Topic: R20 Rockman & Rockman X Official Complete Works (Mega Man art book)

[JonLeung]

R20 Rockman & Rockman X Official Complete Works



Looks neat.  I bought a Street Fighter art book (Eternal Challenge, I think) a while back.  But this looks cooler.

[TerraEsperZ]

Oh, cool! I'm definitely going to order this as soon as I'm back from China (because otherwise, nobody will be there to receive the package for me).



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"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

[marioman]

Rumor has it that they are coming out with one for Mega Man Zero too.  They look really neat.

[Rew]

Dangit, why don't these things come out in English? I can't read Japanese. =(



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"So this is what it's like..."

- Spark Mandrill

[marioman]

They are<\i> coming out in English IIRC.

[JonLeung]

Rew Said:

Dangit, why don't these things come out in English? I can't read Japanese. =(

And if it was only in Japanese, would you appreciate the art less?  



(I suppose you'd miss out on some descriptions of what things are...but for the most part I don't think it'd be too bad.)

[Rew]

@marioman: There are rumors, but I haven't heard anything definitively yet.



@Jon: You make a good point there. Still, I hear that there's all sorts of valuable storyline info about MM canon in these type books that we English-speaking folk don't see unless we happen to be on a MM forum with an uber MM nerd who knows Japanese and has these kinds of sourcebooks to cite in debate threads. =P



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"So this is what it's like..."

- Spark Mandrill

[JonLeung]

MM canon?



Seriously, this is all you need to know:



MM: It's Dr. Wily.  Again.

MMX: Zero dies in every other game.  And look, it's Sigma.  Again.



I'm sure if it hasn't been mentioned (possible spoiler?) that the Sigma Virus will turn out to be Wily's soul, so technically it has always been Wily.    I'm totally guessing here but I wouldn't be surprised.



I kid, though.  There are some convolutions in the storyline in other regards in the MMX games, though sadly they haven't been all that memorable.  It's, like, look, Bamboo Pandemonium, I don't particularly care about your space rocket fetish, I just want your Green Spinner so I can move on.  And then all that Zero Virus/Sigma Virus stuff.  Look, let's just mix in some Resident Evil T-Viruses while we're at it.



I do, however, recommend Mega Man X: Command Mission.  That was that Mega Man X RPG on the GameCube and PlayStation 2.  It sure is a breath of fresh air to change the genre.  All those eight billion people that complain Mega Man is stale have to play that game before complaining again.  You can't say Capcom doesn't change when you don't support them when they do try new things.  Those same people should pick up some Killer7 while they're at it, even if Capcom was only the publisher.



Also, I want to know if it's spelled "Mega Man X2" (no space) or "Mega Man X 2" (with a space).  "Mega Man X 2" makes more sense to me...after all, you don't stick other sequel numbers right to the name (and Killer7 is not a sequel, BTW).  "X 2" implies a sequel to the first in the X series, which is distinct enough from the original Mega Man.  If it wasn't, then I could understand "X2" as being another entry in the Mega Man series, which it is, but also isn't, since X is separate enough.  It's 100 years later with different characters!  They even refer to Mega Man X more commonly as X, regardless of whether or not he was built from the original Mega Man!...ramble ramble words words words

[TerraEsperZ]

Well, the Japanese manuals probably have at least a tiny bit more backstory than the American ones (I mean, seriously? Monsteropolis!? That's right there with Super C's American story), just like the Sonic The Hedgehog games did.



The X series might have had an interesting story if Capcom didn't change it every game or so, without mentioning outright retcons (first the Mavericks were due to the Reploids being imperfect copies of X, then it was due to the Sigma/Zero Virus, and now Maverick Hunter X seems to go back to the first idea).



That's why I prefer Mega Man Zero's story. The first one eventually got retconned after they decided that Zero didn't put himself in stasis for centuries at the end of X5, but all in all it remains my favourite because it mostly stands complete in itself.



But seriously, I think a huge Mega Man/Rock Man encyclopedia covering all the games and how they relate to one another would be really interesting. Might not sell all that much though, but a guy can dream



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

[marioman]

Also, I want to know if it's spelled "Mega Man X2" (no space) or "Mega Man X 2" (with a space).

No space.  If you look at the title screens for the games, the number is always directly beside of the X.  Also, in the Mega Man X Collection, the text on the game select menu says X2, X3, X4, etc.

