We’ve already posted the review for Sonic Universe #53, which is the eighth part of “Worlds Collide” and the closing chapter of Act 2. But if you feel spoiler-free is the way to be, but still want to sneak a peek at the issue hitting comic shops tomorrow, June 19th, then hit up Destructoid and soak up the new five-page preview!

Since the announcement of Mega Man’s much deserved inclusion in Super Smash Bros., some fans have been wondering just how the deal was brokered. Smash producer Masahiro Sakurai gives some insight in an interview with Polygon.

Sakurai says the addition of Mega Man to the Smash Bros. Wii U and 3DS roster is a reflection of the winnowing down of candidates. He brings features and characteristics, like his ability to use various Robot Masters attacks, to the roster that you don’t see in other characters, Sakurai says. Mega Man’s addition came about at the behest of fans as well. After Sonic the Hedgehog — who appeared in Super Smash Bros. Brawl — Mega Man was the most requested guest character, Sakurai said.

Getting Capcom’s approval for Mega Man was easy, to hear Sakurai tell it.

“We approached Capcom with the idea and they were very favorable and open to it,” he said. Sakurai and the teams at Sora Ltd. and Namco Bandai focused on the classic NES-style of Mega Man, a chunkier, less angular, less sleek version of the character. The Smash Bros. version of Mega Man focuses more on his ability to absorb others’ powers, de-emphasizing punching and kicking. Mega Man’s mega uppercut, which Sakurai says was inspired by the character’s appearance in Marvel vs. Capcom, is one of his few melee attacks. “The approval process, in terms of how we’re representing Mega Man, was actually really smooth and went really quickly.”

I know there’s been some consternation that Capcom really didn’t care about Mega Man getting into Smash, but it looks like they were happy to get behind it all this time!

Via GoNintendo

Mega Ran is touring Japan from June 19th through June 29th, and he’s looking for a bit of help funding his endeavor. You can find out more details by visiting the Mega Ran Japan Tour homepage and their Kickstarter page, which is filled with videos, a list of tour dates, and of course, rewards such as CDs, DVDs/Blu-rays, posters, buttons, tickets, and exclusive content. There’s even a pie chart, so you can see exactly what your money is going towards!

This leaves us with just one question: Will he instead call himself “Rock Ran” while in Japan?

Just a heads up. Enthusiast of all things Rockman Ucchy-san and his blog Rockman Unity are moving to a new address at Livedoor. This is because Capcom of Japan plans to close down its Capcom Online Games blogging service come the 27th of this month. COG bloggers have the ability to sign up to Livedoor and import their blogs. At any rate, we look forward to more zany updates from Ucchy-san!

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It’s been one bad decision after another on the part of our evil doctors since Mega Man, Sonic, and their pals hopped through the dimensional uber-portal and entered the Skull Egg Zone. Poor allocation of resources, underestimating the effectiveness and resourcefulness of their adversaries, failing to strike with critical force at the optimal time, the “management” side of Team Evil has played out as a guide of all the worst screw-ups that plagued both sides in World War I. Clearly, Sun Tzu wasn’t required reading for either mad scientists or Overlanders. Apparently, neither was TV Tropes.

Now, only Knuckles and Amy Rose are still rocking their heavy metal duds, and to put the cherry on top of the Screw-up Sundae, Wily and Robotnik pulled them off of annihilating Team Chaotix (who don’t have the ability to reverse the transformations) and sent them after Mega Man and Sonic (who do).

But sure, they’re not worried. Flop sweat goes along with the whole evil genius thing, as do pocket protectors and sharks with fricking laser beams on their heads. They’ve got all the Chaos Emeralds, they’ve got 100+ Robot Masters, and according to the cover, they’ve even got that Chaos critter in a mutated Rock Monster form as well. They’ve got no reason to worry, right?

Right?

A few issues back, before Yardley started doing the artwork, the theme I brought up was that of the cosmic joke, about how evil is its own worst enemy, because they don’t play nice with each other. And now, we finally see that the cracks are beginning to show. So run along, evil doctors. Scheme your schemey schemes while you still can… and while there’s still a presumed air of cooperation between you two.

