Capcom is gamefaqs polls most hated gaming company in a matter of days

Although Blizzard is just barely behind, Capcom has pretty much gone from one of the most well loved gaming publishers to the most hated virtually overnight.

When Mega Man Universe was canceled, I was disappointed.  It was okay though, Capcom's word was that the game wasn't shipping up too well, and the few that did play the game said the controls needed more polish.  All well, better to not release a Mega Man game than to feed us a cruddy one (I'm looking at YOU X7!).

Then Legends was canceled.  Incredibly irritating, and many fans were understandably frustrated.  The backlash was predictable, because saying the game doesn't meet your criteria, when the complete wave of arbitrary bullshit that does is beyond comprehension doesn't exactly fly well.  But THEN the European Cacpom twitter has the gall to tell fans it's their fault the game didn't get made.

Death of a Legend(s3?)

So despite my earlier snarkyness, I am pretty disappointed that Mega Man Legends 3 is not getting released.  I had my problems with this game from the beginning.  The fan participation seemed, at the time, like either a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, or a dumb marketing gimmick.  I was pleasantly surprised the former was handled with much care to prevent that from happening, and obviously the latter was ineffective or nonexistent.  I also have problems with the series in general being basically Mega Man in name, and having very little to do with it's predecessors.  I'm all for innovation, but Legends always felt like the apple that fell just a bit too far from the tree with me.

That said, I did enjoy Legends.  The controls were terrible, the camera could be a pain, but overall these games were fun.  Perhaps it was that intangible good feeling that's hard to get with a game, or perhaps it's how 1up.com's Jeremy Parish put it, that Legends was a game with heart.  While I'm not taking the news as hard as some people, I do feel like this string of cancellations is a bitter pill to swallow, and Legends 3 was the closest thing to the series ever moving forward that there has been in a long time.

Oh man!

Am I ever so glad I don't have to drop $300 on another Nintendo gimmick system!

Didn't See That One Coming

Kotaku is reporting that Inafune is out. At this point that takes the Mega Man franchise out of his hands for good at the end of the month. I gotta say I'm a bit surprised that he's calling it quits just as the one game he's been pushing to get made for years and years finally gets green-lighted.

Although the creator is being removed from the project, this may be a good thing in the end. If any franchise needs new blood in it, it's this one. This could be a chance for a young gun developer to take hold of the franchise and breath some new life into it.

I had my misgivings about Legends 3 ever since it was announced for a hand held. While that doesn't necessarily mean it'll be bad, or even not amazing, it seemed to me that Capcom was playing it safe trying to be the big game at the system launch amid the sea of crap that always hits at release date. It was as if they didn't trust that it was going to do well enough on its own.

Furthermore, this co-development by the fans thing is looking like a huge gimmick to me. I've always hated the "design by committee" approach to just about everything, because you either get an incredibly bland product, or a completely directionless product.

I guess it's okay so far, with just a series of contests between the developers with fans voting on the best works, but the more interaction the fans get, the more chances we could end up with Portal references or just flat out weird fan-fictiony interactions between the characters, particularly Mega Man, Roll and Tron.

With Inafune washing his hands of the franchise, and the reasons above, we could be up for a rocky start in the new era of Mega Man games. Something different and awesome could come out of this after a while though. Games are only good when the creator has a hold of them right?

Legends 3 In Developement

So I gotta say, I'm incredibly disappointed Capcom is continuing this series on another hand-held. The 3DS to me, looks pretty much like a big gimmick in the making, with more games coming out that focus on the graphics than the gameplay. It also sounds like limiting yourself so much when you've got to design a game for this little tiny screen instead of something out there for the consoles. I find it so frustrating that the only damn Mega Man games that come out on the consoles are essentially Mega Man 2 remakes, while the franchise continues to advance slowly on the hand-helds.

That said, the announcement finally got me to look at the 3DS, and at least from the screenshots I've seen, it looks like we've got the power of a gamecube coming to our hands in the least, which should be more than enough for this game. Sure, I just complained about games based on graphics, but I'd at least like to see the game advance past the Playstation 1 days. I don't need to see the individual hairs on the monkey's ass here, but the 3DS should make Legends 3 a pretty game.

With all my complaints about the game being on a hand held, it's hard to watch Inafune come out like this and not get excited.



You can feel the enthusiasm in his voice. You can see the excitement in his eyes as he stumbles over his words. And you can see that the man has been humbled by an audience that has basically given him the mandate, support, and opportunity, to create this game that's been ten years in the making.

Right now I'm not worried that Legends 3 will be a bad game. Inafune looks to be really fired up over this. I mean, he decided to break the news over Youtube and through Capcom's website. This is a relatively big news story in the games industry. Capcom could have easily sold this story to a magazine like Nintendo Power, or a website like IGN or GameSpot, but I don't think he could have waited any longer to get out there and say, "Hey guys, it's finally happening!"

Legends isn't particularly one of my favorite series in the franchise, but it has always been a fun series to play through. Having never seen a 3DS in action, and seeing Inafune as fired up as he is, I think it's very possible that Inafune decided to release this game on the 3DS as soon as it was given the green light.

Let's keep in mind that the series was far from incredible though when it came out, so lets not hype the game out to its grave. If Inafune wants to make his Magum Opus here, he has to surpass everything he's done so far and pour it all into this. He's been green-lighted by the fans, and now finally Capcom itself is on board, so lets wish him luck, and hope Legends 3 will be the pinnacle of the entire Mega Man franchise.

The Future of Legends

I probably should have wrote this update after Legends 2, but honestly I didn't think about talking about the futures of each series until well after writing about Legends 2. So I decided to wait until after the last official entry in this series, Great Five-Island Adventures!

