Megaman 9 is so retro and no insert credit love?

[Blackbox]

Well from my younger brother's lurking on forums I found out that Capcom is making Megaman 9, which is already exciting because there is no insipid letters to the title. It is 100% 8-bit graphic style and will be released on PSN, Xbox live and WiiWare. If this game is successful (really successful) it could start a trend of graphics not being more important than gameplay. I like the retro aesthetic not just in itself but because today's media (doesn't really work in this case downloaded games and all ) DVD and Nintendo DS cartridges would have so much extra space and the game might benefit from retro graphics and more focus on gameplay.

Anyways here some screens, allegedly from Nintendo Power.

http://i28.tinypic.com/10hspkp.jpg

http://i26.tinypic.com/2wrjac9.jpg

http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/MM9/5.PNG

http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/MM9/6.PNG

http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/MM9/8.PNG

http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/MM9/9.PNG

http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/MM9/10.PNG

Unofficial(?) game info like robot masters names and such. Get this SplashWoman!! link below:

http://gonintendo.com/?p=47632

[Burnsro]

It's not yet confirmed for PSN and XBLA release.

I wonder if it will still feel like the NES games or if it'll feel different (jumping or shooting may feel slightly off) and just have 8bit graphics plastered over it.

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

I guess I'll be the first to ask: is this really necessary? I mean...isn't it a bit excessive? Personally, I'd be more comfortable with high-res 2-D graphics. I think I'm as retro as the next IC user, but...has anyone ever said that NES graphics are actually good-looking? I see their charm as purely nostalgic. But I've never been a Megaman fan--it always felt clunky and heavy to me.

On the other hand: gameplay does matter more than graphics, and I'm just glad that it isn't 3-D--not because 3-D is inherently evil, but because Megaman is an inherently 2-D series...though Legends was good...hm.... Anyway, if it's cheaper to make this way, then awesome; and if the team is more passionate then even better! (I'd actually be really interested to know what the thinking was behind this, and the process that the team used to design it: if they replayed the old games and if any of them are alumni from the series' roots. I hope an interview ends up on Gamasutra....)

Blackbox: hasn't the Wii already proven that graphics aren't as important as a magical beam stick and budget pricing?

[NFG]

Gotta say I'm not impressed. If it was coming out in 16 bit glory I'd be excited, but NES-era graphics reek of more fail than nostalgia to me (I was not a member of the NES generation).

Of course, no one cares what I think, but seriously: 8 bit instead of 16? Sounds more like cost-cutting than any real nod t'wards a retro aesthetic.
_________________

[L]

[Koji]

This only serves to highlight the fact that Megaman has been doing the same goddamned thing for the past two decades. I hope this game means they're no longer putting any money into the series, so they can give it a rest, once and for all.

[!=]

[Jon R.]

[aderack]

[lordnikon]

Megaman 9 is an important game. For the first time something really challenges the perception of generational inferiority that has been crammed down all of our throats by teams of corporate marketing drones since the dawn of consoles.

It is interesting to see so many people echoing these themes. They are either blasting the game as some retro cash-in or are complaining about it's 8-bit inspired art direction, wishing for 16-bit or higher 2D. I have also seen comments where people are complaining about the fact that actual pixels are being displayed. I find this to be fascinating. With the now widespread use of HDTV displays, all of a sudden pixels are seen as a graphical defect that need to be corrected/fixed.
_________________
www.onlineconsoles.com - network gaming for the Dreamcast, GameCube & Playstation 2

[Cacophanus]

What's much more interesting is that it's being developed by Inti Creates. They made Gunbike on the PSone and the actually good Eureka Seven PSP game (not to mention a swathe of Megaman games too obviously!).

[liquidcross]

I'm all over this like flies on shit. (For obvious reasons.)

While I don't mind it coming to WiiWare, I'd prefer a PSN release if possible, as that platform actually has a viable backup solution.

[FortNinety]

Yeah, count me in as another person that is pleased as punch that this is coming out. My only concerns is related to stupid stuff, like how one of the bosses is a woman, and wondering if this bridges the classic and X series.
_________________

[lordnikon]

[sfried]

I hear it's being headed by Inafune's IntiCreates.

