Somewhere in that great checklist of "things Capcom haven't done with Mega Man yet" is a fighting game. It may never happen. Right now, though, there's a trailer out for a fan-game called Mega Man Arena. The project aims to pick up the slack and look good while doing it.
Mega Man Arena is a four-player fighting game in the vein of Super Smash Bros. developed by Jeff "KishSquared" Kish. It will feature nine characters from Mega Man 1 and Mega Man 2, twenty seven stages, team battles and... chickens. It's due out in early 2018 and looks super rad.
You can catch an early look at the game live on November 4th for charity. Hit up the video's description for more details!
Source: Mega Man Arena (thanks, PizzaStart!)
Ya know, I was working on a game not too far from this, some very long time ago. I feel like that one was based on a game that was also like this. Neither my not-even-alpha game nor the other game was very good, though. Ah, well.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, this one doesn't look very good, to me. It's very generic, uses so much recycled material, and just... lacks any real soul. It's almost like the playable characters from the Day in the Limelight games were tossed into a multiplayer arena-style game with stages (proudly) ripped and reassembled from the commercial games. That's just not that exciting.
Also, why just nine characters? And, why just from the first two games? Jazz it up. Go wild. Between the official releases, 8-Bit Deathmatch, and other sources, there's no reason not to add more characters from literally any classic series Mega Man game beyond the first two. They could even add characters and stages from the side games, as well! Most of the sprites already exist. Just have to know where to look.
In any case, I'm sure it'll have its fans, but if the most exciting thing about this game, to me, is the fact that you can wrangle a Cook... well, I don't think it's for me.
Starting with the first two games and only 9 characters seems like a sensible start. With how many games they could pull from, the roster could've easily been MUGEN-levels of overwhelming, from a presentation standpoint. This just looks like something fun that should've come out a while go. It's probably not amazing, but given that I'm most familiar with the first two games, I'd probably enjoy playing as Metal Man or Quick Man in a Smash Bros type of game.
DeleteThis is only version 1 so 9 characters is good enough, IMO. Balancing will undoubtedly be an issue, and a small roster makes that manageable. And why specifically 9 characters? From the video, it looks like it's Mega Man and the 8 robot masters from Mega Man 2. Also, MM8BDM used the Doom engine, so (assumedly) they didn't need to code up as much as this person does since many of the gameplay elements were already in place to some degree. All in all, I'd say that covering all of the Mega Man 2 robot masters in the initial release is more than acceptable for a project like this. It all goes well, then the author will eventually be in a better position to "go wild" with content in future releases.
DeleteThis doesn't really show anything, but would you mind telling me how you feel about this?
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmSOkqypzPM
This comment has been removed by the author.
Delete@Anonymous October 21, 2017 at 9:42 PM [This was the removed comment.]
DeleteJust gonna toss this out there: Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch may be running on Zandronum, a source port of Doom, but every single weapon, object, and even some of the physics, had to be coded by-hand. The sole exception, to the best of my knowledge, was Time Stopper, which juse used a timed "Freeze" console command, until later releases.
In any case, I'm not quibbling over the number of characters, particularly. I mean, Street Fighter II only had eight playable characters, to start. I just think that the roster could have been more varied. Why limit the roster -- and, the stage select -- to just the Mega Man 2 bosses when there are so many good ones from the other games? Oh, right. It's literally everyone's favorite game, in the series. I forgot. Tch.
----------
@Shin Star
See now, that actually looks interesting, to me. Between that video and the one with Pharaohman, I think that the stages are nicer and more creative and the character abilities are moe interesting. And, best of all... it's not just Mega Man 2 materials. In short: I like it.
I appreciate the reply and your thoughts on it. Thank you! I'm going to relay it to my brother now because he's the creator of that game.
DeleteThank you, Joseph Collins. I am the creator of the project in that video that Shin Star linked. I am sad to say there hasn't been any progress on the project, but I am determined to finish the project eventually. If any real progress is made on the project, I will post my progress to my Twitter account (https://twitter.com/khmaibq).
Delete"...every single weapon, object, and even some of the physics, had to be coded by-hand..."
