Price Glitch Affects UDON Books, but Should Be Cleared Up Soon

Last weekend, Amazon and other online book retailers began offering books like Mega Man Official Complete Works for the cutthroat price of $14.99. A pretty good deal, but not a deal that was intended to happen. And while Amazon honored the orders at first, it seems that may not be the case anymore. Staffer Maverick-Jin was e-mailed this morning by Amazon to be told his order for Mega Man Megamix Vol. 1 and Mega Man Official Complete Works was canceled, citing lack of stock and offering him a $25 gift card for the trouble. And sure enough, only stock from Amazon’s third party sellers is available as of now.

We inquired to UDON Entertainment’s Matt Moylan as to the situation, and here is what he tells us. First of all, Matt assures that the books are not out of stock, and they still have a few months supply of both MM and MMX Official Complete Works, as well as Megamix Vol. 1. The source of the problem appears to be with the distributor, Diamond Distributors. Once this glitch had been realized, Amazon put a hold on all products managed by Diamond, which besides UDON includes publishers such as Marvel and Dark Horse. While UDON has no control over the matter, Matt suspects the issue will be worked out in the next couple of days, and asks for the patience of us fans.

Additionally, Matt also offered up some good news. Mega Man Zero Official Complete Works will be going back into print, and should arrive starting the first week of May, so those who may have missed the chance to grab it will get a new one. It sounds like there’s strong demand for Mega Man artbooks and comics!

As always, much thanks to Matt and UDON for the heads up.

A look into Rockman EXE Official Complete Works

Rockman EXE Official Complete Works, the latest continuation of the uber-big Rockman artwork books, has released in Japan this week. And for those wanting a nice look inside, Nigoli has got you covered. His photographic report of the book contains a lot of nice pages with content not commonly found in what’s been released on the Battle Network front in the west. The fantastic book covers 18 games in 176 pages, with reportedly over 5,000 images. A must-have for not just Battle Network fans, but perhaps all Mega Man fans.

Imports of the book at Play-Asia seem to be a little delayed right now for unknown reasons. Of course if you can wait it out a little bit, we do have more than enough hints that this will be one of UDON’s future projects.

Update: Play-Asia is now shipping copies of EXE Official Complete Works.

News Credit: Sketch Redoku, Nigoli’s Rockman Series Blog

Both Mega Man and Mega Man X Official Complete Works due Dec. 23rd; sample images

Our very good friend from UDON, Matt Moylan, has let us know that both Mega Man Official Complete Works and Mega Man X Official Complete Works (as seen recently on the Mega Man 22nd birthday live stream) will be available next week, just in time for Christmas. Here is the official statement from Matt:

Just wanted to let you know that we can finally say both Mega Man Official Complete Works, and Mega Man X Official Complete Works will be arriving in comic book stores next Wednesday Dec 23! Just barely in time for X-mas(or Mega Man X-mas if you prefer heh). As for regular book stores, and online vendors line Amazon, that is less precise. Could be a few days earlier, could be a few days later, but all book have shipped to retailers. If you want them for sure on Wednesday, head to a comic book shop.

Of course I know what you really came here for, the sample pages! Let this be your final sweet temptation (warning, large sized images).

Thanks for the lovely images, Matt! We look forward to the books!

Rockman.EXE Official Complete Works Cover Art

Well, it looks like E-Capcom has finally let the cat out of the bag as far as the Rockman.EXE Official Complete Works cover art is concerned.

While the contents of the book seem very promising, the cover feels a bit underwhelming; especially when compared to the covers of all the previous Official Complete Works books. Why they went with such a plain design when there is so much great existing art from the series to work with is anyone’s guess.

Regardless, you can preorder the book (dropping on December 21st) at Play Asia right now for $36.90. For more details on the book’s contents, take a gander at our previous post.

News Credit: Protodude’s Rockman Corner

A look at Mega Man X: Official Complete Works 3D embossed cover, and hints at more

Matt Moylan, managing editor of UDON, just got back his sample copies of Mega Man X: Official Complete Works, and he couldn’t wait to show off its embossed cover to us! Though somewhat difficult to make out in the pictures below, Matt says “both X and the logo stick right out of the cover.” He also assures that Mega Man: Official Complete Works will get the same embossing treatment.