So we rejoin Sonic, Megsy, and their flying helpers just in time to see Knux and Amy Rose slamming down and laying up the smack like an angry god’s fists. Thanks to external speakers, because God forbid robotic critters communicate with one another in shortwave encrypted data bursts or binary, the good guys are made aware that their fight has a timer on it: They wait too long before dropping the Spinshot, Sonic’s last two pals will be blowing themselves up to try and take the good guys with them. And this time, it’s quite a doozy of a fight, with two bruisers charging at them.

Traditionally, both Sonic and Mega Man have trouble with brawlers. On a good day, Sonic narrowly avoids getting his butt handed to him by Knuckles, and Amy is… well, I have this theory that cuteness, especially cuteness with a hammer, is a force of nature several factors more destructive than most tropical storms. Thankfully, they manage to burn out the cute circuits with a well placed burst of that Fire Tornado weapon Mega got from Blaze Woman earlier, and after a Spinshot, they’re down to Knuckles… with Mega Man bringing the pain train.

Knuckles Man is like most star athletes: The best way to screw him up is to get him hammered. With his left cross out of commission, a page-long, highly coordinated alpha strike lets them put Knuckles back into fur and skin instead of steel. And then to celebrate, Amy jumps on Sonic with a tackle hug and takes over the moment. They get Knux back up on his feet just in time; Mega Man gets a call from Proto Man. They’ve found something.

They’ve located the teleporter pad which will let the good guys get up into that stupid flying egg thing. Only problem is, it’s powered by one of those Mega Man password screens– you know the ones I’m talking about. Seriously, go to the Mega Man Homepage and check out Mega Man 2-6. Use the Javascript password generator and load up on 9 E-Tanks in Mega Man 3 before you charge into Wily’s Castle. You know you want to.

Suffice it to say, this is a start. They know where they have to go to stop the insanity; now it’s just a matter of getting the band back together. The heroes split up, with Sonic taking Amy to go find Shadow (because apparently, she’s very good at tracking male hedgehogs, nudge-nudge), Mega and Rush going for the recuperating Blaze and Silver, and Knux and Tails going for the teleport pad to help Team Chaotix and Proto Man break the lockout.

But the bad guys have their own problems up in the Egg to drag them away from their war machine project: Somebody’s messing with the system, and they’re venting Chaos energy from the crystals. Guess who’s responsible? Yeah, her. Big surprise, right? She’s always getting herself into trouble.

That Chaos Devil’s not so bright, but it’s loyal, at least. The thing listens when Robotnik chews it out like a puppy dog. Rouge spits out a few angry words before they drag her off to be put through the upgraded Roboticizer. At the start of the issue, we did see one of those stage select screens with a question mark in the corner. Seems Rouge is the question mark, and they plan on having her lead the uber Robot Master army.

But don’t worry, the bad guys aren’t the only ones bringing an army.

This guy is a frigging Army of One. As my good pal Revokov liked to say in his Supercondensed X reviews, “What now, bitch?!”

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When it comes to strategy games, I’ll take turn-based any day of the week over “Active Time Battle” or any system in which stuff keeps happening when I’m trying to plot out my moves. It’s not like I take forever to send my Wanzers to crush my enemies in Front Mission, or decide if I want to use a Double or the Triple Tech in Chrono Trigger… I just like having the time to sit back amidst the chaos and the music and figure out what the heck needs to happen. I loved Demon Stone, but to be fair, that fight with the Red Dragon near the end of the game drove me nuts. And no, I’ve never beaten Front Mission Evolved. Mostly because that game ruined a good thing and didn’t transfer well to a sh’mup, buuuut…

The fact is, Wily and Robotnik sort of stopped planning after a while. They figured they’d done enough, and then they started having to shoot from the hip. It’s kind of like what happened back in World War II with Germany. They were developing jet planes even in the early stages of the war, but things were going so swimmingly, Der Fuhrer declared that the uber-planes weren’t necessary: The old prop planes they had in the Air Force were enough. And so, they lost two years of development time, time they really did need, because by the time the Allied bombers started knocking on their doorstep, they’d lost an opportunity. The same goes for Wily and Robotnik here. They stopped making preparations for what they had to know was coming. They lost their opportunity.

