§bIn the year 1987, Capcom sought to make a game based on Astro Boy.

§9The plans fell through though, so a man named Keiji Inafune was tasked with creating new characters for the game during development.

§bIt was actually Akira Kitamura (A.K. in the games' credits) who created the main character's iconic sprites. Inafune merely refined the character's concept with his artwork.

§9You could say the two of them worked together like Dr. Light and Dr. Wily, only A.K. didn't turn evil in the end.

§bThough... funny thing about that. In the Japanese version, Light and Wily were never partners. Wily was just some guy who showed up out of nowhere to steal Dr. Light's robots.

§9And did you know that Mega Man never even threatened to kill Wily in the Japanese version of Mega Man 7? He just said he didn't trust him and demanded to know what he was really up to when begging for mercy.

§bAnyway, the end result, Mega Man for the NES, was commendable, but had slippery controls and overused a red and orange color scheme in many areas.

§9Mega Man himself was almost red too, but was changed to blue because the NES had more blue colors in its palette than red.

§bDue to the game's uncomfortable quirks leading to lack of success, a sequel wasn't given the blessing by management. But Inafune and his team set out to make one anyway, juggling it between their other assignments.

§9It was this labor of love that cemented Keiji Inafune as the father of the entire Mega Man series.

§bFor the sequel, the controls were tightened, the artwork became more elaborate and colorful, and the difficulty was adjusted, even including two modes in the US version.

§9Kids were also allowed to submit their own boss designs during development. A total of 8370 entries were submitted for Mega Man 2's eight robot masters.

§bThe rest, as they say, is history.

§9Mega Man rose to fame with six games on the NES and five on the Game Boy. The two series evolved in parallel, with Mega Man 4-6 adding second fortresses to lengthen playtime, while Mega Man IV and V (Rockman World 4 and 5 in Japan) tried to become perfect in their succinctness. They won out in the end, as the two of them frequently compete with Mega Man 2 for the title of best Mega Man game ever, while Mega Man 4-6 slowly got long in the tooth.

§3But the sacred formula of eight robots and a fortress wasn't enough when it came time to leap to the 16-bit and 32-bit eras. Mega Man 7 was criminally short compared to most other SNES games; the classic stage select mechanic came to be seen as a puzzle that you breeze through when you know the solution rather than an invitation to replay the game many different ways.

§1Mega Man 8, meanwhile, had Frost Man's stage and Wily Stage 1, which barely counted as levels for reasons that are memetic today.

§3Thus Mega Man began to decline in popularity and relevance.

§1Instead of trying new things, he began to spin off into new series, with Mega Man X beginning the trend. The X series only helped to hasten the decline in the end though, with X6 and X7 nearly ruining everything for everyone, especially poor Megaman Volnutt who had been working hard to forge his own identity at the time.

§3Megaman Battle Network and Megaman Zero revived things for a while, but began to peter out in the public's mind halfway through their series' run. Thus Star Force went largely ignored and unloved and there were not enough fans left to support Mega Man ZX when it came out.

§9But then the original returned, putting his best foot forward in Mega Man 9 and 10. A resurgence of interest came with him, and many people eagerly awaited what further adventures the legacy character might embark on in Megaman Legends 3 and beyond.

§3But then, Inafune finally reached his limit. He departed from Capcom before he burnt himself out, and without him watching Volnutt's back, Megaman Legends became more famous in death than it ever was in life.

§1Not only was it ended, but the rest of the spinoffs followed. It's been one of the loudest silences in the history of video games.

§3It still continues to affect Inafune's attitude to this day. He blames himself at least in part for the cancellation of Legends 3 and would leap back onto the project right away if given another chance.

§1Perhaps with another chance, Mighty No. 9 wouldn't have become a stillborn franchise due to his mismanagement either. He's been lying low ever since that debacle. It feels like the only good thing he did with that project was encourage Yooka-Laylee and Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night to get created.

§3It's a sad injustice to have a life so violently snuffed out when it's at the start of a renaissance and it seemed to have plenty more fruitful years left in it. It looks like we may not be getting any more Mega Man for a long time.

§9But... then again, maybe we will.