    

Additionally, Matt also had this curious message to impart upon us: “Also, not ready to announce future art book dates yet, but if fans like the STARs on their favorite television NETWORKs to speak English then, they’d be advised to wait a bit before buying certain Japanese versions of art books. ” Boy Matt, I’m scratching my head over that one. Hrmn… But all the same, thanks for the sneak peak and the info!

Capcom announced Rockman EXE Official Complete Works

With Rockman EXE Operate Shooting Star out now, it only makes sense that Capcom would continue their Official Complete Works books with the Rockman EXE series. Releasing in Japan December 21st for ¥2,100 (roughly $23.42 USD), the big will be 176 A4 format pages of promotion images, character artwork, conceptual artwork and planning sketches. It will also feature special artwork from guest contributors. To sum it all up: FREAKIN’ AWESOME! The Official Complete Works series definitely leads with the amount of beautiful artwork it publishes. My only complaint is I don’t know if 176 pages is enough for a series as big as EXE!

Matt Moylan Gives Us the Straight Dope on UDON’s Upcoming Mega Man Books

Last year, UDON Entertainment brought us Mega Man Zero Official Complete Works, a fantastic and rich artbook for the Mega Man Zero series. This year they’re stepping it up quite a bit, releasing both Mega Man and Mega Man X Official Complete Works, and on top of that releasing translated editions of some greatly sought after Rockman manga early next year. These will no doubt be heavily desired books for us Mega Man fanatics. To find out more we went straight to the source: Matt Moylan, UDON’s managing editor and all-around cool guy. In the following interview, we get the scoop from Matt about what to expect with the upcoming, and perhaps what might be yet to come.

TMMN: First off, Mega Man Official Complete Works has just been released, and Mega Man X Official Complete Works will be forthcoming in a couple of months. So for starters, please take some time to explain the contents of these books and what makes them so great.

Matt: Mega Man: Official Complete Works and Mega Man X: Official Complete Works are video game art books that collect all the official game art, character designs, sketches and more for the Classic Mega Man series, and the Mega Man X series respectively. One of the coolest parts is having all the character artwork for every hero, every enemy, every boss, and every Robot Master from all the games in one place, from Air Man to Yellow Devil and from Axl to Zero!

Mega Man: OCW covers the original Mega Man 1-8, the Playstation remakes, the Game Boy series, plus spinoff titles like Mega Man & Bass, Mega Man Soccer, Mega Man Powered Up and more. Mega Man X: OCW covers Mega Man X 1-8, plus the Xtreme games, Command Mission, and Maverick Hunter X.

Now originally, both these  were released in Japan as a single book: R20 Rockman & Rockman X Official Complete Works. What led UDON to the decision of splitting R20 into two books for its English localization?

There are a few reasons we split up the original R20 into two books.

First, it’d be a pretty thick book, and big chain book stores are unwilling to display books over a certain price point face out. Some won’t even carry a book over a certain price except in special cases. So, since we think that Mega Man has a lot of mass market appeal, we split the book in two to keep the price point down.

From the fans’ perspective, we also get the added bonus of spreading out the cost across two smaller purchases instead of one big one. Plus, I’m sure there are many folks who would love to have only the classic Mega Man, or only the Mega Man X book, so they have that option now.

Though Mega Man Official Complete Works has been released, Amazon is giving shipping estimates of one to two months. Has there been any delay in production, as Mega Man Zero Official Complete Works had, or is this perhaps Amazon’s miscalculation for receiving a new product? Are copies of MMOCW printed and ready to go?

Actually, neither of the two new OCW books has been released. We’re a little late for various reasons, but in the end it means that Mega Man OCW will be released at the end of November, with Mega Man X following in early December.

The books are all being printed now, so don’t worry, we won’t have a year-long delay like with the Zero book.

Months after R20 released in Japan, the game Mega Man 9 was released. Is there any possibility materials and information from that game made it into Mega Man Official Complete Works? Are any other special contents or features being added? Such as the shiny cover Zero OCW had.

