I wonder how he'd feel after learning that the Shovel Knight guys had huge success by tapping into the classic Mega Man formula he couldn't recreate. Probably pretty bad.
I feel like whatever mausoleum might house that particular dead horse must have a revolving door installed by now to accommodate the number of people who drop by wanting to give it a good beating. It's ground that's already very well-tread.
"Inafune felt that there was a growing disconnect between Capcom and it's players" Indeed there was, and at the very heart of the disconnect was Inafune himself. He was so out of touch on what made Capcom great to the western audience to begin with, and that was its high quality gameplay and production of the very Japanese centric games that Capcom was known for.
@@atre5763 I think he was more a creator than a businessman but he was trying to be a businessman and that ruined him as a creator. I was one of the backers for Mighty No. 9 because I liked what they were originally going for. Unfortunately they failed to deliver, the game was ok but really unpolished and some of the ideas I was most excited about they backtracked on. One of the biggest things I was looking forward to was that instead of this ability is strong against this boss they were going to have more utilitarian functions, that didn't really happen though and it ended up feeling like more of a cheap clone. The fan-base didn't help too much, a lot of backers were disappointed that it wasn't MORE like Mega-Man despite the KickStarter stating outright that it was to be a spiritual successor and that they weren't going to use the exact same formula (they were trying to evolve and probably avoid potential lawsuits). At the very least when I joined, the KickStarter talked about the more utilitarian abilities/approach I mentioned. The art style for the final game was also nowhere near as good as the concept art (I didn't expect it to be exactly the same but the concept art was very much within the realm of possibility even on older hardware), better lighting would've gone a long way. Inafune wasn't completely wrong about the Japanese market either, they were in fact behind the times and stuck in their ways. Many of them refused to release to a western audience at all, they also tended to resist things like save states (for games where they make sense), modern controls, menus, ect. They were also against DLC which is a catch22 (they weren't just against bad DLC but good DLC as well). Fortunately they've turned that around a bit and are doing a better job of keeping what we love about Japanese games while keeping up a bit better with the times.
I feel like Inafune was too arrogant to blame himself here. He was openly critical of Capcom after he quit, then Mighty No.9 happened and that blew up in his face. Finally, Capcom was like screw it, let's make Mega Man 11, just to add insult to injury.
Fully agree. I also wonder what he was thinking with Universe's "art" style, it's so hideous that just from looking at it I'd expect nothing but a total disaster. And apparently he had so many bad ideas that I can hardly blame the execs for shutting many of them down, whatever they were. I also agree with the other replies, it just adds injury that MM11 returned to top form without him. I feel bad for Inafune, I really do.
What really stands out here is Inafune's ego getting the better of him during the title's development, instead of giving due consideration to what had previously proven successful, then storming off in a huff once it was abundantly clear that his approach wasn't the right one. And therein lies hubris.
I would say that he wasn't wrong either. Capcom needed to be shaken up and take some risks. In the end, there wasn't a understanding, but Capcom took some of what Inafune said to heart. The only difference is Capcom did it their way, in Japan.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e that's not what he was referring to in what Inafune was right on. Inafune was right in that Capcom and Japanese developers were behind the times and.
A lot of people don't remember that the Japanese thought we were idiots in the mid 80s. So they didn't do anything that would be perceived as "Western", which means no foreign influence, but also no new ideas. That's just what happens when you isolate yourself.
I think Inafune fell into a trap when he began developing his western inspired mindset. Japan wasn't losing shares in the gaming market because they were behind the times, it was because non-Japanese studios had finally built themselves up after almost two decades of Japanese dominance in the gaming world, there was just more competition now. People still LOVE Japanese games, and it's mainly because they are at their core: *Japanese* , not American, or French, or British. You can have Western Inspired, but keep them just that- *Inspired*
That's a good point there. I wish companies like Capcom, and Konami could understand that we never stopped wanting to play the kinds of games that put them on the map in the first place.
Exactly. Their fatal flaw was them wanting to become more western when we already have too much of that already. I don't play very many western games anyway, Japanese games have their own uniqueness that cannot be copied and they should embrace that.
Pretty much this. Inafune misread the room and made a flawed assumption. Thing is, I feel like a lot of Japanese developers are trying to ape Western design and philosophy now, and I really don't think it's the right direction to take. I like Japanese games because they're... well, Japanese. Different devs from different countries and cultures just all feel different, and I like that. Variety is the spice of life.
Funny how Inafune was so critical of Capcom being stuck in the past while desperately clinging to Mega Man 2. That mentality was present during 9 and 10's development cycle as well, 9 especially. Inti Creates had big ideas to move the series forward but Inafune told them to make it more like 2 when development began.
It made sense to get an external company to do something simpler like a retro sequel. And for the first one, using MM2 as an inspiration is a good base to start with. You’re pitching it as a throwback, so you don’t want to go too far. It’s still insane to me that not only is the music better than a lot of the classic series, but that the melodies feel authentic to the series. About a decade later I was trying to hum one of the robot master’s themes and forgot the robot and which game it came from. I guessed it might’ve been from 2 or 3 and realized it was from 9. I liked it when it came out, but I had a newfound respect for it.
@@mrshmuga9 It's all in retrospect, but it felt like a waste of talent to relegate Inti to a project like that when they had already proven themselves with the Mega Man Zero series.
And just like Mega Man Universe, it screwed up the entire development cycle and ended up not working as intended anyway, making it a completely pointless addition.
If there is any positive to this story, it’s that we got the magnificent PC fan-created Mega Man Maker game out of the ashes of Mega Man Universe. Great episode, Norman!
That was a great video. It's interesting how he criticized the higher-ups for being salarymen, and then he outsourced the game to the cheapest company he could find.
@@OlivierCaron and probably the budget they gave him for the project. It was known the higher ups didn't like the idea of working with the West so it wouldn't be surprising if they gave him the bare amount of resources.
especially because the outsourcing wasn't necessary before the sudden decision to add the online play feature--on top of the work already piling up. this makes 'company funding' irrelevant--financing was absolutely not in his hands, that's not how corporations work--but it _was_ in his hands on adding the simultaneous online play feature, which needed outsourcing, which landed the decision-making in the finance department. there is no indication (unless it was omitted) that this feature was a capcom demand, it seems like an inafune demand: such abrupt changes are extremely characteristic of projects headed by inafune, so i have no reason to believe there is much omitted details. (i should add: it is on capcom's internal structure that inafune would have a level of power to push this feature to that level, too. capcom isn't let off here. inafune is probably _right,_ unintentionally, because if they had some higher up whose purpose was to reel him in, say a programming engineer or what have you, the position was likely filled in by a salaryman who was paid to do, basically, nothing, rather than to actually say 'hey, inafune-san? no, that's not possible, and outsourcing won't change that'.)
@@russianbot8576 also the fact that a lot of pointless online features that just make development worse also appeared in a certain other inafune project which Capcom has had no influence in... Mighty no.9
I'd often thought that Capcom would eventually make an offer to the people behind Mega Man Maker that would legitimize it as an official product (like what happened with SF X Mega Man on PC). I've used the program for years and it is AWESOME, easy to use, has full controller support, and sharing levels/playing other's levels works beautifully. It's so easy to use that my son's been making some hilarious Mega Man levels for me to play since he was 5.
The thing is that if Capcom would do that, they would have to pay licenses to Nintendo and ZUN because of the weapons inspired in those games that where implemented in Mega Maker. Either that or remove the weapons from the game completely.
As the other commenter pointed out, this is pretty unlikely. Unfortunately. Mega Man maker borrows so much stylistically and thematically from other places and IP that Capcom don't own... they would have to change so much about it that it wouldn't even make sense to pay the original Developers for it....And not paying them would open up a whole nother PR nightmare... not to mention that people would hate getting an official version that was worse than the unofficial version. It's just not something that seems like a good investment of time and resources. Leaving Mega Man maker alone and not trying to shut it down with legal claims is the best gift they can do to the community. And I think that's what they've been doing intentionally
I find it really amusing how Inafune's incompetence reared its head pretty early on with MM Universe. Really sad that his leaving led to so many Megaman games getting canned so hard...
Yeah, it was always and will always be an unreasonable decision by Capcom to cancel EVERYTHING Mega Man after Inafune split. Universe, where he was the director? OK I guess since that's a pretty tough role to fill (though it honestly seems like the game was 90% finished after they cut the dumb MP mode and could definitely have been salvaged and released). But Legends 3, Maverick Hunter and the rest? While leaving the series on hiatus for . . . a decade I think? That just reeks not of making a business decision, but making a personal attack on Inafune himself, since he was the man associated most with Mega Man at the time. It was like "we're killing your legacy at this company, Inafune!" but all it did was cancel a bunch of potentially good games.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Yeah, and Capcom uses the excuse that no one was confident enough to step up to the plate to do Mega Man games cause they didnt think they would be able to do the same quality as Inafune did so they decided not to touch it lest they make it worse. But after seeing Inafunes failure, they figured huh maybe we can pick up where he left off. Sadly, Inafune had to be sacrificed so Mega Man could live again, at least for a little while. I havent heard a peep for a Mega Man 12.
@@MLBlue30 They are slowing down to prevent oversaturation. If there's a Mega Man project in the works, it's taking its sweet time. As for Inafune, I do believe he's a good illustrator and can hold himself as a producer. And disregarding Kamiya's tweet, I wonder if even he realized that before Inafune was acting like a businessman, he was working on arts and other stuff. Artists are creators of their own design. I think he would have been best as running as an art director. People take what Kamiya said for granted and like they did before with Inafune being seen as the "Father of Megaman", look at it at face value.
Geez, 2010-2011 was a weird time. We got Mega Man 10, but then everything Mega Man related was cancelled, Universe, the first-person Maverick Hunter, Online, Legends 3, it's crazy just how many things that were getting scrapped. Really hope one day we see some of this stuff surface. One day.
This is exactly what my job now did, went with the lowest bidder with 0 experience in our industry. It's a nightmare and this quickly became one of the most stressful jobs ever because of it. Corporate suits are too detached from reality and only care about money, which hurts everyone and everything involved.
Inafune is such a weird character, you can kind of tell where some artists come from with their ideas. Miyamoto, Sakurai, Kamiya, you can tell a lot about them by their decisions and the games they work on. But often, Inafune doesn't make sense. He doesn't seem to really think as a business man, nor as an artist. He doesn't seem to have a clear vision of any kind. And the games he worked on reflect that.
I wouldn't say that. He had a clear vision. The problem really was his western push, which was literally done because he misread the data like a typical corporate busybody. It literally turned Capcom into Crapcom.
@@KuroNoTenno It sounds, then, he was a data man, rather than an artist, tuxsuit or even corpo. He just looked at Western games going high in numbers and handpicking traits he thought were key in their design and saying "If your game does this, it will sell well!!!" not understanding why even those concepts were put on the first place.
He's definitely weird because his track record is ALL over the place. A lot of major, major hits were helmed or headed by him, including some major sleeper hits like Shadow of Rome and major franchise starters like Dead Rising. But then he also has a bunch of stinkers, of course most infamously Mighty Number 9. So it's like, yeah, he's a bit too unpredictable and uneven in his track record.
@@KuroNoTenno So yeah, he pushed for western games at Capcom, but then he went on toComcept and produced very japanese-focused games and anime. Again, doesn't sound like a man with a vision.
I feel like Mega Man is just a game I like "the idea of"..and what I mean by that is that I get happy whenever someone says Mega Man and get ultra pissed whenever I actually play Mega Man..
Mega Man Maker is so fantastic- four playable characters, assets from just about every Mega Man game. Honestly found it more user-friendly than Mario Maker, too. I'm happy to see it get a mention here.
I mean, if it's on PC then the fact of having keyboard and mouse for a level editor game is going to naturally be a major advantage. Mario Maker actually had pretty good usability on the Wii U's touch pad with a stylus, it's really on switch withe MM2 where it doesn't seem as strong or as well designed for things.
Bionic Commando was fun, the swing mechanic was great. It's great sin though is that you couldn't replay levels to grab collectibles you missed. You could replay levels, but it wouldn't save any XP you gained or collectibles you acquired. You had to get everything in one go, which was stupid.
