Trivia / Mega Man (Classic)

• Bad Export for You:
  • The Rockman Complete Work games released on PlayStation Network's "PSOne Classics". Nothing was translated, so good luck navigating the menus or enjoying all of the bonus content if you can't read Japanese! It wasn't until the first Legacy Collection that players without any knowledge of the Japanese language were able to read the database featured in the Complete Works series, but the Legacy Collection itself was an inverse of what former brought in terms of features and refinements.
  • The original Japanese version of Rockman Battle & Chase featured new three characters introduced in that game: Chest, a robot that gives descriptions on the race courses and parts the player won; Ripot, an avian robot that commentates during races and hands the prize money to the winner of the the grand prix; and Plum, a pink-haired robot girl that also serves a commentator and interviews the opponent before a race starts. The overseas versions of Rockman Battle & Chase, which made its way into the Mega Man X Collection, had nearly all of the voice-acting removed and these characters never appear anywhere in the game outside of Ripot during a cutscene where Dr. Wily steals the prize money.
• Development Gag: Several. For instance, Commando Man was Search Man's original name.
• Executive Meddling: Why Mega Man 3 is one of Inafune's least favorites. He said that it could've been a much better game if the team was given more time to polish it, but Capcom wanted it released as soon as possible to capitalize on the momentum garnered from the second game, and he had to replace the head of production to complete it. However, the third game is still loved by most of the general public, rivaling Mega Man 2 for most popular.
• Fountain of Expies:
  • All main characters in each series are based on Mega Man and named after him, with the obvious exception of Zero. This also applies to Beck, the titular protagonist of the classic series' spiritual successor, Mighty No. 9.
  • Zero and other future incarnations of Proto Man variably play the role of The Lancer, Aloof Big Brother, or The Rival at various points in their respective series, including Mighty No. 9's Brandish (an older brother to Beck as Proto Man was to Mega Man) and Ray (sharing a similar backstory to Proto Man).
  • Similar to her brothers, most series will allude to Roll by having a blonde girl who dresses in either pink or red and acts as a sister, love interest, or mission control for The Hero. Alia, Roll Caskett, Roll.EXE, Ciel, etc. including Call from Mighty No. 9.
  • This also applies to alike Robot Masters. For example, Ice Man, Fire Man and Elec Man are the first of many elemental-themed Robot Masters, and Wood Man is the first to use a shield-based weapon.
• Late Export for You: Battle & Fighters was initially released in Japan in July 2000, before finally seeing an international release on the Nintendo Switch in August 2022, 22 years after it released. It and its sequel were included as bonus unlockables in Mega Man Anniversary Collection first released in 2004, which in itself was exclusive to North America and remained only on sixth generation home consoles.
• No Export for You: A couple of games, but most notably...
  • Wily and Right's RockBoard: That's Paradise, released for the Famicom (the Japanese version of the NES), which was basically Monopoly with Mega Man characters. It never saw a North American release because Nintendo of America believed it would promote gambling among children. Also notable for being a Mega Man game that does not feature Mega Man as a playable character.
  • Before its inclusion on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive Mini, The Wily Wars was only made available in North America through the Sega Channel, but when the service ended, you were out of luck if you were living in North America (unless you happen to have an emulator, or a Game Genie, which can bypass the regional lockouts of imported titles). The game saw an actual release—y'know, an actual cartridge—in Japan and Europe, but in a move that defied logic, it didn’t see that kind of release in North America. But come 2021, it was announced that the game finally would finally see an official physical release in North America thanks to Retro Bit.
  • Mega Man 6 was not released in Europe until after 19 years when it finally saw the light of the day on the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console to coincide with Mega Man's announcement in Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U. It almost didn't get released in North America either, as Capcom felt it arrived well past the NES's prime. Nintendo, however, published the game themselves.
  • Mega Man & Bass, which was one of the last games for the Super Famicom (the SNES's Japanese counterpart), having been released in 1998. It never saw a release outside of Japan until 2002-2003 when it was ported to the Game Boy Advance.
  • Super Adventure Rockman, an "interactive movie game" that combines text-based adventure gameplay with that of a First-Person Shooter and features Anime cutscenes. Notable for being much darker in tone than other games in the classic series, and as such was apparently disowned by Inafune himself, who thought it contrasted with the mood of other games a little too much.
  • Battle And Chase, which saw Mega Man go-karting with Dr. Wily; initially released only in Japan and Europe for the original PlayStation before being made playable elsewhere as an unlockable game in the PS2/GameCube's Mega Man X Collection.
• Official Fan-Submitted Content: Monster designs are often from contests.
• Referenced by...: Anodyne: There's a hidden MegaMan in the background of one boss fight.
• Remade for the Export: The GBA version of Mega Man & Bass.
• Sequel Gap: Twice. Mega Man 8 was released for the Playstation in 1996 and Sega Saturn in 1997 to commemorate the series' 10th Anniversary, and then there'd be an over 10 year hiatus until Mega Man 9 was released for the Sony Playstation 3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii in 2008. It was shortly followed by Mega Man 10 for the same systems in 2010 and then there was an 8 year hiatus until the release of Mega Man 11 on the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and PC in late 2018.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The first game was originally intended to have eight Robot Masters like the rest of the series. When the decision came to cut the number down to six, only seven designs were fleshed out, and Bond Man◊, a glue Robot Master, had to be cut. Bond Man had since gained a cult following in Japan, and even Keiji Inafune has taken a liking to him. He was briefly under consideration to be one of the new bosses in Powered Up, but Inafune felt it would be better for him to remain mythic and unofficial. More information on Bond Man can be found here.
  • Putting aside Bond Man, you have the Robot Master fan submissions that were used as the basis for the new Masters from 2 to 8; there are roughly 750,000 Robot Masters who were at one point or another under consideration for the games. While some of the rejects got used eventually (see Development Gag), the vast majority of them are unknown to everyone who didn't directly sift through the postcards.
  • Only God knows how a possible opening sequence in Mega Man 3 would have looked like, but the slow first part of the title theme is a clear indicator that they had planned one for the game.
  • According to Mega Man Official Complete Works, the original concept for Top Man and his stage was lost when someone tripped over a power cord and the information hadn't been properly saved. It took three days to reconstruct it, and Inafune openly wonders in the book what things would have been like if the original concept survived (among other things, maybe the Top Spin wouldn't be a Joke Weapon/Lethal Joke Weapon).
  • Bass and Treble were originally going to be named Baroque (バロック, Barokku) and Crash (クラッシュ, Kurasshu) in early designs, a play on the names Rock (ロック, Rokku) and Rush (ラッシュ, Rasshu). This would emphasize their role as rivals to Mega Man and Rush. As you can see, their prototype designs were also quite different from the final result.◊
  • Some concept sketches included in the Legacy Collection showed that Rush was an eagle at one point.

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