The Great Mega Man Finger Phenomenon
This is a curious tale I’ve been thinking of writing up for some time now, and was inspired by yesterday’s Press The Buttons article about the “Capcom Turnaround.” I referenced this account at the end of the report, and amazingly enough, more of you were interested in that last line than in the PTB article! So with this article I’ll explore the phenomenon in depth.
So what am I talking about? It’s the strange fact that many Mega Man characters seemingly have no ability to separate their third and fourth fingers (that is, their middle finger and their ring finger). It all starts here:
As you can see, the middle finger and ring finger are practically fused together. It’s really as if the artist had trouble drawing a proper hand with five fingers, and had to make one of them really big to imply two fingers together. This hand pose isn’t present with all Mega Man characters, but many hold their hands in a fist, and some just don’t have hands at all. But when a Mega Man character tries to open his or her hand, those two fingers just won’t come apart. I’ll show you some more examples.
Now look at this. By Mega Man 4, the series drawing style “evolved” enough to allow for more detail in the hands. There are five clearly defined fingers, but… those two danged fingers won’t come apart! What’s the deal!? Even by Mega Man 7, where the characters had really been eating their Wheaties, those two fingers always stay together.
By Mega Man 8 it seems they dropped the whole finger thing. Curiously, Mega Man 8 was an awful game. Coincidence?? It’s as if Grenade is just saying “Why!?”
Many years passed before we’d get another numbered Mega Man game. You’d think they might have forgotten about the whole finger thing in that time, but not so! It’s back in full force!
Even humans can’t help it!
Furthermore, the classic series is not unique in exhibiting this phenomenon.
It corresponds to the early X series as well, although it’s not as consistent here. While some characters certainly do present the trait, others can seemingly go against it. Perhaps, like deciding to kill all humans or deciding to walk away from the battlefield even though you’re the most important Maverick Hunter and the series is named after you, it’s a choice.
There may yet be other Mega Man series that exhibit this trait, maybe even other Capcom games, but I’ve not looked hard enough. However, I think this is more than enough to support my observations. Just what is the point of this hand sign? Frankly, I’ve tried it, and it’s really uncomfortable and doesn’t seem to serve any useful purpose other than being identified as a weirdo.
Of course, the reality is that it’s just the style of the artist, likely Keiji Inafune himself, who began as a character designer. I presume many of these character images were created, if at least drafted, by him. Starting in Mega Man 8, Hayato Kaji became the head of illustrating as Inafune went on to take more production roles, which would indicate why the gesture disappears around that time. Then it naturally reappears in Mega Man 9 and 10, games which try to recapture that retro feel. You can tell they really paid attention to all the small details!
Who knows what this strange gesture, which I am naming the “Capcom Hand,” really indicates. All I can say for sure is it’s very Mega Man.
Tags: Artwork, finger, gesture, hand, Mega Man, Mega Man X, way too much time
Filed under: Editorials
Well, it’s obviously an upsidedown ‘M’.
And this SHOULD be a MegaMan greeting. Let’s do it!
When I read Megaman finger, I was thinking of a shining finger-esque MegaMan weapon hehe
Definitely looks like an artist’s cheat to me. I am lousy at drawing but love playing RPGs like GURPS, and without a character portrait, it just didn’t feel as fun. So when I hit on a design element that made it easier, I milked it sooooo bad. Pretty funny I never noticed, though.
As for the debate on the quality of Mega Man games, I haven’t played II-IV on the GameBoy or 9 and 10 yet, so I can’t speak to those games. Plus, most of the classic series I played was via the GCN version of the Collection, so maybe that “doesn’t count” but anyway…
I tend to go with the popular consensus that Mega Man 2 was a great game. I preferred Mega Man 3, and it remains my favorite to this day. I like most of the abilities Mega Man gained in later games and that is the one of the disappointments of the newest two games, though I realize they give a bit of a nod to them via Proto Man and Bass, but it’s just not the same (and honestly, I want Proto Man to get his own play style reflective of him). Oh, and I know that isn’t based on actual play, but by evidence as given by others. Fairly save to say since Mega Man only got to use the Proto Shield MM7 and it didn’t work while jumping. >.>
Mega Man 8 is my least favorite of the Classic games I’ve played. It keeps company with the original and possibly Dr. Wily’s Revenge. The original will of course have issues: it was “new” to them too at the time. That also explains what “went wrong” with the first Game Boy title and with Mega Man 8.
While I can’t find my copy of the first GB game and my copy of the last GB game is touchy so I don’t play it often, within the last month I’ve run through Mega Man 1-8 via the Collection and Mega Man and Bass on the GBA. In fact, I just finished a run through as Mega Man in Mega Man and Bass at about 2:30 AM this morning (I had to work late, so I was up late).