Yea I was super pumped for bionic commando, but felt let down. Like you said, the core swinging mechanics were there and that was the most important. I remember loving that part of it (namely the boss fight with the giant plane in the rafters). But so much else - difficulty, screen edges with radiation, poor voice acting/cutscenes, ending feeling unfinished or out of nowhere, etc etc really screwed it up. Especially after the awesome remake on the original Grin did. Was quite a shame.
I actually loved Bionic Commando. Sure it wasn’t perfect but the core gameplay was solid and a lot of fun. Of course Rearmed was a dream come true and nearly universally praised.
Yeah, ultimately that one's on GRIN and Ben Judd. It was a great game in a lot of ways (and the Online MP it had going, in the brief window of about a month after launch was actually pretty glorious) even with its bizarre and awful wife-arm ending. It really got shafted and I wish it hadn't failed so hard.
Inafune's obsession with westernization of their Japanese market can be marked as a heavy contributing factor behind Capcom's Dark Age. Seriously, just look at how many bad decisions he pushed (including DmC DMC getting greenlit) and you will come to the conclusion that Capcom really is better off without him. It's been mentioned before in comments here on why Japan was falling behind on game sales compared to the west, but it's key to note that the other reason behind it all was that a LOT of Japanese devs were shutting down or getting merged/bought out by other companies during the mid-late oughts. HD game development is hella expensive, and many smaller devs either couldn't keep up with the costs or were forced to stick to handheld games. The HD growing pains period saw the closure of many a studio.
I played “Mega Man” games for the NES and it was awesome. “Mega Man 2” and “Mega Man 3” are the best, the first one was really good, and 4 through 6 was good. Capcom was the cream of the crop when it comes to NES games. The first two were “1942” and “Ghosts ‘N Goblins” were really bad since they were the first two Capcom titles for 1986, and both were developed by Micronics, the same developer that made “Athena” by SNK, “Tiger-Hell” by Acclaim, “Ikari Warriors” by SNK, “Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road” by SNK, and others. Except “Commando” was the first NES game developed and published by Capcom. By 1987, Capcom was getting better and better with “Section Z”, “Gun Smoke”, “Trojan”, and the first ever “Mega Man” game. All made for the NES. “Section Z” was excellent, and it doesn’t even resemble the original arcade game, but it took another direction at a completely different game. “Section Z” for the NES was a completely different game. I finally beat the entire game many times over the years and it was a lot of fun.
It's crazy how much of a 180 Capcom has pulled in the past 3 years after the dark era that was 2010. Now they're incredibly celebrated for their RE remakes, Devil May Cry 5 and Monster Hunter series being some of the greatest games they've ever made.
@King of The Zinger Street Fighter 5 was always a pretty good game, even in the beta. It was just different from 4 so people who were used to that didn't like it. I wish they changed the V-reversal system though, that's the only major problem I had with it.
Are they? The actually new Resident Evil games are boring (and 8 was a DRM disaster on PC), Resident Evil 3 Remake was panned, Mega Man is still dead, Dead Rising is still dead, DMC5 was an abusive microtransaction nightmare, and... Okay, I'll give you Monster Hunter. I may not be interested in it, but it does seem to be successful and non-abusive to its players. When I look at Capcom I just see Monster Hunter and a huge pile of wasted potential. What a shame. Also as someone else pointed out, they're doing NFTs. NFTs are a grift and any company that gets into them immediately earns a spot near the top of the 💩 list. EDIT: Also most of the Mega Man Legacy Collections were a waste too. The X collections, split into two for no god reason, poor resolution scaling on all the 2D games, poor input lag, the only two games that made it out okay are 7 and 8, and those suck. The Zero/ZX collection, still poor resolution scaling, pointless editing to the scripts (what did they gain by changing "die" to "perish" exactly?). What a disappointment. They can't even cash in on their legacy correctly.
So this game was basically gonna be like Mario Maker, except MegaMan Maker. Not a bad concept at all, but I think where Mario Maker succeeds is that you can literally make a Mario level using the NES, SNES, WII graphics increasing the variety and possibilities. MegaMan Universe has only one visual look and it looked very bland and it looked unappealing to most fans and press.
Maybe if Inafune completed the game properly, we would have gotten a sequel on PS4 that uses more Mega Man games? Just like what Nintendo did with Mario Maker getting its Switch sequel?
I think only having one style wasn't as big of a mistake as that style not looking like any game released so far. Ironically, if it looked like Mega Man 2 it would have been far more appealing to fans and would have probably helped with those frame rate issues...
Mega Man Maker was such a brilliant idea that anyone who's ever played a game in the series can instantly picture it in action. Having played tons of hours of MM myself, I have no idea how an online co-op mode was supposed to work in a definitively single-player experience
Not likely what they were going for but player 2 playing the bosses would have been fun. Try beating half of the various bosses when they don't have an ultra simply AI.
I was at that NYC comic con and actually got to play this game. I didn't mind the art style and I remember picking Rockman it was cool cause it felt like playing with the character right off the Famicom game box art. Problem was the gameplay the control felt terrible and I remember feeling quite surprised by this. The character felt heavy when you pressed the button it felt more like lifting Kratos from God of War then little Rockman. I remember a platform that was right in front of me and not being able to land on it because of this. And I own the NES/Famicom versions and can beat em all.
Yeah I was there too, I can hardly remember the game. Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 was much more exciting at the time haha. Did you attend the panels? They showed a lot of stuff for MvC3 and Legends 3
@@Koop1337 That's absolutely right I remember MvsC3 was the main attraction at the booth and they had MegaMan universe off to the side playing on a monitor that you could pick up and play it did attract attention as there was a short line in front of it. There was also a small panel and it was someone who worked on MVC3 but I can't remember who it was. I was with a friend of mine who was more concentrated on the MVC stuff. I've always been a fighting game fan but never really like the Superhero fighting games the series that really started with X-Men Children of the Atom. So I was more focused on the MegaMan game. No I'm one of the few people left that actually use to go to the comic cons to buy comic books.
@@eddylex4921 haha yeah I haven't gone since that year. You could just get a ticket at the main door back then. Now I think you gotta preorder way in advance right? I actually have an autographed poster for MvC3 and Legends 3 from that event still. Got to get them properly framed.
@@Koop1337 Yeah like a year in advance or something ridiculous, it was years ago last time I went they just got too crowded it became insane, and I snuck in I went all the way there and I was told there were no tickets as they sold out months ago. The guard was overwhelmed there were literally thousands of people coming in I got in the middle of the crowed and snuck in. They got there money's worth out of me though as I spent alot at the actual seller booths.
If I recall correctly, Maverick Hunter was an FPS developed by some of the devs that made Metroid Prime. The game was supposed to be a trilogy with X going Maverick at the end of the second game and you had to play as Zero in the last game to go and kill him. It would've been such a sick sub series.
Dude of all the games I could play on NES, Gameboy or SNES it was usually Mega Man games that I put the most time into. Getting any game in the 2010s was like getting a visit from a lifelong childhood friend. Sad that we didn’t get to see the Universe come into fruition!
I love that they embraced the cheese more over time too. It kinda went to the wayside after that for a long time, but it recently resurfaced in RE2 (or was it 3, 2 or 3) Remake, if you haven't seen that easter egg google it up it's a fun time. Also, some easter egg mega man posters on some walls in that one too, actually.
The box art was made in hours by someone who had never heard of Mega Man, and that art was never used again. Everyone, including the artist, can plainly see that box art is bad. Really, really bad.
@@EebstertheGreat the worst part about bad box art megaman is not the art itself but how low the standards are in the us to be able to pass something like this for a real product and put it on shelves while actually asking money.
@@HaohmaruHL As I said, they commissioned the art too late, so they had no time to shop around. They got what they got. It was just bad planning and a rush to release. Other Mega Man boxes in North America don't look so dumb. Supposedly, the president of Capcom USA told the head of the marketing department to get box art by the next day. That's a bad decision. And the marketing guy went to a friend who had never heard of Mega Man (not yet released) without sending the friend any other promotional materials. That's a really bad decision. But once the bad art came in, they had to go with it, because there was no time to get another drawing.
@@EebstertheGreat no one asked to change anything in the first place. Letting one person frkm the american branch to choose everything out of his own taste is a bad idea and your typical American narcissism
Funny that Inafune heavily criticized the whole Japanese game devs around 2010 even though Demon's Souls came out in 2009 and Dark Souls in 2011 and created a whole new genre.
It is present in the 2D portraits, and only the 2D portraits. The 3D models are too low poly to look like anything other than early PS1-era low poly models. The larger images in the character customization screens make it obvious just how low poly these characters are, it looks like limbs are four-sided boxes. Though here you can see the attempt at a Powerpuff Girl style face texture (at least for regular Mega Man), which was slapped directly onto the low-poly head.
I don't think it was inspired by PPG specifically, but more US cartoons in general that were popular at the time. PPG was used as an example as it's probably one of the cartoons that best exemplify that general art style: Bold colors, thick lines and relatively simple shapes.
Besides being cancelled, I was also disappointed because The Megas had their music featured in the trailers (and maybe game) and they lost out on it. I would’ve liked to see that work out for them. Maybe they would’ve wrote new/original music for it too, who knows.
I still remember the hype behind this game, too bad Legends 3 was canceled. For a long time I didn't like Capcom because they were practically ignoring Mega Man despite being sort of their mascot, and being a fan of the franchise, it really hurt. At least Mega Man himself appeared in Smash, and we have the Legacy Collections and MM11. Great video, as always!
A lot of people forget that it was Inafune's remarks on the Japanese game industry that actually led to a lot of the success of the MN9 Kickstarter Campaign. Everyone agreed with his criticisms, and thought he was bringing Japanese gaming back to its roots. I still think he has a lot of good points, but is MUCH better as a concept designer than as a producer.
His one critical flaw was misreading the data and assuming that Western games' success was because they were Western, and not because of literally anything else they were doing that wasn't strictly related to Western culture or aesthetics. Well, that and the fact that he can't seem to admit when one of his ideas genuinely just wasn't very good. He was mostly right about Capcom (and to some extent Japanese developers in general) being a clusterfuck stuck behind the times, but he wasn't really much different himself. He talked the talk but he couldn't walk the walk. Thankfully it does seem like Japanese developers have more recently come to understand that their unique approach to game design & development has its own appeal that international audiences already appreciate as-is. There are just certain aspects that Western games pioneered (to give one example, accessibility settings & overall configurability) which Japanese games definitely benefit from having as well, and they can still have that without sacrificing their Japanese roots.
@@DELTARYZ He couldn't walk the walk because he was still inexperienced. He had some good points, but he should have questioned his ideas more even though he had some guts to try something.
I actually really enjoyed Dark Void, but it was disappointing in that it didn't feel finished. The climactic final scene came out of nowhere and ended abruptly.
Bionic Commando was a decent game. Sure we had plenty of web-swinging Spider-Man games, but I’m pretty sure you could latch on to any part of the environment (unlike Spider-Man). Although too much random poison gas barriers to keep it linear, despite making an open city.
Both Dark Void and Bionic Commando 2K9 were solid games when it came to their core gameplay. Both also had pretty bad writing and rushed, awful endings (though Bionic Commando's ended up a LOT worse than Dark Void's on that front). I bought both on launch and am still bummed how poorly they were both received.
The thing with the whole "appeal to western audience" (well, one of the many, many things, actually) is that they focused on what western devs where making when they should have wondered "What Japanese things are successful in the west? ". Trying to change the artstyle is one example of that : had he paid more attention, Inafune would have seen that Anime had been steadily growing in popularity in the US since in tthe 90, and even earlier in Europe.
I was so stoked for MMU back in the day. This was years before Mario Maker, too. I remember sketching out levels I wanted to make. And then one day, I logged online, and saw it was canceled. I was so upset. Good times, lol. 🤣
I'm glad Christian Svensson gets a blurb in here. To me, he's an unsung hero who had nothing, but North American's Capcom fans interests in mind. While fans harrassed him for more localized titles, I strongly believe he fought for us, and as per Capcom Japan, got stonewalled repeatedly. Since Capcom Japan was backseat driving North American localizations/imports, Christian gave up and left after seeing so many of his Capcom USA colleagues laid off. Anyone who remembers Ace Attorney for the DS should know what I mean and how much he tweeted knowing what we wanted. He fought, but Capcom Japan stonewalled. A few days before Capcom USA's "restructuring" and Christian giving up and resigning, he even started up a petition to try to convince Capcom Japan to get us a physical release for Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (remember at this point Ace Attorney didn't meet sales expectations so they only get digital releases going forward). As far as I can tell, Capcom Japan thinks North America consists of fans that exclusively play Biohazard/Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter games and nothing else. And so we get late releases on phones for the other franchises. We're lucky Capcom Japan eventually gave Steam a try. Or maybe VALVe's success gave the inspiration behind globalization. I dunno.
