All the Powers of the Sun!

After completing this funny Solar Man animated short, my good pal AWD! requested me to showcase it here. I thought it might give him a little of an unfair advantage, since he entered it into Capcom*Unity’s Robot Master fan art contest. But now that the results are out, I’m absolutely pleased to show it off! (And you still got second, AWD! Good job!)

Pretty funny and nicely animated/timed. Truth be told I’ve been trying to get AWD! to do a short since the Nitro Man contest. So if you enjoyed this, definitely plead for him in the YouTube comments and on his website to do more. He’ll just love you for it.

Enjoy the Holidays… A Hokey Dr. Wily Christmas Special

Well today is that spirited, festive day. Hopefully you are having a great time celebrating with family, getting presents, eating delicious food and playing some awesome games. But if you do have some free time in all that, and just happen to be stumbling over this site today, then here’s a little something else to get you in the spirits. Dr. Wily style.

This is a little cartoon short Andrew Dickman and I made six years ago. I imagine Andy would be pretty embarrassed that I’m bringing it back up, but fortunately he’s away visiting family right now. Wasn’t sure I’d be able to find it, and I had to boot up an older computer to go grab it. Anyway, it’s pretty silly. I wrote the script for it and arranged the Mega Man tunes used in it, while Andy animated it and did the voice acting (basically, all the hard stuff). I know it seems pretty sloppy, but after we got the script and some other stuff together, Andy only had two days to animate it.

It may be pretty corny, but I hope you at least get a little laugh out of it (though I’ll admit that Dr. Wily’s present at the end isn’t very funny). And of course, I hope everyone has a wonderful, happy holiday today. Merry Christmas!

The Switcher Presents: Mega Lions!

It is a legend no one will forget…

During the heyday of the 90’s and Mega Man’s run as a top syndicated cartoon star with a mix of episodes both good and bad, there is one story which has always stood out from the rest: “Curse of the Lion Men.”

Thanks to The Switcher, who has made a hobby out of splicing scenes of bad video game cartoons into horribly humorous highlight reels, you can now relive and share the travesty which was Curse of the Lion Men without having to view the entire episodes. It’s just enough to make you laugh and roll your eyes without wanting to kill yourself for any vague sense of association.

That last image of Roll says it all, doesn’t it?

FUNimation and Mega Man: Together at Last?

It seems that Anime Boston has brought some new and unexpected news to the world of Mega Man. Word has it that FUNimation, most famously (as well as infamously) for their use of the North American Dragon Ball anime license, reportedly announced at the convention that it has acquired the distribution rights for the Ruby Spears Mega Man animated series, which has been held by ADV Films, who has released the series on DVD twice over.

“The license entitles Funimation to release the show online and possibly on DVD,” says Protodude.

In addition, it seems that FUNimation may also be taking the reigns of the other ADV-held Mega Man license, which is for the OVA Upon a Star. “According to Sylar, a Funimation representative implied the acquisition at Anime Boston,” Protodude reports.

“Both the RS cartoon and Upon a Star were said to re-release in late 2010.”

From the sound of things, FUNimation has been gathering a number of different properties, around 30, from the company. It should be interesting to see if FUNimation might do anything more with the cartoons, or if we might simply see the same releases we’ve been treated to for the past several years.

“What? Mega Man’s Taken Over the Bomb?!”

Ah, now here’s yet another blast from the past, one which I bet fewer Mega Man fans are familiar with.

Many of us remember the Ruby-Spears Mega Man animated series which ran in syndication, went to Fox Family, then was released on DVD and then re-released on DVD again more recently. At the time of its original airing, however, there was an action figure line from Bandai of America, sitting alongside their other products of the day as The Tick and, of course, Power Rangers.

What some people may not know, however, is that like those other lines, the Mega Man action figure line had its own commercial. However, to the best of my knowledge, this one did not run on television; instead, it was shown before the animated episodes which were collected and released on VHS by Sony Wonder (and if you like the animated series’ art style, it has some decent covers for collectors).

Recently, someone posted the commercial to GameTrailers, and it has now made their “Featured” list for the day. So here it is, with Dr. Wily narrating in all his non-Scott McNeil-powered glory:

The figures were cool, especially in lieu of any real alternatives at the time. It’s a shame the second wave never made it into production, as Mega Man did have some neat custom armor in the cartoons that would have made for some neat figures.

My own collection of these remains rather poor, unfortunately; when they came out, I was “too old for toys,” but too young to get a job while the toys were around. I did come by an incomplete and slightly-worn figure of Mega Man himself later, but with no Mega Buster. Nonetheless, the line was a good source for some Robot Masters who haven’t seen other releases, such as Snake Man, Drill Man, and Bright Man. Perhaps someday I’ll get around to hunting these down.