For the sake of those who have yet to play and remain relatively unspoiled, I’ll simply say that you can find Protodude’s thoughts here (mind, just because I’m not spoiling anything doesn’t mean these articles aren’t), those of 1UP’s Jeremy Parish here, Jonathan Holmes of Destructoid here, and our very own Heat Man wraps things up– with a bit of humor, no less– for The Mega Man Network here.

For past installments in this series, you can click the following links to find recollections on the previous Mega Man Zero games: 3, 2, 1…

…and we all know what comes after 1, so go grab yourselves a copy, if you can find one today.

So naturally, it only stands to reason that this next batch is about Mega Man Zero 3. You can find Protodude’s reminiscence here, while the words of Destructoid’s Jonathan Holmes can be found here. 1UP’s Jeremy Parish took the week off to talk about the Collection itself, but that’s okay; as it turns out, I probably said enough for two people, anyway.

Seriously, Mega Man Zero 3 has to be my favorite of the saga, and it was like trying to fit a watermelon’s worth of awesome into a space the size of a lemon. And I still had to cut things short! Checking out the game again in Mega Man Zero Collection with the built-in mod cards should prove to be a real treat.

For now, we hope you enjoy this. And this week on Capcom Unity, things will be wrapped up with Mega Man Zero 4, and Heat Man will once again return to step up and deliver his thoughts on the series coup de grace.

Over on 1UP’s Retronauts blog, Jeremy Parish has taken a look at the most recent efforts from both the East and the West in their attempts to recreate the Blue Bomber in a tangible plastic form.

On the Eastern side, we have Kotobukiya’s upcoming Rockman model kit, which we’ve covered at length here on The Network. And why wouldn’t we? The detail, articulation, accessories, and interchangeable parts all come together to create what appears to be the most definitive Rockman figure to date.

On the Western side of the coin, we have Jazwares’ Mega Man figure from their Mega Man Retro Roto line from 2005 (technically, their newest take would be the JUVI versions). The line, which includes Mega Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, the hard-to-find Shadow Man, and a shield-less Proto Man, were based on Capcom of Japan’s own character model turnarounds from earlier games, and sacrificed articulation in order to more accurately represent the characters’ pen-and-ink forms (as seen on page 158 of UDON’s Mega Man Official Complete Works art book).

The Retro Rotos are slated to be re-released soon, though it seems some websites are erroneously reporting them as “new” figures. Perhaps this is a testament to the impact they had the first time around.

The Retronauts post, which can be seen here, goes on to liken the differences between the two releases to the way Capcom USA would often alter the look of the Blue Bomber for his Western appearances, often resulting in a less-aesthetically pleasing rendition of our hero.

One thought mentioned is that if Jazwares were mimicking the East-West transition on purpose, “they’d go all the way and create a deformed midget style Mega Man based on the first game’s U.S. box art: A squatty old man incapable of standing with anything but a pigeon-toed hunch. Which, truth be told, I’d actually buy.”

And that leaves me curious: would you purchase such a figure? Personally, I might consider such a thing, particularly if they managed to fit the backdrop in somehow as a sort of diorama.

Jeremy Parish of 1UP, Jonathan Holmes of Destructoid, Protodude of his eponymous Rockman Corner, and some guy from some place gave their thoughts last week, and this week, the lineup is largely unchanged… save for one.

In a noble attempt to follow in the footsteps of his hero and role model, Heat Man has stepped up to tell his tale of playing Mega Man Zero 2, and you can find that yarn here. And if you’d like to read more, Protodude’s can be found here, Parish’s here, and Holmes’ here.

As one might have guessed, this week will see recollections of Zero 3 posted to Capcom Unity. And on that note, I must not commence with the process of converting thoughts into words for your reading pleasure, so stay tuned.

Four were chosen to express themselves, and they are Protodude from our affiliate, Protodude’s Rockman Corner; Retronaut Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com; Bit Transmission podcaster Jonathan Holmes of Destructoid; and myself, Lord Black “Nytetrayn” Draco.

More is to come from each of us in the following weeks for each game in the series, with one slight exception: me. This week, I’m tagging out to my partner Heatman, who will help co-represent The Mega Man Network for Mega Man Zero 2.

And so it will go until I get tired of him holding me back and I put him through a glass window on Brutus “The Barber” Beefcake’s “Barber Shop” talk show set.

Oh, um… right. Anyway, you can keep an eye on the Capcom Unity blogs this week for the Zero 2 segments, which we’ll round up like this once again when everyone has said their piece.

Looking back on this image makes me fairly nostalgic. I’ve had very few of those “wow moments” in my gaming life, but Mega Man X was one of them. Maybe I was at that right age, but the game really blew me away at the time. The presentation, the gameplay, the attitude, it all upstaged the classic games. And while Mega Man 2 will probably always be my all time favorite game, even that never “wowed” me like the original X did.

