Mega Man 11: Attempts to Modernize a Legend

Mega Man 11 is the latest game in the series released after 8 years of absence. Both Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 have a familiar retro style, with graphics and gameplay in the style of the first 6 games on the NES system (Nintendo Entertainment System). At E3 2018, GameSpot talked to producer Kazuhiro Tsuchiya and director Koji Oda about finally modernizing one of Capcom’s most popular series.

“As we were working on Mega Man 11 and thinking about how we wanted to present it, I felt like a retro part just didn’t seem right,” said Tsuchiya. “This will limit the vast amount of what we can do. Because there is such a long time between this and the previous one, I think the best thing is to make the game compatible with modern hardware, use as much of their potential as possible, and have people You can look at it and realize it’s the latest sequel. It’s a huge step forward for the Mega Man series.”

And this meant designing a new look for the series, but also finding ways to make it recognizable and evolve naturally. Tsuchiya says they’re very aware that the issue might stray too far from current style, and don’t want to “distract existing fans.” And ultimately, they aim to make a Mega Man part that “looks like you’ve come straight out of a work of art.”

Obviously an important part of the graphic style is animation. But when it came to animating this new generation of Mega Man, on a character originally built from angled polygons, Capcom realized that they had to subtly frame the game to make the game. still looks like a classic game.

“That’s something we’re particularly interested in when working with animators,” says Tsuchiya. “With modern hardware, it is possible to create extremely smooth graphics and animations, but then we realized that if it was too smooth, it would affect the gameplay and the controls wouldn’t work. be sure as we want. We really had to go back to studying the animations of the previous games, like how Mega Man escalates, and see which frames are the most important, which frames of Mega Man are really geared towards the control without. we want. We researched them and made sure that the gameplay elements remained tight and nostalgic to previous games, but at the same time made sure that the graphic style was modernized as well.”

However, it is also not without new elements. The Double Gear system allows Mega Man to use two abilities that can be switched quickly, including a short burst: making his shots stronger, and another slowing him down. time.

“I wanted to build something that would open up more gameplay and more options for veteran gamers, and at the same time open doors for first-timers,” said Tsuchiya. “Trying to come up with something that doesn’t overwhelm the core mechanics, allows those core mechanics to stay there, and possibly help add something new in, is challenging. For us, this is a process of discovery. A process that takes a lot of fine-tuning to make sure everything is connected.”

And luckily, it looks like Mega Man is in the hands of a professional team. After a long hiatus, Blue Bomber is finally back with stunning graphics and cleverly improved gameplay. And of course it is, this game is produced by two longtime fans of this series.

When asked about their favorite Mega Man game, both gave completely different, but equally interesting answers:

“Apart from the classic series, the first Mega Man Battle Network game — that really inspired me,” said Tsuchiya. “The plot, the setting and everything about it. I think it does a pretty good job of portraying a child’s imagination. I think that game captured that very well. When I first saw and played it, there was something that really affected me in a big way.”

“The first Mega Man was the one I really loved,” Oda said. “For me, when I first started playing it, the gameplay system was great and solid. I found it to be so solid in the beginning that it was my responsibility to make sure that I didn’t go too far from the essence but still managed to improve the series.”

According to GameSpot