Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune has traded in on the nostalgia of every generation of gamers since the days of the original Nintendo Entertainment System by finishing the Kickstarter campaign for his upcoming game Mighty No. 9 with a grand total of $4,046,579 in funds raised. As a result of the successful campaign, which cleared all its fundraising goals and then some, Mighty No. 9 will appear on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, PS Vita, 3DS, Wii U, PC, Mac, and Linux. So basically, you’ve got some options.
It’s been 26 years since Mega Man originally debuted for the NES and he’s been pretty scarce since then, only having appeared in Mega Man 2 through 10, 11 or so Mega Man X games, Mega Man Legends 1 and 2, eight Mega Man Battle Network games, four Mega Man Zero games (although technically Zero was the star of those), Mega Man ZX and Mega Man ZX Advent, and three Mega Man Star Star Force games, not to mention a handful of Capcom fighting games. Probably some others, too, but there are only so many hours in the day in which to research this stuff. In other words: Mega who? He has practically become an unknown. And that will probably continue, as Mighty No. 9 hopes to capture the magic of the original without paying all those pesky licensing fees for the rights to the name.
There were some pretty great incentives to those who Kickstarted the game; everything from t-shirts and strategy guides to getting to design an enemy or actually appear in the game itself. Those who pledged $10,000 or more (and there were four of those) even get to have dinner with Inafune, during which they can continuously ask him questions about the Mega Man franchise as he becomes increasingly irritated and tries to steer the conversation toward his new game, which is not Mega Man no matter how much you want to call it that.
Mighty No. 9 will make its appearance on just about every game console known to man sometime around Spring 2015. Until then you will just have be satisfied playing those same old dozens upon dozens of Mega Man games that have appeared on every other game console known to man. Sometimes it’s hard being a gamer.