by Joseph Morici, Capcom had even considered the name "Rainbow Man" as a possible title due to the nature of Mega Man's color change when using different Robot Master weapons.Mega Man's origins in the NES localization varied depending on how source material was handled globally. In the original release, he was built as a housekeeping robot to serve his creator, Dr. Right, but was later converted into a fighting robot upon urging his creator to do so. In the NES localization, he was co-created by Dr. Wily and his original purpose as to why he was built was never mentioned.
Nearly all of the classic series Mega Man titles have been two-dimensional sidescrollers involving horizontal movement through various levels. This mechanic continues even on titles developed for high performance platforms, such as the Sony PSP release of Mega Man Powered Up, which features 3D graphics, yet movement to both the background and foreground is restricted. The main series on both the NES and Game Boy would follow this approach in the design of every game developed on those systems, and set the standard for all platformer Mega Man games to come. Mega Man himself has evolved very little cosmetically since his initial release, but has often been given new techniques in each game. The New Mega Buster, for instance, which was introduced in Mega Man 4, allowed him to charge up a shot. The slide was introduced in Mega Man 3. It was these
which were needed in order to help him exceed any new challenges added by the level designers. In Mega Man 9 and 10, Mega Man's abilities were restricted back to that of the original game. However, Mega Man can charge his shots again in Mega Man 11, and he gained the ability to increase its power and speed with the Double Gear System.
Capcom, recognizing Mega Man's versatility, has placed him in several different video game genres outside of his usual series. He has since been seen as a sports star in the Super NES game Mega Man Soccer, a race car driver in Mega Man Battle & Chase, and a board game piece in Wily and Right's RockBoard. A limited release arcade fighting game series containing Mega Man: The Power Battle and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters pitted Mega Man against several boss characters from his original series.
Though Capcom owns the rights to all Mega Man games and has been responsible for the development of all of his console titles, it has in the past licensed the Mega Man character to other companies for PC releases. Mega Man and Mega Man III were not ports of the NES games of the same name, but significantly different original games, and were developed by the US-based Hi Tech Expressions. The Mega Man game on the Game Gear was published by Sega. Rockman Strategy was developed and released exclusively in China by AcerTWP.
Mega Man was to have appeared in several iterations in the canceled Mega Man Universe. These included a redesigned Mega Man simply called 'Mega Man', the classic Keiji Inafune styled Mega Man referred to as 'Rock Man', and 'Bad Box Art Mega Man', who was based on the box-art featured on the North American version of the original Mega Man game. Mega Man makes another fighting game appearance in Street Fighter X Tekken but as an aged, obese depiction of the character on the North American box art of Mega Man, complete with pistol. Here he has the name "Mega Man" even in the original version. He was given the appearance of a middle aged man with short legs while Capcom also discarded the idea of costumes being more focused on the traditional games from the franchise. The concept of the design was making him as "cheap" as possible with the artist being a major fan of the character. The designed was scrapped several times as early versions were seen as too cool, most notably his helmet.