"The Shadow" Retrospective

To honor Mega Man 9's arrival, let us take a look back at the events that led up to MM9's official announcement:

It all started with a single comment made in response to the post, "Capcom Sees Film Industry As Easy Money, Future Franchises To See Theatrical Adaptations?" The comment:

"No movie anytime soon, the only thing original series thing planned in the near future is Rockman 9 for VC and PS3 Download." -The Shadow (Capcom Insider)

'The Shadow's' comment was soon swept under the rug. I mean c'mon, we've been hearing claims of a MM9 for years. Why would I, or anyone else for that matter, believe some random individual? Well, what happened next was truly unexpected...

One fine June morning, the OFLC ratings board revealed that Mega Man 9 was on it's way. The news set the internet a blaze. Immediately after the reports, the enigmatic commenter, The Shadow, quickly become a topic of much speculation. Who was this guy? How did he know about MM9 so early? Soon, I was contacted by The Shadow himself. Our conversation led to numerous revelations:

The Shadow revealed himself as a "beta tester" from the innards of Capcom USA (later revealed to be a front). His intentions were simple and fair: leak as much MM9 info as he could to the fan base using my blog to spread the word. Two days later, I publicly released every morsel of MM9 info The Shadow provided in this post. The information was as follows:

"-Rockman 9 will feature a retro 8-bit art style, a homage to the earlier games.

-Two playable characters: Rockman and Blues (ProtoMan).

- A popular belief is that RM9 will act as the 'link' to the events of the X Series. This is not so, The storyline DOES NOT lead into the X Series, rather it's a 'traditional' plot.

-Many new characters, new Robot Masters and maybe some new supporting characters.

-Gameplay is reminiscent of Rockman 3-6.

-Online components: Leader boards and some unknown form of online play

-RM9 will be on all major home consoles: Wii, X360 and PS3. X360 and PS3 users will be able to purchase the game from their respective download services. It's unknown how the Wii version will work, whether it will be a downloaded game or not. "

The following day, The Shadow dropped another leak, this time pertaining to the story of MM9: "Robots Have Expiring Dates." The very next day, another leak: "MM9's Development Outsourced?"

The newest morsel of info claimed Mega Man 9 was being developed by "two companies"; Capcom Japan and an unidentified "third party." As it turned out, the second developer was none other than Int-Creates of Zero/ZX series fame.

Weeks later, The Shadow vanished, seemingly silenced by Capcom. Shortly afterwords, Capcom's Seth Killian "confirmed" there was an individual leaking MM9 info, penning The Shadow as someone who saw the game in its very early stages, though not a beta tester per se.

And thus ended The Shadow's story. I do hope nothing bad came of him but if you're out there, man, thanks for keeping us posted on MM9!

And so, here we are today, eagerly awaiting to boot up our Wiis and download Mega Man 9 tomorrow, bright and early.  I don't know about you, but I feel as if Christmas is coming, and I won't be able to sleep!