Current Events > Did Mega Man fall off the same way Captain Falcon did?

(+) Yeah! (+)

It feels like Mega Man's online presence has diminished a lot in the last decade.
Mega Man 9 was a shot of adrenaline. He had flash movies. The Ruby Spears cartoon and ytp were there. There was Airman ga taosenai, there was Okkusenman. LPers loved him back before LPs devolved into clickbait and screaming. There was more enthusiasm.

A while ago I asked about Captain Falcon. The consensus was that Captain Falcon lost his allure because he went too long with too few games and people got tired of posting the falcon punch clip. Makes sense. Mega Man still gets the occasional game/re-release though.

they are not even comparable. without smash falcon never becomes an icon and is lost to history more or less. megaman maintained his classic legacy into the ps2 era at least on the basis of games alone. but yes he will probably be a legacy property soon unless gen alpha rediscovers him in a big way

MedeaLysistrata posted...

they are not even comparable. without smash falcon never becomes an icon and is lost to history more or less. megaman maintained his classic legacy into the ps2 era at least on the basis of games alone. but yes he will probably be a legacy property soon unless gen alpha rediscovers him in a big way

There was some similarity. Obviously Captain Falcon/Falcon Punch were the biggest single fad, but Mega Man had an online following with a lot of their own jokes in the late 00s. I don't know if it was all powered by SSBB pre-release hype or because people still believed they'd both continue to get games.

I liked when both were things people would bring up fairly regularly.
Now they're both like Rugal's wax sculptures in KOF. They just occupy spots on Smash roster, devoid of hype.

f-zero as a franchise is pretty much dead and captain falcon is more viewed as a weird old novelty outside of smash

megaman is one of the earliest, if not the very earliest, victims of capcom milking a franchise far beyond sustainability but he hung on for WAY longer than pretty much anyone they've ever done that to outside of street fighter. Megaman sustained itself through multiple long stretches of games that were mostly put together as budget asset reuse exercises and to this day people still want more

Captain Falcon never had online presence.

Mega man 11 believe it or not is the best selling mega man game ever and the battle network collection is also pretty sucesful, so yeah, people still care about mega man. Capcom just to has to care about mega man, lol.

creativerealms posted...

Captain Falcon never had online presence.

Sure he did.
Old internet fads liked to big characters up, lots of them were derivative of the Chuck Norris thing. Captain Falcon got depicted like that a lot but more eccentric. People would be going SHOW ME YA MOVES and FALCON PUNCH/KICK all the time.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Mega man 11 believe it or not is the best selling mega man game ever and the battle network collection is also pretty sucesful, so yeah, people still care about mega man. Capcom just to has to care about mega man, lol.

A game can sell amazingly and people can barely talk about it after it's been out for a month. That's basically every game now. More people than ever play video games. Older generations still play games as they age, younger ones are getting in faster than ever. The stigma of being a nerd has all but vanished. Of course sales records will be smashed. I'm not impressed by that.

I'm talking about some actual creative expression from the following. Fan projects, fads. People used to make things fairly regularly. Mega Man had it and then it just disappeared at some point.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

I'm talking about some actual creative expression from the following. Fan projects, fads. People used to make things fairly regularly. Mega Man had it and then it just disappeared at some point.

A dude has been working on a mega man corruption fan game for the last longest and fan mods for older mega man titles/demakes for stuff like mega man 8 and X8 is usually releasing/going to release here and there. The mega man online activity or whatever was never super huge in the first place, but the series gets more fan activity/whatever the hell the metrics you countin' now than what most other old video game series can get.

Mad-Dogg posted...

A dude has been working on a mega man corruption fan game for the last longest and fan mods for older mega man titles/demakes for stuff like mega man 8 and X8 is usually releasing/going to release here and there. The mega man online activity or whatever was never super huge in the first place, but the series gets more fan activity/whatever the hell the metrics you countin' now than what most other old video game series can get.

There are so many hacks for The original MM, MMX, etc is crazy fun.

Imagine Mega Man Legends 3 becomes a soulslike

mach25687 posted...

There are so many hacks for The original MM, MMX, etc is crazy fun.

Yeah I can't wait to try out that X8 one, and mega man unlimited was really fun. Honestly there is a ton of classic mega man and mega man X fan games.

Actually, I need to see whats up with this X5 and X6 demakes. Apparently they are a thing but I didn't check them out yet.

Mad-Dogg posted...

A dude has been working on a mega man corruption fan game for the last longest and fan mods for older mega man titles/demakes for stuff like mega man 8 and X8 is usually releasing/going to release here and there. The mega man online activity or whatever was never super huge in the first place, but the series gets more fan activity/whatever the hell the metrics you countin' now than what most other old video game series can get.

If that's as frequent as it used to be that's nice. There used to be a bunch, mostly MM2. Ultra, Exile, No Constancy, 7FC, 8FC, MM8BDM. Was fun.

Even if he was never that popular to begin with, something's gone. In Japanese stuff it's like he's become an alumni or occasional cameo. Gets into those long medleys they always make because of seniority, instead of because he's actively popular.

Maybe Capcom banishing him to the shadow realm when Inafune left really was the point of no return.