Legends is for all intents and purposes is dead in the water, at least for now. All the cell phone games, the re-releases, the appearances in other Capcom games, all of it doesn't mean a thing right now. Keiji Inafune says that Legends is his personal favorite Mega Man game and he has promised the fans that he will make Legends 3 one day even if he has to fund it himself. That might be the only way however, as Capcom is afraid that Legends will costs too much to make for too little returns.

The fan base keeps pressing for a new Legends game though and occasionally Capcom makes use of their online community websites to poll the fans on it. If Capcom feels that they can make a profit on Legends 3, it'll happen, but they've been toying around with the series for nine years now and I wouldn't take any cameos as a hint of an upcoming release. However, the Dead Rising/Lost Planet engine was designed with Mega Man Legends 3 in mind, so the ground work has a foundation, but it might never be utilized.

Awareness for the series is rising though. The game got re-releases on the PSP in Japan, and odds are good the series will make it's way to the PSN store, and if we're really lucky, the X-Box live Arcade and Wii Virtual Console, though I wouldn't hold my breath there. I think it's now or never with this console generation if we're going to see a new Legends game before Inafune retires, but that's only wild speculation on my part.

If a new Legends game is to be made, it must have tighter controls than the original games. I think it would also help to add more Mega Man elements. Weapon selection, better boss fights, open ended dungeon selection. Basically less Castlevania, more Mega Man. Oh and for god's sake, tone down the money grind.

Story wise, we've gotta get Trigger off the damn moon and get him dealing with the remains Elysium. The old system is supposed to reactivate and start killing all the carbons any time. Potentially that means endless sequels as they never mention any specific number of systems, or they could just scrap that and have Mega Man continue his Diggers quests for any number of reasons. The best part of the games are the Bonnes and the Servbots though, and hopefully if the series continues we'll get the old voice actors back, but don't count on it.

There is one way to help get Legends 3 off the ground, although it's not guaranteed to work. That is to straight up fund Capcom by buying all of their Mega Man products, regardless of quality... which most Mega Man fans are doing anyway, so I guess you'll have to convince your friends that Operation Shooting Star is the next coming of Ocarina of Time, as well as every other future title. Hell, go back and buy the Star Force and ZX games even if you don't like them. If Mega Man gets more support, Legends is likely to get more support too. That might not work anyway though, so don't get your hopes up for Legends 3 unless Inafune starts taking hostages to get it made.

Next up, The best selling Mega Man game in years.

Mega Man Legends 2: Great Inheritance

Legends 2 is a game that takes a step forward and two steps back. It is the mantra of this game. It seems that for every new improvement to the game there is a nasty new problem that pops up. It feels more refined than the original for sure, but it lacks the innovation the first game had (a shocker for Mega Man I know) and most of the design feels uninspired and lazy. What isn't brand new is territory tread much to far, and what is new is tedious and shows either a developer intention to frustrate the player or a huge lack of play testing oversights.

Legends 1 was far from perfect but it tried to make up for it's faults in other areas and disguised a lot of them by taking it easy on the player. Legends 2 feels like the slapped a band-aid on all the problems of Legends 1 and then tried to run with a whole host of new ideas that the engine isn't polished enough for. This leads to an increase in difficulty that is nearly 100% due to the games lack of solid controls. The worst part is, some idiots at Capcom had the idea in their head that bad controls are legitimate difficulty challenges. The game literally asks you if you like a challenge when selecting a control scheme. THE PLAYABILITY OF A GAME IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR GAME DESIGN! God this is why I hated the Resident Evil series for so long. Capcom dropped this retarded attitude with Resident Evil 4 and hopefully it's dead and buried forever.

Back on topic, once again the reason this game isn't as good as it should be is because of playability. Legends made up for this by designing around the controls short comings, Legends 2 does not, and whats more it has a whole new host of straight up stupid design decisions. More on that in a bit.

New Features

• More Control schemes including Dual Analog support, however you're stuck with an asinine button configuration for it.
• New characters who I assume would probably had returned should the series had continued from this point.
• Mega Man's kick has been replaced with a Mega Arm that picks up objects and enemies.
• Mega Man can now lock on to targets and run and shoot them.
• The shielding system from Mega Man Legends has been removed.
• The armor equipment has been expanded upon.

Story

Like the first game this one opens up with a premise, dicks around for a bit, then throws all the important details at the end of the game. Luckily for us, this game answers all of the first games questions and doesn't leave us hanging with any real new questions. Yes it has a cliff hangar but not one that the solution isn't fairly obvious should a third game be made so it's nothing to worry about.

Some time after the events of the first game, Barrel Casket (Roll's Grandfather) is holding a press conference with his friend the multi-millionaire Werner von Buecher about an upcoming journey to "The Forbidden Island," which they believe is the location of the Motherlode, the big treasure mentioned in the first game. During the press conference a woman who resembles Roll's mother interrupts it and warns that the Motherlode is a catastrophe and not a treasure and that they should avoid it at all costs. The completely reasonable von Buecher guard unit then opens fire on her. She jumps out the window on a big flying... bird... thing and her bird thing named Gatz accidentally destroys their engine sending the giant swirling storm surrounding the Forbidden Isle.

MegaMan and Roll see the events unfold on TV and decide to rescue them. Roll has some blueprints for a drop ship that her father made and they stop at an settlement near the Forbidden Island to gather parts to make it. However, they find a man named Joe who has lost his memory who has already built the drop ship and gives them permission to use it. It is alluded to that he maybe Roll's long lost father, but considering he doesn't even have a voice actor this revelation surprisingly goes no where.