We did ask about including the artwork of Mega Man 9 in the book, but unfortunately Capcom Japan wouldn’t allow us to include anything that wasn’t in the original book. We would also loved to have added artwork of Zero from the upcoming Tatsunoko VS Capcom North American release, but no-go.

We will be doing some special cover treatments, though. This time, we’re adding some 3D embossing to really pop the main character out on both art books; should look pretty cool!

Do you have plans to localize the Official Complete Works book for the MegaMan Star Force series that released in Japan earlier this year? And do you know if Capcom is planning to continue Official Complete Works with any other Mega Man series?

As soon as the Star Force OCW was announced, we made sure to get the ball rolling so that we could add it to our English art book library. We’ll wait until our current Mega Man art books are on sale, though, before announcing a date on that one.

Currently, we don’t know of any more Mega Man art books in the works, but I’d love to see a Battle Network OCW put together some time, or a book collecting all art of the the shorter MM series, plus odds & ends like Legends, ZX, MM9 etc.

Speaking on Mega Man manga, we know UDON plans to come out with Hitoshi Ariga’s Rockman Megamix, and Shin Ogino’s Rockman ZX. With all the Rockman manga that’s come out in Japan over the past two decades, how did you decide to start with these two? Do you have intentions to move on to other series, such as Yoshihiro Iwamoto’s Rockman X manga?

Yup, Hitoshi Ariga’s Mega Man Megamix is finally getting translated! If you’re going to begin doing Mega Man manga, there’s nowhere else to start than this 3 volume series. Fans have been dying to read this for years, and we’re glad to finally bring it to them.

The Mega Man ZX manga series was also an easy decision as the latest installment of the core Mega Man universe. That, and the artwork is simply gorgeous!

If these titles do well we’re certainly going to keep it rolling with other titles. The Rockman X and Zero mangas are a possibility. Ariga also has begun his new “Gigamix” series, which would be first on our list for new Mega Man manga.

How much involvement do the original manga authors have in the localization of their works? What are they like to work with? Any fun stories?

For Megamix, we went directly to Hitoshi Ariga to get the artwork files, to ensure our edition is as high quality as possible. He’s a very nice guy, and seems ultra excited to have his work released to a whole new group of readers.

We haven’t run into too many issues localizing it, though some of the changed names have had to be addressed. For instance, Ariga was curious how we would handle the fact all of Dr. Light’s robots have a giant letter “R” on their chest (since he is named Dr. Right in Japan). In this case we’ll be preserving the original art, and just add a note at the beginning explaining the Japanese VS English names.

As far as other projects go, how much of a possibility is there for UDON to put together a Mega Man Tribute book, like you did with Street Fighter and Darkstalkers? And what can fans do to help realize its creation?

A Mega Man Tribute would  be a great project, and is one of the ideas that has been batted around. Though, it is a much tougher project to get off the ground than our last two Tributes. With Street Fighter, we have worked with the property so long that Capcom trusts us whatever we do. Darkstalkers was pretty easy too since it is an inactive property. Mega Man though is an active and very tightly controlled property for Capcom, so I think we need to show them we can take care of Rock & friends with the artbooks and mangas first before we approach them on anything that big.

What fans can do to help is let Capcom know at conventions, through email, or on the official Capcom-Unity forums that you’d like them to let UDON tackle a Mega Man Tribute book. Helping make sure our current Mega Man books sell well couldn’t hurt either, so be sure to tell all your friends about them!

And finally, it really seems UDON is bumping up their Mega Man coverage this season, and of course we fans are thankful. Any final statement you want to impart with the fans or about UDON’s works? Maybe a little insight on anything else in the works?

We’re all very happy to bring Mega Man in as a bigger part of UDON’s regular publishing projects. There are a lot of big Blue Bomber fans at UDON, and part of choosing the projects we do is because we just want to read them ourselves!

As for future projects, maybe the fans would like to let us know what they want to see. If there’s a cool Mega Man manga or art book that you’ve heard of from Japan, or if you’d like to see UDON tackle an original Mega Man project, then please let us know any time at fans@udoncomics.com.

