You've just been given full creative control over the next Megaman game...

[Product Placement]

Title explains it all. Based on how happy people are over the news that Capcom killed the development of a gritty FPS game, where Megaman X turns evil on us [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.405427-Capcom-Killed-Gritty-Mega-Man-FPS], I want to see what kind of ideas people have for a Megaman game of their own.

...

I guess I'll go for the obligatory OP posts first rule.

I, myself, am gonna go for a gritty storyline, for challenge reasons.

Also, for extra points, I'm gonna create an alternative storyline that spins off from the original Megaman series and ignores everything from Megaman X and beyond. Yeah... that ought to piss off enough fans. Now let's see if I can win them back over.

Spoiler

It's the year 2XXX and the original Megaman (AKA Rock) has been excavated from the ruins of Dr.Light's lab. After being repaired and reactivated, he finds himself in a world where humanity is fighting a losing battle against androids, lead by none other than... Dr.Wily. Surprised by the prospect that his arch nemesis is still alive, Rock quickly volunteers his services to the human defense force.

The game is a 3rd person platform shooter, using gameplay mechanics similar to the original series, while borrowing elements from Megaman X. It will start with an intro level, where Rock has to help defend a downtown center against hostile androids. Afterwards, he's brought to a base that has developed teleportation technology and is allowed to pick which order he'll tackle the next stages. Each stage has him fighting to reach a robot general that's maintaining a portion of Dr. Wily's army. Rock absorbs the powers of said general and upgrades his arsenal/abilities. After each stage, Rock returns to the base for a mandatory recharge and tune up. Periodically, after certain number of stages, the city is attacked again, with a larger, more powerful force that Rock has to defeat before continuing. Wily will make appearances via transmissions, where he demands for humanity's surrender, while arguing with Megaman's defiance to prolong the war.

Now, for the story angle. As soon as Rock is done helping with the defense in the intro level, the confused soldiers realize that he himself is an android and aim their guns at him. Higher ups, responsible for reactivating Megaman, intervene and lead him away. Players will learn that Wily's usage of robot armies to attempt world domination, during the original series, has permanently soured human/android relations and made humans incredibly fearful and distrusting towards robots. As a result, the production and harboring of androids has now been banned. The decision to activate Megaman was fervently debated but the prospect of a total defeat and Megaman's track record at defeating Wily won the leaders over and eventually gave a go ahead. Nobody's happy about the decision but people are desperate enough to tolerate Rock's presence.

Fighting the robot generals will reveal bits of info about the android motives. Some of them will berate Rock for helping the humans. Others will try reasoning with him into joining their cause and promise peaceful co-existence between humans and robots, once the war is over. The most fighting oriented ones will simply be too thrilled with the prospect of fighting the legendary Megaman, to bother with any dialog.

Once you've defeated the last robot general and returned to the home base, you will find it in middle of a huge attack. The base has been penetrated and half the equipment's been damaged, including the tune up device.

Once you're done defending the city, yet again. Rock decides he must now take the fight to Wily himself. A scientist who's gradually been warming up to Rock admits that as a safety measure against Megaman's possible betrayal, the humans installed a kill switch into him, with a countdown timer. The purpose of the "tune up" device was to reset the timer but now that it was out of commission, he would be lucky to last long enough to even reach Wily.

Despite that, Rock carries on and tackles an ancient stronghold that's one of Wily's former headquarters from a previous game, now rebuilt and fortified. Upon defeating the final boss, Rock learns that Wily is actually dead and has been so for a very long time. What's more is that Humans are actually responsible for starting the war, in an attempt of ridding the world of androids forever. Robots sought refuge in Dr.Wily's old base and gained access to his old data in order to develop means to defend themselves. Knowing that humanity would never sit down at a negotiating table with robots and how much they feared Dr. Wily, the androids recreated the image of the doctor as their representative, in the hopes of bullying the humans to surrender.