Anyway, MegaMan drops in the Forbidden Island and finds a mysterious girl named Sera and her keeper there. The seem to recognize MegaMan as Trigger and are from the ancient civilizations that built the ruins. They promise to lead Buecher to the Motherlode (which will give them all the refractors they need) if Beucher can get Sera the four hidden keys needed to unlock it. Guess who Beucher asks to go get them?

So now we're on an adventure to get all the keys, but all the pirates have teamed up against us to get them first. The Bonnes, Glyde and his Bird Bots from Misadventures, and a couple of new characters, Klaymoor and Bola. While a lot of hilarious moments happen here (both of Tron's encounters are the highlights of the entire game) the main story doesn't move forward until MegaMan returns all four keys.

Once he does, Sera attacks Beucher's ship and steals the keys. During the attack MegaMan takes out Sera's keeper (who turns into a giant bird thing himself) but gets badly damaged in the process. During this period, the woman who looks like Roll's mother helps repair MegaMan and restores his memory. She introduces herself as Yuna, "The Mother Unit of Terra." Terra is Earth, don't think much on why they bothered to change the translation.

We go through MegaMan's memories. MegaMan, Yuna and Sera all come from Elysium (remember what X said he was going to build in X5?). Elysium is the home of the last human to ever live The Master, and Sera was the Mother Unit of Elysium. MegaMan was a purifier unit, or in more recognized terms, a Maverick Hunter. In the Japanese version, he is literally an Irregular Hunter (the Japanese name for Mavericks).

We find out the origins of the people who remain on Earth. They are called "Carbons" and are essentially artificially created humans. They are kinda like Reploids but much much much much more advanced. They have desires such as hunger, suffer from disease, can age, reproduce and die. They are pretty much humans created from other humans.

They aren't seen as equals however, and considered by the system in place an inferiority to humans because they are artificial. Elysium serves the purpose of protecting the Master from the hardships of normal life that the Carbons suffer, and should the Master die, his genetic code would be used to clone new humans and the Carbons would be wiped out in order to make room for the new clone human species on Earth.

The Master takes a fondness to MegaMan and asks to see the Earth. There he questions the system and doesn't want to wipe out the carbons. He asks MegaMan to destroy the system then dies because being outside of Elysium for even a few minutes when you're 3000 years old gives you a hell of a heart attack.

MegaMan takes the Masters genetic code and is sought after by Mother Sera to start the Carbon Reinitialization process. Since MegaMan is going against the system, he is now considered a Maverick and the system is to track them down. Sera wants to hunt MegaMan down, but Yuna wonders what is motivating MegaMan to act this way and takes a more neutral position. Frustrated, Sera comes to Earth to fight MegaMan and the two nearly wipe each other out completely. Yuna seizes the opportunity to seal Sera away in stasis and "resets" MegaMan so he may heal from his wounds and his memories are stored within Data the monkey. MegaMan is eventually found by Barrel Casket and adopted.

Also worth mentioning is that in between this time, for some reason that is very loosely explained, Yuna takes Roll's mothers body temporarily. The Roll's parents subplot is actually really stupid when everything comes together.

After restoring MegaMan, Yuna decides to aid him by taking him to Elysium. She tells MegaMan that it is his decision to either support the systems Carbon Reinitialization or to destroy it. They say this a bunch of times as if they were actually giving the player a choice like for multiple endings or something, but no actually, there is only one choice.

MegaMan goes and faces Sera who after fighting MegaMan, she understands the Master's wishes (what the hell is with this franchise and people figuring things out as they fight?). She's about to die, but Yuna has her transfer her AI to Yuna's old body. Yuna says that other systems are still in place that will awaken eventually to threaten the carbons and the three of them will need to stop it. She then wonders how they're going to get back to Earth.

The last scene shows Roll and Tron arguing about how to build a rocket to get to space to save them. Data worryingly says, "Sorry MegaMan, but it looks like you're going to be up there a while longer." You have no idea Data.

Legends is really strong with the characters more than the main plot which really tries to have you digest too much all at once in very specific points. The overall performances are great, except during the flashback sequence in which MegaMan has some really painful dialog to listen to, and the Master is the most boring and emotionless character ever made. Otherwise, the game sets up what would have no doubt been about a million sequels to come if the series wasn't put on hold indefinitely by Capcom.

Aesthetics

A huuuuuuge improvement over the last game. Everything looks much better, the characters, the environments and the dungeons. MegaMan got a bit of a redesign himself, and he looks a little less cartoony and a little more serious. I prefer this look myself. The other characters have had some touch ups themselves and are much less blocky looking.

The game came out just before the release of the PS2 so the graphics were comparable to other games at the time but that wouldn't last long as you'd imagine. More important than the straight graphical prowess however is how much more interesting this game looks compared to it's predecessor and games around the same time period. Yes, there are much better looking games out there, but this one isn't bad.

The last games stages all were pretty bland and there wasn't much variety in the environments. The opposite is true in this game as you'll travel the whole world in a variety of environments and locales. The individual dungeons have their own themes going on with them and are much more memorable for it.

Legends 1 consisted of one central town that was made up of squares, but the cities in are much more interesting, albeit individually smaller.

One thing to say about this game is that it actually has good cinematography and goes a great distance to capture the scenes from the best possible angles. I had about 150 screenshots to sort through and almost all of them were framed so well. It was tough choosing the best ones. I really like how this game looks, and it's one of the high lights of the Mega Man franchise.

Sound

Also very good. The sound track is excellent and greatly improved from Legends. Legends as a series is more symphonic than most Mega Man games but it fits the series better. The music accompanies each scene beautifully and enhances the appropriate emotions quite well.

