Dorkly: Leaked Memos Explain Early Mega Man Box Art Designs
If there is any part of Mega Man which is sure to outlive the franchise itself, it would be the notoriety of the original series’ earliest box art. But how did such design decisions ever come to pass? Why is Mega Man sporting a Tron-esque outfit and handgun on the original? Why is he breaking is ankle in the second? Blasting Spark Man in his nuts-n-bolts on the third? And so on.
Well, as it so happens, the intrepid journalists over at Dorkly have apparently managed to uncover some of the original memos passed between someone known only as “Andrew” to Devin, who was apparently a part of Capcom USA’s art staff at the time. Read over these, and all will be revealed…
…well, for the first six games, anyway. Granted, by about Mega Man 5 and 6, things had actually begun to look like Mega Man, though 7 was a bit of a throwback. Actually, Mega Man 6‘s box art was pretty accurate, despite what Dorkly’s findings seem to indicate.
Personally, we’d have liked to have seen Andrew’s thoughts when it came to Mega Man 8, when the company just began using regular stock art for their Mega Man covers. But perhaps he was no longer around by that point? Or maybe he was just focusing on Mega Man Legends (“Computer models are all the rage now! Everyone loves ‘em! Do it!”).
Thanks to Tony Ponce for the tip!
Tags: Dorkly Bits, Mega Man Classic, Parody
Filed under: Community Developments
Why did I think this was serious news before I actually clicked the link?
Pretty clever though, all kids do love blasting robot genitals.
So we’re thinking that Rob Liefield had a hand in drawing the box art?
My God, that was absolutely HILARIOUS! XD
Seriously, the writer of those notes seemed to have a fetish for MegaMan aiming at enemy genitals. The joke seems to go on since MM3 onward
Came for the intriguing revelation…
…left for the lame satire.
US NES game covers were often awful. We get it. Can we stop beating the dead horse now?
As much as I enjoy MMN’s many great offerings, I’m continually irked by how it treats the mere mention of Megaman anywhere as front page news–especially when it presents a crappy joke with a misleading headline.
Moobire: Well, the posting process does tend to place new content on the front page; if we dated it further back, no one would get to see it.
And honestly, we just aren’t getting much from Capcom these days. Aside from the occasional Archie and D-Arts news, pretty much everything is being driven by fans and sites such as Dorkly. We try to provide content for Mega Man fans to check out each day, so without these types of stories… well, there just isn’t much to talk about.
I will, however, apologize if you found the headline too misleading; I was afraid it might be insulting if it were labeled a joke, but if others feel the same way, I can make a note of prefacing such headlines with “Parody” or something.
In fact, I’ll even go ahead and amend this one to hopefully make it clearer to anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. Please feel free to share what you think of the new version.
“Let’s have a 45-year old guy.”
….and that folks is how you become suckish at designing game covers.
But seriously though, you gotta love that BBA Mega Man! XD
I for one appreciate the mega man news.
The title was misleading, yes, you got punked, get over it!
you don’t like it, make your own site to put up actual mega man news… that should be fairly easy… you make a banner called “actual mega man news” and you’re done.
It was silly, but amusing.
If the cover designs for the early Mega Man games were so unpopular, it’s ironic that the retro covers for MM9 and MM10 became so popular. Go figure.
Now some get a hold of Memos for voice casting of the Mega Man 8 game,
@glitcher
well, the retro covers were really different..
first off, they were really well done, as opposed to the mega man 1 and 2 box arts. They just look great.
second, we were well aware of why it looked that way, because it parodies the old NES boxart. unlike the original ones, where we to this day have no idea why Dr. Light is behind crash man.
third, there isn’t any actual box. it’s really kinda disassociated from the game, unless you have one of those rare press kit things.
fourth, they were made in parody of the retro covers.
As usual, Dorkly does jokes like Capcom does business recently. I’d say how but I think I’d get yelled at for the 4 letter word. Ha.
But really I didn’t find this funny. But you might can see they tried.
Dorkly sure does love to take a funny joke and beat it until you wonder why you were laughing in the first place.
The first 3 covers were fine and made me laugh. The other 3, when the covers were clearly getting closer to the source material just made it seem like they were reaching to find something funny… and ultimately failed outside the whole random planets near Earth for no reason observation.
Mega Man 1 and 2 US box art were awesome in a bad way. Then with 3 and on they had that really unsettling version of Mega Man which was a super angry and muscly robot boy.
Love it!
Last time I checked, April Fools falls on April 1, not August 25.