Armed with this new knowledge, the kill switch draws ever closer to zero, threatening to permanently shut down Megaman. The remaining androids in the base offer to place him in suspension, while figuring out a way to disconnect the kill switch. Thus we find Megaman now on the opposite side, at the mercy of his former enemies.

The end.

Upon activating my self critique mode, I find my ending to be rather weak but that was the best I could come up with, on a short notice. Feel free to criticize the fuck out of it (be nice, though) or come up with your own story for your own Megaman dream project.

 

[Orange12345]

Title explains it all. Based on how happy people are over the news that Capcom killed the development of a gritty FPS game, where Megaman X turns evil on us [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.405427-Capcom-Killed-Gritty-Mega-Man-FPS], I want to see what kind of ideas people have for a Megaman game of their own.

...

I guess I'll go for the obligatory OP posts first rule.

I, myself, am gonna go for a gritty storyline, for challenge reasons.

Also, for extra points, I'm gonna create an alternative storyline that spins off from the original Megaman series and ignores everything from Megaman X and beyond. Yeah... that ought to piss off enough fans. Now let's see if I can win them back over.

Spoiler

It's the year 2XXX and the original Megaman (AKA Rock) has been excavated from the ruins of Dr.Light's lab. After being repaired and reactivated, he finds himself in a world where humanity is fighting a losing battle against androids, lead by none other than... Dr.Willy. Surprised by the prospect that his arch nemesis is still alive, Rock quickly volunteers his services to the human defense force.

The game is a 3rd person platform shooter, using gameplay mechanics similar to the original series, while borrowing elements from Megaman X. It will start with an intro level, where Rock has to help defend a downtown center against hostile androids. Afterwards, he's brought to a base that has developed teleportation technology and is allowed to pick which order he'll tackle the next stages. Each stage has him fighting to reach a robot general that's maintaining a portion of Dr. Willy's army. Rock absorbs the powers of said general and upgrades his arsenal/abilities. After each stage, Rock returns to the base for a mandatory recharge and tune up. Periodically, after certain number of stages, the city is attacked again, with a larger, more powerful force that Rock has to defeat before continuing. Willy will make appearances via transmissions, where he demands for humanity's surrender, while arguing with Megaman's defiance to prolong the war.

Now, for the story angle. As soon as Rock is done helping with the defense in the intro level, the confused soldiers realize that he himself is an android and aim their guns at him. Higher ups, responsible for reactivating Megaman, intervene and lead him away. Players will learn that Willy's usage of robot armies to attempt world domination, during the original series, has permanently soured human/android relations and made humans incredibly fearful and distrusting towards robots. As a result, the production and harboring of androids has now been banned. The decision to activate Megaman was fervently debated but the prospect of a total defeat and Megaman's track record at defeating Willy won the leaders over and eventually gave a go ahead. Nobody's happy about the decision but people are desperate enough to tolerate Rock's presence.

Fighting the robot generals will reveal bits of info about the android motives. Some of them will berate Rock for helping the humans. Others will try reasoning with him into joining their cause and promise peaceful co-existence between humans and robots, once the war is over. The most fighting oriented ones will simply be too thrilled with the prospect of fighting the legendary Megaman, to bother with any dialog.

Once you've defeated the last robot general and returned to the home base, you will find it in middle of a huge attack. The base has been penetrated and half the equipment's been damaged, including the tune up device.

Once you're done defending the city, yet again. Rock decides he must now take the fight to Willy himself. A scientist who's gradually been warming up to Rock admits that as a safety measure against Megaman's possible betrayal, the humans installed a kill switch into him, with a countdown timer. The purpose of the "tune up" device was to reset the timer but now that it was out of commission, he would be lucky to last long enough to even reach Willy.

