I picked up Megaman Zero Complete Works yesterday and also finished reading another one of the way too many Mokou/Kaguya dojins for Touhou and it seems like a good time to reflect on why these two quasi-cult games never got further than they could have. Okay Megaman was never going to be the next Mario but it shouldn't have devolved into something where you can't even sell 100K copies. I'm going to include Touhou here since it follows a very similar pattern as Megaman (first 3 games defined the genre, and then just sort of got lost).
1. Power fatigue. In Megaman no robot master can be reused, and in Touhou all the girls have a non repeating element/power/attribute. As is obvious by the time you get to Megaman 10 there isn't just that many interesting way to have (cold element) Man or (how element) Man, or that by Touhou 11, nuclear fusion is considered a weak power (on the final boss) when you've Sun (Yuka) and Black Hole (Suika) and it makes you wonder why on earth are the last boss feeling powerful with power that isn't even enough to destroy a planet.
It's not surprising the enemies of the first 3 games in these genre tends to occupy the most fan support because after all these are the guys who have all the cool power. It's even worse when you get to the X series where you cannot have repeating animals for the Mavericks and after MMX4 or so, you run out of even meaningful animals that would look like challenging foes.
You can say that these are just the 8 robot masters but it just doesn't feel the same fighting Dark Necrobat compared to say, Storm Falcon, or you fight a girl whose power is 'walk through walls' compared to a girl whose power is to stop time. It's just harder to come up with some interesting game mechanisms that involve Yamato Man compared to the Flash Man who has the time stopper.
This means if you adhere to a 'every character must be unique' like these two cults game do, you really shouldn't have any new characters after about the third game. It's going to be something like the show Hero where either you've new character with some totally lame super power or worse yet it makes you wonder 'are we supposed to be impressed with this new power?' The first modern Touhou game, TH6, has Time, Destiny, Destruction, Darkness, Ice, All Magic locked up, and the characters of in there have dominated fan polls. Metal Wheel from Megaman 2 is arguably the most versatile robot master power ever, and I think it has a lot to do with that Metal Man has a far more versatile slot compared to say, Snake Man or Top Man. I literally see no way you can make Topspin or Search Snake anything more than a gimmick weapon to use on a boss, but Metal Wheel feels completely natural to use it the way it is. Yes it's overpowered to the point that it's probably the best weapon to use on half of the bosses but that's why it's fun.
2. Give the fans what they want. There's way too much dojin on 3 of the major pairs of girls (Destiny/Destruction, Life/Death, Eternity/The Phoenix) because those are the girls who occupy the coolest powers and have the most interesting relationships with each other. Omega is some kind of living legend in the Mugen community since he just naturally fits into the 'super duper awesome boss guy', even though you're talking about a fighting game engine that in theory could make anyone invulnerable, but it's not a surprise people spend all their time making the next unbeatable version of Omega or Evil Ryu or Shin Akuma because they actually fit that kind of role. Speaking of Evil Ryu, this is one part where Capcom gets it right (at least most of the time). Evil Ryu almost always appears in some way or is at least alluded to in every Street Fighter game since Street Fighter Alpha 2. He's obviously a fan favorite and it doesn't matter if his inclusion even make any sense because people just want to see Ryu doing teleports and raging demons. In the Megaman world there should always be Omega (original Zero), and there should always be a X versus Zero fight even if it'd literally make no sense because those are the two really big things for the series in the X and later era. Heck, Omega shows up in ZX for absolutely no reason whatsoever, though by then it's too late to salvage the series. People want to see X exterminating all Reploids (which is more or less what happened with Neo Arcadia anyway) because he got tired of being a wussy pacifist, and yeah maybe some kid out there will be sad to find out Megaman X turned out to be a bad guy but again the entire premise of Megaman Zero is that X is supposed to be the bad guy because he was the one who founded Neo Arcadia that you spent most of the series trying to take down. It's not like anybody really buys the 'that wasn't me, that was Copy X' deal.
