Hey Don

[Eric]

I remember you saying Mega Man ZX Advent had to sell like 100k copies in Japan to get a sequel going, and it fell short of that by like 10k or whatever.

However in the US it sold almost 200k copies, wonder if that will influence their decision to make another ZX or Z game.

[Zeus]

I doubt it. There's been NO word on anything Mega Man related other than MM9 for a while. And Capcom may be looking outside Japan for a lot of other things but they're still very much a Japanese company.

And if they're gonna put their efforts into a MM game it'll probably be MM10 considering how well MM9 did. I want to see them continute the PSP remakes somehow, even on XBL/PSN/WiiWare.

[Don]

Well MMZXA went over 100K in America quite a while ago but like Zeus says I don't think they care what it sells here, which is pretty strange since I think we actually buy more Megaman stuff than people at Japan do.

I think the whole MM development team, especially Inafune, is simply too stuck on the 'good old days' and not realizing that they've been left behind in the dust and if not for some surprising American support, their franchise would be pretty dead now.

[Eric]

Well MMZXA went over 100K in America quite a while ago but like Zeus says I don't think they care what it sells here, which is pretty strange since I think we actually buy more Megaman stuff than people at Japan do.

I think the whole MM development team, especially Inafune, is simply too stuck on the 'good old days' and not realizing that they've been left behind in the dust and if not for some surprising American support, their franchise would be pretty dead now.

That could be said of a lot of Japanese developers, save Hideo Kojima.

[Zeus]

Well MMZXA went over 100K in America quite a while ago but like Zeus says I don't think they care what it sells here, which is pretty strange since I think we actually buy more Megaman stuff than people at Japan do.

I think the whole MM development team, especially Inafune, is simply too stuck on the 'good old days' and not realizing that they've been left behind in the dust and if not for some surprising American support, their franchise would be pretty dead now.

Not Inafune. He used his clout in Capcom to make Dead Rising and Lost Planet. Those were made almost exclusively with the US market in mind. He also tried to re-make the MM games to update them with the PSP remakes to try and extend the life of them but that failed (too bad, they ruled).

And MM9 was very strongly marketed here with the success of the original on VC (particularly in America) going a long way to convincing them to go ahead with the development. Just because it was done in the MM2 style don't mean it was a mentality "stuck in the good old days". It was actually a more progressive business decision made to capitalize on a franchise that's become almost the epitome of old-school gaming. All attempts to update the MM franchise has failed, and rarely were the games flat-out bad (MMX7 is a huge exception). It's the consumers who forced it stuck in the "good old days".

[Don]

MMX6, X7, and X8 simply weren't very good games. The reception they got is appropriate for their status, and probably a bit better than it should have been due to the Megaman brand. I'm not saying they need the next Megaman game to sell a million but the X series don't even deserve to sell 100K compared to the competition they're up against.

Inafune is obviously afraid of any kind of closure on any kind of Megaman series. They're basically even afraid to mention the fact that Zero and Ciel existed in ZX and that Priaire is really Alouette as if you somehow can't tell this. They never said Zero was made by Dr. Wily in the X series for example. They didn't even say Zero died at the end of Z4. And they certainly won't ever say the only obvious way the original Megaman ended should be because Zero killed Megaman (how else can the two series be tied together? Notice that X was designed as a war machine unlike Megaman who can just conveniently steal powers). Is Inafune afraid of the fact that if something permanent actually happens that didn't take place in some ambigious timeframe between the games that people will stop buying it? X actually died in the Zero series and that's one of the more successful Megaman series recently that isn't a Pokemon clone.

[Zeus]

MMX6 was a fine game. Pretty hard levels but still a fine game. X5 and X6 weren't as good as X4 but they were still good games. X7 shall never be spoken of again and X8 isn't very good at all. They're actually the only two of both the regular and X series that I never beat.

Again, you but too much thought into the storylines of Mega Man.

[Don]

I think only people like you, Zeus, could find the story in X6 to be not insulting after Zero blew himself up to save the world in X5 and then hide himself in a cave and repaired himself again since the series cannot go on without him generating the sales. You're also one of the very few people I know of that thinks X6 is good.