Despite that, Rock carries on and tackles an ancient stronghold that's one of Willy's former headquarters from a previous game, now rebuilt and fortified. Upon defeating the final boss, Rock learns that Willy is actually dead and has been so for a very long time. What's more is that Humans are actually responsible for starting the war, in an attempt of ridding the world of androids forever. Robots sought refuge in Dr.Willy's old base and gained access to his old data in order to develop means to defend themselves. Knowing that humanity would never sit down at a negotiating table with robots and how much they feared Dr. Willy, the androids recreated the image of the doctor as their representative, in the hopes of bullying the humans to surrender.

Armed with this new knowledge, the kill switch draws ever closer to zero, threatening to permanently shut down Megaman. The remaining androids in the base offer to place him in suspension, while figuring out a way to disconnect the kill switch. Thus we find Megaman now on the opposite side, at the mercy of his former enemies.

The end.

Upon activating my self critique mode, I find my ending to be rather weak but that was the best I could come up with, on a short notice. Feel free to criticize the fuck out of it (be nice, though) or come up with your own story for your own Megaman dream project.

that's actually more or less the story of megaman zero, a series of games on the gba, except it's zero instead of megaman and it's 2d not 3rd person. It's really freaking good to they did a remake for the ds with all 4 games in one.

as for my megaman game I'd just like to see more of them continue the zx series

 

[Darquenaut]

Really, no one has posted to this one yet?

I don't think mine would be so heavily focused on story, as the MegaMan games I used to play were never that involving in story, but much more in mechanics and gameplay.

My imagining of an updated Mega Man game would be a third person open-world type of game. The world would be separated into zones, probably about 8-10 of them, each with its own theme, akin to the original games. However instead of plodded down a corridor, you would be able to interact with the enviroment. Further, each zone would have it's own strongholds of robot minions and sub bosses. Destroy enough of those to lure out the Robot Master of that zone and then engage them in open combat all over the zone - you leave the zone, they won't follow you, but at the same time, they might go back into hiding if you don't return quickly enough.

And also akin to the previous MegaMan games, I would make ol' Mega super adaptable to both enemies and enviroments. Imagine using a Mega Buster to topple a crane and crush enemies underneath, then taking the fallen enemies' power cores, repairing yourself, refueling your weapons, etc. After killing a robot Master, you'll be able to access their weapon at any time and explore hidden areas in other zones.

So right about now, I'm essentially combining Prototype with Metroid and Saint's Row and applying them to the elements we are already familiar with from Mega Man.

The art style would be very much akin to Inafune's original art style- bright colors abound- characters with big-ass boots, etc. I'm thinking cel-shaded, maybe it the same vein as Asura's Wrath, which had an exceptional art design itself. All in all though- I want it to feel vibrant, but not like Cyberpunk nightmare. More Astro Boy, less Ghost in the Shell.

Also - very importantly considering this is a Mega Man game - is the music. I would go out and get the best Electronica Artists, Chiptune Artists, and so on I can find to comprise the soundtrack. I want it to sound familiar to the original OSTs - synthetic but altogether memorable.

How's that for a start?

 

[WhiteFangofWhoa]

Mega Man Univ- Oh wait.

A 2D one with lots of bells and whistles and great care taken to make each weapon useful. Either a Mega Man X9, Rockman and Forte 2 (Surprised they didn't do this already, but then R&F was originally Japan-only), or a complete reboot of the first with more backstory for Light and Wily. Some fans have written the games into one of my all-time favourite story collections, collectively known as the Legacy of Metal. Might be too dark, but it contains the best concept I've seen for a Mega Man Universe-type game; all players are Maverick Hunters in X-verse commissioned to handling Mavericks the top two hunters are too busy to deal with, with every ability and weapon from the games available to you.

The biggest twist for R&F2 would be allowing a 2-player cooperative mode and a versus mode, with Proto Man and Roll playable with their own story modes as well as Mega and Bass. For a super-challenging variant, have another versus mode where one player plays through the levels as usual without any normal enemies or minibosses, but the second player works to kill them before they can reach the boss.

