Mega Man, known as in East Asia, is a 1987 platformer game developed and published by Capcom for the NES/Famicom. The first installment in the Mega Man franchise and the original video game series, Mega Man was produced by a small team specifically for the video game console market, a first for Capcom, which up until that point focused on arcade games. It was directed by Akira Kitamura, with Nobuyuki Matsushima as the lead programmer.
The game follows the humanoid robot, Mega Man and his quest to save the world from Dr. Wily and the six "Robot Masters" under his control. Mega Mans nonlinear gameplay lets the player choose the order in which to complete its initial six robot master stages. Each culminates in a boss fight against one of the Robot Masters that awards the player-character a special weapon. Part of the strategy of the game is that the player must choose the order in which to tackle the stages so that they can earn the weapons that will be the most useful for the future stages.
Critics praised Mega Man for its overall design. Mega Man established many of the gameplay, story, and graphical conventions that would define the ensuing sequels, sub series, and spin-offs in the Mega Man series. The game has since been re-released in game compilations such as Mega Man Legacy Collection, ported to iOS/Android, and became a part of console emulation services. A sequel, Mega Man 2, was released 1 year later in Japan and 2 years later in the US. A remake with 3D graphics, titled Mega Man Powered Up/Rockman Rockman, was released for the Sony PSP in 2006.
Plot
In the year 200X, robots developed to assist mankind are commonplace thanks to the efforts of the renowned robot designer Dr. Light/Right. However, one day, these robots go out of control and start attacking humans, and among them, there are six advanced humanoid robots created by Dr. Light/Right for industrial purposes. Known as the "Robot Masters", they consist of Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man. Dr. Light realizes that the culprit responsible for these attacks is his old rival Dr. Wily, but is unsure of what to do. His helper robot, Rock, has a strong sense of justice and offers to be converted into a fighting robot to stop Dr. Wily's plans, dubbing himself Mega Man. He eventually defeats all six Robot Masters and recovers their central cores, then confronts Dr. Wily within his Pacific-based robot factory, where he is manufacturing copies of Dr. Light's robots. After defeating replicas of Dr. Light's Robot Masters, and several robot masters designed specifically by Wily to defeat him, Mega Man confronts Wily in a final showdown and defeats him before returning home to his family.
The initial Western release of the game has the same plot, and some significantly changed details from the Japanese Famicom manual. In this version, Dr. Light and Dr. Wily (who is portrayed as Dr. Light's former assistant) co-create the humanoid robot Mega Man alongside the six Robot Masters, each of whom were designed for the benefit of Monsteropolis's citizens (no such place existed in the original plot). Dr. Wily, angered by Light taking credit for their work and desiring to use his creations for criminal purposes, steals the Robot Masters and modifies them, then creates his own army of robots to seize control of Monsteropolis and declare it his own personal empire. Dr. Light, horrified by Dr. Wily's betrayal, sends Mega Man to destroy the Robot Masters and free Monsteropolis from Dr. Wily's machines.
Development
Before Mega Man, Capcom made arcade games, and its console releases were mostly ports of these games. In the mid-1980s, Capcom made plans to develop Mega Man specifically for the Japanese home console market. They decided to bring in fresh, young talent for the small team, including artist Keiji Inafune, a recent college graduate who started on the Street Fighter team. Inafune recalled that the Mega Man development team worked extremely hard to complete the final product,
The development team for Mega Man consisted of only six people. Inafune (credited as "Inafking") designed and illustrated nearly all of the game's characters and enemies, and the Japanese Rockman logo, box art, and instruction manual. He was responsible for rendering these designs into graphical sprite form. Mega Man is colored blue because it seemed that the color had the most shades in the console's 56-color palette (cyan included), and that selection was used to enhance Mega Man's detail. The basic sprites for Roll and Dr. Light were created before Inafune joined the project, and the designs for Cut Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Guts Man were in process.
The team had initially considered names such as "Mighty Kid", "Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Man" before settling on their final decisions. The "Rainbow" name was considered because the character could change into seven colors based on the weapon selected. The production team chose a music motif when naming the main characters in Mega Man. The protagonist's original name is Rock and his sister's name is Roll, a play on the term "rock and roll".
Mega Man was scored by Manami Matsumae (credited as "Chanchacorin Manami"), who composed the music, created the sound effects, and programmed the data in three months, using a sound driver programmed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi (credited as "Yuukichan's Papa"). The musical notes were translated one by one into the computer language. Matsumae was challenged by the creative limits of three notes available at any one time, and when she was unable to write songs, she created the sound effects.
When the game was localized for distribution in America, Capcom changed the title of the game from Rockman to Mega Man. This moniker was created by Capcom's then-Senior Vice President Joseph Morici, who claimed it was changed merely because he did not like the original name. "That title was horrible," Morici said. "So I came up with Mega Man, and they liked it enough to keep using it for the U.S. games." 1UP.coms Nadia Oxford attributed this change to Capcom's belief that American children would be more interested in a game with the latter title.
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