I’ve been feeling lately that it’s time for Capcom to turn back to Mega Man X again. Admittedly I’m slightly iffy about a Mega Man X9, since I don’t personally feel that X2-X8 ever reached that bar the original X set, though some are still quite good. But I would definitely like to see something. At the very least they can throw Mega Man X up on the Wii Virtual Console. That’s been way overdue, as it’s not just a great Mega Man game, it’s a great game period.

I feel that some of the strongest support among our fandom here is for the X series. Do you ever get nostalgic for the series? How would you like Capcom to return to 21XX?

This week, Matthew Green (who also runs the gaming blog Press the Buttons) has opted to take a look at everyone’s favorite Blue Bomber, and has produced some amusing bits:

More can be found here, while Green notes on his page:

I’m very pleased with how these came out, but I like the Mega Man schematic most of all. While most of the mechanical parts are taken at face value, take note of the references to the Nintendo Entertainment System’s CPU and a knock at the maligned Mega Man Soccer. The base image is taken from Mega Man: Dr. Wily’s Revenge, while the font is CyFi which you may have seen recently during the opening title sequence fo the 1980s flashback episode of TV’s Fringe. Layers upon layers, people.

Perhaps we should consider stealing paying homage to this idea by producing some visuals of our own (though we’d go beyond the Classic series, of course).

#1: Endless Mode

Endless Mode was by far one of the greatest things to come out of Mega Man 9. What better a way to increase a game’s replayability than to have a stage that’s always different, and doesn’t end until you do? Endless Mode was easily the best downloadable content Mega Man 9 had to offer, and was so liked that ROM hackers started making their own endless versions of other Mega Man games. Of course there is still room for improvement, as I feel that Mega Man 9′s Endless Mode didn’t offer enough variety. It featured, I would guess, roughly 40 to 50 unique stage segments, not counting the boss rooms. After a while you got to know them all, and that’s just inevitable. But what’s more, it didn’t utilize all the obstacles Mega Man 9 had to offer, like Galaxy Man’s portals, Tornado Man’s magnetic platforms, and Jewel Man’s swinging beams.

Even if it is downloadable content again, I’m pretty confident Mega Man 10 will feature its own Endless Mode. It had better anyway, because it’s incredibly fun.

#2: All New Music

Mega Man 9′s return to its retro roots featured a return to some great sounding chiptune music as well. However, in an effort to relive the wonderment of the renowned Mega Man 2, Mega Man 9 directly borrowed some of its music, and this seemed just a bit strange. Granted, while most of the reused music was little jingles and such, people still prefer something new in all aspects. You can’t recreate the awesomeness of Mega Man 2 by trying to copy it exactly. The worst offender is menu theme, which uses Mega Man 2′s password theme. This little song can quickly get grating if you spend any decent amount of time navigating the menus. It’s especially true when looking up online rankings, which still don’t seem to load that well even a year after Mega Man 9′s release.

I will note that during my hands-on with the Mega Man 10 demo at CES, I did hear that the jingle for the stage start theme is the trademark jingle from Mega Man 2, but it’s a fresh arrangement that gives it some more pizazz. So I am hopeful of the rest of the music having its own unique qualities if it ends up being borrowed from other games.

#3: More Mega Man on Virtual Console

When Mega Man 9 came out in 2008, we didn’t just get Mega Man 9, but the first three Mega Man titles on the Wii’s Virtual Console as well. It was a great way to get people geared up for the new Mega Man 9, and I’d hoped they’d do it for Mega Man 10 as well. I even tried to find this out during my trip to CES, but Capcom’s PR wouldn’t comment here nor there on the matter. Of course, wouldn’t you know it, just as I’m considering this for the article last week, Rockman 4 gets announced for Virtual Console in Japan! And it ought to get to us as well. I’m sure there are also expectations for Mega Man 5 and 6 as well, and while I think those two are kind of weak Mega Man titles, they are still pretty decent NES titles, so I do look forward to them.

Incidentally, do you know what I’d love to see on Virtual Console? Mega Man X. Sure, some of you are probably thinking it’s being held until Mega Man X9 gets announced, but I don’t know if I can wait that long. Mega Man X is not just a great Mega Man game, it’s one of the best Super Nintendo games, period. Get this one out there, Capcom!

#4: A New Kind of  Final Boss

Since Mega Man 4, it’s been kind of a tradition that the last boss of a Mega Man game is the Wily Capsule – an escape capsule-like ship Dr. Wily operates that appears and disappears while attacking Mega Man. I’m all for tradition, but there are some things that I don’t see as needing to be a tradition. While it was appropriate for Mega Man 9, which was more focused on being a revival, I’m hoping we’ll get something a bit new in Mega Man 10, something not so predictable. I’m not saying the last boss shouldn’t be Dr. Wily still – c’mon, you know he will be. But let’s have him try something new for his last-ditch effort to stomp Mega Man. The Game Boy line of games tend to have fairly unique takes on the last battle, so there’s definitely to do something different than the Wily Capsule.

