This morning's post on Street Fighter X Mega Man made mention of who the person responsible is, and how it registered on Capcom's radar. But Destrucdtoid has just published a fairly in-depth look at how all the pieces came together, and it's an interesting read to say the least.
The story starts with Seow Zong Hui, a Singaporean engineering student who has been working on the game since 2010, whenever he had time to spare. Seow then approached Christian Svenesson, Senior Vice President of Capcom USA at EVO earlier this year.
Svenesson's initial response was quite positive:
"In my head, we were in the middle of our 25th anniversary celebration of Street Fighter… We had started planning the Mega Man stuff a couple of months earlier, but we didn't have a good opener."
Yet Svenesson was also not an expert on Mega Man, so he obtained a copy and showed it Capcom's Senior Online Community Manager, Brett Elston. And his take?
"There were four levels available at the time… I played through and I only got maybe halfway through the first stage I played, which was Blanka at the time, and even halfway through I was just like, this is great. It feels right, the philosophy of the level design is right. The physics, the jumping — everything feels just like it should. I immediately said go for it."
Once Elston gave the thumbs up, it was time for the hard part: acquiring the necessary funds to finance the project, gathering Q&A resources, plus sorting out the legal mumbo jumbo. Basically, Capcom USA owns Street Fighter rights, while Capcom Japan owns Mega man.
For those within Capcom, especially on the US side, the project is very important to them. Svenesson explains:
"I would argue that if anything, if we get a million downloads of [Street Fighter X Mega Man]… that just helps raise awareness for the brand across the board and creates fertile ground for things to happen regardless of which direction that it kind of comes in."
So for those of you who wish to see Mega Man live on in an official capacity, which seems very unlikely in recent years, downloading Street Fighter X Mega Man might be the way to show that there is indeed a demand.