To be fair, they still have a lot going for them. It’s going to be one brutal throwdown when all the Robot Masters come out swinging. Sonic and his pals are finally going to realize that Mega Man is anything but a chump… nothing defines a man, after all, quite as well as his enemies. Side joke: What do you call a superhero without an arch-nemesis? Unemployed! And of course, the doctors have their uber war machine, which looks like a cross between the one from Mega Man 9 and the one from Sonic the Hedgehog 2. And that Chaos Devil… thing. Oh, and Rouge, for all the good she’ll do them. So it’s not like they don’t have a lot of junk to throw at the good guys.

It’s just not going to be enough at this point. I can see some of you shaking your heads. Of course the good guys are going to win. You know it, I know it. Reality and the cosmos demands that Duo shows up, flattens everything with his Shining Fingers, and the main force of Team Hero runs inside and blows that base to crap before hitting the cosmic reset button.

But for as much as the bad guys supposedly know at this point about their rivals, for as many defeats as they’ve suffered, how is it they still couldn’t account for all the things the good guys could pull out of their hats along the way? Why wasn’t there some sort of de-roboticization fail-safe built into the Roboticized Masters, like making them blow up if they were tampered with? When they realized that the Roboticized Masters weren’t working as well as they’d hoped, why didn’t they immediately send out the Robot Army?

Well, writers have to do a thing called pacing. They have to build up encounters with progressing difficulty so the good guys have a chance. If they have to write the bad guys a little on the stupid side (which seems ridiculous in hindsight, as they’re both super geniuses), that’s just how it goes. But at least, amidst all the wrong decisions Wily and Robotnik are making, the creative team behind this project is addressing the Cosmic Joke.

When the chips start to fall out of their favor, the coalition of evil begins to fall apart, and the backstabbing begins. And the good guys all chuckle, because that’s one constant in the universe we can all live with.

For The Blue Ink.

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When he isn’t writing “The Blue Ink” reviews for The Mega Man Network, Erico (The Super Bard) spends his days keeping track of the “Legacy of Metal” fanon, dabbling in cooking and tea-brewing, and exploring the human condition from his Iowa stomping grounds.

The views expressed here reflect the views of the authors alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Mega Man Network.

The first section of Wave Man’s stage is a trap room, with jets of steam that shoot from the pipes as we approach and a swinging ball and chain called Teckyun. There are three of each, with the first two pairs being nearly identical. We can walk through Teckyun’s chain, and neither trap is affected by our weapons. While there’s nothing wrong with the traps themselves, this setup is very lazy, with each pair in nearly the same relative position. Even as an introduction, this could have been given more effort.

These pipes will suck Mega Man into them if he stands too close to the opening, so grabbing the large health is a little harder than it looks. We’re also given an extra life for making it into the second pipe. Not much to it, but it’s visually fun.

This area is also tame, as Giree moves very slowly, so the only danger here is if the player lets the second Giree onto the top platform. Even then, there’s enough time to move back through the steam if a player screws up.

Speaking of the steam, I appreciate that they activate when the player approaches and reset when they back off, avoiding the potential for their timing to sync badly with something like Teckyun and prevent the player from progressing unharmed. The downside to this is that Mega Man has to stop and wait for each one if there’s no room to jump over them. The two jets next to each other here accentuate that downside without adding anything of interest to the gameplay.

Here’s a neat stage gimmick. Bubbles appear from below, and Mega Man can ride them upward. The small ones break after a moment, so the player has to wait for an opportunity to jump across to each large bubble. I particularly like the last screen. If players know when the small bubble will come they’ll have enough time to jump onto it as it appears without worrying about hitting the spikes, but if the player needs to react to it they’ll be running short on headroom. However, a slide will get the player to the next bubble without risking the jump. For such a small moment, it does a good job of rewarding both knowledge of the game and strategic thinking.

This area kicks off one of the more controversial gimmicks in Mega Man, but in this image I just wanted to point out that the area leading up to it is entirely empty. That sort of thing can work for building suspense or giving the player a breather, but Mega Man does not have enough room in its stages to be doing this.

This vehicle section scrolls automatically. We retain the ability to jump and shoot, but sliding and charge shots are out. We also lose the ability to pause, which I can only imagine is a lazy fix to avoid weapon switching. The water also messes with our movement, with Mega Man going faster forward and slower backwards. This seems opposite of what would be expected for this setup, as going faster is usually harder than slowing down.

