Wednesday, February 10, 2016

Mega Man Development Secrets Revealed in Old/New Interview


A 2011 Rockman Maniax interview between Mega Man creator Akira Kitamura and Hitoshi Ariga has been translated courtesy of Shmuplations. It's a delightful read brimming with untold Mega Man development secrets. Seriously! There's so much in here we've never heard before.

Here's my personal favorite bit:

Kitamura: In the beginning, I imagined a character like Mega Man equipped with some kind of weapon, but when you transformed, your whole appearance would change. You know that little protrusion on the top-front of Mega Man’s helmet? When you changed weapons, it was supposed to change like the Ninja Captor character’s helmets, and show a little symbol depending on the weapon’s element (fire, water, lightning, etc).

Ariga: Ah! So that was the idea behind the helmet design…!

Kitamura: Unfortunately, for various reasons, we weren’t going to be allowed to use those symbols like that. 1 But that design element was super important to me—it wasn’t really up for compromise. As I sat there fretting, Matsushita came over and said, “How about this?” What he showed me was the color change mechanic.

As you'll come to read, Ninja Captor (pictured above) is one of many specific Tokusatsu properties that influenced the original Mega Man design plan. Of course, there's a lot more history to it than that.

Other interesting tidbits dropped include Mega Man's ability to turn himself off (when he no longer feels needed), Cut Man as a protagonist, Mega Man's armor was almost white, Roll almost had curls, and oh-so much more. It's crazy, people.

Check out the full interview here and be enlightened!

11 comments:

  1. Wow, that's a lot to process. So much I didn't know. Thanks for sharing Protodude!

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  2. That's an oddly specific inspiration for Mega Man, especially considering how Ninja Captor was dropped from the Super Sentai franchise and left to gather dust.

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  3. I guess this confirms that Mega Man definitely did have influence from Astro Boy and Casshern, which before had only been rumored. But it is pretty obvious otherwise.

    But at least this debunks the rumors that Mega Man was "originally supposed to be an Astro Boy game", or "wholly based on him".

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    1. It wasn't only rumored before, literally if the creators don't say it the interviewer will, why even fight it? I remember more than a couple of interviews with Keiji where the interviewer asks what the inspirations for the creation of Rockman were and just threw in "I know Astro Boy is one" and Keiji just has a yeah yeah moving on to the real inspirations kinda response. I don't know about Casshern but it's like obligatory to add Astro Boy now from the developer/creator's standpoint in an interview.

      The last part of your comment the whole *Mega Man was originally an Astro Boy game* was the only speculated thing on the topic, that still to this day has people rumoring about it without confirmation.

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    2. Megaman X is heavily influenced by the original run of Casshan. You can see similarities between Sigma and Burei king boss.

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  4. Wow, what a really great article! Thanks for posting it. :)

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  5. "I imagine he was conflicted about changing the human Mega into Mega Man"

    Wait...what? Is that just an Ariga thing? Is Rock originally a human in one of Ariga's books?

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    1. Rock was always a robot, just that he was at one point much more human-like and working as an assistant to Light.

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  6. The part where he says Dr. Light failed with Protoman and it revealed his human side was a bit confusing. Anyone know what he meant?

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    1. I think it means he's not perfect. Unlike Mega Man, Proto Man is known to have a system failure with his energy conversion.

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  7. I think this interview is the newest piece of media I have read about Kitamura (even if it happened in 2011). I thought he was dead.

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