To paraphrase something I saw from the Touhou boards, nobody is going to play a vertical shooter for its story either, but it's still insulting when whatever passes for the story looks like someone wrote it up in 5 minutes and expect you to totally forget anything that's ever happened before.

The gameplay noticeably declined after X4 since Capcom got obsessed about putting instant death traps rather than anything meaningful. Just count the number of spike/pit traps and I'm certain they went way up after X4, which is one of the few Megaman games you can just run around and jump all over the place without worrying about falling to your doom every 15 seconds. When the gameplay sucks, things like nonsensical plots gets noticed because you no longer have good gameplay to hide behind. If X4 had a nonsensical plot, people will probably forgive it just because it's still a cool game. When lesser games have nonsensical plot, that cannot be forgiven because there's nothing else to fall back on.

[Don]

I thought this is a good summation of what happened in MMZ3: http://www.dzarchive.com/iragination/il ... um=2&pos=4

Difference is that since MMZ3 is actually good it doesn't really matter the story is kind of dumb. But if the game isn't as good as it was, then people will care. Incidentally the ones with poor story tends to have poor gameplay, probably just due to coincidence.

[Eric]

Z3 was pretty awesome story-wise. I thought Z4 was a bit of a let down after all the revelations and finale in Z3.

[Don]

Well I don't like how the Guardians the X just showed up, say some stuff, and then died for good and you don't even know that unless you consulted some outside source. They also failed to resolve the Dark Elf arc probably because they can't actually say she was originally Iris since X series is still ongoing (what girl of any significance does Zero know of from the X series that is not Iris?) Zero and Ciel, as always, are solid characters, able to carry the game despite a relatively weak supporting cast compared to normal.

Z4 looked more like another attempt to grab money before they retire the series. The whole game feel empty because what's the point of continued fighting when almost everyone mattered is already gone?

[Zeus]

Again, we're talking about the storyline of a Mega Man game. It's a minor part. I'm always talking about gameplay, level design, and boss design when I talk about Mega Man. Story is very far down the list

[Don]

Again, we're talking about the storyline of a Mega Man game. It's a minor part. I'm always talking about gameplay, level design, and boss design when I talk about Mega Man. Story is very far down the list

And you thought X6 was a good game in these aspects?

[SineSwiper]

Jesus Christ! Can we stop talking about Mega Man for once?

[Eric]

Jesus Christ! Can we stop talking about Mega Man for once?

Nah, with me Zeus and Don it's gonna come up.

[Zeus]

Again, we're talking about the storyline of a Mega Man game. It's a minor part. I'm always talking about gameplay, level design, and boss design when I talk about Mega Man. Story is very far down the list

And you thought X6 was a good game in these aspects?

Yep. It was a pretty challenging game (levels anyways; the bosses were easy) and played wonderfully

[Zeus]

Jesus Christ! Can we stop talking about Mega Man for once?

Nope. One of my favourite gaming series' of all time. I was happy as a pig in shit when it made a comeback with the Zero series and collections after years of mediocrity (and MMX7) and am sad to see it go now. ALthough MM9 would be a great way to ride off into the sunset.

In general, the 2D platformer will go the way of the dodo once Capcom gives up on Mega Man (aside from New Super Mario Bros 2). Too bad. Over the years I'd say that the 2D platformer was my favourite genre and one I put the most hours into

[SineSwiper]

Fine, but quit talking about the story like it's Schindler's Fucking List. It's just a dumb little robot with the face of a 5-year-old, created by the perfect stereotype of some aging scientist. There is no plot, and any illusion of a plot is really stretching some barely-there elements into a story that is as thin as rice paper. (You know, sort of like making a movie out of a fighting game.)

Nobody gives a shit about Sonic's "story" or the story in any number of the thousand of Mario games. Nobody is writing hours of posts involving why Donkey Kong throws those barrels. You're Mario and you jump over barrels. That's IT!

Jesus, just reading conversations like this make me feel like I'm one step closer to reading Kirk/Spock slash.