The voice acting once again is great and most of the voice actors from the previous games make a reappearance. MegaMan's voice has changed and many complain it's a bit too feminine, but I guess as someone whose seen just about everything related to Mega Man voice acting it doesn't bother me so much. He just sounds younger than the last MegaMan Trigger to me. Like I said in the story section, he just has some really bad dialog in the flashback.

One confusing thing is that if "Joe" is as important a character as they lead one to believe with regards to Roll... why does he not have any voice acting? In fact, a few scenes you would think would be important are missing voice acting. It's really more confusing then terrible though. The sound on a whole is pretty good though.

Design

The game opens with a fire starting on the Flutter. You put it out, watch some story, have a bit of a mini dungeon and a few boss fights before you get to your first real dungeon which is decently enjoyable.

Then from here on out the game starts getting worse and worse. Most of the boss fights are pretty fun but they are all much more difficult than Legends. They exhibit different patterns and motions leaving you needing to use more strategy instead of running and shooting which worked in Legends 1, the final boss fight especially.

The weapons in this game are improved over the first, but once again since you can only take one with you at a time, most of them won't get used being how situational they are. The Fire Extinguisher sub weapon is a great example of how useless some of them are. You use it in the very beginning because you are forced to, and then at some random point in the game they actually suggest you use it during a boss fight as if you would have been stupid enough to bring the damn thing with you. These are the only sections in the game where you put out fires, so whats the point?

One of the other problems with these weapons however is that they are WAAAAAAY to expensive to upgrade. Grinding out cash is really slow, but if you use cheap ways to get it you'll probably get around 1,000,000 zenny every half hour or so. Some of these weapons cost around 18,000,000 to upgrade and it just isn't worth your time to do this. The Legend's 1 prices compared to this were still bad, but manageable, these are insane and not even counting the other junk you have to buy.

MegaMan's new lifter arm replaces the kick however, and that is an improvement as you can pick up most enemies and hurl them at each other, usually instantly killing them. You will always have this with you, leading to some small block moving sections. It opens up the possibility for puzzle solving, although it's rarely utilized.


The enemies are extremely tedious. Not difficult, tedious. They charge at you, jump into you, fire at you from really weird angles and take FOREVER to kill. It doesn't help that MegaMan goes comically flying in every which way from the slightest tap from an enemy making these fights to seemingly never end. Sometimes the game gets really fucking cute with you and lines up some dead end rooms with these really annoying enemies and locks the door until you fight them. This is especially bad in Elysium which would almost be a fun dungeon if it wasn't for these fuck you rooms.

Most of the dungeons are ok except for the god forsaken under water dungeon. This dungeon just flat out reeks of "WHAT THE FUCK WERE THEY THINKING!?" This is the worst section of the game for thousands of reasons the first of which is because MegaMan is underwater, you move at half speed. WHO THE HELL THOUGHT THIS WAS A GOOD IDEA TO PLAY IN SLOW MOTION? I could stand this if it wasn't THE LONGEST DUNGEON IN THE GAME. ARG! FUCK THIS DUNGEON IT TAKES FOREVER! Even if you buy the water chip so you can skate across it you still move really slow and can't attack while skating anyway so what's the point? The dungeon also sticks the boss behind a wall that you need to drill behind, so unless you go out of your way to drill the wall, run allllllllll the way back to Roll to switch weapons then come alllllll the way back, you're buster dueling the boss which is a gigantic pain in the ass since it's 3 monsters constantly shooting at you. Shooting at you while you're moving in slow motion I might add. It's not hard, it's just fucking tedious.

Another tedious section is the ice dungeon where you have to chase around keys to get to the locked room. They are annoying as all hell to catch and you need to use the grabber to get them, so fuck your special weapons. It's not hard, it's tedious.

Some design choices make you just wonder what the hell the point was. For instance, there is a quiz you can take after the first real dungeon. You would think it would be really interesting to have some MegaMan questions to answer but NO! This game asks you shit about the Russian revolution, Geography and Math. Who the fuck thought people would want to play this to simulate their school experience?

The design in this game excels in only challenging the players patience. Like I said, it's not hard, it's tedious.

Playability

The nicest feature is that we can now lock on targets and fire while running with the targets locked on. The problem is the lock on feature is extremely fickle and drops your target all the fucking time. Other times it targets them at an angle and you still can't fucking hit them. And targeting multiple enemies? Forget it as your targeting has a hard time distinguishing the dangers of a giant fire breathing reaverbot and a flea. You can set the targeting to auto if you really hate yourself. The main problem with the controls here is that the game design in Legends 2, unlike Legends 1, doesn't compensate for it's shitty controls and the difficulty is increased ten fold because of it. But that difficulty comes in from MegaMan getting tossed around more than directly taking damage, so it's all just tedium.

As I mentioned before this game supports dual analog, but changes the button configuration on you to really asinine controls for it. All I have to say is, WHY WON'T YOU LET ME SET MY OWN CONFIGURATION!? Or make one that doesn't suck! Shit. This game isn't unplayable, but they really didn't try to make this game much better than the original Legends.

Extras

• The Buster Cannon is a decent weapon to focus upgrading on. It's extremely powerful although you can't move while firing with it. It'll really fuck up the early bosses though. At the end of the game, grab the shining laser though.
• The best way to gain cash is to enter the B License sub-ruins on Pokte Island and keep going in and out of it until the first enemy you see is a running treasure chest. Run into the dungeon until you find the Golden Duck reaverbot. He drops about 8,000-10,000 each time you kill him and respawns when you leave the room.
• This game also features a dark side/light side meter, but the only point of it is to gain an extra weapon. Kick some pigs around to become dark side and speak to a merchant in the desert village to find the part for the Crusher.
• Roll has a diary you can read in her room recapping the events from her perspective. If you give her gifts you'll eventually be able to get a discount from her when improving your weapons. Her diary also has a "secret" message for you if you are really nice to her the whole game.
• Speaking of this, if you use your grabber weapon on Roll at the start of the game, she'll scream and slap you. MegaMan is perverted.