[aderack]

Yeah, I was wondering about the X thing as well. That may or may not fit into what I expect is Inafune's real plan here -- that being the meta. Splash Woman sure does fit, though!

Already I'm getting some twinges of playfulness. Cement Man... yeah...

[aderack]

Brady: Also, I meant to ask you, what are your thoughts on Megaman 9?

eric-jon: Oh, I thought we'd discussed it.
Well, it's Inafune.
It would be, wouldn't it.
The fact that it's contemporary him, with all the stuff he's into right now, harking back to past him -- the endless Mega Man cycle...
That's pretty meta.
This is one of the more interesting things to happen in the industry for a while.

Brady: My one hope is that while it looks like a NES game, it abuses sprite limit and gives us more animation than the NES could handle.

eric-jon: Oh, I hope not.
I hope it's programmed for NES hardware.

Brady: Really? Wow.
What we did talk about prior is creators from the 8bit days still being around, and Inafune is one of them.

eric-jon: Working within limitations. Part of the point of the exercise, I would think, is developing an NES game with the benefit of twenty years of hindsight.

Brady: Hrm, there is that.
eric-jon: To experiment with the evolution of design, and how it might or might not be independent of the choice of medium. And how the choice of medium might be a stylistic choice as much as anything -- akin to choosing charcoal over pastel or oil.
The NES is still a viable platform. Is qualities are simply qualities. Its visuals look the way they do, its sounds sound the way they do.
Its capacity is what it is.
And I think that's worth exploring from a contemporary standpoint.
It's a valuable step, I think, toward understanding the art of game design.

Brady: If it wasn't viable, a lot of these, like you wouldn't have Tectoy or all these tv game things.

[!=]

I feel very much about the usage of hardware platform as stylistical choices, having actually argued for that view in my demoscene circles.

Machines, akin to musical instruments, carrying a historical weight, a lesser, yet more personal relationship to people AND a set of capabilities -- the timbre of the instrument -- that makes it recognizable.

The conflict between an author and his/her medium as a creative force: tension between a mind that wants to drive the medium in places it does not naturally go, appeasement when this same mind tries to exalts its qualities in their most natural way.

[Mister Toups]

to the people complaining that 8 bit isn't good enough...

in this case, I'd say that it's the most logical choice. we still get new megaman games with SNES style graphics... tons of them, in fact, between what's available on the gba and the DS; and anyway, 8 bit megaman is iconic. megaman made a name for itself on the NES and in many ways is synonymous with the experience of 8 bit gaming for many people. if you were to ask any random person on the street about megaman, assuming he was in any way a gamer, he'd probably think of one of the 8 bit megaman games.

so it's not just about nostalgia. it's about the identity of the franchise. what megaman is all about. nostalgia factors into it, too, but... to be honest, as much as I enjoy something like megaman X, in many ways I feel as if already it loses much of the essence of megaman, while replacing it with something else. I'm looking forward to a more stripped down, back-to-basics experience.

I'm actually quite thrilled that this is being made, if only because the principle of the thing is so great. the game itself... well, who knows. it may be awful. it may be awesome. but it shows that developers are still willing to take chances on unproven ideas and is a rare sign of the industry acknowledging its own history and legacy.

on top of everything else eric-jon has mentioned, as well.

[analogosagnos]

I wouldn't say it's the most logical choice, even if it's the most conceptually appropriate choice. The fact that two (three) Megaman games were made after the (iconic, yes) NES era messes with the feel of continuity enough to put a damper on the logic, and even the notion of it finally bridging the gap between it and the X series. Unless this is even more meta than we think and the NES visuals actually will have some zany in-narrative plot twist function.

Anyway, my first inclination upon hearing about this game was leaning toward eric-jon's stance. I want to see what time has taught us about taking advantage of the real NES hardware. I want to see down-and-dirty clever programming, exploits, real "holy shit you can do THAT on the NES?!" moments. On the other hand, I'm in the same crowd that sits and waits patiently (to no realistic avail) at the time in which the next 2D console Castlevania drops, and who nearly got the chills trying to imagine the (then assumed to be 2D) Street Fighter IV. To that end I'd also very much like to see what the Greatest 8-bit Product Ever would look like.

