Capcom was recently asked about their plans for Mega Man in a recent financial meeting. The company’s response raises hopes that they could make the Blue Bomber an active franchise again.
As reported by Video Games Chronicle, Capcom’s representative gave this answer:
“Including Mega Man 11, the latest entry in the franchise, Mega Man is one of Capcom’s historic IPs and is loved by fans, and as such we want to take care in how we develop the series.
We are considering how to approach the production of new entries in the series, which requires numerous factors, including the development of a solid concept, ideas and gameplay, etc.”
Mega Man does have a strange history, in terms of a legacy Capcom franchise, and also as one of those legacy characters from gaming’s boom period in the 1980s NES/Famicom era.
As the story goes, the first Mega Man was not a huge hit, but Capcom was willing to give the developers a second chance. They poured their unused ideas and the extent of their abilities to making Mega Man 2, which did become the breakout hit that made the franchise.
The consensus among the fans is that Mega Man 3 was an equal or better follow up to Mega Man 2, but Mega Man 4 to 6 saw Capcom resting on their laurels.
All of the first six games were released on the Famicom/NES first, with Mega Man 7 coming to the SNES, and Mega Man 8 arriving on both the PlayStation and Sega Saturn.
Mega Man would then be relegated to spinoffs and remakes of these first few games until 2008, when Capcom collaborates with Inti Creates to make new 8-bit style Mega Man games Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10. These games essentially turn the clock backwards from Mega Man 7 and Mega Man 8, but also arrived at the right time for a nostalgia cycle hitting the same time digital games were starting to become popular on consoles.
In spite of the existence of Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10, fans lost confidence that Capcom would continue to keep making new games of the Blue Bomber. Former Capcom employee and Mega Man steward Keiji Inafune utilized that spurned fandom to drive interest and funding to Mighty No 9. Sold as a spiritual successor to Mega Man that would take that franchise’s legacy forward, Mighty No 9 would live in infamy as one of the most serious botched projects in the history of crowdfunding, with a final game that turned out well below the expectations for even a new NES style Mega Man.
In 2018, Capcom finally releases Mega Man 11, the first new game in the series to come under the leadership of Capcom veteran Koji Oda. Oda has taken it upon himself to become head of the Mega Man franchise moving forward.
While Mega Man 11 wasn’t quite a new breakout hit, it was received favorably enough by fans and reviewers to accept the new direction the series has taken.
But even then, it has already been five years since that game, so we weren’t quite clear how committed Capcom was to reviving Mega Man. The company has certainly seen considerably more success with Resident Evil and Monster Hunter, but their current push to diversify with more projects of different genres should be the opening for Oda to lead production of a new game yet again.