Ironic how things turned out, Inafune's studio is no more while Capcom is stronger than ever. Guess the fool who was "stuck in a loop" was Inafune all along.
While Inafune certainly fucked up, I think he wasn't completely wrong. Capcom is doing well indeed, but all their games are remakes/ new instalments of their current IP's. They haven't developed any new IP's in quite some time and they will eventually have to if they want to remain relevant. Not only that but they now have a lot more western game influences in their games (which is a good thing for all games). He was wrong on the scope and he catastrophized a lot, but in the end the Japanese game industry has had to evolve to compete, and that's a good thing.
Yup, took capcom a few years to get their shit together but since 2017 it's just been a one quality title after another. Even the "bad" ones aren't that bad like the RE3 remake.
Here's a fun fact; Gyakuten Kenji 2 aka Ace Attorney Investigations 2 was never released outside the Japanese Market, despite millions of fans wanting that game. Though the game is 'region free' as it can be played on any DS/3DS platform regardless of country but it would be much easier for us if it was in English and other languages too.
i was a boy. they were 138 girls. can i make it any more obvious? thats right, i had a crazy dream last night. HAHAHAHAHA!!! im the funniest youtube star ever. youre welcome for laughing dear sraL
I'm so jealous of you right now. You just stumbled onto a gold mine of some of the most amazing retro game videos made to date. His videos rival those you'd see on a cable network channel, if not better. Norm is serious about the accuracy of his content and has done an incredible job of incorporating all the information in an easy and fun to follow format. Congrats! My personal favorite of his is "the rise and fall of Sega".
It's crazy that Mega Man Universe was announced the same year that Mega Man 10 came out. I feel like that is part of the story that gets lost. The Mega Man Franchise was still releasing prominent games across multiple sub-series almost every single year up until 2010. The only way in which they had "forgotten the series" was on home consoles. Mega Man X8 was the last major home console release for the series for 4 years from 2004 to 2008, when Mega Man 9 came out. Even the classic series, which had been kind of forgotten for more than a decade (aside from Spin-Offs) had just come back. Mega Man 9 and 10 were both great games, just fairly small. The series was never really dormant prior to Capcom canceling 6 Mega Man games over a few years. As he mentioned, aside from one, the six were (not necessarily in order): Mega Man ZXC, Mega Man Legends 3, Mega Man Universe, Rockman Online, Maverick Hunter, and Mega Man Star Force 4. ZXC, Maverick Hunter and (I think) Star Force 4 were never announced prior to being canceled. Maverick Hunter was a really cool looking thing, that may have been more of a tech demo than a full game. I still would've loved to play it. We didn't know about ZXC until an Inti Creates interview, which happened after this video came out, where it was briefly mentioned.
I feel like Inafune knew it was a hot pile, and outright quit when it went awry. Then continued to talk sh*t to save face. Mighty no.9 is testament to that attitude.
@Figgy Newton I've heard The Last Guardian described as "A PS4 game that looks like a PS3 game and plays like a PS2 game". Haven't played it myself, but the general consensus seems to be "it's debatably pretty good when judged completely in a vacuum on its own merits, but it absolutely does NOT deliver on the expectations/hype built up over so many years of waiting for a new Team Ico game." I have played SOTC (original and remaster), albeit much more recently, and I definitely agree that game is a timeless masterpiece that anyone who is passionate about video games should play. Honestly though, how *could* Team Ico live up to that kind of achievement? Quite the colossal (heh) shadow to stand under. One timeless masterpiece is still more timeless masterpieces than most developers have made.
What Keiji Inafune didn't realize about the global market was that the increase in global sales was due to vast amounts of new players entering the medium while not understanding what gaming could be and often is, with Japanese game development studios would again be on the rise as the new gamers in the Western market would eventually drift away from the adrenaline-fests they started with.
Nobody should take Inafune at his word on anything considering how he mismanaged all of these projects into oblivion and then turned around and did the same with Mighty No. 9. Its gobsmacking people still talk about him like he has anything but harmful to brand in the end. Nice to see that was not the case here.
True, especially with the negative reception the Mega Man Universe demo got (especially with the art style and gameplay). And Mighty No. 9 is a good example of why gamers should be careful when funding games on Kickstarter, because you could be funding a stinker (like MN9 and Yooka-Layle).
@@jeremyriley1238 Yooka-Laylee really wasn't that bad, while I do think it had some crippling flaws that harmed its overall enjoyability (in particular the obnoxiously short stamina limit on various movement abilities) I don't think it was anywhere near the abomination that Mighty No. 9 was. YL's sequel is a genuinely excellent DKC-inspired 2D platformer, which I do prefer over the first game.
As a fan of Japanese games, I've always admired Inafune's willingness to challenge the corporate culture, and call for the industry to modernize. I just wish any of his projects lived up to that ambition.
@@allcapcomeverything3866 Not really, he only tried to act like a businessman but he hurt his other careers in the process, trying to find a way to get the Japanese game industry out of their stagnant funk.
Inafunai: it wasn't for the journalists it was for the players. *Later players don't like it either* Inafunai: it wasn't for the players it was for me.
Say what you want about Inafune. He was wrong about the industry, wasn't a competent game developer, and was frustrating to work for. But like many artists, he was a visionary. He pushed for a more progressive approach to game development. Universe could've been the first to bring the "make your own game" genre to a mainstream market, and I still think there's value in his approach in Legends 3 and MN9; a more open and communicative dev environment, and letting the fans get involved in the development process. The industry is lacking in people who are willing to take risks now.
Thank you for making this video! I am a huge Megaman fan and I really enjoyed watching you chronicle this saga. Though I have to wait a relatively long time before you release a new video, the wait is usually worth it. Please keep it up! Also, I was recently watching your first videos in the channel. You really have gone a long way in improving your content. 👍
Funny enough Keiji Inafune predicted doom for the Japanese videogame industry and was the driving force for Capcom to make their games more western like in the early 2010s which only made things worse for Capcom and close to bankruptcy in 2013. I think that was a warning sign for how Inafune was as a leader when it came to his mismanagement on Mighty No 9. For me, I’m more of a fighting game person so I was satisfied with Street Fighter 4 and MVC3 alongside their updates so when SFXTK it was a tough experience since I both love the game and hated it for their DLC on disc practices.
Mr. Historical Man, I have this weird thing where when I see a video in my recommendations, I am not compelled to give it a watch but every time I do, I end up loving it
God, 2010 Capcom, what a dark, dreary time. I’m so glad they stopped making bad, catering to the West style games long enough to do Mega Man justice a few years back. Good stuff all around, video gamer
Street Fighter x Tekken, (multiple) Street Fighter IVs, Darkstalkers Resurrection. The early 2010s for Capcom destroyed one franchise and tainted another.
What are you talking about? Megaman 11 did justice? Its such a horrible game. There hasnt been a decent Megaman since 9/10 and those only were good because they were straight copys of 2/3. No new Megaman game was good sind probably early Megaman X Series. Maybe if you want to be generous the Network Series or ZX. Also SF4 is shit? It singlehandely revived Streetfighter... SF5 is shit. And that nothing else came after that.
I remember for a time people feeling like there was a Mega Man Saturation more than anything During most of the 2000's I think he had at least 3 different spin-off series launching games almost every year around the same time as each other, Battle Network, Zero and X with X being hit the hardest with low sales MM9 being a retro style game felt like a breath of fresh air in a way but it felt like it wouldn't be until MM11 that Capcom would have a better idea of what to do with him
yeah the key point here was that mega man as a fracnhise was getting burned out on both wicks but that more because of spinoffs like battle network and starforce not classic or X which were in the process of seeing revivals i was REALLY hoping Maverick Hunter was going to shake things up in a similar way that Metroid Prime since it was clearly its inspiration but it wasn't meant to be. I still remember buying 3DS and fondly thinking that megaman legends 3 was going to be finished within a year or so. heh heh. at least we got MM11.
I was so devastated after hearing about Megaman Legends 3 cancelled, its like my bestfriend had died. Volnutt was left on the moon, Roll and Tron failed to saves him :( Imagine if Nintendo reboot Mario and make a new Mario games that art style just like Marvel comics and run in 30fps, that is so weird.
Fun look at a cancelled project! There's one thing I never understood about Japanese games and game publishers during that particular point in time--they all talked about globalization and appealing to western or global audiences. It wasn't just Capcom; SquareEnix made a similar push. I'm sure it was based on increased sales projections, but it disregarded the potential that by trying to emulate something that's more western, it could inadvertently ostracize the consistent consumer-base who likes to buy Japanese games because they are designed with Japanese sensibilities. Really, the better approach seems to be incorporating things like accessibility options from western games while maintaining the other eastern elements of game design and art style.
I think it was because around this time more people were getting into games and they believed that it was because more people wanted wester styles of games aka dark and gritty games. It was the same reason why several companies at this times tried and failed to get into phone gaming
@@curtailedbike4123 Inafune fell into this mindset without double checking if that's what people really wanted. North American/South Americans, Europe and et cetera have our styles. Just because there were some success in other places didn't mean we wanted Western style games. If anything we just wanted companies from their own land to step it up and be more original, we liked their style as it is.
Well the Japanese console games market was cratering exponentially at the tail end of the 2000s, with Japanese gamers mostly moving to mobile gaming and leaving a massive void where they once were. It was and still is really dire straits for the japanese games market.
Fuck, I remember being CRUSHED when Mega Man Legends 3 was cancelled. Seeing previews in nintendo power back in the day, that game looked cool as hell.
This is definitely true most of the time, but Borderlands is probably the one glaring exception to that. The game originally had a fairly bland art style that hardly stood out from any other shooter of the era, and they radically shifted to the cartoony humor-filled vibe pretty much at the eleventh hour. It's impressive that they managed to pull off such a drastic change (and this likely did contribute to the franchise's ongoing success), but I do feel bad for the artists that poured their blood, sweat, & tears into the original version of the game only for Gearbox to utterly sabotage their vision, regardless of how it affected the game's sales.
gotta imagine how pissed capcom was when nintendo beat them to the punch just a few years after this w/ mario maker?! honestly even looking the way it did I was kinda hyped for universe, I liked the concept! especially the part about playing as different characters that would've been an interesting take on the megaman formula. I was hoping it would've been at wondercon 2011 (as I'd been to my first one the year before) but when they announced they would be there and the game wasn't in the lineup, I was starting to suspect it was gonna get axed for good. shame they couldn't revisit the concept I mean I enjoyed what I played of megaman 11, but even if not it's nice to think about. Great to see behind the scenes of how everything went down these documentaries are always top-notch!!
@@georgehernandez2156 There have been five Mario games that sold more than 30 million units and two of those were Mario Kart games. The best selling Mario game on Switch is Mario Odyssey at 21.95 million units. Super Mario U Deluxe sold 10.44 million, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars sold 9.01 million. Also, what SM2 USA stuff did they not include that was announced? There was a rumor that there was going to be an additional SM2 style, but it was never more than a rumor, and then they released the mushroom that gives you Mario 2 sprites and physics.
Yeah they had to be pissed. I hope they're not too pissed about Mega Man Maker, especially since they tend to allow fan projects to exist and honestly MM Maker is VERY good. Like, professionally made level good in many ways, honestly.
More proof of how disconnected Japanese developers have become, not just from the West but from Japan as well. A Mario Maker style game with classic gameplay and set options for the various eras of the game would have been nuts. That is exactly what people want. He was so close to getting it right, but he disregarded why people like games like Mega Man. A Mega Man game that departs so far from being Mega Man outright failed because that's not what customers wanted. Nostalgia is a hard thing to do. You need to do enough to keep things new, but you can't just make other games and just stamp the nostalgic name onto it, but this is exactly what Inafune did.
Funny considering that since then Inafune has been on a steep decline and has shown he is completely out of touch with gamers while Capcom is having a resurgence like no other by embracing their japanese game maker roots.
Yeah, it's like when Castlevania made the jump to 3D and just turned into a DMC knock off in the process. Like, who thought a castlevania game with nothing in it that people like about castlevania was a good idea?