What's the verdict on this game? It's fun, but not as good as Mega Man Legends, specifically because of those mind numbingly tedious bits. Still it sucks that the Legends series cut off as it was about to get going. If Legends 3 ever does get made though, it's going to have to blow these games out of the water to be successful. Capcom can do that if they don't get lazy, something Capcom is also good at being.

Playthroughs
N/A

The Misadventures of Tron Bonne

Most of 98 and 99, the US went without a Mega Man game for the first time in years. While this isn't strange for 99% of other franchises, it is for Mega Man. The last game we had over here was Legends, a real departure from the main game play styles. So what do we get after all this time of waiting? A departure from the departure... a spin-off of the spin-off. Misadventures of Tron Bonne reeks of a quickly thrown together fan-servicing, cash milking, miserable pile of crap. But it isn't, no it's actually quite entertaining! Color me pleasantly surprised!

It should be noted though, that this is a Mega Man game in name only. The blue bomber only gets a cameo and a few brief easter egg mentions, and it's not even the Mega Man from this time period. Also, while this game is entertaining, it's not particularly great and has a number of flaws. What saves this game is it's charm.

As I said in my Legends review, the Bonne family is one of the most entertaining aspects of Mega Man Legends, and that is in no small part thanks to the Servbots, and this game puts you in charge of 40 of them in an assortment of mini-games. Even if each individual mini-game isn't all that good, the characters will keep you progressing through the game to it's finish.

Story
A year before the events of Mega Man Legends, the Bonne pirate family has just finished construction on their giant air ship, the Gesellschaft (that ship you blow to smithereens in Mega Man Legends). Teisel Bonne has taken a huge loan of one million Zennys from a loan shark, named Mr. Loathe, to fund the construction. One day while he and Bonne Bon are out on a dig, Mr. Loathe sends his henchmen, Glyde and the Birdbots, to kidnap them.

Tron decides to go on several criminal endeavors to raise the money to pay off the loan to Loathe, but Loathe raises the interest on her, and refuses to let them go. Loathe imprisons Tron with her brothers, and has apparently been using diggers to uncover a giant reaverbot mechlanoid called the Collosus, in which he plans to use to take over the world.

The Serbots break out the Bonnes, and take down the Collosus. They throw a party afterwords celebrating their freedom and new wealth, only to discover the Servbot who had freed Tron and her brothers had accidentally thrown away all of their treasure. Cue the sad trombone.

It's a ridiculous game, but the characters are really the highlight of this one. The Servbots are so naive and child like, and Tron is one harsh mistress to work for. Teisel, Tron, and the whole group of Servbots, play really well off each other, and despite all of the torture and bits of pure insanity, they are one loving family of pirates.

Aesthetics
No real graphical upgrades from Legends, and Tron's only 3D appearance in this game is on the cover. The graphical style this game goes for is different though, using still images to convey the majority of the story, pasted over the 3D environments. It works really well, and the artwork is top notch for these characters. There's variety in the environments and settings, such as robbing a town bank, to the under ground ruins of the ancients. It's a step up over legends, where the dungeons tend to blend together, although their aren't as many levels total.

Sound
Rob Smith and Caroly Larson reprise their roles as Teisel and Tron, and each do fantastic jobs, but the stars of the show are the Servbots. The voice acting in this game is just as good as it was in Legends, and will serve the most of what little replay value this game has.

The music is pretty relaxed and atmospheric, but nothing special. Legends had better music than this, but it's not terrible.

Design
The game is broken up into a variety of mini-games built around meeting your million zenny goal. There are three primary mini games. The first uses the combat engine from the Legends with a few bonuses, in that you get a few Servbots to assist you in your pillaging endeavors. You'll move around towns sending your yellow boys busting into houses and shaking down random characters, all while the cops are blasting at you. This part of the engine is used in most of the critical gameplay/plot elements, and how you'll deal with boss fights.

The second mini game is a first person dungeon crawler, where you'll send the Servbots to scavenge treasure and disable traps for you as an interesting subplot plays out. Interesting the first time you play it, but probably the most boring out of all the games, once you've played it once before. The Servbots are invincible, and the puzzle are overtly simplistic, robbing you of any real challenge in these sections. The only redeeming factor of these sections are the quirky characters.

The third mini game is by far the best, and could probably translate nicely to a cell phone game or something. It's a puzzle game in which Tron must move several crates off a pier on to her ship. You're limited to a set number of moves, and various crates have certain movement restrictions on them, requiring a lot of critical thinking to figure out a path. Luckily, you can bring a Servbot along to give you hints.

The Servbots themselves all have individual strengths, weaknesses and talents, and you'll have to play around with their stats to get the most out of them. Each Servbot has an Attack, Speed, Brains and Sloth rating, which you can raise through a variety of mini games and items. Most of them have a hidden talent as well, some of which will assist you in the combat sections, and others will fill minor interesting roles on your ship, such as changing the background music, or repainting your mech, the Gustave. You unlock these talents by raising their stats, or giving them items you find, and unlocking all of them will keep you busy.

While only the Puzzle game is truly fantastic, none of these games are so tedious to discourage you from playing them. If I had one complaint, it would be that the mini games to raise Servbots stats actually are a bit on the ridiculous side in difficulty. Especially the speed game, in which you must serve lunch to the Servbots rapidly, with almost no room for error.

