Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Mega Man Legends is Coming to PSN Next Week!


They did it. They actually did it. After championing the cause for nearly half a decade, Brett Elston and team Capcom USA have made the impossible happen: Mega Man Legends is headed to PlayStation Network in North America.

Capcom has confirmed the original PlayStation classic will launch on the PlayStation Store next Tuesday, September 29th. The game will run for $9.99 - a little pricier than your typical PSOne Classic but far cheaper than the likes of eBay. It will be playable on PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Vita ONLY. Due to "a variety of constraints" it will not play on PSP. Be advised!

This is a huge win for not only the Mega Man community but curious gamers looking to see what all the Legends fuss is about. Capcom USA has my heartfelt thanks for making it happen!

Now, I'm genuinely curious how they got around those gnarly legal hurdles. I wonder if Sony actually eased their master disc image policy and allowed Capcom to go in and remove infringing content. That *might* explain the additional six dollar charge.We'll find out next week!

Bring on 2!

32 comments:

  1. It's a little sad that after so much disappointment, the biggest achievement in recent Mega Man development is being able to buy a game I already have again... But I really can't wait for this to hit the Play Station Network

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  2. "This is a huge win for not only the Mega Man community but curious gamers looking to see what all the Legends fuss is about."

    I mean, it's cool, and I'm glad for people who never got to play the games and didn't want to jump through the hoops of setting up a Japanese PSN, but I'm kind of struggling to see how 'huge' this is.

    If there's some follow up news regarding the series however...

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    1. Considering the biggest news for Mega Man in recent months has been crowdfunded toys, Archie comic crossovers, and an HD compilation of 6 Classic games everyone owns, I'd say it's at least a notably positive development. What makes it big is how hard it was to port this specific title to modern consoles. Legal hurdles and whatnot.

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    2. By "everyone", we really mean the small subset of old time, hardcore MM fans out there. Capcom clearly aimed for more casual gamers to get introduced to the franchise with the Legacy Collection, and the challenges IMO were more of a bone thrown for old time fans.

      I believe MM isn't getting revived without new fans being brought into the fold, marketing to the hardcore fanbase isn't going to provide ROI in Capcom's eyes. I'll provide polite praise for anything that aims to do that

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    3. @AnonymousSeptember 25, 2015 at 8:17 AM

      I don't know why my original reply didn't go through, but I basically said something along the lines of "fair enough," all things considered.

      @AnonymousSeptember 25, 2015 at 9:13 AM

      I don't really agree with that. The Classic series has been re-released at least once every generation since the PSX days. I don't think it's some "small subset of people" who own those games in one form or another. Heck, the Anniversary Collection that only released in the west sold over half a million units by itself. Not to say it's necessarily a majority of fans, I have no data for that, but I don't think it's a particularly small group either. Mega Man 9 was marketed largely to old time fans and it sold better than Capcom could have ever expected, and provided enough ROI for them to claim to be happy with it very openly.

      If the Legacy Collection was aimed at more casual gamers, they should have done more to market it. They did more for it than most Mega Man games get as far as promotion, and having a physical release will help, but an actual ad or two for television would have helped a big way there.

      Capcom needs to work on their marketing for the series in general though.

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  3. Anything that makes old classics legally available and easily obtainable by today's interested parties is great by me! I don't have a compatible Sony system, but that doesn't make me any less happy.

    I'm always for the preservation of older games by keeping them on the market in some form or another!

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  4. Day one buy. I can't wait to play this on my Vita. <3

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    1. Excuse me for asking an odd question, but are you THE Pitch? The one from the MegaMan Legends Station forums?

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    2. *blink* Erm... Yep. That's me.

      Are you THE Anonymous?

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    3. Haha, no, I don't post anywhere much, so I can't quite be 'THE' yet. Anyway, it's no big deal. I just remembered reading many of your comments at MMLS and recognised the name here, got curious and asked =)

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  5. i, honest to god, gave a huge clap to a point that made my hands hurt.

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  6. Well, it's like they say.

    "Here we go again."

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  7. Very cool. I have the original for the PS1, I have the PSP import, OUYA PSX Emulator version, and I will more than likely purchase this on the PS3, just to show some extra support! Plus I like the way the controls are on the Playstation controller best.
    Glad to see things moving in the Mege Man Legends world. I still haven't given up hope for Legends 3...
    -Logan O

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  8. Instant buy!! can't wait for MML2 to be released aswell!! :D

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  9. Hoho Excellent, can.t wait to play it along with Legends 2.
    Hopefully nothing much is changed in the content though then again most of the illegal stuff has nothing to do with gameplay so it should be fine.

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  10. I think the original MML is far better than 2, and I like the game, but it's outdated. I don't see too many people picking this up from this generation being all that impressed and becoming crazed hardcore fans begging for a sequel to the sequel. At best what I think this release will do is shoot some life into a small subset of an already small fanbase.