The new enemies are a floating mine known simply as V, a dolphin named Irucan, and Rider Joe. V takes three hits, giving us enough time to kill it by the time it gets 2/3rds of the way across the screen. Rider Joe takes two hits and can appear from either side of the screen. While the ones from behind will shoot now and then, the ones in front don’t. I see no reason why they wouldn’t unless it was a programming oversight. Irucan is the best of the group, jumping across the screen and landing roughly where the player wants to be sitting. They die in one shot, but can jump at a variety of heights to make reacting to them difficult.

This area mixes up the enemy order well, which is about the most we can expect given the limitations of this mechanic.

The screen darkens, and we meet Octoper OA. It moves in an M shape, emerging from the water twice each time it moves across the screen, and fires a large projectile towards Mega Man at its highest point. It has 20 health and can only be damaged in the green gem, but offers little challenge despite our limitations and can be easily killed before it finishes a movement cycle. Considering that previous minibosses often had multiple attacks or at least some randomization, this is a major disappointment.

The next section drops V to put more focus on Irucan. This was a good move, as they’re more fun to avoid and their jump arcs are more erratic now. By the end they’re appearing in pairs, with the last giving us an opening to jump between them if we don’t kill them. The “E” item is placed in the air along the way, making it by far the most annoying hiding spot for these things.

Unfortunately the level ends abruptly after this area, with only a lone Twin Cannon to guard the door. I feel sorry for this one, as it was somehow given the one placement worse than directly in front of us, as both of its shots move under our feet but it’s within range of our charge shots.

While I’m willing to give the vehicle segment credit for being reasonably fun on its own, this was not the proper way to introduce it. We only get about 10 screens worth of normal gameplay (ignoring the empty screens), and the Teckyuns and bubbles taunt us with the possibilities they had for use in a normal stage before it throws us in a jet ski all the way up to the boss door. A third segment with more complex traps would have helped round it out and justified the lackluster use of them in the first section, but I think this gimmick would have worked out better in a Wily stage, which already have a habit of being short and doing odd things now and then.

The stage looks nice enough overall, but some things feel lacking, like the fact that the teal fluid is animated but the water behind the washing machine doors is not, and that Octoper has no animation whatsoever.

While fans may be gearing up in anticipation of Mega Man’s debut in Super Smash Bros., the “Worlds Collide” story arc is still going on right now. If you’ve elected not to read Erico’s review for fear of full-issue spoilers, ComicsAlliance features the first few preview pages from this seventh latest installment in the 12-part epic.

Source: via TSSZ News

Now, before anyone goes flying of the handle about this, hear us out: In an interview with Polygon, director Masahiro Sakurai explains that the forthcoming Super Smash Bros. titles for Nintendo 3DS and Wii U won’t have the same sort of Adventure Mode experienced in Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be any fun had with the vast range of characters featured in the game’s roster.

There will be a single player [campaign], but it won’t be like the [Subspace Emissary] mode in Brawl,” Sakurai explained. That game’s adventure mode offered a series of unlockable movies that explained the Subspace Emissary plot. “One thing we can do with the Smash Bros. series that’s unique to us — because we have all these different disparate characters brought together — is we can create that sort of fan-movie experience as a special gift. But now those things are posted on the internet, it doesn’t really become a gift for people who played the game.”

“What we decided this time around, we’re just going to have [those movies unlocked] from the beginning,” Sakurai said. “We’re going to have a movie for Wii Fit Trainer, The Villager and Mega Man and they’ll be viewable right at the beginning, you can watch those right away.”

So we’ll still be getting some fun videos featuring the characters interacting, but it sounds like the Adventure Mode might be more akin to what was seen in Super Smash Bros. Melee than the grand, sweeping epic of Brawl.

But which version would you prefer? Sonic was a late arrival last time, but there would have been plenty of time to feature him (should be make an encore appearance) and Mega Man this time out, had they chosen that path.

Source: via GoNintendo

But in an E3 week that’s shown us Super Mario 3D World (fun game, by the way), Mario Kart 8 (looks gorgeous), Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, two The Legend of Zelda games, Yoshi’s New Island, and more, not to mention an absolute killing by Sony at their press conference, my mind just keeps wandering back to one thing: Super Smash Bros. (which is more or less the full name, by the way; no “Melee” or “Brawl“-style addition) More than that, it keeps coming back to one particular part: You guessed it, Mega Man.