Variety is this games strength, not playing up anything strong enough to be it's own game, but changing things up enough to keep them interesting. There's also a couple of hidden gambling games you can unlock with some effort, and you'll always have a sense of progress as you gain more money, develop better weapons, and unlock new talents. A fun game, but definitely nothing traditionally Mega Man about it.

Playability
As I said, the training games for the Servbots are stupid hard, and are hardly worth your time. Another complaint is the stats have limited use, and it's hard to distinguish how useful each stat is. I'm not entirely sure how sloth really even affects the Servbots, but the game tells you it's bad (although it has a humorous mini-game to lower it). The difference between the attack ratings is hard to measure also, and brains only seem to affect the crate moving game. Speed is definitely measurable though, as the difference between a rank 1 speed Servbot and a rank 4 speed Servbot is obvious once you see the difference. Once again, though, the speed training is incredibly difficult, so it might not be worth your time raising this stat for all your bots.

The game itself isn't particularly difficult either. Even if you have trouble with a boss fight, E-Tanks are so cheap that you can load up quite a bit before anything gives you trouble. If you wanted to, you could probably finish this game without too much upgrading either the Gustave or your Servbots, but where would the fun in that be?

Extras

• You don't have to complete all the mini-games to finish the game, so if any section is giving you trouble, just farm for Zenny in the free mission and skip them.
• At once point, you'll get to choose your favorite Servbot. They'll get an attack boost and wear a red hat. General consensus is that #27 is the best to choose, because he has a speed of 4 to start with, and will make the final levels much easier.
• Servbots Brain ratings go up from being taken on missions. Take Servbots with unknown talents with you to raise their brains up, chances are you might unlock something.
• Speaking of Brains, raise one of your appraiser Servbots brains to 4 and he'll tell you which Servbot to give which item when you show it to him.
• The rocket launcher weapon for the Gustave is pretty useless, since you can't move and shoot with it, but it is required to unlock certain areas of the free mission. If you are going to be in combat in general though, go with the Gatling Gun.
• This is the first appearance of Glyde. You might not recognize him in this form, but he gets a bit of a redesign as Glyde.exe in the battle network series, where you might be more familiar with him.

The Misadventures of Tron Bonne is an often overlooked game that is pretty enjoyable. That said, you won't miss much if you don't touch this one either. The main reason to see this game is to see why the Servbots are so popular in the Mega Man universe.

Playthroughs
Miss Tron, Miss Tron! Let's Play the Misadventures of Tron Bonne! by Outlaw Moogle and Jacobus Spades

Rockman Gets Educational

For the rest of 1998, Capcom would license Rockman to some Taiwanese company to make some kiddie educational PC games. There isn't a lot of information known about these games here in the states though, and they're pretty rare. Even if I did get my hands on them, I couldn't play them as they're in Japanese... or Taiwanese... or Chinese or something, I couldn't tell you.

Rockman's IQ Challenge
Rockman X's Mathematics Tornado
Rockman DASH To Save the World
The gameplay between the three games as far as I understand is the same. They're basically a series of quizzes related to general knowledge and things elementary kids should learn. I'd imagine they have a few animations and artwork of the various characters from each series, but that's pure speculation, assuming the developers of these games even made an attempt to make them fun.

I'm going off second hand knowledge here, but we know for sure none of these games are apart of the official Rockman/Mega Man time-line, so you won't miss anything by not playing them. That said, there isn't a lot of information out there about them, and they are official Capcom licensed, so if you want to own EVERYTHING, put these on your lists. You can find more screenshots and information about these games here at the Mechanical Maniacs.

Mega Man Legends

And so we start off the ill fated Legends series. The first Mega Man Legends actually didn't do too terribly, selling well enough to make the Playstation greatest hits lists (at the time 150,000 sales within a year), but it didn't quite match the sales of the other 2d games.

The biggest problem with the game is that Mega Man didn't transition very well into 3D. 3D platforming is a bit of a tough genre as it is, and 3rd person shooting doesn't compliment it much either. The controls for this game are what really hold it back, and it really could have benefited from more conventional control schemes.

Despite the flaws that hold it back, it still has a lot going for it, and it is Keiji Inafune's favorite series of the franchise. I've always said Mega Man games and story were like poison, and this one certainly has some toxicity to it, but the characters really drive this game like no other before it, and even though the controls aren't great, exploration is still pretty fun.

Story
Mega Man and Roll crash land on an island, hijinx ensues, then suddenly a gigantic mind fuck happens and the world is in danger. This accurately describes the main plot of Legends. Nothing really important happens till the end of the game, and then it ends on a cliff hanger. Yeah, seriously.

In Japan, this game is called Rockman DASH, or Diggers Adventures Stories in Halcyon days. This time period is apparently an Egyptian mythology for around 8000 AD. That puts this game at the very end of the Mega Man time line, and we know for sure that's where it is because, according to an interview in Mega Man Zero Complete Works, the Zero and ZX time lines have been written specifically setting up Legends in mind.

The Earth has changed significantly. The world is flooded, and most of the remaining civilization are spread throughout the world on various islands. Much of the old technology has been lost, and has found itself buried deep in ancient underground cities. The remains of the ancient cities are constantly scavenged by adventurers, known as Diggers, who constantly search for items known as refractors, or giant energy crystals used to power current civilization. MegaMan (yes that's how they spell it for this series) Volnutt, and his companions, Roll and Barrel Casket, are Diggers. MegaMan also has a little monkey companion named Data, who can save your game.

The game begins proper after their ship, the Flutter, goes down and they are forced to scrounge for parts to repair it on an island named Kattelox. As they are doing this, a gang of pirates, known as the Bonnes, attack the island looking for hidden treasure there.

