/vr/ - Retro Games

[Anonymous No.9514970]

How come the Mega Man franchise has never been as successful as other franchises? Prior to Mega Man 11, only Mega Mans 2, 3, Battle Network 4 Blue Version, and X sold a million copies and none of them sold 2 million

[Anonymous No.9514975]

>>9514970
They made up for quantity with quantity.

[Anonymous No.9514978]

>>9514970
There were 1-3 games coming out pretty much every year for 12 years in a row.

[Anonymous No.9514980]

>>9514978
20 years* in a row

[Anonymous No.9514987]

Because Crapcom are largely losers

[Anonymous No.9515257]

>>9514970
This has been the case with many "classic" series. People overestimate how much they sold because of how acclaimed they were. (similar thing to JRPGs like Chrono Trigger and FFVI that sold very little in the West back in the day, but people seem to think they were huge.)
For example: to my knowledge, Castlevania never sold terribly well past the first 3 games; ironically, the biggest sellers past that era were Lords of Shadow and Lament of Innocence. SotN allegedly sold poorly, but eventually gained some sales due to word of mouth (not sure how true this is, but Wikipedia states that). Japan doesn't seem to give a shit about the series. Allegedly, the GBA and DS games hardly reached 500k in sales each. SNES ones weren't big either.
A very typical situation back in the day was that the biggest sellers on Ninty's consoles were their own IPs—Mario, Zelda, DKC, etc. Then came big hit games everyone talked about, e.g. Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter 2, NBA Jam, or even cartoon games like Aladdin and Lion King. In Japan only, you can add Square and Enix. But everything else was kind of lagging behind.
Mega Man likely continued for so long because making new games on the old engine was cheap, they could reuse a lot of the old ideas / assets.

[Anonymous No.9515291]

Inafune was in over his head with multiple different series within the franchise. It shocks me to this day that the Battle Network series was even mildly successful. If that motherfucker was still at capcom we would have had a shitload of shitty games by now across the whole franchise with the quality of mediocre indie Steam games.
Remember when they were making a FPS Mega Man X to completely reboot the series?

[Anonymous No.9515308]

>>9515291
>It shocks me to this day that the Battle Network series was even mildly successful.
It wasn't just "mildly successful". It was one of the biggest game series on GBA in Japan (picrelated). It was the heyday of Pokemon and trading card games. Capcom capitalized on that wave, and it paid off.
The irony is that Mega Man Zero sold way less.
>Inafune was in over his head with multiple different series within the franchise.
Why wouldn't he though? It was clear that after MMX6 and MM8 that the series had hit the wall. So it's natural they tried going in other directions. They tried doing something with Command Mission, I heard it was good but alas you never see anyone discuss it.

[Anonymous No.9515330]

https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1671796491003026.webm
https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1671796556401763.webm

https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1671811500327331.webm
https://i.4cdn.org/wsg/1671811565679614.webm

[Anonymous No.9515332]

>>9515308
Command Mission is good. That should've been the direction the X Series went, with some improvements of course. My only complaint about it is that the music is painfully average, especially for a Mega Man game. It has a handful of good songs, but the rest of it is all pretty forgettable. I guess the 3 composers were going more for atmosphere and fitting the setting of each place and event, and it works for it I guess. Would've loved a proper X series-like soundtrack for it though.

[Anonymous No.9515357]

>>9515332
Capcom are terrible at managing their own IPs. they let Street Fighter and Final Fight to nothing in the '90s–2000s.
To be honest, I wished for a DMC-like Mega Man. but simply put, the series lost its momentum. DMC sold way better in the West, where Mega Man hasn't been very popular for years. In Japan, it hardly had any left, save for going into RPG territory which it did. That said, Onimusha was a hit in Japan—maybe Mega Man could have worked as a similar game after all.

[Anonymous No.9515672]

>>9514970
Mega Man as a franchise doesn't have that draw. There isn't a huge reason to buy a new one unless you're a Mega Man fanatic. It's the same formula. They're good games but for your average person, they don't need to play another one. Sure, I give a shit about the slippiness of MM1 vs the later games or the non-8 bit games vs the 8 bit games. But to most gamers, it's the exact same game over and over. The 2D Action Platformer became antiquated in the 5th gen. If you read reviews, people trashed games like MM8 for being 2D. Mega Man found new life on handhelds with Battle Network/Zero but they ran that into the ground. At its core, I think MM's gameplay doesn't have broad appeal. It's difficult and the novelty of being able to pick your own path/use special weapons wears off after one game. From game to game, they don't have a huge innovation to draw people in. They aren't graphical showcases. They don't usually have multiplayer. They never had that revival into 3D like Sonic Adventure, Mario 64, and OoT. MML is good but it wasn't something to the level of those games.

[Anonymous No.9515678]

>>9515357
>I wished for a DMC-like Mega Man
3D Mega Man Zero by PlatinumGames is coming out spring 2023, haven't you heard?

[Anonymous No.9515724]

>>9514970
Dunno but megaman maker is superior to mario maker.

[Anonymous No.9515725]

>>9514975
adds up

[Anonymous No.9515726]

Has Magaman ever meet Megaman X?