Oh, and it's spelled Wily, not Willy.

 

[teebeeohh]

you know the vile mode in the PSP remake for megaman X?
that, only as a full game(and balanced as such) and not with vile as the PC.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

I'd flat out resurrect Megaman Legends for the modern era... because Lisa Foiles is dead wrong about those games, Megaman + Zelda = Win. Though to be fair to her... they would need quite the gameplay boost as the old ones had obtuse controls to say the least.

I'd even keep most of the plot as already established but try to introduce "Megaman Legendized" versions of Dr. Wily and Protoman.

 

[Phantom Renegade]

Megaman legends 3 yes, all the way.

Those games were great,almost two generations after the fact i still play megaman legends 2 every once in a while.

 

[WoW Killer]

Metroidvania style with multiple characters to switch between. So it's all one big level but you get different areas reachable depending on the character and upgrades you're using. It's like, I can get up to that bit over there if I use the guy with the wall jump, oh, but I need a different character to blast through that ceiling; how will I get him up there? Lots of upgrades, lots of weapons. Secrets everywhere.

Fuck it, I don't even care about Megaman, I just want to see more Metroidvania games.

 

[EstrogenicMuscle]

- Starring Roll
Because more female protagonists.
- Metroidvania
Because why wouldn't a Mega Man Metroidvania work?

 

[Kopikatsu]

Turn based RPG. Turn based RPG all the way.

Command Mission was great. I really wish more games did it's intro more often; that being Mega gets his ass wrecked by almost every boss in the game at the same time at the end of the first area. Seriously, why does NOONE ever try that?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

First Person modern military shooter with a primary focus on multiplayer because you just don't see those these days.

 

[go-10]

I'd keep it simple, not too worried about story since Mega Man is all about 8 robot masters and an end castle, so with that in mind

first I would get Ark System Works to do music, art, level design, and animations, so imagine BlazBlue style graphics and art style in a 2D mecha universe

game starts you choose a character, X or Zero (redesigned versions)
X is a ballistics specialist so all his weapons are projectiles with different effects (fire, ice, electricity, etc.)
Zero is a melee weapon master, so with every robot master he gains a new weapon and attacks (swords, lances, bo-staffs, dual swords, claws, etc.)

have 3 armors for both characters, a sky armor (speed) a ground armor (defense) and a water armor (strength)
all armors are hidden through out the 8 levels and you can mix and match the pieces, upon obtaining all the pieces for 1 specific armor a new stage and robot master appears specifically designed to test the player with his ability with the armor; these levels are much harder than all the other stages in the game, they're meant to test you, and is 5 times longer than a regular level so your ability to survive will be put to the test

 

[Product Placement]

that's actually more or less the story of megaman zero, a series of games on the gba, except it's zero instead of megaman and it's 2d not 3rd person. It's really freaking good to they did a remake for the ds with all 4 games in one.

He he. Of course I ended up copying someone else. Would you believe I've never ever touched the Zero series? I kinda missed out on the whole hand held gaming thing.

Oh well... I suppose it's a form of flattery to think that someone thought that a similar idea was cool enough to be made into a game.

I don't think mine would be so heavily focused on story, as the MegaMan games I used to play were never that involving in story, but much more in mechanics and gameplay.

There's always been a story but it's kinda been hidden in the background. The older games, especially, had to deal with limited space issues, which made story telling a luxury. But yes. Generating good gameplay is of course important. That should never take the back seat.

Also, this...

Also - very importantly considering this is a Mega Man game - is the music. I would go out and get the best Electronica Artists, Chiptune Artists, and so on I can find to comprise the soundtrack. I want it to sound familiar to the original OSTs - synthetic but altogether memorable.

Oh man. I completely forgot to bring up the music but I would definitely put heavy emphasis in making some excellent rock themed electronic music. It wouldn't be a Megaman game without it.