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  11. YAY I can afford this game now

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    1. Too little too late nothing! It doesn't need to lead into anything more, it's just cool to see this be available to new audiences.

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    2. What new audience? No one is gonna be looking for an outdated relic, get real.

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    3. With that kind of logic, all Mega Man games are outdated relics and you're an ancient grandpa. Believe it or not, there are newer gamers who have a fondness and appreciation for the "outdated relics" of past.
      - Dr. Jerk.

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    4. Most Mega Man games are relics but not outdated, my stance and argument stands.

      Think of it like this, does Mega Man X4 sprites look out dated to you? If no, that is because it reached a point were aesthetically sprites just were beautiful representations of art and artistic technique. But take a really early 3D game, and it clearly looks technically inaccurate because of the limitations in geometry, movement and memory (for detail), and through that inaccuracy I don't think it formed or garnered its own aesthetically pleasing style with a large enough fanbase.

      Think of it like that for gameplay, as a simple 2D action platformer, very early Mega Man just did it right and aged really well (gameplay wise) and set the standard for the rest of the games that followed in its footsteps, Legends did not follow in those footsteps and frankly I think it didn't blaze a trail for the path that it did take.

      Like I said I could be wrong, but I think the vast majority of people will look at Legends as outdated and I highly doubt a new audience will emerge with a great fondness and appreciation for MML, I see the hardcore (the very small group of hardcore) fans making up the majority of the sales. Same with re-releasing games from the Classic or X series, only difference is those two have a much bigger fame, frame of success in the past and fanbase than Legends, even then those two series still won't get a ton of loyalists buying re-releases (but many games from those two are easier to market to a small realistic portion of a new audience).

      We will see how it goes though. I am not offended by my grandpa status in this case as it can come with wisdom and experience.

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  13. Now capcom needs to put up legends 2,X6 and maybe mega man 5 and 6 for people who don't a have a ps4 to get the legacy collection.

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  14. just after i bought a copy off ebay

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  15. No one's going to be looking for an outdated relic? Then why do people buy all of these old games? People are constantly buying and selling thousands of older games... be it on official services like PSN, XBLA, and Steam, or on eBay and Amazon and garage sales. Your logic is tremendously flawed.

    If a game is truly good, it will age well through its mechanics, characters, and story.

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    1. That's what I meant I don't think this game aged well and don't think its game design is timeless.

      Also I clearly implied no new generation (by saying no one) will be looking for an outdated relic (dramatically of course), you are misleading. Old/older videogames sale as a market, but no one video game just getting introduced to modern audiences that is very or even moderately old pick up some substantial new audience almost always, especially if there are no updates to the game at all. At best a very popular game of the past will get a fraction of its fans repurchasing the game making it a really successful re-release.

      So grounded in reality I don't see MML's PSN release doing all that well and attracting some new audience large enough to make any real difference. I will happily eat my words but history points to that as an unlikely possibility and outcome.

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  16. For what it is this game is still fun to play and is still quite impresive in a retro sort-of way. I can see this selling well and being worth the effort to get it on PSN. MML2 is still the better game,though, and hopefully it'll get released soon.

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  17. Nah, I enjoyed exploring the one big island and its vast underworld better than island hopping in Legends 2.

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    1. Same here, (I'm the anon in the debates), I also like the superior voice acting, the NPC interactions, and general mood and story telling style of the first. I'll give 2 credit for improving the very bad lock-on system of the first but it generally retained a lot of the coasting the first game suffered from, if not worse.

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    2. I wonder what a Mega Man Legends remake would need to do in order to redeem itself as Mega Man's first foray to 3D, in the eyes of the majority of Mega Man fans who prefer either 2D Mega Man games or other 3D games at the time, like Zelda and Mario 64. Would it be enough if the movement interface was different, and if so, how? Was Legends 3 going in the right direction, or not doing enough, from what we saw? How does EX Troopers compare, better or worse than what Legends did?

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    3. Mario was just Mario in 3D, Zelda was just Zelda in 3D, that was their design philosophy anyway. Mega Man Legends was Mega Man adventure RPG spinoff with some small likeness to Mega Man, in fact it was more Zelda in 3D than Mega Man. So I don't think the two situations are comparable to each other.

      Super Mario 64 is pretty much Mega Man in 3D, it already has a nonlinear stage progression (letting you choose from stages to pick and beat), and the rest is gravy. Just replace the Mario aesthetics with Mega Man ones replace Mario's model with a Mega Man one (with his character and voice replaced as well obviously) keep the moveset outside of bombdrop, and head stomp and replace those with buster shot and slide, design the stages and enemies around Mega Man, and there you have a damn good Mega Man game in 3D. From there flesh it out as Mario has done for it's future games in 3D.

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