In the specific case of Mega Man 8, I personally felt Mega Man looked “wrong”, as did several other characters… but not everyone. Many looked just fine. Plus, I learned a long time ago not to judge a series by the artwork. As a specific example I have been a Transformers fan since the beginning, but my favorite series is Transformers: Animated, though I hated the stylized aesthetic at first. So if the rest of the game had been tops, it’d be easily forgiven.
I enjoyed Mega Man 7 a lot: it felt like whatever improvements the SNES allowed were employed, and executed well.
Mega Man 8 failed in the execution of many of the “expected improvements”. Story was “okay”, but I enjoyed the other games more. The animation was alright, but the voice acting hurts to listen to. Sometimes its worse delivering substandard content than skipping it all together. After all, what features could have been created using the resources that went into the animation (time, money, development costs, disc space, etc.)?
So saying Mega Man 8 is the worst in the series is like being in last place at the Olympics… I mean, look at my complaints: game play was great.
Except “Jump jump, slide slide”. That was horrid. And then sticking it into the beginning of the Wily level!
@Trigger
You are entitled to an opinion but most of what you said was an exaggeration, with the exception of battle chip challenge being bad. The worst Megaman game is easily from the DOS group.
Oh, and Battle Chip Challenge suffered from being a new direction in a spin-off series. I played it quite a bit, and the worst part is… not enough save files/wasn’t a DS game. (Six playable characters + two save files) x lots of hours in a game = aggravation. As for wishing it were a DS game… then in the middle of a long tournament, I could just shut the unit and have it go into power saver mode.
I think I’ve played Battle Chip Chip Challenge more because it is a longer game. I think I’ve enjoyed Mega Man 8 a little more… but remember what I said about flawed execution? Mega Man 8 just failed to deliver the upgrades to the core game design. Battle Chip Challenge was basically some sort of hybrid between a TCG and a fighting game, and was probably a lot closer to what “net battling” would actually be like than the core games. Mixed blessing that the game sort of “played itself”.
As you can tell I really enjoyed it despite its flaws. Still, it was a flawed beginning verses a good game in a series of great games… I guess it doesn’t seem like a fair comparison. As opposed to say comparing X Series or Zero series games. Same genre and several entries.
@Lumine1412 & @Doctor Andy
The use of Cyber Elves is most definitely an “easy mode”, and the game is designed to penalize you for taking the easy way out. If you’re playing barebones, and especially if you’re playing without unnecessary weapon-grinding (I was downright appalled to see weapon leveling removed from Zero 3 and Zero 4, though), Zero (1) is the most challenging game the Rockman sidescrolling metaseries has to offer.
@Trigger EXE
Every time you post something, you look more and more like the kind of audience “Easy Mode” is catering to. Continues are for the weak and for the unskilled.
Back in ‘da good ole days’, gamers didn’t have “easy modes” spoonfed to them– if something was hard, we kept on trying until we were skilled enough to get past whatever difficulties stood in our path. Easy Mode is a medium for the unskilled to remain unskilled. After all, if the game’s default difficulty is “too hard”, they don’t have to actually try to become a better player, they can just hop over to “easy mode” and be given instant gratification. Rockman Zero’s (and by extension, Zero 2′s) difficulty does not lie in bosses being “the hardest, and not in a good way”, but that your initial life bar cannot be extended without suffering permanent penalties to your score, IE, the use of Cyber Elves. This also applies to Sub Tanks, though Zero 2 is more forgiving in that you are able to acquire two Sub Tanks without damaging your ranking.
tl;dr, Trigger EXE / Easy Mode players, try harder.
Does anyone else see the Spock greeting on the hand sign?
@Fishman
I have no problem with an easy mode. I’ll probably start 10 with Normal, and when that has kicked my butt long enough to get a baseline feel for the difficulty, I’ll switch over to easy to add another play-through or two to the game. That’s probably why I was lucky to start with Mega Man 3: besides being one of the easier Mega Man games, on the NES it had some amazing cheats that dramatically dropped the difficulty. I can pretty easily beat Mega Man 3 legit now, but it was my first game beaten period. Even with in game cheats, I couldn’t beat anything else before it.
Now, that explains why easy is good for young or new players.
Hating on continues? That is just tells us you are either trying to pick a fight or lying for pure fun. Continues exist because its a video game. It means that someone can beat a game without dedicating too much time to it. Since it’s a video game and not something important. I mean, surgeons wish they go continues.
lol @ fishman. Talk about serious business.