§bMega Man still lives to this day. The fans won't let him die. Thanks to starring in many popular works from Mega Man Unlimited by MegaPhilX to Bob and George by David Anez, he's practically become a public domain character despite not legally being in the public domain.

§9Perhaps the public domain isn't an area defined by law at all, but a concept in the science of anthropology? Perhaps everything enters the public domain immediately upon creation, regardless of what the law says?

§bAfter all, it's pretty obvious by now that Mega Man has achieved immortality through the people who love him, like many old things have. Heck, programs as old as DOS still refuse to die as well even though we live in a world where everyone uses something that's at least comparable to Windows 7.

§9It's part of a life cycle. Something new comes along, it becomes popular for a while, then its turn ends and something else comes along. But the formerly new thing usually doesn't die outright; instead it gradually becomes vintage, a valuable antique, or a coveted luxury. It may even return to life in the public's eye one day after spending years living quietly and humbly, as if biding its time.

§bOr it may even be reincarnated, as is the case with RosenkreuzStilette, Rokko-Chan, and Azure Striker Gunvolt. Spiritual successors are especially common in video games.

§9BlazBlue is a spiritual successor to Guilty Gear.

§bPokemon Black/White is said to be one to MOTHER 3.

§9Bioshock and Dead Space are ones to System Shock.

§bThe Boktai series is one to Metal Gear: Ghost Babel.

§9Mercenary Kings carries the spirit of the Contra and Metal Slug series.

§bFreedom Planet began as one to the original Sonic the Hedgehog trilogy, then grew beyond that, becoming a love letter to all great mascot platformers of old.

§9And who's to say that Megaman Legends 3 won't one day be completed by the fans, not as an 8-bit platformer, but as the 3D adventure game it was originally meant to be? Give it enough time, not only for someone to get a team together but for everyone else to be sure that some other company can't or won't do it, and it's bound to happen. The Legends series probably deserves it too seeing as it pioneered a lot of adventure mechanics before The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time did.

§bEven when the video game industry looks rickety with bloated budgets, rampant game cancellations, and studio closures, remember that when the big trees in the forest fall, they just make room for the new saplings sprouting on the forest floor.

§9Maybe those saplings will become big trees too, with all the good and bad that entails. It's a shame to see such grand old trees rot away, partly because we always know their deaths could have been avoided if only someone had been a little less stupid or short-sighted.

§bBut as long as people love video games, the natural life cycle will continue.

§9At the very least, be thankful that creations always exist separately from their creators. The rights for those characters always end up going somewhere, and they'll either find loving homes with new creators, or the rights will expire, opening up the floodgates for fan works.

§bCourse, it's not like that's ever stopped the Mega Man fandom before. And that's one thing we should always be thankful to Capcom for. Whether it's because they're apathetic or have never completely lost their sanity, Capcom has always been happy to let the fans keep their franchises warm for them until the day they, or whatever company will gain their rights should the worst happen, revisit them.

§9Granted, Capcom has always had a tendency to overcook their franchises with far too many sequels. But looking back, it's quite amazing the amount of content we've gotten out of Mega Man. The classic flavor in particular has maintained a good standard of quality. Even its worst games aren't genuinely bad.

§b(Discounting Mega Man 1 and 3 for DOS, of course. And that Game Gear one.)

§9For a franchise that's heavily criticized for never innovating, it's actually pretty amazing the amount of originality each new Mega Man game requires. Each new game demands a new set of 8 robot masters, and with them must come new weapons, new levels for using said weapons, new music, new tile sets and enemy graphics, and new cutscenes and stories that make sense with the new robot masters, even though story has never been one of the games' strong points.

§bSo even though preserving the sacred formula meant that the games eventually stopped being big enough to be worth burning to cartridges or discs, the fundamental nature of that design helped preserve the franchise against stagnation.

§9Course, that also cursed the series in a way, ensuring that its villains and side characters would always be more interesting than its protagonist.

§bBut Hitoshi Ariga and Ian Flynn did an excellent job at fixing that.

§9Besides, even if you still insist on criticizing the franchise for being unoriginal, can you blame people for wanting to keep revisiting an old friend? Would you like it if all your friends kept disappearing so you had to constantly go out to make new ones?

§bI didn't think so.