[Anonymous No.9515841]

>>9515672
MML is way better than sonic Adventure.

[Anonymous No.9515847]

>>9514970
Mega Man is in this weird situation where it's not that popular of a series and yet, it has so many games and the series has had multiple TV series

[Anonymous No.9515856]

>>9515726
Yeah, in the American cartoon.

[Anonymous No.9515863]

>>9515847
Mega Man games were really cheap and easy to make and sold well enough to make a profit. And everyone still consider's Rock to be Capcom's mascot

[Anonymous No.9515985]

>>9514970
Too difficult for casuals
Look at sonic those games are retard proof

[Anonymous No.9515996]

>>9515847
Don't forget the live action movies

[Anonymous No.9516000]

>>9515841
>MML is way better than Sonic Adventure
No it isn't. I enjoy playing through MML, it's a good game, but it certainly isn't better than Sonic Adventure.

[Anonymous No.9516086]

>>9514970
Because only 1 2 and 3 were actually monumental with insanely good controls for their time while the successors were just generic shitty cash grab run and guns

[Anonymous No.9516091]

>>9515332
>Command Mission is good.
Eh, it has issues, like not letting you change the camera controls

[Anonymous No.9516092]

>>9515330
got a sauce on the remixed versions?

[Anonymous No.9516103]

>>9515357
>they let Street Fighter and Final Fight to nothing in the '90s–2000s.
What? They were releasing more SF stuff in the 90s than at any point before or after. Even ignoring the absolute juggernaut that was SF2, we also got the Alpha and SF3 trilogies in that decade.
Final Fight, sure they didn't really do much with.

[Anonymous No.9516104]

>>9515841
Perhaps it is. But there's no denying Sonic Adventure did more to keep Sonic popular than MML did for Mega Man.

[Anonymous No.9516150]

>>9516092
Toad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NRHtcNaK3r0
Dive: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcMDz3SAel4

[Anonymous No.9516834]

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7413/

colour version of MM5 GB released and I won't be able to play before 1-2 months because I broke my wrist

fuck

[Anonymous No.9516847]

>>9515985
I wouldn't say that Mega Man games are harder than /vr/ Mario and yet Mario has always been the most popular platformer series ever ever

[Anonymous No.9516945]

>>9516103
>What? They were releasing more SF stuff in the 90s than at any point before or after. Even ignoring the absolute juggernaut that was SF2, we also got the Alpha and SF3 trilogies in that decade.
First off, I meant the era after SF2, of course. "Before" the 90s, you only had a basically failed single game, SF1.
Second, they really fucked up a lot of things after that, no wonder that the series went into hibernation until SFIV after the '90s.
They bet on SFIII, but CPS-3 failed miserably, and the games were hard to port anywhere and basically were hardly known outside of FGC circle until EVO moment #37 meme. Not only that, not going 3D meant it'd never quite reach high sales anyway. A lot of their decisions for the game were also weird, like the initial plans to ditch Ryu / Ken and the fact that the freaky chars in the game were actually meant for a different sci-fi fighting game.
Then you had SFA series, which was at first just a low effort by Capcom to sell the remaining arcade boards machines at first, made by a team with lots of inexperienced devs in barely 6 months. In the end it turned into the more popular series than SF3.
Then you had actual 3D Street Fighter… outsourced to Arika. And it turned out pretty shitty. Why? What the fuck? You take your biggest IP in 4th gen, and treat it like that?
All in all, you get the picture.

[Anonymous No.9517375]

>>9516834
wow it actually came out. now I just need Mega Man X Corrupted

[Anonymous No.9517457]

>>9514970
Mega Man's popularity came from rentals, and later piracy. Actually, even more important than either of those, most of Mega Man's popularity came from people who didn't even play the game but heard the music, watched the Flash animations, etc

[Anonymous No.9517459]

>>9516834
Oh shit, nice. Hope your wrist gets better bro.

[Anonymous No.9517461]

>>9515357
>they let Street Fighter and Final Fight to nothing in the '90s–2000s
Lol what

Both of those series got sequels in the 90s

[Anonymous No.9517467]

>>9516834
Which wrist?

[Anonymous No.9517507]

>>9514970
I blame Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom. They seem to eat up the majority of Capcom's budget nowadays alongside Monster Hunter, Resident Evil, and Devil May Cry. There's also the whole Inafune thing. Honestly I wouldn't be that mad if they just sold Mega Man to IntiCreates, they made the last few good games prior to Mega Man 11 anyaway.

[Anonymous No.9517936]

>>9514970
Understand that the market was a lot smaller, as were production costs. 1 million in unit sales in the early-mid 1990s was a boon, and even if Mega Man wouldn't break that number often, it still sold considerably well.

Capcom was also more lenient on sales targets, so they had at least an internally justified excuse to put out so many games in such short a timespan.

Mega Man 11 only got that far with deep discounts.

[Anonymous No.9517950]

>>9514970
Aside from MM2, MMX, and MML, they were winging the whole series. I loved it, but in retrospect they had no fucking clue where to take it.