Mega Man (Series)

Mega Man, known in Japan as Rockman (ロックマン, Rokkuman), is a video-game franchise created and published by Capcom that centers on a humanoid fighting robot who defeats enemy robots and copies their weapons. ¹² It began with the game *Mega Man* on the Famicom in 1987 and has since expanded into a family of interconnected series spanning multiple console generations. ²⁶

The protagonist is a robot originally named Rock, built by the scientist Dr. Thomas Light as one of two assistant “children” alongside his sister Roll — a pun on “rock and roll.” ¹ When Light’s jealous former colleague Dr. Wily reprograms the doctor’s utility robots for world conquest, Rock volunteers to be rebuilt as a super fighting robot and is renamed Mega Man. ¹⁶ His role across the original story is to battle Wily and his ever-growing army of robots using his arm cannon, the Mega Buster, and his ability to absorb the special weapon of each Robot Master he defeats. ¹ Mega Man’s stated goal is to protect the world and to see humans and robots one day live in peace, an aim summarized in the games as “everlasting peace.” ¹ The first game’s roster of enemy robots included Bomb Man, Guts Man, Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man, each yielding a weapon upon defeat. ⁶⁷

Design and inspirations

The character was designed by Akira Kitamura, with the final animation of Mega Man produced by Keiji Inafune based on Kitamura’s initial design. ¹⁷ Its creators drew on Japanese anime for both the design and story, particularly Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy (Tetsuwan Atom), a robot-boy tale that was itself an adaptation of the Pinocchio story about an inventor and his artificial child. ¹⁰¹¹ Inafune has said that music played one of the most important roles in the series’ inspiration. ⁹

Mega Man was a 2D action platformer developed by Capcom in the 1980s. ⁶ Its most influential contribution to 8-bit gaming was letting players choose which of the initial stages to tackle and in what order — unusual at a time when action platformers ran through a fixed sequence of levels. ⁶ Each Robot Master defeated yielded a new weapon, and another boss would be weak to it, so the stage order and weapon acquisition created a chain of experimentation that gave the playthrough more variety than contemporaries. ⁶ The game had no aiming mechanic — Mega Man fires his arm cannon horizontally, launching up to three pellets at once, so the challenge lay in timing shots against enemies that fly in from every direction. ⁶ The debut sold an estimated 500,000 copies — modest for the era — a shortfall Inafune attributed partly to the American box art, which Capcom commissioned in a single day, with the artist reportedly spending only about six hours on it. ⁷ Capcom greenlit a sequel regardless, and *Mega Man 2* became one of the best-selling and most acclaimed NES games. ⁷

Mega Man Review [NES]SuperkenGaming

The original series

The numbered “classic” series ran on the NES with Mega Man (1987), Mega Man 2 (1988), Mega Man 3 (1990), Mega Man 4 (1991), Mega Man 5 (1992), and Mega Man 6 (1993), moved to the Super NES for Mega Man 7 (1995), and reached the PlayStation and Saturn with Mega Man 8 (1996). ³⁵ The Japanese titles carried subtitles absent from the Western releases, such as Rockman 2: The Mystery of Dr. Wily, Rockman 3: The End of Dr. Wily!?, and Rockman 5: Blues’ Trap?!. ³ After a long hiatus, Mega Man 9 (2008) and Mega Man 10 (2010) returned to a retro 8-bit style on PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360, and Mega Man 11 arrived in 2018 on PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. ³

The classic games were repackaged repeatedly: the Complete Works line issued each of the first six NES titles individually on PlayStation in 1999, the compilation Mega Man: The Wily Wars (1993) gathered them on the Genesis, and the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (2004) reassembled the series on GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox. ³ A parallel run of five Game Boy titles — Dr. Wily’s Revenge (1991), Mega Man II (1991), Mega Man III (1992), Mega Man IV (1993), and Mega Man V (1994) — extended the classic era on handhelds, and were later gathered in the Rockman World line. ³⁵

Spin-offs of the classic era included the arcade fighting-style games Mega Man: The Power Battle (1993) and Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters (1994), the racing title Mega Man Battle & Chase (1997), Mega Man Soccer (1994), the RockBoard board game (1993), and the remake Mega Man Powered Up (2006), which added the Robot Masters Time Man and Oil Man to the roster. ³⁸ Super Adventure Rockman (1998), released on PlayStation and Saturn, offered an interactive-movie interpretation of the classic characters. ³

Sub-series

The franchise branched into several distinct continuities set across an evolving future timeline. ² Mega Man X, launched on the Super NES in 1993, follows X — described as the powerful evolution of the classic fighting robot — as he battles rogue robots called Mavericks; the series added dashing and wall-jumping for faster-paced combat and, across its eight main entries, introduced the playable characters Zero and later Axl. ²⁴ The X games ran from Mega Man X (1993) through Mega Man X8 (2004), with X7 and X8 moving into 3D character models and environments; the spin-off Mega Man X: Command Mission (2004) recast the cast as a turn-based role-playing game. ³⁴

Mega Man Legends (1998) took the series into 3D action-adventure on the PlayStation, spawning Mega Man Legends 2 (2000) and The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (1999). ²³ Mega Man Battle Network (2001) reimagined the property as a role-playing series on the Game Boy Advance, following the NetNavi MegaMan.EXE and running to multiple numbered entries often split into paired versions. ¹³ The Mega Man Zero series (2002–2005) and the Mega Man ZX games (2006–2007) continued the timeline on Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS. ²³

Mega Man: Dual Override - Reveal TrailerCapcom USA

The franchise also crossed over into other properties, appearing in Capcom’s Marvel vs. Capcom fighting games and the fan-made-turned-official crossover Street Fighter X Mega Man (2012). ¹³ A new entry, Mega Man: Dual Override, has been announced as forthcoming. ⁶