To be honest, it doesn't look like it's going to be either of these things. Even when I suppress my cynicism of the product as a corporate "move" and look at it as just an experiment, it still looks pretty modest so far. I'm pretty sure it's already been proven that it's not made with real NES limitations, but it already seems like it's more interested in echoing the past than...retroactively surpassing it, or whatever. So I don't see much evidence of that super pixel pushing either. But I guess we'll have to see the animation.
_________________

[another god]

there's a point to having iconic 8-bit megaman, and there's a point to pushing past the NES' limitations.

i mean, why would we want games with drab colors, (unintentional) slowdown, and tons of flicker? as much as i would say it would be a testament to 8-bit gaming to really make an 8-bit game and make it today, it's just not how i'd want CAPCOM to make a game.

all i want to do is be reminded of how great 8-bit megaman was, maybe play a game with the same gameplay, and maybe have that game kicked up a notch or two. plain and simple - do 8-bit limitations interest me as a gamer and a fan of old school mario? no. does megaman? yes.

[Blackbox]

ThisMachineKillsFascists,
Your right the Wii does prove graphics don’t make the game. But, at risk of sounding like the many casual game bashers I was very surprised that the killer app for the Wii was Wii Sports which really needed to be fleshed out more, though it was fun for a few weeks. With Nintendo creating re-releases of Famicom and Game and Watch games in Japan before the Wii, I though there line of thought was leading to something like 9-volt games from Wario Smooth Moves, like the Wind Waker (at 0:53 on the video) or like Balloon Fight ( at 1:30 on the video) but you know a full game (like using a pointer for Okami Wii Version).

[NFG]

[Lurky]

It's not even clear they'll stick with those limits, if this ends up bridging Megaman with Megaman X

we might see something really odd like nes megaman meeting this sprite

I think it's unlikely they'll go with mono sound unless it's actually a nes game.

[Burnsro]

The story is not going to connect to X.

[liquidcross]

[Isfet]

if Capcom is smart, they'll never link the series together. the opportunity to do so (logically and easily) passed over a decade ago, so at this point it would just make more sense to only have vague hints at things for the fans and continue to allow each series to occupy its own space. because really, even though all Mega Man games have something in common, they play quite differently from each other. it would be a shame to just end an entire style of games due to some desire to create true continuity in Mega Man's hilariously fatuous storyline.

anyway, i'm not particularly thrilled about the graphical style chosen for this game, but what i'd prefer is far too unrealistic. the only real potential benefit i see here would be that the game might have the same mechanics and feel of the NES games (a certain kind of tightness), which is something the series never really quite got a hold of on any other console. i don't really know why that is, to be honest, but i imagine it has something to do with adding frames of animation and sprites.

appealing to nostalgia is probably the best move Inafune could make with this series right now, considering how much interest in it dwindled after the earlier games. not that i think this will only be about nostalgia, but the game definitely fits in with what seems to be the game industry's M.O. as of late.

[bloody heartland]

The idea that this is about going back to NES-era hardware limitations is pretty absurd, since this is clearly about ripping off all the Neo-Arcardian cyberapocalypse crap that's encrusted the series for the past decade and getting back to the core concept of Mega Man, which did not include hamfisted robot hitlers or stabs at misguided pathos.

There's no point in ressurecting a corpse when you can invoke the spirit: in any case, since the NES/Famicom used mappers, working within the limitations of the NES is essentally meaningless. Castlevania 3 is not stock NES hardware that sounds that good, it actually has an extra sound chip in it. Conversely I'd have to see a 1982 arcade game with the complexity of Pac Man CE's mechanics to believe such a thing was possible back then - the first game's so limited that once a certain number register goes past a value, the screen glitches out and distorts. The Y2K bug started because back in the 1970s and 1980s computer hardware and memory was so limited and expensive the "year" field could only be stored and expressed in two digits. I doubt something as intricate as CE would have been possible for a few years.

Back to Mega Man: Infaune has wanted to make the kind of games he's wanted to make for years but been stymied by market demands and expectations. Dead Rising was designed so that at any time they got clearance the engine could become Mega Man Legends 3, there's a really awesome quote about that. That's why you can dress up as Mega Man in it.