Stop giving those of us who avoid easy mode a bad name. MMZ obviously isn’t the worst Mega Man game, but the condescending elitist commentary is far from necessary.
And for every good ol’ game that didn’t have difficulty settings, there was at least one which did (heck, even Atari 2600 games had them!).
It’s a good thing games have different difficulty levels (the more the better), so a newcomer can still get something out of his time with the game, and an expet can get a respectable challenge with just amping it up a bit.
I mean, what’s so bad about having choices, anyway?
oh, I almost forgot:
If easy modes keep newcomers from getting skilled players, what’s the problem? The REAL problem, I mean.
It’s not like videogame skills are important abilities to develop for life, except for some eye-hand coordination or some form of analytic thinking, but even those are abilities you can develop by other means!
Sorry for the double post.
Going back on the topic of the fingers…
I’d like to think the “Capcom Hand” went with the whole “Kabuki Warrior” aesthetic that the grand majority of Robot Masters display when they strike their dynamic poses.
Then again, when every single character ends up doing it, it kinda makes you wonder if the finger placement was done as a force of habit or an “artist’s cheat” as Otaku put it. ^_^
…Or maybe this is the secret of Mega Man 9…
In any case, awesome article!
I’m sorry, but… To the writer of this article: You have trolled several of us with condescending opinions which have lead to a troll extravaganza below your article. Please avoid doing this in the future, please. I don’t read these articles to find biased critiques of games I like.
From finger art to MM8 war to Fishman trolling and everyone falling in his trap. Hoo boy, what a mess.
Just chill, people are entitled to an opinion, even the author (*gasp* No way!). Focus on the actual topic of the article, it’s far more interesting than pointless arguing.
Seems like I’m one of the few who did stay on topic and had his question ignored. Wasn’t Spock’s greeting “Live Free and Prosper”, I think? You know Spock from the old show Star Trek.
Live long and prosper, artbiter.
Trigger be trollin’. Called Rockman and Forte the worst in the series, did he.
Aww, I was enjoying the article ’til the MM8 bash. Of course, I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it… Just saying.
Put me in the boat of loving 8. I’ll admit, it’s kind of the series odd duck, but I’ve played it plenty of times and I accept it for what it is. It’s one of those “so bad it’s good” It’s a series that never needed all that extra polish, and suffered when it was forced upon it.
While the voice actors are pretty bad, I enjoyed hearing the boss personalities mid-battle. Grenade Man being crazy, Frost Man being dumb, Aqua Man being… let’s just move on. And Jump Jump, Slide Slide is epic.
Don’t MAKE me go play it again, dammit. I’ll do it!
(7 on the other hand… ugh.)
Rockman 8 characters don’t fuse their fingers because the art was drawed by another person and not Keiji Inafune.
wow…never noticed the hand thing until now. kinda odd. kinda cool.
I always thought the artist just felt it looked cool or intimidating with the one hand thrust behind in a gang sign whilst the other pointed a weapon towards you. Guess you never know.
Just to clear this up, it was mentioned in the R20 artbook that Kenji Inafune drew the hands like that because he thought it looked cool. He didn’t do it on purpose but by the time he noticed he was doing it, it felt right to do it that way so all the other artists did it too.
So chalk one up for Inafking and his accidental trolling.
I’m going to start doing this all the time.
Interesting, maybe the artist(s) was/were doing it subconsciously?
I frown at you for dissing Rockman 8, but the pipe thing blew my mind.
<3
Hitoshi Ariga once made a comic suggesting Rockman fans use that hand gesture like a secret call sign. If it were done in English, it might look a little something like this.
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_gEvFPgiGuCQ/S-iqFN3jVHI/AAAAAAAAAHM/Xp0_4PeD0j8/s1600/hands+english.jpg
That hand shape could be found in a lot of American cartoons too
WEST SIDE
Clearly Megaman, his allies, the robot masters, wily and all other friends and foes are reppin the Wu-Tang Clan here. Theres no mistaking it, they are flying the Wu “W”!
The Robot Master is kickin’ it west side!
Looks like it started out as an artists cheat and just turned into a running gag once animation got detailed enough to do away with it.
I can do it with my left hand, but not my right hand, kinda fitting since almost all the art up there has it with the left hand *just found out that I can do it with my right hand too*
You know, I have always wonder that too. I am pretty sure it’s just Keiji Inafune’s way of drawing though, like others have said. Seems that the character or robot masters he didn’t have “hand” in drawing don’t use the gesture. I guess it really is just a special art symbol. XD
It either means M for megaman or W for willy and was done on purpose.
Mega Man 8 wasn’t an awful game. It just had awful voice acting. As a game it was fun and had cool music too