There’s the video again, for those who want to follow along as I dissect it.

First, I’m sure I’m not the only one who suspected that the end of the other video wasn’t really the end, not after Snake’s reveal for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and sure enough…

It was about the 13 second mark when it clicked. The hair? That could probably be any of countless characters’ hair. But the limbs… they were different, but does anyone else really have those proportions? Anyone that would be likely to appear in a Super Smash Bros. game, anyway? Of course, as the unmistakable helmet appeared in a distinct yet different way only seconds later, I knew it had to be true.

That didn’t prepare me for what came next, though, as Mega Man’s eyes lit up in a way we haven’t really experienced before.

If you follow The Mega Man Network’s Rock Tumblr, then you probably saw the enormous image dump I made the other night as I finally had time to go through two pages’ worth of posts (sorry about that, by the way). Of particular note is this reblogged post, wherein ClevelandRock said:

So, did anybody else know Mega Man’s eyes are actually screens? I didn’t. In fact, they remind me of CRT TVs. Didn’t they have LCD screens in 200X? Could Dr. Light not afford them? Personally, I would want only the best parts to go inside my son’s eye sockets.

As far as Mega Man’s redesign goes, this is definitely an interesting aspect, as we’ve always known him to basically look more or less human whenever he’s not all armored up. It works from a robotic standpoint, but I can see how some might be apprehensive about it, too. At the same time, you’ll notice that the glowing is only in effect in the cutscenes, which is set at night. Perhaps it’s a form of night vision? After all, he was just standing on the cliff with nothing at all lit up, and his eyes seem normal in all other shots.

In short, it’s a cool touch, and probably nothing to read too much into right now. That said, I also dig that the crest on his helmet– which has always appeared as little more than lighter-colored pieces of metal– are now glowing as well.

Both have served the character well in the past, but moving forward, one might argue a change might be needed, if only for the prolonged survival of the series/franchise/character outside of our relatively little (and possibly dwindling) niche. Mario, Link, Samus, Sonic, Snake, and even (rather abruptly, intentional though that was) Pit have all evolved and changed over time. Mega Man, in his Capcom form? Not so much.

What’s more– and what possibly makes this better– is that this might have been Capcom’s doing.

People have been quick to write off Capcom as doing nothing but licensing merchandise while they’ve said they’re trying to figure out how to proceed with Mega Man, and I’m wondering if this might be the first step in that– the first clue towards what they’re doing. To those believing Capcom just scribbled a signature on a piece of paper and just passed the whole thing off to Nintendo, Capcom Unity community manager Brett Elston had this to say on Twitter:

Nintendo doesn’t “care” about Mega Man more than Capcom. Those are logos. PEOPLE on both sides made SSB happen. That design is collaboration

This quote may be very telling, as if you go over to the official Super Smash Bros. website and click on Mega Man’s profile, you’ll see the following picture that has been making the rounds:

What makes this significant is not only that it’s hand-drawn (or not a 3D model rendering, at least) is the text below it:

It’s not conclusive how big his role is, whether this image is all he did or he was helping out from the ground floor on up until now, but the simple fact is that this is the guy who has been drawing the modern version of Mega Man for over a decade. If there was a person to help update the design while sticking to what he’s become, then he seems like a good choice.

Furthermore, director Masahiro Sakurai had this to say about the inclusion of third-party characters into Super Smash Bros. in general when asked by IGN about Namco Bandai characters making an appearance as a result of their part in developing the game:

Just because the game is being cooperatively developed with Namco Bandai involved, that doesn’t at all mean that they’d be given any special consideration for having characters in the game. Smash Bros. can still be considered as an all-star collection of Nintendo characters. Just like with Mega Man or any other third-party character, it would have to be a very special situation.

Adding third-party characters should be considered a very special case. In the last game, when we added Sonic and Snake, there were lots of different hoops to jump through as far as getting approvals and making sure all the parties involved were happy with the way things went. You can consider it a very special circumstance for that to happen. Even in cases like adding Pokemon characters, there are a lot of parties involved and there’s a lot of wrangling. It’s much tougher than people can imagine. I know lots of people have requests and their own ideas about third-party characters that would work, but I want people to understand that adding a third-party character like Mega Man is a very special situation.