The majority of the game is spent dealing with the Bonnes and trying to find the hidden treasure before they do. I hate to gloss over it, as these are the best scenes of the game, but no significant plot points happen until MegaMan actually opens the hidden treasure.

This hidden treasure turns out to be a robotic man named MegaMan Juno, a bureaucratic model robot from Eden, a giant space station. MegaMan Juno recognizes MegaMan as a purifier unit (Japanese translation is Irregular hunter, or Maverick Hunter), named MegaMan Trigger, and notes MegaMan is suffering from memory loss. He assumes Trigger has awakened him to purge the island of what he calls "carbons," which turn out to be all of the townspeople. Suddenly, a gigantic space laser beam of doom aims at the island, ready to wipe out all life there. Yeah... this comes out of left field for a game that's pretty silly until this point. Didn't we just do the laser cannon of doom last X game Capcom?

Anyway, MegaMan Juno taunts MegaMan trigger and tells him that if he can "deactivate" him, he may be able to stop the purge. Trigger takes him down, but has no idea how to stop the purge. Just then Data, the monkey you save with, contacts Eden and indefinitely postpones the purge, and he transfers all of MegaMan Juno's duties to MegaMan Trigger. Trigger gives him a look of "what the flying fuck?" and asks Data if he knows what's going on. Data tells him he knows everything about MegaMan, where he came from, what his function is, and why he lost his memory but, sorry folks, we're out of time, guess you'll have to buy Mega Man Legends 2! MegaMan gets over this kick in the balls of a cliffhanger pretty much instantly, and he and his friends leave the island in the sunset. Game over.

While the story isn't amazing, the characters really keep it interesting, as all of them are so damn likable, especially the Bonne family. You will want to see what's happening next this entire game.

Aesthetics
For it's time the graphics weren't especially good, but they didn't suck either. We're talking about a game that came out to compete with Goldeneye, Tomb Raider 2, Quake 2 and Final Fantasy VII to give you an idea of where graphics were at the time. Capcom was a lot better at sprites at the time then they were full 3D games, and the sprite games are more detailed to be sure.

The animation in this game is really good though. Everything flows really nicely and the texture changes on the characters faces when they are talking look pretty good, despite some occasional lip sync problems.

The town and outdoors look nice, and for the time feels like an actual bustling city. Remember, there was no Grand Theft Auto III at the time, and getting run over by a car is a real concern in this game. The dungeons themselves are a bit lackluster though, many of them look exactly the same and the textures used are pretty boring. One weird thing is that some textured walls have holes on them, and for the first time I thought they were just decoration, but you actually can gather items from them by examining them. It would have been a bit more intuitive if they had bothered to indent the walls a little bit or something like that.

I grade on aesthetics instead of straight graphics because I think a game can look nice for itself without pushing the envelope of what a system can do graphically. Lots of games have high end graphics but look like shit, check out any of the shit brown ps3 and 360 titles out to prove that. Mega Man Legends is a bit blocky, but still looks decent. In fact, it's use of style and color makes this game look better today than Goldeneye, Tomb Raider 2, Quake 2 and Final Fantasy VII.

Sound
What's this? Capcom gave a shit about the localization this time? Yes, they did! Holy crap! This game has some of the best voice acting Mega Man games have ever gotten! Rob Smith, the voice of Teisel Bonne, not the guy from The Cure, is absolutely hilarious! Every thing he says is pure gold in this game. The other characters sound great too, the servbots, Tron, even MegaMan sounds better than he has in past games. Roll is a bit high pitched, but not really annoying, she just has some sugary dialog.

The sound effects are pretty nice, giving the explosions and blasts the effects you would expect. The music is nice and mood setting too, and there's even a Metal Man remix thrown in there for good measure. The sound is very enjoyable this time around, and it shows you Capcom can make the effort for their North American audience when they want to.

Design
The basic design of this game is about exploration more than anything else. You enter a dungeon, find various items, take them back to Roll to upgrade your gear, then go back to the dungeons and check out the new areas you have access to. There is a very metroid like feel to this game. While there is a lot of backtracking, it is mostly optional, and you'll probably do it to find parts to create new weapons and buster upgrades. This is a significant portion of the game.

Roll will create a new weapon for MegaMan and upgrade it for you if you pump some Zenny (cash) into it. Unfortunately, this isn't as cool as it sounds. First, you can only carry one special weapon at a time, meaning you need an all around useful weapon, instead of taking anything with situational usage. That means most of the weapons won't ever get used. If you could switch between them at any time they would get a lot more uses.

The dungeons themselves are pretty bland, consisting of a room full of enemies, followed by another room full of enemies. Your strategy for taking them on won't change much either, as there are only a handful of enemies that require more than just shooting them until they explode.

The bosses on the other hand are a blast, and the Bonnes always come up with new interesting ways to face MegaMan. You'll have several David vs. Goliath setups here, taking on gigantic robots, and just about all the fights are spectacular. They are a bit easy though, with only the controls being the challenging part.

The game offers an assortment of side quests and mini games to break up the dungeon crawling, and even offers a primitive dark side / light side meter. Basically, you get a few choices like stopping some bank robbers, or taking their loot for yourself. All this does is make MegaMan's armor turn darker, and you get some of the merchants prices jacked up a bit, but not so much to be noticeable over the light side of choices.

Overall though, it's not a bad starting entry, and Legends 2 does improve the design much better, I just wish it included more Mega Man staples, like choosing where you want to go at any time, or using boss weaknesses and choosing weapons and the like.