3. It takes more than your stars to keep a cult game alive. Megaman didn't get to where it is with just Megaman. If not for Zero, the X series probably wouldn't have ever made it anywhere, and by the Megaman Zero series it was more than even just Zero. The two protagonists of Touhou doesn't even always win the popularity vote against characters whose last appearance in the games was 5 years ago. Similar to #2, you got to know who are your Evil Ryus that keeps the fans back, and make them integrated and possibly playable too. There's all kinds of effort to hack a GBA to make Omega playable in MMZ3, and there's no reason why he shouldn't have been a standard feature after you beat the game. Yes there's no possible way the game can be challenging playing as Omega but I think that's exactly the point. Players would like to play as the Omega/Original Zero and just walk up to a boss and say, "I am the Messiah. Hahaha!", whip out a 7 hit instant kill combo and win, because that's the kind of character Zero was supposed to be, not this "I got hit on my head like Goku and turned out to be a good guy" deal. It's fine to use that version of the Zero for story purposes but nobody said there can only be one mode to play a game. For that matter, why isn't there a playable Ultimate Armor X? No I'm not talking about the cheat code equivalent where you have infinite Nova Strikes which really doesn't even fit the character at all. I'm talking about the MMX5 version where X can randomly charge up these ridiculous super moves (Soul Body comes to mind) that you will never be able to do while playing as X. Why not have Ultimate Armor X who can only do charged attacks but make every one of them do crazy effects like he does when you've to fight him? Surely that is more interesting than putting in a code to get Ultimate Armor X and keep on hit 'R1' for a move that makes you invinicible and do crazy damage? In TH8 you can play as what are essentially the prime elements (i.e. a girl who actually has a major power) and some of them are ridiculously overpowered at least from a beginner point of view (they're not necessarily good for a scoring run due to other characteristics), and TH8 is widely praised for being able to pick a prime element and just blow everything up even if you suck at vertical shooters. It's particularly baffling when you consider X was never even very popular in the game that started his name, but he is always in the spotlight. Some of it is necessary since MMX is mostly a game about him, but I think more people would rather play as Vile than X, and let's not get started on Axl who I don't think anyone cared about at all. You can replace him with Alia picking up a gun and that'd be a strictly better game and I don't even like Alia.
1. Power fatigue. In Megaman no robot master can be reused, and in Touhou all the girls have a non repeating element/power/attribute. As is obvious by the time you get to Megaman 10 there isn't just that many interesting way to have (cold element) Man or (how element) Man, or that by Touhou 11, nuclear fusion is considered a weak power (on the final boss) when you've Sun (Yuka) and Black Hole (Suika) and it makes you wonder why on earth are the last boss feeling powerful with power that isn't even enough to destroy a planet.
It's not surprising the enemies of the first 3 games in these genre tends to occupy the most fan support because after all these are the guys who have all the cool power. It's even worse when you get to the X series where you cannot have repeating animals for the Mavericks and after MMX4 or so, you run out of even meaningful animals that would look like challenging foes.
You can say that these are just the 8 robot masters but it just doesn't feel the same fighting Dark Necrobat compared to say, Storm Falcon, or you fight a girl whose power is 'walk through walls' compared to a girl whose power is to stop time. It's just harder to come up with some interesting game mechanisms that involve Yamato Man compared to the Flash Man who has the time stopper.
This means if you adhere to a 'every character must be unique' like these two cults game do, you really shouldn't have any new characters after about the third game. It's going to be something like the show Hero where either you've new character with some totally lame super power or worse yet it makes you wonder 'are we supposed to be impressed with this new power?' The first modern Touhou game, TH6, has Time, Destiny, Destruction, Darkness, Ice, All Magic locked up, and the characters of in there have dominated fan polls. Metal Wheel from Megaman 2 is arguably the most versatile robot master power ever, and I think it has a lot to do with that Metal Man has a far more versatile slot compared to say, Snake Man or Top Man. I literally see no way you can make Topspin or Search Snake anything more than a gimmick weapon to use on a boss, but Metal Wheel feels completely natural to use it the way it is. Yes it's overpowered to the point that it's probably the best weapon to use on half of the bosses but that's why it's fun.