Another thing we know is that there is a certain reverence towards the NES games, Mega Man 2 in particular, both inside and outside of Capcom (to a fault, one might even argue). It’s that version of the character which is considered most iconic, and it was that precise style of gameplay they attempted to recapture with Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10.

Therefore, it’s not at all difficult to believe that Capcom would like to be able to move the series forward in a way which resonates with today’s audiences while still allowing the character to evolve to some degree. And this could be the result of attempting to reconcile the two; Sakurai himself even said that having him move as he did on the NES was a “top priority,” though he didn’t say precisely whose priority it was.

Or perhaps not. This is all just my own supposition, theorizing, and hypothesis. Until we see something more from Capcom or just get more details from Sakurai (who else is hoping we see “Japan Time” return?), all we can do is rationalize what we’ve been given.

Suffice to say, I think this design does a fantastic job of updating the NES Mega Man into something more contemporary, keeping his basic proportions and movements while assembling everything in a way that still works as well as some other designs, and perhaps even better. While I do like the previous designs, I will say that at least this one makes the wrists look believable.

Moving back to the trailer…

At right about 37 seconds in, we see Mega Man charging the Mega Buster for a charge shot. One thing I like here, though part of it may be the camera, is the vibration involved as he braces his Buster; it feels like it’s adding a greater sense of power, of “oomph” to the blast. Shortly after, we see the tide turn against Mega Man– did you notice that he gets a special death animation, exploding just as in the games?

We’ve all heard the Mega Man 2 title theme, which has basically become Mega Man’s personal theme, remixed plenty of times, as well as the Dr. Wily’s Stage 1 theme from the same game, and both sound great here. What I personally enjoyed was at 44 seconds in, when we get a remix of the “Weapon Get” theme from it, too. It just works so well here.

48 seconds in, we get to the Special Weapons. In a clever touch, they chose to use the silhouettes with lit-up eyes for each of the Robot Masters whose weapons he’ll be using. We probably won’t see this much, if at all, in the game, but it is clever as it allows them to use existing assets in a fashion which complements the style of the new Mega Man without having to redesign and render each Robot Master. In other words, it’s making the old art look like it belongs with the new Mega Man.

At 51 seconds, another great part:

I absolutely love the way the Mega Buster transforms here. Over the years, this has often been something of a weak point when watching Mega Man in animation. In the Ruby Spears series (which actually kept true to the original designs in this regard), Mega Man’s hand would simply pull into his forearm, and maybe a smaller barrel would come out (more often not).

In Super Adventure Rockman, there’s a bit of glowing shape-changing during at least one point, with Mega Man sliding the forearm armor down past his hand, then pulling it back up with the barrel revealed. That was neat… and then in the next moment, the other arm just changes in the blink of an eye. Kind of lame, though you can’t argue it doesn’t fit the rapid changing of the games.

But this? I’ll admit it, I’m a sucker for mechanical transformations like this. I love it in Transformers, of course, and wherever else it tends to show up. Heck, after seeing Man-at-Arms transforming his arm into a cannon in the 2002 He-Man and the Masters of the Universe reboot, I began using it for my own characters who had similar armaments in RPGs and such (including those that were Mega Man-based). To see it used on the original Mega Man in an official capacity is just terrific, in my view.

If you didn’t think this part was awesome, please check into your nearest medical facility: It’s possible that you may not have a pulse.

The craziest thing is that watching Mega Man perform these attacks and basically just move around in action, I feel like I already know how to play the character. If he winds up being as intuitive to play as it feels like he would be by watching him now, I’m definitely going to have some fun.

Again with the transforming Buster. I just love how detailed this all is, and by design. Sakurai even explained the reasoning for this particular transformation in this video:

The Spark Shot and Flame Blast will morph his hands into the Mega Buster, but he needs to vent it out since he will overheat if he uses both hands.

I do believe that is the canon reason for why Mega Man rarely ever uses both arm cannons at once, too. As always, Sakurai and his team’s attention to detail is nothing short of marvelous (and helps better justify using D-Arts figure‘s two Mega Busters at once). Which brings up another point:

Ever since someone first thought of the idea of Mega Man ever appearing in Super Smash Bros., there has been talk of his ability to steal weapons from his opponents, with some claiming that would basically infringe on Kirby’s gimmick. If we think about this in the context of Mega Man, the way they’re doing it here makes more sense; after all, Mega Man gets his weapons by defeating robots and then copying the data from their weapon chips.