Mega Man Universe should've been great and so easily monetized. About every 6 months, release a new old game DLC and you can use those assets to make new levels.
The thing people get wrong about Inafune is that he is artist, but NOT a game designer. He is talented at drawing interesting robot-esque characters, but he has no idea how to utilizing those characters in an actual game.
I'm picturing an arena shooter like Overwatch, but when you kill someone you get their weapon. Picture playing as Winston and all of a sudden your now playing as Tracer. Seems like a fun battle mode. Or in the Mega Man version you are forced to use the weapon of the first other player you kill. "Do I shoot Heat Man or Wood Man?" "Gemini Man or Snake Man"? Maybe Wood Man is the last one left and nobody wants that weapon in the next round. It's a cool twist.
Damn, the thought of a Prime like version of MegamanX sounds awesome. Super Metroid and MegamanX went hand and hand for me back in the day. Needless to say, it would've been ideal if Capcom collabed with Retro proper and kept the nostalgic X character design aesthetic
I'm glad you did a video on the story of this game. I thought it was interesting to see how in the end there were really 2 stories in 1 video. 1. The creation and cancellation of MMU. 2. Inafune's thoughts & general thoughts on why Japanese developers lost relevancy in the 2000s and into the 2010s. The second story is one I would like to learn more about. I have my own thoughts on the matter. Such as how I think that many Japanese developers stayed focused on consoles well after the DOS/Windows PC became an extremely popular gaming platform (at least in the US) in the 90s and 2000s. There have been a number of (now) huge Western developers like Bethesda, Bioware, and DMA Design/Rockstar North that got their start on home computers & PC then also made it big on consoles in the 2000s. Or how many of the larger Japanese studios didn't appear to take mobile gaming seriously until after a boatload of other development houses (worldwide) had already conquered that market.
I actually got to play Mega Man Universe, preview Mega Man Legends 3 and meet Kenji Inafune at Comic-Con. I remember Universe being sluggish and frustrating to control, think of Mega Man: The Wily Wars. I really didn't mind the art style of the game, personally. It just needed some more control tightening, more life and better direction. The best thing I walked out of Comic Con with was a autographed Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3 poster signed by Inafune!
This I could understand cancelling but Mega Man Legends 3 was soul crushing. I remember myself and so many Mega Man fans under one auditorium going bananas when Inafune showed us the world that was built so far. We were amped! Hell, I got myself a 3DS to get the damned demo! It's safe to say that us Mega Man fans were pretty resentful of Crapcom afterwards.
Still heartbreaking. I’ve accepted why Mega Man Universe was shelved, and I’ve never been big into level building games like this, but to kill ALL Mega Man projects like that hurts. Especially Legends 3, which I still wait for. Even Maverick Hunters looked like it would have been fun; sure it’s far and away from the tone of Mega Man and looks more like the Bomberman Act Zero debacle, but released along with the other, more faithful entries, it wouldn’t have been so jarring. Ah well…I guess the last Mega Man game being Mega Man 11 isn’t the worst finale.
9:30 The general public was already allowed to play the game at TGS during the public days (Sat/Sun). You’d get a commemorative face towel for playing the demo.
Me too, shame he didn't take a step back and look at his decisions before the eventual fall. Would have spared his career. Heck he should have just stuck to what he's good at. Which is being an illustrator and producer.
Fantastic video as usual. I had never heard of this game before, but I had heard about those other cancelled Mega Man games. Sad to hear they were all cancelled due to Inafune getting a bit off track and too ambitious. At least the series is in better shape now, despite still being relatively quiet.
It was really frustrating to listen to the press lap up Inafune's comments back then. He was always a charlatan trying to paint himself as the savior of the Japanese game industry. His globalization push was more damaging to Capcom than anything, and of course things fell apart when he, who had positioned himself at the apex of the company's development operations, decided to split. The fates of Mighty No. 9 and Red Ash were among the clearest examples of karma in action I've ever seen.
Yeah but I think he did have a point. Most Japanese games around that time sucked! I mean Nintendo was making some bangers on the Wii. AAA games were western at the time and bringing ALL THE PROFITS that Japanese try to emulate and copy and just did not work.
@@gjergjaurelius9798 No doubt, the Japanese game industry struggled due to the realities of transitioning to HD game development. A lot of smaller devs either went under or were merged into other companies. But I wouldn't say that most Japanese games of that era sucked. Certainly not when the western side of development had its own issues and troubling trends. It's also not entirely fair to compare the output of a single nation (Japan) versus the "west" (literally the entire dev output of the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere).
Love this! Binge watching all of these while trying different emulators on my Linux Systems. Looking for episodes on recent emulators. The Gaming Historian is the best.
after the cancellation of mega man legends 3 and the disastrous development of mega man universe & mighty number 9, i'm convinced that inafune has the most biggest ego in the entire video game industry
Didn't realize there was a video on this until earlier today. Despite the criticisms, I wanted to see this game released. Hopefully someday, the TGS/NYCC builds will be released in the wild so those who didn't get to attend those two events get to try the game out. I also still have the inflatable Arthur Lance promo from the game sitting somewhere in my room (thanks to my friend who attended NYCC.)
See, Inafune wasn't wrong about Japan at the time. The games coming out of there weren't dominating like they used to or even setting any new standards. Been pulled back over the last decade though. That said, he was clearly not exactly having his best game design ideas here... and then Mighty No.9 happened.
Now some game developers are getting it together and realizing that they can improve on themselves while keeping their style. They didn't need foreign influence. As for Inafune, while he had guts to call out the problems their game development had in the industry, he himself was misunderstanding things and assumed ideas and actions that costed him big time when Mighty no 9 came up. He wasn't even a good businessman, he is a illustrator and producer and should have stuck with what he knows.
I haven’t watched this channel in about a year but man I love seeing all the content. This one caught my eye and now I’m gonna binge all the other videos you put out. I will always enjoy the effort you put into these and the stories you tell.
In hindsight. Putting Inafune in charge of anything spells disaster. And can we stop calling him the “father” of mega man. He didn’t do much with the franchise nor had much involvement. 😑😑😑😑
@@dimsumboy22 Inafune did create one of the most popular characters in the whole franchise too. As much as I dislike him, acting like he did nothing for MegaMan is plain wrong.
On this note, I must add that Megaman 11 (Capcom on their own), is a fantastic game, and Mighty No.9 is not. So Capcom was right, and their RE/MH success these years just shows him he's wrong and we like both US and Japanese style games...Now Capcom's issue is #FREEMVC2!!
This game is such an absolute tragedy to me. Mega Man 2 is by far my favorite Mega Man game, so I would've absolutely adored a remake. The fact it was also slated to include different playable characters and a stage creator, nearly half a decade before Mario Maker? Well, that's just the icing on top. I guess it's good to finally know what happened, sounds like Inafune just had all the wrong ways of going about the right ideas. I wish they'd revisit this project in the future; perhaps a retry using Mega Man 11's assets.
Man Capcom who were in their darkest times back in the mid thousands. Making and turning one their Capcom games and westernised them. To DmC to Bionic Commando and even Resident Evil 6. Even the blue bomber couldn’t get its upcoming games and Megan Universe is a great example,where it’s going to be an equivalent to Mario Maker before Mario Maker came. Now that Capcom has fixed their mistakes let’s see what future is going to be for the mighty blue bomber.
I had only ever seen the first trailer for megaman universe and my assumption was that as megaman you would be able to venture into the "universe" of other Capcom titles and battle their heroes to get their abilities such as Arthur's Lance throwing and Ryu's fighting style, and because it's Capcom I figured it would have other big Capcom titles as other "universe" stages like resident evil, bionic commando ect.
I was really looking forward to this game, despite the criticisms. Anyone else?
I actually never heard of it but it's cool
I wasnt a mega man fan back then but a mario maker like mega man game sounds fun!
i would love to see the idea make a comeback
This was one of the few game cancelations that legitimately made me upset, Legends 3 and Megaman Mania being two others
@@zlink88 Legends 3 was a hit for a lot of people. I think I've signed a half dozen petitions over the years to get it made.
me
"But the development of Mighty No. 9 was a mess, and a whole other story."
Me: So... future episode? Yes please!
Matt McMuscles wha happen? Did a great video on it
watch stop skeletons from fighting's video, it tells that story
I'm with Mephisto on this
I wonder how he'd feel after learning that the Shovel Knight guys had huge success by tapping into the classic Mega Man formula he couldn't recreate. Probably pretty bad.
I feel like whatever mausoleum might house that particular dead horse must have a revolving door installed by now to accommodate the number of people who drop by wanting to give it a good beating.
It's ground that's already very well-tread.
"Inafune felt that there was a growing disconnect between Capcom and it's players"
Indeed there was, and at the very heart of the disconnect was Inafune himself.
He was so out of touch on what made Capcom great to the western audience to begin with, and that was its high quality gameplay and production of the very Japanese centric games that Capcom was known for.
Well said.
EXACTLY!!! Kamiya was right! He's a business man, not a creator! And a bad business man at that!
But what made him great wasn't popular anymore
@@atre5763 and a bad creator
@@atre5763 I think he was more a creator than a businessman but he was trying to be a businessman and that ruined him as a creator. I was one of the backers for Mighty No. 9 because I liked what they were originally going for. Unfortunately they failed to deliver, the game was ok but really unpolished and some of the ideas I was most excited about they backtracked on. One of the biggest things I was looking forward to was that instead of this ability is strong against this boss they were going to have more utilitarian functions, that didn't really happen though and it ended up feeling like more of a cheap clone. The fan-base didn't help too much, a lot of backers were disappointed that it wasn't MORE like Mega-Man despite the KickStarter stating outright that it was to be a spiritual successor and that they weren't going to use the exact same formula (they were trying to evolve and probably avoid potential lawsuits). At the very least when I joined, the KickStarter talked about the more utilitarian abilities/approach I mentioned. The art style for the final game was also nowhere near as good as the concept art (I didn't expect it to be exactly the same but the concept art was very much within the realm of possibility even on older hardware), better lighting would've gone a long way.
Inafune wasn't completely wrong about the Japanese market either, they were in fact behind the times and stuck in their ways. Many of them refused to release to a western audience at all, they also tended to resist things like save states (for games where they make sense), modern controls, menus, ect. They were also against DLC which is a catch22 (they weren't just against bad DLC but good DLC as well). Fortunately they've turned that around a bit and are doing a better job of keeping what we love about Japanese games while keeping up a bit better with the times.
I feel like Inafune was too arrogant to blame himself here. He was openly critical of Capcom after he quit, then Mighty No.9 happened and that blew up in his face.
Finally, Capcom was like screw it, let's make Mega Man 11, just to add insult to injury.
Thankfully 11 was fantastic and given that what it and the legacy collections have been doing, there's some hope for the Mega Man series yet.
They didn't stop making them eventually people will get burnout on the franchise
@@shinysamurott613 To me, that's the true insult to injury: not just that Capcom made MM11, but that it was ten times better than MN9
Fully agree. I also wonder what he was thinking with Universe's "art" style, it's so hideous that just from looking at it I'd expect nothing but a total disaster. And apparently he had so many bad ideas that I can hardly blame the execs for shutting many of them down, whatever they were. I also agree with the other replies, it just adds injury that MM11 returned to top form without him. I feel bad for Inafune, I really do.
I didn't hate Mighty Number 9. It just felt incomplete. I enjoyed it for what it was
What really stands out here is Inafune's ego getting the better of him during the title's development, instead of giving due consideration to what had previously proven successful, then storming off in a huff once it was abundantly clear that his approach wasn't the right one. And therein lies hubris.
I would say that he wasn't wrong either. Capcom needed to be shaken up and take some risks. In the end, there wasn't a understanding, but Capcom took some of what Inafune said to heart. The only difference is Capcom did it their way, in Japan.
@@sdzero But he was wrong because the general consensus for MegaMan Universe was that it wasn't good.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e that's not what he was referring to in what Inafune was right on. Inafune was right in that Capcom and Japanese developers were behind the times and.
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e The idea was good, but the execution was the issue. Capcom didn't have the resources at the time.
A lot of people don't remember that the Japanese thought we were idiots in the mid 80s. So they didn't do anything that would be perceived as "Western", which means no foreign influence, but also no new ideas. That's just what happens when you isolate yourself.