#5: Zero

We know the Mega Man series and Mega Man X series eventually— Hahaha, I’m just kidding you guys.

#5: Doc Robot

One of the most unique concepts of Mega Man 3 was an enemy known as Doc Robot. These guys emulated the Robot Masters from Mega Man 2, so it was basically getting to fight them over again, and they appeared in revamped versions of the stages you previously beat. This was a really cool concept, and I’m let down that it really hasn’t been reused in other Mega Man games (except Mega Man V for Game Boy, to a degree). Of course, it’s not so much about Doc Robot itself, but about expanding the game. It would be great to have more stages than the eight Robot Master stages and then Wily Castle. Let’s have some more in between. And how cool would it be to face the Robot Masters from Mega Man 9 again in some form? Or heck, how about various Robot Masters from all the earlier games? If you want to please Mega Man fans, then more stages and more bosses is definitely one of the best ways to go.

You know, while I might sound kind of complainy in each of my topics, ultimately these complaints center around the same thing: wanting more. And when it comes to a video game, that’s the best kind of complaint someone can have!

What do you want to see with Mega Man 10?

Despite this, however, there are also a number of Mega Man titles we haven’t seen, or have been held back until new opportunities had arisen for them to be released. Super Adventure Rockman is one such game.

Released on the SEGA Saturn and Sony PlayStation in the middle of 1998, Super Adventure Rockman was a full-motion video adventures that spanned three-discs, with the animated portions being broken up by first-person segments which involved fending off foes with the Mega Buster by way of a targeting cursor. That there has always been a certain lack of a Rockman anime (not counting the Rockman.EXE series that would come years later) helped make this item somewhat desirable among fans of the Blue Bomber.

As it turns out, however, it seems that the game has more detractors than genuine fans, and chief among them is the Man behind the Mega himself, Keiji Inafune. From UDON’s Mega Man Official Complete Works art book:

“To be honest, I feel I owe the players an apology for this one . . . There was a phase when the company was basically selling Mega Man to the lowest bidder, and I really feel like this title is the worst of the worst . . . The ultimate unspoken rule about making a game that is geared towards children is that you simply cannot kill anyone, but here you have military helicopters falling out of the sky and people dying in droves. If it had been up to me, I would have at least made it so they all ‘got away safely’ via parachutes or something. Then as if that wasn’t bad enough, Roll dies… and to top it all off, the whole world is destroyed! I was like, ‘ Did they really need to go that far?!’”

Granted, there are fans who would no doubt disagree with Inafune’s assessment due to their own desire for a darker Mega Man tale. But it seems that even those who have played it feel that the game itself is rather lackluster; 1up’s Retro Gaming Blog has an entry for the game, in which the author states “As someone who played through all of Super Adventure, I have to say, Inafune’s right — this game is ridiculous as a Mega Man game.”

Personally speaking, I thought this game would make for a good Wii port– maybe clean things up a bit, change aiming the Mega Buster to work with the Wii pointer, bring in the cast from Mega Man Powered Up, and drop it into the arms of waiting fans. But from the sound of it, perhaps that isn’t such a good idea– and it doesn’t seem Inafune would get behind it, either.

In fact, in light of Inafune’s comments, one has to wonder if the game would still be considered in-continuity. Then again, there are various fans who deny X6-plus, or Mega Man Zero, or both, so I imagine people will or won’t include it in their own personal fanon of their own accord.

1up’s Retro Blog takes a recalls these opening sequences in 8-Bit Cinema: A Look Back at Mega Man’s Motivations, from the rather blunt title screen which appears when you turn on the first game to the eye-rolling revelation that Mr. X was the true mastermind behind Wily in Mega Man 6.

By the time Mega Man 4 rolled around, the NES was capable of some pretty heroic graphics. A little movie explaining the origin of Mega Man preceded the title screen, and it was epic for my ten-year-old mind to behold. Suddenly, the little blue robot had humanity, purpose, and a history.

Of course, he had all that in Japan from day one, while America just got box art starring the Chupacabra. Nevertheless, I still love the train-riding bit, complete with tunnel lights whizzing by. Tickets? Mega Man’s on a mission to save the world. Shove your tickets.

To this, Capcom responds “Chupacabra indeed. Of course, we can’t all be perfect and there are some bad apples in the bunch (Mega Man 3, where you at?).”

That said, which Mega Man openings are your favorites? I’m partial to Mega Man 2‘s, though Mega Man 4‘s origin story was delightful.

Personally, I’d love to know what might have been for Mega Man 3, had they opted to create one for it.