It’s a sad day for Mega Man Legends fans who were eagerly anticipating the release of Mega Man Legends 3 and its downloadable Prototype Version for the 3DS. Capcom has officially cancelled the entire project, so both games will unfortunately not be seeing the light of day.
Originally planned to release alongside the 3DS e-Shop update, as one of its major launch titles, the Prototype Version was a much-anticipated project. Its big brother release was as well, so it’s unfortunate news. Fans of the metallic blue armored platforming icon had waited ten years for news regarding another Legends game, even going as far as to create a fan campaign to support its development.
“Unfortunately it was not felt that the Mega Man Legends 3 Project met the required criteria” to go into full production, according to Capcom, so the proverbial plug was pulled on the entire development.
These cancellations aren’t the first in 2011, for the beleaguered little blue man and his arm cannon. A creative do-it-yourself project known as Mega Man Universe was cancelled in March. It was in development as a downloadable title for the PlayStation Network and XBOX Live Arcade.
Capcom denied that the departure of conceptual lead Keiji Inafune had anything to do with the cancellation of the projects, via their Capcom-Unity Blog.
It’s disappointing to hear this news because I know how popular the Mega Man series is. There’s a large community of core fans who were really looking forward to these games and their dedication to the series shows. I hope something new will be released in the relatively near future, to ease the frustration over this news.
Hopefully we’ll get a reason for this cancellation at this weekend’s Comic-Con.