That's just a very convoluted and verbose way to say things were better back in the old days, and they are not. The Megaman franchise has been around for 20 years. There's no stroke of genius that's preventing Megaman franchise's return to fame. Basically every time there was a Megaman game that didn't look like a complete sell out 'send money to Capcom please' effort, it has been received well by the fanbase. If looking at monetary success, Battlen Networks is obviously at the top, and if we only include Megaman-like action games, it'd be either the Zero series or one of the mid X series (probably X4 or X5). This is basically advocating the same throw away everything that's ever made Megaman good and start over theme that Inafune himself argues, which is why the father of Megaman hasn't been doing anything meaningful with Megaman in the last 10 years or so, and has very little to do with probaly the best recent Megaman series.
The article, and you obvious try very hard to have a discussion without bringing up any actual issues with Megaman, since it is not able to address any of them. There are obvious gameplay issues with Megaman series that need to be fixed, but I'm sure you don't know about them and I'm pretty sure Parish doesn't either because he doesn't play half of the game where they're most obvious. It is meaningless to talk about what a 'return to roots' would solve in terms of gameplay without knowing what issues are involved:
1. The dash. Introduced in MMX1, even though Super Mario Brothers can run fast in its first incarnation. This move also simulates the effect of the slide when it comes to versus enemy projectiles, even though you cannot tell this by the animation. The ability to dash increases the pace of the game signifciantly, and lessens the requirement on absolutely precise jumps. The drawback is that the dash-under move is overabused in some of the later games. Originally as something cool for experts to do, you end up having a game where you got to either be a dash under wizard (ZXA, Z3's 2nd form on Omega) or you die horribly. To a lesser extent, too many attacks become dependent on having absolute mastery of the dash jump to avoid. The most notable example of Z3 Omega's triple hit combo that requires 2 nearly perfectly timed dash jumps to avoid. However despite all this, it'd be hard to find anyone who actually thinks having the ability to dash hinders the game as long as the game doesn't assume you spend your life learning how to dash through things.
2. The wall jump. Also from X1. This reduces the need for random stupid Rush whatevers to get anywhere, and also makes it more likely you'll survive an ill fated jump instead of slipping to your doom. The abuse for the wall jump is obvious in X1 where bosses can be defeated without taking any damage if you hug the upper left corner of the room. Many attack patterns are renderd trivial when you can hop on the wall, which defeats the purpose of Megaman game as Megaman is a game about memorizing patterns and avoiding them at its heart. While this is mostly a design issue, as later games generally give bosses good anti-wall move (X2 Zero's ground smash is a good example), I don't think most people feel too strong about this one way or another. If they keep the wall jump it won't be bad, but if they get rid of it no one will miss it either.
3. The double jump. Introduced in X4, this allows anyone who is not an action gaming god to actually have a chance avoiding some of the tougher patterns in the game without resorting to the wall jump (see #2) or the dash (see #1). For example Z3 Omega's triple hit combo is easily dodged with a double jump. The Megaman games generally are very well balanced around the double jump. It does not render the difficulty nonexistent, and truly diehard guys can simply not use it.
4. The everything else. This can be the duck in X5, the biometals in ZX series, collecting armor in X series, Cyber Elves in MMZ, the EX modes in MMZ, and way too many other things to list. Like Inafune mentions in his interview related to MM9, no one denies that some of the later Megaman games have become hopelessly bloated with moves that do not serve any meaningful purpose. It is painful to watch a video of ZXA when a battle looks like a RPG with someone pausing the screen every 3 seconds to switch to a different form (usually to access the double jump!).
As far as anyone knows, MM9 will have absolutely none of the innovation in the recent games, so you get rid of 1, 2, 3, and 4. You don't even have the slide, which is sort of like a #0 as it is a precursor to the dash. Now #2 is somewhat harmful to a game if used incorrectly, but I blame the designers for having a game where you can hop on a wall and negate the entire game's difficulty. Z series is quite fond of using the 'no walls' approach and it is an excellent way to fix this. #1 and #3 are strictly improvement to the game engine itself, unless one argue lesser players should not be allowed to beat Megaman games, which is what happens if #3 is removed.
Now #4, which the article doesn't go over, but Inafune does in his article, is a big one. The extraneous moves that serve no purpose really does ruin the Megaman games. But any competent designer should be aware what is bad in #4 and avoid these especially after seeing fiascos like ZXA's RPG-like battles. If Inafune lacks the ability to tell that something like Zero's EX moves (Z3, X4, X5, possibly the 3 most well received Megaman games in the modern era) is a very good thing then he is a poor designer and should not waste people's time with another game.
As far as I can tell MM9 is going to have a quasi-wimp-out mode like the Z series's cyber elves or the shop system in Megaman & Bass, so even after all this talk about going old school we still managed to inherit some of the worst features in the recent Megaman games. Megaman game players, by definiton, are not RPG players. They have no interest in going into an area over and over to get X energy crystals to buy this new powerup (Legends 2's spectucular failure should be a reminder never to have a RPG system in a Megaman game). The truly hardcore guys do not need it, and the normal guys don't have the patience to put up with an obselete game design yet they lack the skills to beat the game without. As a result you get a game that's hated by both the diehard and the normal guys.
Of course, Parish's article seems to be just all about 'death traps are good' even though he spoke very strongly about X5's biker stage which is like a moving death trap. It seems like MM9 is headed down the same path as Legends 2 where the game can be nearly unbeatable and the only purpose it serves is for the ego of the few action gaming gods that can beat it, and most likely it won't be you or me.
Edit: I went over the article again to make sure I didn't miss anything. It basically starts with the completely unfounded assertion that MM2 is the bestest Megaman game ever because he and his five friends think it is, and dismisses anyone who might think of it otherwise as kids that grew up in the X series age. Of course he doesn't even mention the Zero series because he never beaten them. In the comparison between MMX and MM7 again it's based on a random unfounded basis (MMX is good, but when applied to old school MM7, it sucks). I don't particularly think highly of Megaman 7, but it doesn't suck any more than most of the filler Megaman titles.
There's also some unfounded jab on MM Legends as a 'disappointing sequel' even though MM Legends and Tron's Misadventures were the games that gave hope Megaman might not be stuck in medicore 2D forever (and Parish had some pretty good reviews about these 2 games). Legends 2 utterly botched it with the nearly impossible Sera fight that is more likely to make you break your controller from frustration. Of course if you apply the Sera mechanism to any other Megaman game, it'd be like getting to the last stage, entering the boss room, and fall into a pit and immediately die (and 1 out of 1000 times you might not, but it also takes 20 minutes to just get to the door). At any rate the failure of Legends is 100% attributed by a bad design as opposed to any inherent badness of the 3D platform.
About the only thing he could argue that'd make sense is that if X4, which is one of the top candidate for the best Megaman game ever, and you can certainly tell Capcom made a genuine effort to polish a game, ended up with merely okay sales, then maybe the fans don't really appreciate a well polished game. After all the next game, X5, removed all the voice acting, the Anime, and any semblance of a story, and still sold nearly as many. Even the game after, X6, usually viewed some kind of abomination where Zero hide himself in a cave and mysteriously returned from death, only sold a little bit worse still compared to X6. So maybe you can say that fans don't really deserve polish if it's not going to generate sales so maybe 8-bit sprites are all we needed. Even in that case, Inafune's own interview says he told his artist to draw sprites and then they have to dumb them down because no one makes sprites that simple anymore, so I really doubt it'd have taken any meaningful effort to at least make the game look 16-bit, say on the level of MMX1.