[Don]

Fine, but quit talking about the story like it's Schindler's Fucking List. It's just a dumb little robot with the face of a 5-year-old, created by the perfect stereotype of some aging scientist. There is no plot, and any illusion of a plot is really stretching some barely-there elements into a story that is as thin as rice paper. (You know, sort of like making a movie out of a fighting game.)

Nobody gives a shit about Sonic's "story" or the story in any number of the thousand of Mario games. Nobody is writing hours of posts involving why Donkey Kong throws those barrels. You're Mario and you jump over barrels. That's IT!

Jesus, just reading conversations like this make me feel like I'm one step closer to reading Kirk/Spock slash.

I think what you say can be applied to Metal Gear Solid, or a lot of other stuff out there that's supposed to have a good story.

Just because the story isn't the selling point of Megaman, doesn't mean people don't notice when the story is good or bad.

[Eric]

Fine, but quit talking about the story like it's Schindler's Fucking List. It's just a dumb little robot with the face of a 5-year-old, created by the perfect stereotype of some aging scientist. There is no plot, and any illusion of a plot is really stretching some barely-there elements into a story that is as thin as rice paper. (You know, sort of like making a movie out of a fighting game.)

Nobody gives a shit about Sonic's "story" or the story in any number of the thousand of Mario games. Nobody is writing hours of posts involving why Donkey Kong throws those barrels. You're Mario and you jump over barrels. That's IT!

Jesus, just reading conversations like this make me feel like I'm one step closer to reading Kirk/Spock slash.

Sonic and Mario have no continuity.

Megaman does, people have put together what happened between the first series, to the X series, to the Z series, to the ZX series.

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean you have to come into the posts and nerd rage about it, sheesh.

[Don]

I've noticed that things with blanks in the continuity tends to spark people's imagination. Sure of it is just people making stuff up, but if they didn't at least intend for say for Megaman to die between the time of Megaman and Meagman X, then the whole story behind Zero is meaningless. If Xenogears wasn't intended to have stuff to fill in the ton of blanks in the game, they wouldn't have needed to release Xenogears Perfect Works that covers all the plot holes in the game.

But it's almost as if these blanks are always filled better by fans than the original makers. There is probably some X versus Zero fanfic/dojin out there that actually handles the fight that X series talks about forever but never really resolved in a satisfying way. The X4 manga is certainly better in terms of story resolution than the actual game.

Sometimes I wonder if game makers just take the best random idea from Internet somewhere, they'd probably have a story that makes a lot more sense than whatever nonsense that passes for story these days.

[Zeus]

Fine, but quit talking about the story like it's Schindler's Fucking List.

I don't and I never have. I've mentioned this many times above. Story in MM is like #12 on the list of things I look for.

But Eric makes a point. There is actually some level of continuity to the storyline, particularly with the X series onward. Those cutscenes in MMX4 that were cool at the time and helped make it the best MM game of all time to most aren't just there for show. So it is something some people analyze. And especially if you look at the Zero series where one game directly ties into the other storyline-wise.

So you have a lot of people who do look at it. They love the games so much that they wanna piece together the storylines that, early on, were designed as one-offs. Don happens to be one of them, Eric seems to care enough to talk about them, and I reject most talk on the storyline continuity.

[Julius Seeker]

Megaman always makes me think of a pissed off murderous Cartman "Ants in the pants! Ants in the pants! You son of a bitch! You were supposed to get me Red Megaman! Now I can't make Ultra Mega Megaman! You cheap piece of crap! I HATE YOU!!!! I WANT YOU TO DAH!!!"

[Blotus]

Just because you don't like it doesn't mean you have to come into the posts and nerd rage about it, sheesh.

Do you know who you're talking to?

[Don]

Nothing after the original Megaman series were ever designed as one-offs. Z2 is perhaps a game that cannot possibly make any sense on its own if it's not meant to be viewed in the part of the greater picture, since it expects you to know what has happened in Z1 or you wouldn't even have an idea why you're doing all this, and obviously the events in Z2 only serve as a bridge to Z3.