DeleteBut that still leaves a lot of code that they didn't have to write completely from scratch. (Basic engine, general physics, script interpreter, level editors, rendering, networking, etc.) Granted I haven't worked on MM8BDM and am merely guessing here, but usually the reason that people use a pre-existing engine in the first place is that the amount of code that they don't have to write from scratch vastly outweighs the amount of custom scripting that they need to do in order to get things to work the way that they want (not to mention the general headache of dealing with another person's code/engine). Even if the Mega Man Arena author was using GameMaker or something, I would still probably say that it's a little more work than MM8BDM since he has to duplicate the Mega Man physics which is something MM8BDM didn't have to worry about.
"Why limit the roster...to just the Mega Man 2 bosses [...] And, best of all... it's not just Mega Man 2 materials"
You have to start somewhere. My guess is that it's probably going to be updated on a per game basis so more games will follow. However, if the "problem" is that you just personally have something against Mega Man 2, it would probably be better to just say that in the first place. It appears that you do not like the fact that Mega Man 2 is a fan favorite, and while you are entitled to your opinion on which Mega Man game is the best, trying to argue in favor of your bias under the guise of other talking points (like roster size) leads to confusing and unproductive discussion. Personally, I like Mega Man 2 and am OK with the decision to start there.
@Shin Star:
Interesting. Not quite as complete as Mega Man Arena, but it looks good. I wonder if this one is still in production. It looks like it's been in development for a couple of years, but no updates have been posted in almost a year. Now I want to go out and see how many other projects like this there are out there.
Looks fight as tuck, man!
ReplyDeleteAgain, thanks God we have an awesome fanbase that keeps making more Megaman fangames for us to play. The fanbase is the only reason Megaman is still alive.
ReplyDelete@Anonymous (October 23, 2017 at 6:52 AM)
ReplyDeleteListen. I am incredibly hard to please, when it comes to Mega Man fan games. For example... I didn't like Mega Man 2.5D because nothing worked like I expected it to, despite everything looking like it should. While I thought Mega Maker was a cute experiment, I ultimately don't care for it because, despite the player physics being pretty spot-on, the enemy behavior and trap/environmental hazards don't perfectly replicate what they're trying to. Don't even get me started on games where the player characters jump too high, slide too far, or move too quickly, though. Meanwhile, I praise games like Mega Man Unlimited, Mega Man Revolution (the original), and Mega Man: Super Fighting Robot because they not only replicated the feel and look of the commercial games very well, but they also did their own thing and did it well. (Still don't care for that "final boss" of Unlimited, though...)
My point is that, if a game is trying to replicate the look and feel of official commercial material, I feel that they should either go all-in, or don't try at all. And, this game? Well, as I said, I'm heavily reminded of the Day in the Limelight series, as far as character behavior goes. The characters and weapons are there, sure... but, aside from this-trait-or-that, it seems like the playable bosses are just Megaman with slightly-different stats, right down to being knocked back and being able to slide. (Sliding? In Mega Man 2? Only on the Game Boy, friend...) It just kind of leads to a big mess, in my opinion, and one may as well just have four Megamans on the screen with access to all the weapons, instead. Ironically, I praise Mega Man Powered Up for, basically, doing the same thing; making all the Dr. Light Numbers "Megaman, but with different weapons/abilities." But... that is a very different game, compared to this.
In terms of a 2D action platformer, I feel that sort of thing works quite well -- especially since they didn't go overboard with what the bosses can do. Would it have worked as a multiplayer battle game? Probably not. At least, not without some careful thought and planning. Otherwise, it just becomes Team Fortress Classic's 2Fort, where you spawn in, immediately get destroyed by weapons from all sides, and nobody can win for hours on-end. But, that's just how I see things. And, it's not like this game has up to 32 players, anyway... though, the single-screen thing does make it feel pretty cramped. (This doesn't seem to be as much of a problem, in Mega Man Versus, since it's a 1-on-1 game.)
As for my dislike of Mega Man 2? Well, "dislike" is, perhaps, not the right word. Rather, I'm sick of the community thinking that it's the "best Mega Man game of the NES era." So, when I see fan games that have a majority -- or, exclusive -- amount of Mega Man 2 content... I get a little annoyed. It's just not that great of a game. Yes, it's much better than the first one... but, then, the third one, despite all its rushed bugginess, is better than the second. Under the hood, at the very least.
That looks PRETTY FRIGGIN' AWESOME. If that was a four player PS4 game I'd buy two more controllers invite people over and go to town!
ReplyDelete"Somewhere in that great checklist of 'things Capcom haven't done with Mega Man yet' is a fighting game."
ReplyDeletenot to be "that guy" but Power Battle and Power Fighters exist.