Pshhh, don't need no stinkin' inafune I always say, with his mighty no.9 flopping ass. Mega man as a franchise was created without him, and it can live without'em. The guy that produced mega man 11 post inafune should get a swing at a X game. I for one legit enjoyed 11. Real talk though it was one of the more fun platinum trophies I went for and I kinda' want to do it again.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Pshhh, don't need no stinkin' inafune I always say, with his mighty no.9 flopping ass. Mega man as a franchise was created without him, and it can live without'em. The guy that produced mega man 11 should get a swing at a X game. I for one legit enjoyed 11. Real talk though it was one of the more fun platinum trophies I went for and I kinda' want to do it again.

Agreed in terms of actually making the games.

I'm talking more about the decade long cooling off period.
Remember "One of the first characters we ruled out of MVC3 because they bring nothing to the table was Mega Man."? The SFxT depiction people hated? MML3 being cancelled. The absence of games with only the occasional re-release or spot in Smash Bros propping him up.

I kind of wanted to think this was something they could walk back by going back to making games and the franchise would be able to rebuild the following again.
It's like he went away for a while, the initial love of the franchise was broken and when he came back he was now treated mainly as a source of nostalgia for older players. Sure MM9 was appealing to nostalgia but MMX8 came out 3 year prior and ZX/Starforce were still going. Dropping him for the best part of a decade's messed him up bad.

Mega Megan died so hard that The Protomen still can't work up the will to finish Act 3.

you're really comparing a franchise with 3(or was their a gba game?) games and hasn't had a new one in 2 decades vs a franchise with like 40 games and still getting the occasional game?

plus they just released MM classic, x, zero and battle network collections on current consoles. without smash captain falcon wouldn't even be known. sure he was the default racer in f zero but they had so many different characters.

i wish nintendo would put out a new f zero game. they did finally release a new 2d metroid after 2 decades. but then star fox is another series that seems dead. they tried a new game on wii u but never bothered to rerelease it on the switch like most of the other wii u first party games.

i been happy with the megaman revival. 9 and 11 are both great games. 10 was good but definitely just wasn't as good as the other 2. the X series needs to be revived. X7 was trash and i never played X8 but heard that one is actually good. but we're due for X9.

Mad-Dogg posted...

Yeah I can't wait to try out that X8 one, and mega man unlimited was really fun. Honestly there is a ton of classic mega man and mega man X fan games.

Actually, I need to see whats up with this X5 and X6 demakes. Apparently they are a thing but I didn't check them out yet.

Well for X5 I know about the Mega Man X5 Improvement Project

• Alias hints are permanetly disabled
• Keep both character bonuses regardles of which is choosen
• Each Heart Tank/Life-Up/Weapon-up Part affect both X & Zero
• Save/Load menu was given a redesign
• Fixed the injured sprites for X & Zero

And some more stuff.

creativeme posted...

you're really comparing a franchise with 3(or was their a gba game?) games and hasn't had a new one in 2 decades vs a franchise with like 40 games and still getting the occasional game?

No. I would have said F Zero in the title if I was. I said Captain Falcon though.
I was on about the character's presence online.

Captain Falcon was Nintendo's Chuck Norris for a while. Mega Man could do a lot, he was an all purpose protagonist and games/cartoons yielded enough material to keep him fun to talk about.

Both died off. I'm curious what exactly happened to each. Captain Falcon became 'that nostalgia act from Smash' and Mega Man got left out for most of the 2010s.
And both are lacking a flow of real games. Not re-releases, not cameos, not mobile games.

battle network collection sold very well

Mega Man 11's kind of an anomaly.

They just randomly showed up in 2018 with a new game.
You couldn't expect the plot to do much but spin the wheels after 9 and 10 did the same thing. They give you a strong Mega Man this time, one that can slow down time and use super moves. In the other games if you wanted spike shields and other lifelines you'd have to save up for them. Basic Dr Wily must be stopped story, Yellow Devil shows up for the throwback.
It seems like an entry point for newer players but then they never followed up with a 12 in a similar style.

And all people really say about it is "No look they made MM11 as well." in between shipments of repackaged Mega Man games from 2-3 decades ago.

ViewtifulJoe posted...

Mega Man 11's kind of an anomaly.

They just randomly showed up in 2018 with a new game.
You couldn't expect the plot to do much but spin the wheels after 9 and 10 did the same thing. They give you a strong Mega Man this time, one that can slow down time and use super moves. In the other games if you wanted spike shields and other lifelines you'd have to save up for them. Basic Dr Wily must be stopped story, Yellow Devil shows up for the throwback.
It seems like an entry point for newer players but then they never followed up with a 12 in a similar style.

And all people really say about it is "No look they made MM11 as well." in between shipments of repackaged Mega Man games from 2-3 decades ago.

honestly the fact that it was a legit fun game and sold well and seems to have reviewed reasonably well and Capcom STILL seems to have no interest in building the brand back up is even more telling.

I kinda want to blame Inafune for this

The feud with Capcom made them reluctant to release a new Megaman games other than the original series. And then it's proven that he's a hack that can't handle his own project (M#9).

They might let the series die and create a new one free from the past. A spiritual successor, but also official.