I think Inafune fell into a trap when he began developing his western inspired mindset. Japan wasn't losing shares in the gaming market because they were behind the times, it was because non-Japanese studios had finally built themselves up after almost two decades of Japanese dominance in the gaming world, there was just more competition now. People still LOVE Japanese games, and it's mainly because they are at their core: *Japanese* , not American, or French, or British. You can have Western Inspired, but keep them just that- *Inspired*
That's a good point there. I wish companies like Capcom, and Konami could understand that we never stopped wanting to play the kinds of games that put them on the map in the first place.
And now Sony is doing a reverse course, pushing western, more cinematic games as its top priority.
Exactly. Their fatal flaw was them wanting to become more western when we already have too much of that already. I don't play very many western games anyway, Japanese games have their own uniqueness that cannot be copied and they should embrace that.
Pretty much this. Inafune misread the room and made a flawed assumption. Thing is, I feel like a lot of Japanese developers are trying to ape Western design and philosophy now, and I really don't think it's the right direction to take. I like Japanese games because they're... well, Japanese. Different devs from different countries and cultures just all feel different, and I like that. Variety is the spice of life.
It's also a very corporate mind set. If you are having success but you aren't having more success than you did before then you are failing.
Funny how Inafune was so critical of Capcom being stuck in the past while desperately clinging to Mega Man 2. That mentality was present during 9 and 10's development cycle as well, 9 especially. Inti Creates had big ideas to move the series forward but Inafune told them to make it more like 2 when development began.
Inofune proved to be at fault, when he developed that fiasco called Mighty No.9
@@TheRezro it’s famous for being infamous
ruclips.net/video/2gKjXpzmWRI/видео.html
It made sense to get an external company to do something simpler like a retro sequel. And for the first one, using MM2 as an inspiration is a good base to start with. You’re pitching it as a throwback, so you don’t want to go too far. It’s still insane to me that not only is the music better than a lot of the classic series, but that the melodies feel authentic to the series. About a decade later I was trying to hum one of the robot master’s themes and forgot the robot and which game it came from. I guessed it might’ve been from 2 or 3 and realized it was from 9. I liked it when it came out, but I had a newfound respect for it.
@@mrshmuga9 It's all in retrospect, but it felt like a waste of talent to relegate Inti to a project like that when they had already proven themselves with the Mega Man Zero series.
I never thought about that point specifically but it's so true lmao
Funnily enough, Keiji Inafune also tried to shoehorn online multiplayer into Mighty Number 9 as well.
And just like Mega Man Universe, it screwed up the entire development cycle and ended up not working as intended anyway, making it a completely pointless addition.
@Captain Bad Apple. a better version of X4? am i hearing this right? a version that finally fixes at least some of the issues?
Because as we all know, the best way to make a bad game better is to share the pain!
If there is any positive to this story, it’s that we got the magnificent PC fan-created Mega Man Maker game out of the ashes of Mega Man Universe. Great episode, Norman!
That was a great video. It's interesting how he criticized the higher-ups for being salarymen, and then he outsourced the game to the cheapest company he could find.
Pehaps he had to do this because of the company's rules.
@@OlivierCaron This would make sense. Any place I’ve worked has had low bid wins, and it almost never matters if they are capable or not.
@@OlivierCaron and probably the budget they gave him for the project. It was known the higher ups didn't like the idea of working with the West so it wouldn't be surprising if they gave him the bare amount of resources.
especially because the outsourcing wasn't necessary before the sudden decision to add the online play feature--on top of the work already piling up. this makes 'company funding' irrelevant--financing was absolutely not in his hands, that's not how corporations work--but it _was_ in his hands on adding the simultaneous online play feature, which needed outsourcing, which landed the decision-making in the finance department. there is no indication (unless it was omitted) that this feature was a capcom demand, it seems like an inafune demand: such abrupt changes are extremely characteristic of projects headed by inafune, so i have no reason to believe there is much omitted details.
(i should add: it is on capcom's internal structure that inafune would have a level of power to push this feature to that level, too. capcom isn't let off here. inafune is probably _right,_ unintentionally, because if they had some higher up whose purpose was to reel him in, say a programming engineer or what have you, the position was likely filled in by a salaryman who was paid to do, basically, nothing, rather than to actually say 'hey, inafune-san? no, that's not possible, and outsourcing won't change that'.)
@@russianbot8576 also the fact that a lot of pointless online features that just make development worse also appeared in a certain other inafune project which Capcom has had no influence in... Mighty no.9
I'd often thought that Capcom would eventually make an offer to the people behind Mega Man Maker that would legitimize it as an official product (like what happened with SF X Mega Man on PC). I've used the program for years and it is AWESOME, easy to use, has full controller support, and sharing levels/playing other's levels works beautifully. It's so easy to use that my son's been making some hilarious Mega Man levels for me to play since he was 5.
The thing is that if Capcom would do that, they would have to pay licenses to Nintendo and ZUN because of the weapons inspired in those games that where implemented in Mega Maker. Either that or remove the weapons from the game completely.
As the other commenter pointed out, this is pretty unlikely. Unfortunately. Mega Man maker borrows so much stylistically and thematically from other places and IP that Capcom don't own... they would have to change so much about it that it wouldn't even make sense to pay the original Developers for it....And not paying them would open up a whole nother PR nightmare... not to mention that people would hate getting an official version that was worse than the unofficial version.
It's just not something that seems like a good investment of time and resources. Leaving Mega Man maker alone and not trying to shut it down with legal claims is the best gift they can do to the community. And I think that's what they've been doing intentionally
You mean a Mega Man Mania?
@@SirBlackReeds mega man maker
MegaFLE X
I find it really amusing how Inafune's incompetence reared its head pretty early on with MM Universe. Really sad that his leaving led to so many Megaman games getting canned so hard...
Yeah, it was always and will always be an unreasonable decision by Capcom to cancel EVERYTHING Mega Man after Inafune split. Universe, where he was the director? OK I guess since that's a pretty tough role to fill (though it honestly seems like the game was 90% finished after they cut the dumb MP mode and could definitely have been salvaged and released).
But Legends 3, Maverick Hunter and the rest? While leaving the series on hiatus for . . . a decade I think? That just reeks not of making a business decision, but making a personal attack on Inafune himself, since he was the man associated most with Mega Man at the time. It was like "we're killing your legacy at this company, Inafune!" but all it did was cancel a bunch of potentially good games.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe Yeah, and Capcom uses the excuse that no one was confident enough to step up to the plate to do Mega Man games cause they didnt think they would be able to do the same quality as Inafune did so they decided not to touch it lest they make it worse. But after seeing Inafunes failure, they figured huh maybe we can pick up where he left off. Sadly, Inafune had to be sacrificed so Mega Man could live again, at least for a little while. I havent heard a peep for a Mega Man 12.
Rip ZX3 I still want to know what happened to Ciel
@@MLBlue30 They are slowing down to prevent oversaturation. If there's a Mega Man project in the works, it's taking its sweet time. As for Inafune, I do believe he's a good illustrator and can hold himself as a producer. And disregarding Kamiya's tweet, I wonder if even he realized that before Inafune was acting like a businessman, he was working on arts and other stuff. Artists are creators of their own design. I think he would have been best as running as an art director. People take what Kamiya said for granted and like they did before with Inafune being seen as the "Father of Megaman", look at it at face value.
@@bigdoggo5827 I know what happened to Ciel. She was #cancelled
Geez, 2010-2011 was a weird time. We got Mega Man 10, but then everything Mega Man related was cancelled, Universe, the first-person Maverick Hunter, Online, Legends 3, it's crazy just how many things that were getting scrapped. Really hope one day we see some of this stuff surface. One day.
They should have at least finished Legends 3 if not anything else since fans were so attached to that project.
Some more of that stuff has recently surfaced. A lot of it was REALLY bad.
"Go with this studio who has no experience in what we need them to do, they're cheap"
Brilliant, always works.
maybe he was out of budget... : /
@@fumomofumosarum5893 at that point, just don't do it at all
This is exactly what my job now did, went with the lowest bidder with 0 experience in our industry.
It's a nightmare and this quickly became one of the most stressful jobs ever because of it.
Corporate suits are too detached from reality and only care about money, which hurts everyone and everything involved.
Basically EA asking Sensory Sweep to make Most Wanted DS
The simpler art style could have worked if it was cel shaded. The lightning and simple textures made it look terrible. I still would have bought it.
agreed. my thoughts exactly " why wasn't it cel shaded..? "
Inafune is such a weird character, you can kind of tell where some artists come from with their ideas. Miyamoto, Sakurai, Kamiya, you can tell a lot about them by their decisions and the games they work on.
But often, Inafune doesn't make sense. He doesn't seem to really think as a business man, nor as an artist. He doesn't seem to have a clear vision of any kind. And the games he worked on reflect that.
I wouldn't say that. He had a clear vision. The problem really was his western push, which was literally done because he misread the data like a typical corporate busybody. It literally turned Capcom into Crapcom.
@@KuroNoTenno It sounds, then, he was a data man, rather than an artist, tuxsuit or even corpo.
He just looked at Western games going high in numbers and handpicking traits he thought were key in their design and saying "If your game does this, it will sell well!!!" not understanding why even those concepts were put on the first place.
He's definitely weird because his track record is ALL over the place. A lot of major, major hits were helmed or headed by him, including some major sleeper hits like Shadow of Rome and major franchise starters like Dead Rising. But then he also has a bunch of stinkers, of course most infamously Mighty Number 9.
So it's like, yeah, he's a bit too unpredictable and uneven in his track record.
@@KuroNoTenno So yeah, he pushed for western games at Capcom, but then he went on toComcept and produced very japanese-focused games and anime. Again, doesn't sound like a man with a vision.
@@lirfrank I bet Inafune cried like an anime fan on prom night when MN9 bombed in his face.
Megaman and Gaming Historian? You bet I'm watching this multiple times.
Same! MegaMan forever!
Multiple times? But why?
@@user-vi4xy1jw7e because I like both things and because I can.
I feel like Mega Man is just a game I like "the idea of"..and what I mean by that is that I get happy whenever someone says Mega Man and get ultra pissed whenever I actually play Mega Man..
Weird
Mega Man Maker is so fantastic- four playable characters, assets from just about every Mega Man game. Honestly found it more user-friendly than Mario Maker, too. I'm happy to see it get a mention here.
I mean, if it's on PC then the fact of having keyboard and mouse for a level editor game is going to naturally be a major advantage. Mario Maker actually had pretty good usability on the Wii U's touch pad with a stylus, it's really on switch withe MM2 where it doesn't seem as strong or as well designed for things.
Bionic Commando was fun, the swing mechanic was great. It's great sin though is that you couldn't replay levels to grab collectibles you missed. You could replay levels, but it wouldn't save any XP you gained or collectibles you acquired. You had to get everything in one go, which was stupid.
Look up Wha Happun, it's a show that features this game for an episode on its backstory and development woes.
Yea I was super pumped for bionic commando, but felt let down. Like you said, the core swinging mechanics were there and that was the most important. I remember loving that part of it (namely the boss fight with the giant plane in the rafters). But so much else - difficulty, screen edges with radiation, poor voice acting/cutscenes, ending feeling unfinished or out of nowhere, etc etc really screwed it up. Especially after the awesome remake on the original Grin did. Was quite a shame.
I actually loved Bionic Commando. Sure it wasn’t perfect but the core gameplay was solid and a lot of fun. Of course Rearmed was a dream come true and nearly universally praised.
Yeah, ultimately that one's on GRIN and Ben Judd. It was a great game in a lot of ways (and the Online MP it had going, in the brief window of about a month after launch was actually pretty glorious) even with its bizarre and awful wife-arm ending. It really got shafted and I wish it hadn't failed so hard.
Inafune's obsession with westernization of their Japanese market can be marked as a heavy contributing factor behind Capcom's Dark Age. Seriously, just look at how many bad decisions he pushed (including DmC DMC getting greenlit) and you will come to the conclusion that Capcom really is better off without him.
It's been mentioned before in comments here on why Japan was falling behind on game sales compared to the west, but it's key to note that the other reason behind it all was that a LOT of Japanese devs were shutting down or getting merged/bought out by other companies during the mid-late oughts.
HD game development is hella expensive, and many smaller devs either couldn't keep up with the costs or were forced to stick to handheld games. The HD growing pains period saw the closure of many a studio.