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Thank you for your time, Matt! We eagerly look forward to these lovely Mega Man artbooks and manga!

MM Official Complete Works, Chip Tuned Rockman on sale today

Mega Man merchandise is always great, and today a couple pieces of Mega Man merchandise are now available for sale. First off is Mega Man Official Complete Works. Translated and edited by Udon, this huge format, 200 page book contains tons of artwork, concept art and designer notes covering the classic Mega Man series. Owning the Japanese edition myself, I can tell you it’s an awe inspiring collection of artwork that classic Mega Man fans need to have. The book is available on Amazon, among other sites likely, and if you order it through Amazon via the ad button you see on the right side of the site, that helps us out a little bit!

Next up is Chip Tuned Rockman, a collection of 8-bit inspired Mega Man music remixes, that has officially gone on sale in Japan. For some deeper details and samples, you can check out our review. This one isn’t going to be as easy to get outside of Japan. Fortunately for those of us living outside of Japan, this one is available on CDJapan, a seller of Japanese CDs and DVDs that I can recommend via personal experience. This is probably the easiest means to import for now. Still, I hope Capcom will start putting albums like this on iTunes or a similar service soon!

Summer of Mega Man Star Force 3 Contest! Win Star Force 3 and More!

Yepper, it’s that time randomly selected again! Time for another Mega Man Network contest! Because why work for your love when we can simply buy it, like some kind of simple commodity. And you can WIN BIG!

This time around, Tabby has insisted we do an artwork contest again, and none of us likes to see Tabby upset (she’s scary). And with both Mega Man Star Force 3 around the corner, as well as summer, what better festivity than whittling potatoes to look like Zero’s head! I’m kidding, it’s a summer themed Mega Man Star Force artwork contest.

You have big chances of winning, because in this contest there will be a total of THREE winners, with the first place grand prize being a copy of Mega Man Star Force 3, the Ryuusei no Rockman Official Complete Works art book, and a Star Force 3 mini poster! That is just cool beans!

So, check out the official contest rules and regulations. Make good note of them! Then get started on your beuaitful artistic entries! You have until June 30th, plenty of time for now but nor for long! Get crackin’!

Udon Reveals Covers for Official Complete Works Books, Announces Classic & ZX Manga

Udon was kind enough to pass along the news that they have made their official announcement of both the Mega Man Official Complete Works and its companion, the Mega Man X Official Complete Works art books. What’s more, though Amazon.com had the cover for the former leaked early, the latter was still nowhere to be seen. But now, we have both, and they are looking quite nice. See for yourself:

Click to enlarge

The announcement is as follows:

With more than 100 video games in the Mega Man series, the blue bomber is one of the most iconic figures of gaming. Over the past 20 years the diminutive blue robot has been at the head of Capcom’s most popular franchise. Now UDON has expanded the studio’s relationship with the property, and is gearing up to bring new Mega Man art books and manga to English readers.

Arriving Fall 2009, the Mega Man goodness begins with Mega Man: Official Complete Works. This 200 page book showcases 20 years of artwork from the classic and most well-known version of the hero, covering the core Mega Man games as well as little-known spinoffs and even rarer Japan-only titles. Fans will enjoy loads of designs of all their favorite characters like Proto Man, Dr. Wily, Roll, Rush, Bass & Treble and, of course, piles of evil robot bosses! Also within are never before seen rough sketches, rare promo artwork, and commentary from Capcom creators.

Shipping a few months later is Mega Man X: Official Complete Works. This artbook focuses on the original Mega Man’s successor, Mega Man X, who’s unique style and fast paced adventures have made him nearly as popular as his classic counterpart. Here fans will get to see all the dynamic designs of characters like heroes Zero & Axl, deadly villains Sigma & Vile, and all the wild robotic animal men who love to cause trouble for X and his crew!

Also this fall from UDON comes new Mega Man manga brought to you straight from Japan! Initial titles will focus on the adventures of the original Mega Man and also Mega Man ZX, the latest addition to the core Mega Man universe. More details on these and other titles will be coming soon.

So… anyone else stoked?

Source: Udon Entertainment

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