Playability
As said before, the biggest problem with this game is the controls. Mega Man Legends does not make use of the Dual Analogs, and to turn by default, you need to use the R1 and L1 buttons. It's as obnoxious as it sounds, and you can alleviate this a bit by setting these buttons to strafing instead. It won't fix it though, as the only way to look up and down is by holding the R2 button, and if an enemy is nearby, it locks on to them. This wouldn't be a problem if the lock on ever worked right, because half the time MegaMan won't be at the right angle to hit them. Worse yet, you can't move while locked on... what the hell?

Most of the combat in this game isn't so tough that the controls will screw you over completely, but they are not fluid at all. There aren't any precision jumps or instant death traps, and this is good because the controls would not work well with them. The controls are what really hold this game back the most. The design is a bit lack luster in areas, but if a game has control problems you'll always notice those first.

Extras

• Pick up a range item for your buster to help out with boss fights. You'll never know when you need that extra distance between you and the boss, and some sections force it on you. Otherwise focus on Attack, and then Energy for more damage and more shots. Rapid isn't too useful, as shots travel faster, but you can't fire more and they don't do more damage.
• The X-buster and Z-saber are in this game as weapons you can use as little extras. The Z-saber kinda sucks, but the X-buster helps make the most powerful weapon in the game.
• Want some extra cash? Kick the can in apple market into the bakery, you'll get 1000 extra zenny each time. After you get further in the game though, farm the wasps nests inside the Cardon Forest sub gate, they drop much more.
• If you get stuck, ask the mayor where to go next.

There's a lot of problems with this game, and to be honest you may not like it. There are a lot humorous cutscenes, and the whole setting is really interesting, but that's not enough to save it for many people, hence why the series is on hold. It's pretty short too, offering about 10 hours if you really take your time, or 35 if you have some sort of mental deficiency. If you know what to do, it's about 2 to 4 hours. Still, I find it enjoyable, and pick it up from time to time. Try it out though, its flaws don't hold it back from being enjoyable.

Playthroughs
Megaman Legends: Everyone Loves The Monkey by Golden315
Megaman Legends: KICK THE FUCKING CAN by Vprisoner
Speedrun by Tom H. Nguyen.

The Legends Series

Finally, time for a new series! I love classic and X, but as an idiot who plays all these fucking games, I don't mind having a change of pace right now. The Legends series is unfortunately, as Inafune put it "the clumsy child." Mega Man Legends, known as DASH in Japan, is probably the worst series title for title, and don't get the impression that I hate these games. I love them, but I'm stating simple fact.

Mega Man Legends did not sell well, it did not play well. The controls were awful, and the overall design was a bit lack luster, and it cost a crap ton of money to develop. That said, it did a lot of things right too. Capcom is afraid to make another entry in this series for a number of reasons.

1. It's going to cost more money to develop than a standard Mega Man game. Legends, by design, needs to be a Triple A title to deal with full 3D graphics and new game play mechanics, and Inafune even knows it's going to cost several million.

2. It's going to take some real work to design this game to get over the pitfalls of the previous Legends games. You've got some real head scratchers in making the game feel like a Mega Man game in 3D, and every try they've made to push Mega Man into that direction has failed. We'll get to X7 to demonstrate later.

3. This is a departure from the standard Mega Man formula, so while the hardcore fans like myself will buy anything Capcom shits out with Mega Man's face on it, these games are not the wide appeal a game like this needs to be profitable. To sell this game, they'll need advertising, great reviews, and talented workers. Capcom is capable of all these things, but they are also shrewd businessmen, and Inafune's as much a company man as any of them are. The time just isn't right for Legends 3 right now.

But let's talk about the strengths of the series. It has a delightful cast of characters, pretty good voice acting, and a fun sense of exploration you don't get in other Mega Man games. The game design isn't as good as it could be, but the series was developing well and the jump in quality from Legends 1 to Legends 2 was pretty significant. I think Capcom knows enough about the technologies they are working with now to do really well with a Legends 3 should they risk making it.

In the Mega Man universe, this series takes place at the end of the time line, several thousands of years after X, Zero and even ZX. At one point it might have been considered it's own canon, but in Mega Man Zero Complete Works, the designers state that they had kept Legends in mind, and tried to lay the ground work in their series that could lead to the events of Legends, so it is definitely part of the whole story.

This is Inafune's favorite series of the Mega Man games, and he is regretful that it is on hiatus right now. He has stated in several interviews that Legends 3 will be made one day, even if he has to fund it with his own money, so it will come out. Just not right now. However, it should be of note that these games are starting to find an audience, and the characters keep showing up in the other games here and there. Capcom may find that fan support for this series may resurrect it one day, and perhaps sooner than we think. Mega Man Volnutt appeared in a recent game, Capcom vs Tatsunoko, as well. To say they are definitely making it soon would be a hasty conclusion, but it's definitely on their minds.

My own predictions of this series are like this. I think Capcom will test the waters first for a Legends potential. We might see a bundle pack, or an online download of some sort just to see if there is a market there. There is no way they're going to sell enough ports of these games to give a number close to what they need for a final product, but Mega Man's overall popularity is back on the rise, and the right advertising campaign might make them feel easier about it.

We might even see an enhanced port, a few new features to get old owners to pick up the new version. After that, I could honestly see them going for a remake instead of continuing with a third game. Redefining how the game works and applying a more successful formula to it. I could just as easily see Legends 3 directly continuing instead though, but remember, it's been 9 years since we stranded Trigger on the moon. There's no telling how the story will be affected by that.

Legends is a unique experience, but far from your typical Mega Man fare. Don't expect the 8 robot masters, stage select and variable weapons you're used to. The games in this series include:

• Mega Man Legends
• The Misadventures of Tron Bonne
• Mega Man Legends 2

There are some cell phone games in the mix, but those aren't going for the main stream Mega Man audience, so I've not addressed them here. My next review of Mega Man Legends should be up some time tomorrow.