Mega Man is one of my favorite game franchises. The music in the early ones always gets me hyped up
The best games are on the gameboy
It’s incredible how many of the games were so consistent over the years
@@MaoRatto
honestly, true for the original series MM. World 1, 3, 4 and 5 are all amazing games and way better than most NES and NES-like entries.
I played “Mega Man” games for the NES and it was awesome. “Mega Man 2” and “Mega Man 3” are the best, the first one was really good, and 4 through 6 was good. Capcom was the cream of the crop when it comes to NES games. The first two were “1942” and “Ghosts ‘N Goblins” were really bad since they were the first two Capcom titles for 1986, and both were developed by Micronics, the same developer that made “Athena” by SNK, “Tiger-Hell” by Acclaim, “Ikari Warriors” by SNK, “Ikari Warriors 2: Victory Road” by SNK, and others. Except “Commando” was the first NES game developed and published by Capcom. By 1987, Capcom was getting better and better with “Section Z”, “Gun Smoke”, “Trojan”, and the first ever “Mega Man” game. All made for the NES. “Section Z” was excellent, and it doesn’t even resemble the original arcade game, but it took another direction at a completely different game. “Section Z” for the NES was a completely different game. I finally beat the entire game many times over the years and it was a lot of fun.
It's crazy how much of a 180 Capcom has pulled in the past 3 years after the dark era that was 2010. Now they're incredibly celebrated for their RE remakes, Devil May Cry 5 and Monster Hunter series being some of the greatest games they've ever made.
@King of The Zinger Or did they turn around before then?
And now they're supporting NFTs..
@King of The Zinger Street Fighter 5 was always a pretty good game, even in the beta. It was just different from 4 so people who were used to that didn't like it. I wish they changed the V-reversal system though, that's the only major problem I had with it.
I want another Lost Planet...
Are they? The actually new Resident Evil games are boring (and 8 was a DRM disaster on PC), Resident Evil 3 Remake was panned, Mega Man is still dead, Dead Rising is still dead, DMC5 was an abusive microtransaction nightmare, and... Okay, I'll give you Monster Hunter. I may not be interested in it, but it does seem to be successful and non-abusive to its players.
When I look at Capcom I just see Monster Hunter and a huge pile of wasted potential. What a shame.
Also as someone else pointed out, they're doing NFTs. NFTs are a grift and any company that gets into them immediately earns a spot near the top of the 💩 list.
EDIT: Also most of the Mega Man Legacy Collections were a waste too. The X collections, split into two for no god reason, poor resolution scaling on all the 2D games, poor input lag, the only two games that made it out okay are 7 and 8, and those suck. The Zero/ZX collection, still poor resolution scaling, pointless editing to the scripts (what did they gain by changing "die" to "perish" exactly?). What a disappointment. They can't even cash in on their legacy correctly.
So this game was basically gonna be like Mario Maker, except MegaMan Maker. Not a bad concept at all, but I think where Mario Maker succeeds is that you can literally make a Mario level using the NES, SNES, WII graphics increasing the variety and possibilities.
MegaMan Universe has only one visual look and it looked very bland and it looked unappealing to most fans and press.
Maybe if Inafune completed the game properly, we would have gotten a sequel on PS4 that uses more Mega Man games? Just like what Nintendo did with Mario Maker getting its Switch sequel?
@@chaoscontroller316 Mega man 1-6, 7, 11 style would be awesome!
I think only having one style wasn't as big of a mistake as that style not looking like any game released so far. Ironically, if it looked like Mega Man 2 it would have been far more appealing to fans and would have probably helped with those frame rate issues...
Mega Man Maker was such a brilliant idea that anyone who's ever played a game in the series can instantly picture it in action. Having played tons of hours of MM myself, I have no idea how an online co-op mode was supposed to work in a definitively single-player experience
Not likely what they were going for but player 2 playing the bosses would have been fun.
Try beating half of the various bosses when they don't have an ultra simply AI.
I was at that NYC comic con and actually got to play this game. I didn't mind the art style and I remember picking Rockman it was cool cause it felt like playing with the character right off the Famicom game
box art. Problem was the gameplay the control felt terrible and I remember feeling quite surprised by this. The character felt heavy when you pressed the button it felt more like lifting Kratos from God of War then little Rockman. I remember a platform that was right in front of me and not being able to land on it because of this. And I own the NES/Famicom versions and can beat em all.
Yeah I was there too, I can hardly remember the game. Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 was much more exciting at the time haha. Did you attend the panels? They showed a lot of stuff for MvC3 and Legends 3
Oh wow, that must have been very frustrating. Especially since it was a nostalgic reference
ruclips.net/video/2gKjXpzmWRI/видео.html
@@Koop1337 That's absolutely right I remember MvsC3 was the main attraction at the booth and they had MegaMan universe off to the side playing on a monitor that you could pick up and play it did attract attention as there was a short line in front of it. There was also a small panel and it was someone who worked on MVC3 but I can't remember who it was. I was with a friend of mine who was more concentrated on the MVC stuff. I've always been a fighting game fan but never really like the Superhero fighting games the series that really started with X-Men Children of the Atom. So I was more focused on the MegaMan game. No I'm one of the few people left that actually use to go to the comic cons to buy comic books.
@@eddylex4921 haha yeah I haven't gone since that year. You could just get a ticket at the main door back then. Now I think you gotta preorder way in advance right? I actually have an autographed poster for MvC3 and Legends 3 from that event still. Got to get them properly framed.
@@Koop1337 Yeah like a year in advance or something ridiculous, it was years ago last time I went they just got too crowded it became insane, and I snuck in I went all the way there and I was told there were no tickets as they sold out months ago. The guard was overwhelmed there were literally thousands of people coming in I got in the middle of the crowed and snuck in. They got there money's worth out of me though as I spent alot at the actual seller booths.
If I recall correctly, Maverick Hunter was an FPS developed by some of the devs that made Metroid Prime. The game was supposed to be a trilogy with X going Maverick at the end of the second game and you had to play as Zero in the last game to go and kill him. It would've been such a sick sub series.
Spring of 2010? Let the flashbacks begin
I vaguely recall being outside at one point that year, but it's just been so long ago now...
A dark year for the Megamna fans indeed.
Context?
ruclips.net/video/2gKjXpzmWRI/видео.html
2010?
Ah yes, the time when I was enjoying Bad Company 2 using the MG3 & going *BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR*
2010 for me was the long wait for gran turismo 5
Dude of all the games I could play on NES, Gameboy or SNES it was usually Mega Man games that I put the most time into. Getting any game in the 2010s was like getting a visit from a lifelong childhood friend. Sad that we didn’t get to see the Universe come into fruition!
I just love the fact that even Capcom admitted the box art for MegaMan was bad. He isn’t MegaMan or RockMan, he is someone completely different.
I love that they embraced the cheese more over time too. It kinda went to the wayside after that for a long time, but it recently resurfaced in RE2 (or was it 3, 2 or 3) Remake, if you haven't seen that easter egg google it up it's a fun time. Also, some easter egg mega man posters on some walls in that one too, actually.
The box art was made in hours by someone who had never heard of Mega Man, and that art was never used again. Everyone, including the artist, can plainly see that box art is bad. Really, really bad.
@@EebstertheGreat the worst part about bad box art megaman is not the art itself but how low the standards are in the us to be able to pass something like this for a real product and put it on shelves while actually asking money.
@@HaohmaruHL As I said, they commissioned the art too late, so they had no time to shop around. They got what they got. It was just bad planning and a rush to release. Other Mega Man boxes in North America don't look so dumb. Supposedly, the president of Capcom USA told the head of the marketing department to get box art by the next day. That's a bad decision. And the marketing guy went to a friend who had never heard of Mega Man (not yet released) without sending the friend any other promotional materials. That's a really bad decision. But once the bad art came in, they had to go with it, because there was no time to get another drawing.
@@EebstertheGreat no one asked to change anything in the first place. Letting one person frkm the american branch to choose everything out of his own taste is a bad idea and your typical American narcissism
Funny that Inafune heavily criticized the whole Japanese game devs around 2010 even though Demon's Souls came out in 2009 and Dark Souls in 2011 and created a whole new genre.
It's so weird that Mega Man Universe's art direction was influenced by the Powerpuff girls, it barely resembles it at all.
Feels like a reverse "How to Draw Manga" situation, in a way.
It is present in the 2D portraits, and only the 2D portraits. The 3D models are too low poly to look like anything other than early PS1-era low poly models. The larger images in the character customization screens make it obvious just how low poly these characters are, it looks like limbs are four-sided boxes. Though here you can see the attempt at a Powerpuff Girl style face texture (at least for regular Mega Man), which was slapped directly onto the low-poly head.
I don't think it was inspired by PPG specifically, but more US cartoons in general that were popular at the time. PPG was used as an example as it's probably one of the cartoons that best exemplify that general art style: Bold colors, thick lines and relatively simple shapes.
It's like that sometimes. Sonic the Hedgehog was based of Bill Clinton and Robotnik was based on Theodore Roosevelt
Looks more Disney Channel cartoon than anything.
Besides being cancelled, I was also disappointed because The Megas had their music featured in the trailers (and maybe game) and they lost out on it. I would’ve liked to see that work out for them. Maybe they would’ve wrote new/original music for it too, who knows.
I still remember the hype behind this game, too bad Legends 3 was canceled. For a long time I didn't like Capcom because they were practically ignoring Mega Man despite being sort of their mascot, and being a fan of the franchise, it really hurt. At least Mega Man himself appeared in Smash, and we have the Legacy Collections and MM11. Great video, as always!
@Ayy Lmao I was more disappointed about the cancelation of Star Force new series.
Also Taisen
A lot of people forget that it was Inafune's remarks on the Japanese game industry that actually led to a lot of the success of the MN9 Kickstarter Campaign. Everyone agreed with his criticisms, and thought he was bringing Japanese gaming back to its roots. I still think he has a lot of good points, but is MUCH better as a concept designer than as a producer.
His one critical flaw was misreading the data and assuming that Western games' success was because they were Western, and not because of literally anything else they were doing that wasn't strictly related to Western culture or aesthetics. Well, that and the fact that he can't seem to admit when one of his ideas genuinely just wasn't very good.
He was mostly right about Capcom (and to some extent Japanese developers in general) being a clusterfuck stuck behind the times, but he wasn't really much different himself. He talked the talk but he couldn't walk the walk.
Thankfully it does seem like Japanese developers have more recently come to understand that their unique approach to game design & development has its own appeal that international audiences already appreciate as-is. There are just certain aspects that Western games pioneered (to give one example, accessibility settings & overall configurability) which Japanese games definitely benefit from having as well, and they can still have that without sacrificing their Japanese roots.
@@DELTARYZ He couldn't walk the walk because he was still inexperienced. He had some good points, but he should have questioned his ideas more even though he had some guts to try something.
I actually really enjoyed Dark Void, but it was disappointing in that it didn't feel finished. The climactic final scene came out of nowhere and ended abruptly.
Bionic Commando was a decent game. Sure we had plenty of web-swinging Spider-Man games, but I’m pretty sure you could latch on to any part of the environment (unlike Spider-Man). Although too much random poison gas barriers to keep it linear, despite making an open city.
Both Dark Void and Bionic Commando 2K9 were solid games when it came to their core gameplay. Both also had pretty bad writing and rushed, awful endings (though Bionic Commando's ended up a LOT worse than Dark Void's on that front). I bought both on launch and am still bummed how poorly they were both received.
The thing with the whole "appeal to western audience" (well, one of the many, many things, actually) is that they focused on what western devs where making when they should have wondered "What Japanese things are successful in the west? ". Trying to change the artstyle is one example of that : had he paid more attention, Inafune would have seen that Anime had been steadily growing in popularity in the US since in tthe 90, and even earlier in Europe.
I was so stoked for MMU back in the day. This was years before Mario Maker, too. I remember sketching out levels I wanted to make. And then one day, I logged online, and saw it was canceled. I was so upset. Good times, lol. 🤣
I miss being this excited for videogames. Last time must have been drawing a blueprint of a ship I wanted to build in Empyrion Galactic Survivor.
I'm glad Christian Svensson gets a blurb in here. To me, he's an unsung hero who had nothing, but North American's Capcom fans interests in mind. While fans harrassed him for more localized titles, I strongly believe he fought for us, and as per Capcom Japan, got stonewalled repeatedly.