In other words, if Nintendo kept it true to form and tried to implement the Weapon Copy function, then– looking at the roster of Brawl, just as an example– he’d only be able to copy attacks from a whopping one character. Two, if you decide to be generous and count Samus Aran’s Power Suit as something compatible. Everyone else is an organic being of some form or another.

At the end of the trailer, we get this little teaser for a battle with the infamous Yellow Devil. Did you notice he’s coming in from the top of the screen, rather than the sides?

One has to wonder just what his role will be in the game. Some are expecting a boss battle, which is possible, but look again: They’re on Mega Man’s Dr. Wily Castle stage, which– as far as we can tell– is a regular fighting stage. I see this as likely meaning one of three things:

1) Whatever Adventure Mode they include this time utilizes regular fighting stages, much like the ones in Super Smash Bros. Melee. I’m okay with this, to a degree, as while I liked “The Subspace Emissary” well enough, my biggest beef was that the vast majority of its stages didn’t feel like they had anything to do with any of the characters’ native worlds– only generically so (Donkey Kong in a regular jungle, for example), if ever.

2) He’s an Assist Trophy. This would seem a little odd, as the Yellow Devil’s normal horizontal movements seem like they’d be more appropriate for that. Can you imagine trying to dodge?

3) He’s a stage hazard. Remember the Metal Gear in Snake’s Brawl stage, or those legendary Pokemon in another? This could be the Dr. Wily stage’s version of that.

So, that’s more or less everything I have from the trailer specifically, though I still have some other thoughts.

For one, I’m going to have a difficult time choosing between Mario and Mega Man now. Mario’s always been my “main,” and I’d hate to just ditch him. I’ll probably just use both, though a swap-out Marvel vs. Capcom-style tag team option would be great.

As it stands, there are three big mysteries left for Mega Man in Super Smash Bros.:

The first is the question of Assist Trophies: Who does Mega Man get? Sonic got Shadow, and Snake got Grey Fox, the Cyborg Ninja. Who do you think it should be for Mega Man? I’ve seen a lot of people say Bass, though I think Proto Man makes more sense; after all, he’ll gladly fight or help Mega Man at the drop of a hat, though I suppose the same could be said of Bass.

The next is about alternate colors/costumes. Everyone has them, for better or for worse. Some only change colors to familiar schemes from the past– something Mega Man has no shortage of– but others change the character’s appearance a bit more. Princess Peach can look like Daisy, while Wario can choose between his WarioWare biker and Wario Land classic duds. If Proto Man weren’t an Assist Trophy, would you want him as an alternate costume? He and Mega Man are practically twins, after all, and their silhouettes wouldn’t be so different that it should require much work.

Or would you rather it be alternate forms of the Blue Bomber? Mega Man? from Mega Man Powered Up, Quint, or even other Mega Men like X (who would likely appear a bit shorter than usual)?

Finally, what do you think should be Mega Man’s Final Smash? Should they bring back Hyper Mega Man from Marvel vs. Capcom? Maybe allow Super Mega Man to fly around the stage like Super Sonic, using his Mega Arm to smash opponents off the stage similar to the Hard Knuckle’s Meteor Smash? Call in a bunch of other characters like Duo, Auto, Tango, and Beat? Or is there a particular special weapon you think would do the job, like Astro Man’s Astro Crush?

Consider the comments an open thread to discuss it, or anything else I’ve talked about here– in other words, treat them as normal, I guess.

Whew, just shy of 3,000 words… no wonder I don’t write these very often.

Now that he’s been revealed as a new addition to the roster of the upcoming Super Smash Bros. title for Wii U and Nintendo 3DS, we thought we’d check in again on that game’s newly-formed community to see what people are saying– or rather, drawing.

Of course, this is only a mere sampling of the works on display in the Super Smash Bros. Miiverse community, stretching back about five hours from the time of this posting. Many more are there, and of course, many feature numerous other characters that people are either happy to see or want to see appear in the upcoming titles.