Almost 20 years since its release, official concept artwork from Rockman & Forte: Challenger From the Future has been discovered – and it was found by the game's director, no less.
Naoki Youyama was doing a little house cleaning when he found several documents related to the 1999 Japanese-exclusive Bandai WonderSwan title. Among them were concept art for the game's six Robot Masters – the "Dimensions". Above you can see concept art for (from top to bottom) Robot Masters Aircon Man, Clock Men, Compass Man and Dangan Man. The second image from top to bottom features Komuso Man and Konro Man.
Here's concept art of primary antagonist and leader of the Dimensions, Rockman Shadow. Youyama also revealed that Rockman Shadow was designed to be a prototype of Quint!
Youyama also found sketches of Rockman and early concepts for Clock Men and Komuso Man. A drawing of an Hitoshi Ariga-style Blues can be seen as well even though he didn't appear in the game.
More concept art of Rockman, Forte, Compass Man, and Rockman Shadow.
Finally, here's a look at the game's design document binder and source code on CD. Youyama said the code is in an older Mac format. He lacks the tools needed to read or make copies. Hopefully this is something we can help him with...
All in all, this is some very neat stuff. Artwork of Rockman Shadow and Dangan Man actually appeared in an old issue of Coro Coro Comics several years ago. Everything else you see here, however, here has never been published in an official capacity. Not in the game's manual, packaging or even in Mega Man: Official Complete Works – nothing. So yeah; a little summer-time cleaning can yield some excellent reward. Thank you, Mr. Youyama!
You can keep tabs on Youyama's day-to-day life via his official Twitter account. Follow him here.
Here expecting a high quality scan in the near future. Rockman Shadow is one of my favorite characters.
ReplyDeleteIt looks like Komuso Man was originally Doppler Man and Clock Men was originally Gemini Man. Weird...
ReplyDeleteFinally, I hope someone finds a way to open the contents of the game to mod at our hearts content and know how is a wonderswan game made exactly.
ReplyDeleteneat, challengers from the future is my favorite obscure title
ReplyDeleteOh man, I'm REALLY excited about this, especially seeing the official colors for the rest of the Dimensions. Love all the concept art, too. Hope that we get to see more of this.
ReplyDeleteBlues was in the game, though. :) He appeared for a grand total of one small cutscene that happens after you defeat Konro, Komuso, Aircon, and Dangan, but before you fight the Clock Men.
Yo-ho-hooo…! Official color schemes for the Dimension Number series! This day is awesome. Yeah~!
ReplyDeleteGreat to see this stuff surface!
ReplyDeleteOh, nice! Official colours for these characters! It's too bad it wasn't in R20, but better late than never, I guess
ReplyDeleteNICE! I apparently suck at this kind of thing since I can't find them, but I once compiled a bunch of more traditional 8-bit sprites for all the Robot Masters in this game. I think some I made from scratch, some I found done by other people, some I just made edits to, etc. This was so I could make perler bead sprites of every Robot Master. Now I'm going to have to redo a bunch of them with proper colors.
ReplyDeleteWhoa! i want to make some perler of them too!
DeleteTo say this was a pleasant surprise to wake up to would be an understatement. :D
ReplyDeleteI still love that Compass Man is both a navigational compass and a drawing compass.
ReplyDeleteThats awesome, I love seeing concept art.
ReplyDeleteWhatever happened to it ? Did they resolve it or something ? I hope you didnt forget and maybe talks with them again ? Please let us know. This needs more attention.
ReplyDeleteHope it wont be forgot.
ReplyDelete