Since Capcom Japan was backseat driving North American localizations/imports, Christian gave up and left after seeing so many of his Capcom USA colleagues laid off. Anyone who remembers Ace Attorney for the DS should know what I mean and how much he tweeted knowing what we wanted. He fought, but Capcom Japan stonewalled.
A few days before Capcom USA's "restructuring" and Christian giving up and resigning, he even started up a petition to try to convince Capcom Japan to get us a physical release for Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (remember at this point Ace Attorney didn't meet sales expectations so they only get digital releases going forward).
As far as I can tell, Capcom Japan thinks North America consists of fans that exclusively play Biohazard/Resident Evil, Street Fighter, and Monster Hunter games and nothing else.
And so we get late releases on phones for the other franchises. We're lucky Capcom Japan eventually gave Steam a try. Or maybe VALVe's success gave the inspiration behind globalization. I dunno.
Ironic how things turned out, Inafune's studio is no more while Capcom is stronger than ever.
Guess the fool who was "stuck in a loop" was Inafune all along.
While Inafune certainly fucked up, I think he wasn't completely wrong. Capcom is doing well indeed, but all their games are remakes/ new instalments of their current IP's. They haven't developed any new IP's in quite some time and they will eventually have to if they want to remain relevant. Not only that but they now have a lot more western game influences in their games (which is a good thing for all games). He was wrong on the scope and he catastrophized a lot, but in the end the Japanese game industry has had to evolve to compete, and that's a good thing.
Yup, took capcom a few years to get their shit together but since 2017 it's just been a one quality title after another. Even the "bad" ones aren't that bad like the RE3 remake.
Fuck crapcom. Censorship on the fucking vr version of resident evil.
@@MaoRatto that was Facebook’s strange request
@@MaoRatto Blame Facebook, not Capcom.
Here's a fun fact;
Gyakuten Kenji 2 aka Ace Attorney Investigations 2 was never released outside the Japanese Market, despite millions of fans wanting that game.
Though the game is 'region free' as it can be played on any DS/3DS platform regardless of country but it would be much easier for us if it was in English and other languages too.
I subscribed earlier today after watching an old podcast that recommended the Mario Movie episode, how convenient that you just now uploaded again
i was a boy. they were 138 girls. can i make it any more obvious? thats right, i had a crazy dream last night. HAHAHAHAHA!!! im the funniest youtube star ever. youre welcome for laughing dear sraL
what podcast?
I'm so jealous of you right now. You just stumbled onto a gold mine of some of the most amazing retro game videos made to date. His videos rival those you'd see on a cable network channel, if not better. Norm is serious about the accuracy of his content and has done an incredible job of incorporating all the information in an easy and fun to follow format. Congrats! My personal favorite of his is "the rise and fall of Sega".
You should see his the life of soturu iwata, his super Mario 3 and his Tetris ones SO GOOD
@@AxxLAfriku stop, you're lucky to have the subs you do.
"Mega Man Universe? I am your universe, baby!" -Super Mario Maker, probably.
-also hot damn that old megamaker footage brings me back.-
Two episodes within 35 days of each other, good to see you back in the swing of things Norm!
And the quality is still very high
ruclips.net/video/2gKjXpzmWRI/видео.html
It's crazy that Mega Man Universe was announced the same year that Mega Man 10 came out. I feel like that is part of the story that gets lost. The Mega Man Franchise was still releasing prominent games across multiple sub-series almost every single year up until 2010. The only way in which they had "forgotten the series" was on home consoles. Mega Man X8 was the last major home console release for the series for 4 years from 2004 to 2008, when Mega Man 9 came out. Even the classic series, which had been kind of forgotten for more than a decade (aside from Spin-Offs) had just come back. Mega Man 9 and 10 were both great games, just fairly small. The series was never really dormant prior to Capcom canceling 6 Mega Man games over a few years. As he mentioned, aside from one, the six were (not necessarily in order): Mega Man ZXC, Mega Man Legends 3, Mega Man Universe, Rockman Online, Maverick Hunter, and Mega Man Star Force 4. ZXC, Maverick Hunter and (I think) Star Force 4 were never announced prior to being canceled. Maverick Hunter was a really cool looking thing, that may have been more of a tech demo than a full game. I still would've loved to play it. We didn't know about ZXC until an Inti Creates interview, which happened after this video came out, where it was briefly mentioned.
I feel like Inafune knew it was a hot pile, and outright quit when it went awry. Then continued to talk sh*t to save face. Mighty no.9 is testament to that attitude.
Mighty No. 9 was the biggest gaming disappointment of my lifetime.
@Figgy Newton I've heard The Last Guardian described as "A PS4 game that looks like a PS3 game and plays like a PS2 game". Haven't played it myself, but the general consensus seems to be "it's debatably pretty good when judged completely in a vacuum on its own merits, but it absolutely does NOT deliver on the expectations/hype built up over so many years of waiting for a new Team Ico game."
I have played SOTC (original and remaster), albeit much more recently, and I definitely agree that game is a timeless masterpiece that anyone who is passionate about video games should play. Honestly though, how *could* Team Ico live up to that kind of achievement? Quite the colossal (heh) shadow to stand under. One timeless masterpiece is still more timeless masterpieces than most developers have made.
What Keiji Inafune didn't realize about the global market was that the increase in global sales was due to vast amounts of new players entering the medium while not understanding what gaming could be and often is, with Japanese game development studios would again be on the rise as the new gamers in the Western market would eventually drift away from the adrenaline-fests they started with.
Nobody should take Inafune at his word on anything considering how he mismanaged all of these projects into oblivion and then turned around and did the same with Mighty No. 9. Its gobsmacking people still talk about him like he has anything but harmful to brand in the end. Nice to see that was not the case here.
100%. I wish I could fail so many times and still be given so many opportunities. The entitlement he had...
True, especially with the negative reception the Mega Man Universe demo got (especially with the art style and gameplay). And Mighty No. 9 is a good example of why gamers should be careful when funding games on Kickstarter, because you could be funding a stinker (like MN9 and Yooka-Layle).
@@jeremyriley1238 Yooka-Laylee really wasn't that bad, while I do think it had some crippling flaws that harmed its overall enjoyability (in particular the obnoxiously short stamina limit on various movement abilities) I don't think it was anywhere near the abomination that Mighty No. 9 was. YL's sequel is a genuinely excellent DKC-inspired 2D platformer, which I do prefer over the first game.
As a fan of Japanese games, I've always admired Inafune's willingness to challenge the corporate culture, and call for the industry to modernize. I just wish any of his projects lived up to that ambition.
Thing is he CONTRIBUTED hypocritically to corporate culture.
They need someone like that with Nintendo so they can tell hacks like Miyamoto when the fuck are they gonna get with the times?
@@allcapcomeverything3866 Not really, he only tried to act like a businessman but he hurt his other careers in the process, trying to find a way to get the Japanese game industry out of their stagnant funk.
Inafunai: it wasn't for the journalists it was for the players.
*Later players don't like it either*
Inafunai: it wasn't for the players it was for me.
Say what you want about Inafune. He was wrong about the industry, wasn't a competent game developer, and was frustrating to work for. But like many artists, he was a visionary. He pushed for a more progressive approach to game development. Universe could've been the first to bring the "make your own game" genre to a mainstream market, and I still think there's value in his approach in Legends 3 and MN9; a more open and communicative dev environment, and letting the fans get involved in the development process. The industry is lacking in people who are willing to take risks now.
Thank you for making this video! I am a huge Megaman fan and I really enjoyed watching you chronicle this saga. Though I have to wait a relatively long time before you release a new video, the wait is usually worth it. Please keep it up!
Also, I was recently watching your first videos in the channel. You really have gone a long way in improving your content. 👍
Man, this ends on such a sad note. The idea for Megaman Universe was years ahead of its time.
Funny enough Keiji Inafune predicted doom for the Japanese videogame industry and was the driving force for Capcom to make their games more western like in the early 2010s which only made things worse for Capcom and close to bankruptcy in 2013. I think that was a warning sign for how Inafune was as a leader when it came to his mismanagement on Mighty No 9. For me, I’m more of a fighting game person so I was satisfied with Street Fighter 4 and MVC3 alongside their updates so when SFXTK it was a tough experience since I both love the game and hated it for their DLC on disc practices.
Mr. Historical Man, I have this weird thing where when I see a video in my recommendations, I am not compelled to give it a watch but every time I do, I end up loving it
God, 2010 Capcom, what a dark, dreary time.
I’m so glad they stopped making bad, catering to the West style games long enough to do Mega Man justice a few years back. Good stuff all around, video gamer
Street Fighter x Tekken, (multiple) Street Fighter IVs, Darkstalkers Resurrection. The early 2010s for Capcom destroyed one franchise and tainted another.
What are you talking about?
Megaman 11 did justice? Its such a horrible game. There hasnt been a decent Megaman since 9/10 and those only were good because they were straight copys of 2/3. No new Megaman game was good sind probably early Megaman X Series. Maybe if you want to be generous the Network Series or ZX.
Also SF4 is shit? It singlehandely revived Streetfighter... SF5 is shit. And that nothing else came after that.
@@livinlicious I love SF4 but the problem I think they are referring to is how there was too many versions of SF4 which many fans felt ripped off.
@@livinlicious on-disc DLC.
@@livinlicious What's horrible about MM11?
Megaman Universe: ...error file not found...
Super Mario Maker: Hold my POWER STAR
I remember for a time people feeling like there was a Mega Man Saturation more than anything
During most of the 2000's I think he had at least 3 different spin-off series launching games almost every year around the same time as each other, Battle Network, Zero and X with X being hit the hardest with low sales
MM9 being a retro style game felt like a breath of fresh air in a way but it felt like it wouldn't be until MM11 that Capcom would have a better idea of what to do with him
Yeah people got burned out on the franchise
yeah the key point here was that mega man as a fracnhise was getting burned out on both wicks but that more because of spinoffs like battle network and starforce not classic or X which were in the process of seeing revivals i was REALLY hoping Maverick Hunter was going to shake things up in a similar way that Metroid Prime since it was clearly its inspiration but it wasn't meant to be. I still remember buying 3DS and fondly thinking that megaman legends 3 was going to be finished within a year or so. heh heh. at least we got MM11.
I was so devastated after hearing about Megaman Legends 3 cancelled, its like my bestfriend had died. Volnutt was left on the moon, Roll and Tron failed to saves him :(
Imagine if Nintendo reboot Mario and make a new Mario games that art style just like Marvel comics and run in 30fps, that is so weird.
"He's a business man, not a creator." - Hideki Kamiya
Just when I thought Inafune couldn't mess up more Internet Historian added that he made Mighty Number Nine
Fun look at a cancelled project! There's one thing I never understood about Japanese games and game publishers during that particular point in time--they all talked about globalization and appealing to western or global audiences. It wasn't just Capcom; SquareEnix made a similar push. I'm sure it was based on increased sales projections, but it disregarded the potential that by trying to emulate something that's more western, it could inadvertently ostracize the consistent consumer-base who likes to buy Japanese games because they are designed with Japanese sensibilities. Really, the better approach seems to be incorporating things like accessibility options from western games while maintaining the other eastern elements of game design and art style.
That my friend, is the dream
I think it was because around this time more people were getting into games and they believed that it was because more people wanted wester styles of games aka dark and gritty games. It was the same reason why several companies at this times tried and failed to get into phone gaming
@@curtailedbike4123 Inafune fell into this mindset without double checking if that's what people really wanted. North American/South Americans, Europe and et cetera have our styles. Just because there were some success in other places didn't mean we wanted Western style games. If anything we just wanted companies from their own land to step it up and be more original, we liked their style as it is.
Well the Japanese console games market was cratering exponentially at the tail end of the 2000s, with Japanese gamers mostly moving to mobile gaming and leaving a massive void where they once were. It was and still is really dire straits for the japanese games market.
Fuck, I remember being CRUSHED when Mega Man Legends 3 was cancelled. Seeing previews in nintendo power back in the day, that game looked cool as hell.
the one thing that'll get your game series in trouble the fastest is radically changing the art style.
This is definitely true most of the time, but Borderlands is probably the one glaring exception to that. The game originally had a fairly bland art style that hardly stood out from any other shooter of the era, and they radically shifted to the cartoony humor-filled vibe pretty much at the eleventh hour. It's impressive that they managed to pull off such a drastic change (and this likely did contribute to the franchise's ongoing success), but I do feel bad for the artists that poured their blood, sweat, & tears into the original version of the game only for Gearbox to utterly sabotage their vision, regardless of how it affected the game's sales.