2. Give the fans what they want. There's way too much dojin on 3 of the major pairs of girls (Destiny/Destruction, Life/Death, Eternity/The Phoenix) because those are the girls who occupy the coolest powers and have the most interesting relationships with each other. Omega is some kind of living legend in the Mugen community since he just naturally fits into the 'super duper awesome boss guy', even though you're talking about a fighting game engine that in theory could make anyone invulnerable, but it's not a surprise people spend all their time making the next unbeatable version of Omega or Evil Ryu or Shin Akuma because they actually fit that kind of role. Speaking of Evil Ryu, this is one part where Capcom gets it right (at least most of the time). Evil Ryu almost always appears in some way or is at least alluded to in every Street Fighter game since Street Fighter Alpha 2. He's obviously a fan favorite and it doesn't matter if his inclusion even make any sense because people just want to see Ryu doing teleports and raging demons. In the Megaman world there should always be Omega (original Zero), and there should always be a X versus Zero fight even if it'd literally make no sense because those are the two really big things for the series in the X and later era. Heck, Omega shows up in ZX for absolutely no reason whatsoever, though by then it's too late to salvage the series. People want to see X exterminating all Reploids (which is more or less what happened with Neo Arcadia anyway) because he got tired of being a wussy pacifist, and yeah maybe some kid out there will be sad to find out Megaman X turned out to be a bad guy but again the entire premise of Megaman Zero is that X is supposed to be the bad guy because he was the one who founded Neo Arcadia that you spent most of the series trying to take down. It's not like anybody really buys the 'that wasn't me, that was Copy X' deal.
3. It takes more than your stars to keep a cult game alive. Megaman didn't get to where it is with just Megaman. If not for Zero, the X series probably wouldn't have ever made it anywhere, and by the Megaman Zero series it was more than even just Zero. The two protagonists of Touhou doesn't even always win the popularity vote against characters whose last appearance in the games was 5 years ago. Similar to #2, you got to know who are your Evil Ryus that keeps the fans back, and make them integrated and possibly playable too. There's all kinds of effort to hack a GBA to make Omega playable in MMZ3, and there's no reason why he shouldn't have been a standard feature after you beat the game. Yes there's no possible way the game can be challenging playing as Omega but I think that's exactly the point. Players would like to play as the Omega/Original Zero and just walk up to a boss and say, "I am the Messiah. Hahaha!", whip out a 7 hit instant kill combo and win, because that's the kind of character Zero was supposed to be, not this "I got hit on my head like Goku and turned out to be a good guy" deal. It's fine to use that version of the Zero for story purposes but nobody said there can only be one mode to play a game. For that matter, why isn't there a playable Ultimate Armor X? No I'm not talking about the cheat code equivalent where you have infinite Nova Strikes which really doesn't even fit the character at all. I'm talking about the MMX5 version where X can randomly charge up these ridiculous super moves (Soul Body comes to mind) that you will never be able to do while playing as X. Why not have Ultimate Armor X who can only do charged attacks but make every one of them do crazy effects like he does when you've to fight him? Surely that is more interesting than putting in a code to get Ultimate Armor X and keep on hit 'R1' for a move that makes you invinicible and do crazy damage? In TH8 you can play as what are essentially the prime elements (i.e. a girl who actually has a major power) and some of them are ridiculously overpowered at least from a beginner point of view (they're not necessarily good for a scoring run due to other characteristics), and TH8 is widely praised for being able to pick a prime element and just blow everything up even if you suck at vertical shooters. It's particularly baffling when you consider X was never even very popular in the game that started his name, but he is always in the spotlight. Some of it is necessary since MMX is mostly a game about him, but I think more people would rather play as Vile than X, and let's not get started on Axl who I don't think anyone cared about at all. You can replace him with Alia picking up a gun and that'd be a strictly better game and I don't even like Alia.