I might want to experiment with a mixture of electronic and instrumental. There are some bad ass fan made renditions of old Megaman music out there, using electric guitars and other instruments.

Oh, and it's spelled Wily, not Willy.

And there it is. There's always one glaring error you end up overlooking that's gonna stick out like a sore thumb to other fans.

 

[That Annoying Guy]

Title explains it all. Based on how happy people are over the news that Capcom killed the development of a gritty FPS game, where Megaman X turns evil on us [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/7.405427-Capcom-Killed-Gritty-Mega-Man-FPS], I want to see what kind of ideas people have for a Megaman game of their own.

Wait you mean to say Vanquish wasn't the most recent Megaman game? (this is a joke, completely non-serious)

 

[bafrali]

Make a Megaman Zero game with DMC type gameplay. Weapons are there. Enemy designs are there. Combos are there. Maybe add a gear system that not only change your combos but also your movement speed and momentum. You can pick weapons from enemies like in MZ4 and get permanant arms from the Boss Battles like the Big Four ones.

Now where is my funding?

 

[Esotera]

Charge $60 for it, have launch-day only DLC, and make sure that has some form of horrendous always-online DRM that completely breaks the game for the first few weeks it's released.

I want to get rich, and I would also quite enjoy seeing the outraged reaction of that many people at something I did.

 

[thejackyl]

I think I would make a Megaman Metroid style game.

You start in a large complex, as you standard Megaman. (Think the original), as you explore you find things like the dash boots (MMX), the slide (like in MM2), the helmet upgrade (MMX), Rush Coil, and any other gadgets I could think of.

At the start you could probably only fight 2-4(out of 8 or so) without finding any of the upgrades, but you can still fight them in any order (for the most part). Once all 8 are dead Dr. Wily's Lair opens up.

In there you have to find 4 more robot Masters, and finally confront Wily.

Essentially it's like Super Metroid with the bosses replaced with robot masters, and a less linear end game.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

A story reboot about the origins of Megaman. A darkly comic re-telling. It's a first person brawler/shooter of sorts. You begin as Ash Mega, a socially awkward teenager, who, after his best friend Anne Carpenter is killed in a cross fire between gangsters. Ash, determined to clean up the streets so no one else dies, crafts a blue and red suit and mask and takes to the streets as Mega-Man. Of course after beating up a few gangsters Ash get's over powered and kidnapped by a group of mobsters who saw off his left hands off. Determined to survive Ash breaks his bonds and attaches an axe to severed arm stump, and grabs a pistol in his free hands and begins to bring over the top gory vengeance down upon the criminal underworld.

Between levels you could choose up to 4 left arm attachments to take in with you ranging from a bionic hand to dual wield weapons, grappling hooks and blowtorches to reach new locations, shotguns and home-made blasters to deal ranged damage, chainsaws and drills for gory, up-close murder and grenade launchers and flamethrowers for maximum carnage. You'd be able to hold whatever you could find in your right hand.

 

[Froken Keke]

I personally find the original Mega Man formula very solid, so I really don't know if you'd have to change it that much.
Really, I wouldn't mind a new Mega Man game with the gameplay of the NES games, but modern graphics and more levels. Make every robot master multiple levels, perhaps with a small narrative through them. Like having Mega Man chase one through a few levels, or another one kidnapping Roll while taunting the player.

As long as it's as well polished as, say, Mega Man 9, and with a side-scrolling perspective, I'm happy.

 

[Tyrant_Valvatorez]

I would make Megaman Xover what it should have been, a 25th anniversary game that has all the incarnations meet. Gameplay would be based upon the character ie classic Megaman levels, X style levels, Zero basically being harder X levels, Megaman Volnut would have Legends style ruins, Megaman.EXE would use the Battle Network battle system and Starforce Megaman would use the Starforce battle system. The major feature would be upon completion you could switch up things ie X in battle network and vice versa.