[JonLeung]

This is further confusing by the fact that the X and the number appear at separate times and are two different fonts.



And I still say the space makes more logical sense...  



Then there's "Mega Man", clearly two words in the early games, but in the later games, appear to be one word!  Arrrghghrghrble!



It's typically easier to say than to write such (apparently tricky) names.  But, boy, did it irk me every time someone said "Final Fantasy ECKS TWO" when anyone can clearly see it's "Final Fantasy TEN-TWO".  Blargg!  BLARGG!



Anyway, back on topic...I remember Keiji Inafune (I think that's his name) mentioning on that one G4 clip I saw on Mega Man X Anniversary Collection (GameCube version) how if someone presented art of the same quality of the art that he himself had done for the first Mega Man, he would've said, "nope, sorry, try again".  It's funny how with each Mega Man game, the detail of the Robot Masters goes up.  There's not a huge distinction between two games right next to each other, but after a few, and it's like, whoa.  I wonder if I still have that folder on my hard drive when I was trying to collect official art of every Robot Master...

[TerraEsperZ]

I personally feel that Megaman looks better written as one word instead of two, but the Robot Masters shoudl keep theirs separate. I don't know why I feel like this; maybe because Rock feel more like a real character and deserves a real name, while the Masters are more like interchangeable bosses (despite having personalities of their own).



I also noticed that about the Robot Masters' designs. In the first game, everyone looks pretty much as simplistic as Mega Man himself, which makes sense since they're all creations of Dr Light. But beginning with the second one, you can already see that they're all more detailled and more customized for their respective functions and environments.



I'd say that the only generation of Robot Masters I didn't like was the one from Mega Man VII. But then again, I wasn't a fan of that game's graphical style so that might be a reason. I much preferred the style in Mega Man 8 and Mega Man & Bass, even if they made Proto Man taller than Mega Man despite being his prototype (it might be a simple issue of posture though, since Blues stands tall and defiant unlike Rock).



(Yes, I do know I tend to switch between the American and Japanese names).



I've often wondered how cool it would be to see official sprite conversions for all the Robot Masters and characters (1 through 8, plus Mega Man & Bass as well as the Rockman Killers from the Game Boy games) both in standard NES graphics and in my favourite Mega Man 8 style. Heck, for all the 8 bit ones, even try and redo them to increase details and expressiveness since the Masters from the first game don't really look good anymore (and Guts Man looks like a stocky hunchback).



There used to be a site called the Robot Center I think which had sprite artists do Mega Man VII styled sprites of the NES bosses, but the site vanished a few years back I think.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)

[marioman]

Now, I think that the FFX-2 thing is hilarious.  It is a sequel to a sequel, but it is not actually a direct sequel because it is not FFXI.  (If that makes any sense.)



At least Mega Man X makes more sense than that.  I think that the intent of using X2 is to keep people from calling it Mega Man Ten-Two.  (I personally remember hearing people refer to MMX as Mega Man Ten, but that stopped after X2 came out.)

[JonLeung]

I STILL hear people think the X stands for 10.  All right, not entirely illogical.



But where's Mega Man IX, then?  Even if you consider Mega Man & Bass to be 9/IX, then where's 11/Eleven/XI/X1?  There isn't, it goes from X (not ten) to X 2 (not twelve).  Then if you actually play the game and realize it's 100 years later and Wily's not around and there's Sigma instead and there's different issues and the tone of the games are different...



I thought it was a sad, sad day when Penny Arcade revealed their ignorance by having a comic where Tycho was growing furious trying to explain to Gabe that Mega Man X meant Mega Man 10 when it absolutely isn't.  If there's one thing I hate more than people being wrong, it's people being so sure they're right about it.  And if there's one thing I hate more about people being so sure about being right when they're wrong, is when they're published making that incorrect point.

[TerraEsperZ]

Do you have the link to that particular PA strip? I wouldn't put it past them to have made that strip to mock exactly the type of behaviour you mention, where people are angry because they think they are right while everyone else (in this case, the audience) knows they're not. Despite Tycho usually being the smarter one and Gabe the stupid one, they're not afraid to switch things around from time to time.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



Current projects: Sonic CD (Sega CD), Mega Man V (GB), Mega Man Zero (GBA), Battletoads (NES)