Getting back to the point: this is about making a Mega Man game that doesn't feel compeled to throw in a cutscene, or a robot sidekick, or high-res graphics for the sake of high res graphics. Mega Man looks sort of weird on the SNES games because he was designed to (but also perfectly expressed by) NES-era pixel art. If you look at the SNES and PSOne Megaman games Bass is actually a lot better looking, because he's designed for the system hardware. So for years we've had goofy or beefed up looking Mega Men because the market and the press would have ripped into a game using the NES sprite. Advancement for the sake of advancement. If a NES-style pixel grid makes Mega Man look his best, maybe the graphics should be designed around that. Likewise, the level design doesn't really improve if you throw in a few story-based levels in there. It's ok to use NES-style level design. Same for the sound - it's ok to think that the NES soundchip sounds good. It doesn't have to be red book audio. Previously the market and press demanded it.

So rather than a NES game that tries to apply lessons learnt on modern hardware, this is a modern hardware game that tries to apply lessons learnt on the NES.

It's possible to do all of this in a modern engine without having to resort to coding in NES assembly. It just takes a carefully selected colour palette, a nicely judged sense of physics and the right instruments and voices for the soundtrack. That's the NES spirit, and Cave Story shows how nice it can be when you invoke it. If the spirit lives on the flesh can rot without loss.

[layazero]

[ferricide]

capcom has stated that they use a variety of methods to figure out what fans want -- their community site and others, even what games sell well on eBay used.

this thread didn't go the way i expected it to, but i guess maybe i should have. i hate to be a total jerkface (preface to being total jerkface) but i find the whole thing a little pretentious in spots. i mean we're talking about a new mega man game, not postmodern literature. i can appreciate wanting to approach games from a serious perspective but ultimately i think it's really unlikely that the creators are approaching the game this way.

'course gaming has always been rather self-referential and in-jokey at the least, so i expect some good tweaks and ribcage-poking from the game, in that form, if nothing more substantive.

[NFG]

[ThisMachineKillsFascists]

[aderack]

[exodus]

fellows, I have to say that the earlier part of this thread is pretty disappointing. I want to remind everyone that we need to avoid the pretension and posing of other forums, and there's just a bit too much of it here. I am once again not sure what to do about it, other than to ask people to stop!

I hope this is clearish and doesn't just sound like whining. The vibe is getting rough, and I want to avoid that.
_________________

[Persona-sama]

Video is up: http://gonintendo.com/?p=48628

It's pretty accurate to the NES it seems. Hopes for meta trickery seem to be crushed.

It'd be neat if the end song or one of the boss songs were performed by the guys who did the Airman ga Taosenai songs though. That's what this game really seems to be aimed for anyway, that Niconico/Futaba classic Rockman audience.
_________________

[Keitronic]

[aderack]

Hard to tell much of anything from that, except that the new background music seems pretty nice!

Even got NES-style flicker and slowdown.

I'd like to see more of the level design. There are some curious things going on there with the mortar destroying parts of the background and the spinning platform doodad.

[liquidcross]

There's rumors than some Mega Man 2 music is reused in the game (for the password screen and boss select screen). That bothers me; as good as that music was, it's a new game, so it should have all new music!

[bloody heartland]

Just to point out - that's not sprite flicker, which is a symptom of a per-line sprite limit. That's pretty clearly a post-injury invincibility flash. If it was sprite flicker you'd see chunks of characters drop out (the infamous easter egg in the colecovision smurf game, the one where you can duck to remove smurfette's dress, is caused by this - the hat on the player character pushes the sprite limit over and the dress spirte drops out).

Likewise, the slowdown could be an artifact of a poor transfer to the .flv format - fluid movement can be wrecked by the framerate of the playback, or a poor codec.

[FortNinety]

[FortNinety]

Some interesting things...



- Now sure what that's supposed to be. So he gets squished or something?

- You can also buy upgrades, a la the Game Boy games, and in Mega Man 7 & 8 for the SNES and PSone/Saturn. So this is the first time you can do it in an "NES" version.

-

[Jon R.]

[liquidcross]

[Koji]

[Koji]