See also Sonic Lost World
That is sad, especially (like you said) seeing the success of Super Mario Maker. I wish Capcom would try again.
gotta imagine how pissed capcom was when nintendo beat them to the punch just a few years after this w/ mario maker?! honestly even looking the way it did I was kinda hyped for universe, I liked the concept! especially the part about playing as different characters that would've been an interesting take on the megaman formula. I was hoping it would've been at wondercon 2011 (as I'd been to my first one the year before) but when they announced they would be there and the game wasn't in the lineup, I was starting to suspect it was gonna get axed for good. shame they couldn't revisit the concept I mean I enjoyed what I played of megaman 11, but even if not it's nice to think about. Great to see behind the scenes of how everything went down these documentaries are always top-notch!!
Mario maker 2 underperformed though
@@georgehernandez2156 is 7.15 million units really underperforming, though? Especially considering the original game sold just over 4 million units.
@@espeon200 the other Mario games sold like 30 million, thats why they cancelled mario maker 2 dlc. Like the Mario 2 doki doki pack
@@georgehernandez2156 There have been five Mario games that sold more than 30 million units and two of those were Mario Kart games. The best selling Mario game on Switch is Mario Odyssey at 21.95 million units. Super Mario U Deluxe sold 10.44 million, and Super Mario 3D All-Stars sold 9.01 million.
Also, what SM2 USA stuff did they not include that was announced? There was a rumor that there was going to be an additional SM2 style, but it was never more than a rumor, and then they released the mushroom that gives you Mario 2 sprites and physics.
Yeah they had to be pissed. I hope they're not too pissed about Mega Man Maker, especially since they tend to allow fan projects to exist and honestly MM Maker is VERY good. Like, professionally made level good in many ways, honestly.
They were going to make Mega Man Maker years before Nintendo could make Super Mario Maker? I want to live in that timeline.
More proof of how disconnected Japanese developers have become, not just from the West but from Japan as well. A Mario Maker style game with classic gameplay and set options for the various eras of the game would have been nuts. That is exactly what people want. He was so close to getting it right, but he disregarded why people like games like Mega Man. A Mega Man game that departs so far from being Mega Man outright failed because that's not what customers wanted.
Nostalgia is a hard thing to do. You need to do enough to keep things new, but you can't just make other games and just stamp the nostalgic name onto it, but this is exactly what Inafune did.
Mega Maker exists.
Funny considering that since then Inafune has been on a steep decline and has shown he is completely out of touch with gamers while Capcom is having a resurgence like no other by embracing their japanese game maker roots.
Yeah, it's like when Castlevania made the jump to 3D and just turned into a DMC knock off in the process. Like, who thought a castlevania game with nothing in it that people like about castlevania was a good idea?
@@devilmikey00 focus groups and executives... probably?
Mega Man Universe should've been great and so easily monetized. About every 6 months, release a new old game DLC and you can use those assets to make new levels.
The thing people get wrong about Inafune is that he is artist, but NOT a game designer.
He is talented at drawing interesting robot-esque characters, but he has no idea how to utilizing those characters in an actual game.
The cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 was the one that hurt the most.
I'm picturing an arena shooter like Overwatch, but when you kill someone you get their weapon. Picture playing as Winston and all of a sudden your now playing as Tracer. Seems like a fun battle mode. Or in the Mega Man version you are forced to use the weapon of the first other player you kill. "Do I shoot Heat Man or Wood Man?" "Gemini Man or Snake Man"? Maybe Wood Man is the last one left and nobody wants that weapon in the next round. It's a cool twist.
There's a fangame called Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch which is very similar to what you're thinking of
I really liked the first Lost Planet game.
Everything is super slick in this video - music is on point, narration is tight comcise and well delivered. Content is focused - great job
Capcom then was probably the largest example and failure of the "We want the COD audience" mindset that infected the industry at the time
Damn, the thought of a Prime like version of MegamanX sounds awesome. Super Metroid and MegamanX went hand and hand for me back in the day. Needless to say, it would've been ideal if Capcom collabed with Retro proper and kept the nostalgic X character design aesthetic
Inafune leaves: Capcom makes Mega Man 11, the best entry in the main series since 3. I wonder what the problem was…
Not to mention that it was a big middle finger to Inafune’s terrible Mighty No. 9
I'm glad you did a video on the story of this game. I thought it was interesting to see how in the end there were really 2 stories in 1 video. 1. The creation and cancellation of MMU. 2. Inafune's thoughts & general thoughts on why Japanese developers lost relevancy in the 2000s and into the 2010s.
The second story is one I would like to learn more about.
I have my own thoughts on the matter. Such as how I think that many Japanese developers stayed focused on consoles well after the DOS/Windows PC became an extremely popular gaming platform (at least in the US) in the 90s and 2000s. There have been a number of (now) huge Western developers like Bethesda, Bioware, and DMA Design/Rockstar North that got their start on home computers & PC then also made it big on consoles in the 2000s. Or how many of the larger Japanese studios didn't appear to take mobile gaming seriously until after a boatload of other development houses (worldwide) had already conquered that market.
I remember it all as if it was yesterday, thanks for the fun trip down memory lane :)
I actually got to play Mega Man Universe, preview Mega Man Legends 3 and meet Kenji Inafune at Comic-Con. I remember Universe being sluggish and frustrating to control, think of Mega Man: The Wily Wars. I really didn't mind the art style of the game, personally. It just needed some more control tightening, more life and better direction. The best thing I walked out of Comic Con with was a autographed Mega Man Universe and Mega Man Legends 3 poster signed by Inafune!
This I could understand cancelling but Mega Man Legends 3 was soul crushing. I remember myself and so many Mega Man fans under one auditorium going bananas when Inafune showed us the world that was built so far. We were amped! Hell, I got myself a 3DS to get the damned demo! It's safe to say that us Mega Man fans were pretty resentful of Crapcom afterwards.
Still heartbreaking. I’ve accepted why Mega Man Universe was shelved, and I’ve never been big into level building games like this, but to kill ALL Mega Man projects like that hurts. Especially Legends 3, which I still wait for. Even Maverick Hunters looked like it would have been fun; sure it’s far and away from the tone of Mega Man and looks more like the Bomberman Act Zero debacle, but released along with the other, more faithful entries, it wouldn’t have been so jarring. Ah well…I guess the last Mega Man game being Mega Man 11 isn’t the worst finale.
even though the megaman series well continue next year with rockman taisen
9:30 The general public was already allowed to play the game at TGS during the public days (Sat/Sun). You’d get a commemorative face towel for playing the demo.
I feel bad for inafune. He was right about the Japanese industry needing to reach out, but he was also not seeing his own flaws in his products
No he sucks.
i love ur outtro of the lady simply reading that message, it reminds me of the message we get on pbs here in maryland, or at least did 25 years ago..
I have asked myself this same question about Mega Man - giving this a good watch now!
Norman!! You gotta do an episode of Mighty No 9!! It's been 5 years since release!
I respect Inafune a lot for being the man behind my favorite franchise ever, but God did he have some baffling ideas and decisions
Me too, shame he didn't take a step back and look at his decisions before the eventual fall. Would have spared his career. Heck he should have just stuck to what he's good at. Which is being an illustrator and producer.
Fantastic video as usual. I had never heard of this game before, but I had heard about those other cancelled Mega Man games. Sad to hear they were all cancelled due to Inafune getting a bit off track and too ambitious. At least the series is in better shape now, despite still being relatively quiet.
It was really frustrating to listen to the press lap up Inafune's comments back then. He was always a charlatan trying to paint himself as the savior of the Japanese game industry. His globalization push was more damaging to Capcom than anything, and of course things fell apart when he, who had positioned himself at the apex of the company's development operations, decided to split.
The fates of Mighty No. 9 and Red Ash were among the clearest examples of karma in action I've ever seen.
Yeah but I think he did have a point. Most Japanese games around that time sucked! I mean Nintendo was making some bangers on the Wii. AAA games were western at the time and bringing ALL THE PROFITS that Japanese try to emulate and copy and just did not work.
@@gjergjaurelius9798 No doubt, the Japanese game industry struggled due to the realities of transitioning to HD game development. A lot of smaller devs either went under or were merged into other companies. But I wouldn't say that most Japanese games of that era sucked. Certainly not when the western side of development had its own issues and troubling trends.
It's also not entirely fair to compare the output of a single nation (Japan) versus the "west" (literally the entire dev output of the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere).
Love this! Binge watching all of these while trying different emulators on my Linux Systems. Looking for episodes on recent emulators. The Gaming Historian is the best.
after the cancellation of mega man legends 3 and the disastrous development of mega man universe & mighty number 9, i'm convinced that inafune has the most biggest ego in the entire video game industry
Dude can draw basic art with googly eyes. That was good enough for the 80s.
Didn't realize there was a video on this until earlier today. Despite the criticisms, I wanted to see this game released. Hopefully someday, the TGS/NYCC builds will be released in the wild so those who didn't get to attend those two events get to try the game out.
I also still have the inflatable Arthur Lance promo from the game sitting somewhere in my room (thanks to my friend who attended NYCC.)
See, Inafune wasn't wrong about Japan at the time. The games coming out of there weren't dominating like they used to or even setting any new standards. Been pulled back over the last decade though. That said, he was clearly not exactly having his best game design ideas here... and then Mighty No.9 happened.
Now some game developers are getting it together and realizing that they can improve on themselves while keeping their style. They didn't need foreign influence. As for Inafune, while he had guts to call out the problems their game development had in the industry, he himself was misunderstanding things and assumed ideas and actions that costed him big time when Mighty no 9 came up. He wasn't even a good businessman, he is a illustrator and producer and should have stuck with what he knows.
I haven’t watched this channel in about a year but man I love seeing all the content. This one caught my eye and now I’m gonna binge all the other videos you put out. I will always enjoy the effort you put into these and the stories you tell.
In hindsight. Putting Inafune in charge of anything spells disaster.
And can we stop calling him the “father” of mega man. He didn’t do much with the franchise nor had much involvement. 😑😑😑😑
He was supervising the franchise after Kitamura left, so he's technically a step-father.
@@KuroNoTenno i still wouldnt even give that to him. He drank his own kool-aid.
@@dimsumboy22 Inafune did create one of the most popular characters in the whole franchise too. As much as I dislike him, acting like he did nothing for MegaMan is plain wrong.
@@KuroNoTenno And then Mega Man got a second step-father who is Kazuhiro Tsuchiya.
@@irfanafendi4837 And while I'm glad we got MM11 and collections, he sure wasted no time turning the franchise into a mobile gacha.
Sad to see how Capcom wasted their IP with MegaMan
We need that game ASAP. As well as Legends 3, Starforce 4 and MMBN and Starforce Collection. Can they throw as well X9 and ZX 3?
Mega Man 11: “What am I, chopped liver?”
On this note, I must add that Megaman 11 (Capcom on their own), is a fantastic game, and Mighty No.9 is not. So Capcom was right, and their RE/MH success these years just shows him he's wrong and we like both US and Japanese style games...Now Capcom's issue is #FREEMVC2!!
This game is such an absolute tragedy to me. Mega Man 2 is by far my favorite Mega Man game, so I would've absolutely adored a remake. The fact it was also slated to include different playable characters and a stage creator, nearly half a decade before Mario Maker? Well, that's just the icing on top. I guess it's good to finally know what happened, sounds like Inafune just had all the wrong ways of going about the right ideas. I wish they'd revisit this project in the future; perhaps a retry using Mega Man 11's assets.
Man Capcom who were in their darkest times back in the mid thousands. Making and turning one their Capcom games and westernised them. To DmC to Bionic Commando and even Resident Evil 6. Even the blue bomber couldn’t get its upcoming games and Megan Universe is a great example,where it’s going to be an equivalent to Mario Maker before Mario Maker came. Now that Capcom has fixed their mistakes let’s see what future is going to be for the mighty blue bomber.
I had only ever seen the first trailer for megaman universe and my assumption was that as megaman you would be able to venture into the "universe" of other Capcom titles and battle their heroes to get their abilities such as Arthur's Lance throwing and Ryu's fighting style, and because it's Capcom I figured it would have other big Capcom titles as other "universe" stages like resident evil, bionic commando ect.