Capcom has just announced a brand new Mega Man game, with the proper number 11. The brief teaser released today shows a pixel art Mega Man blasting off from a 2018 sign, and into a more cartoon-style world, befitting the numbered release.
Huge MM fan and extremely bitter about the franchise’s mistreatment. If this game does anything interesting enough to distinguish itself from the rest of the Classic series I will be shocked and delighted, but I’m not getting my hopes up for anything more than some good music and a couple cute Robot Masters. 
HOT TAKE: Battle Network is the only good mega man series
Okay the other games are fine but I find the original style platformers to be kinda bad so I’m not super interested in this myself
Give me all those Mega Man X’s on Switch! Oh that is great news.
Honestly, while I adore Mega Man and Mega Man X, those franchises are probably best left in the past. Its ideas have been so thoroughly iterated on that I can’t really imagine them doing anything interesting.
Also, unless you’re willing to put in all the work that the ArcSys artists do, don’t fuckin do the 2D gameplay with 3D graphics thing. It looks like trash and is visually confusing.
Mega Man 11 looks great to me. Only real qualm I have is that the animation doesn’t look great, but the game is still a year away so I could see it being improved still.
Also the Legacy Collections and just about every Mega Man X game coming to Switch is very exciting too.
If 3d graphics on a 2d plane truly was visually confusing we wouldnt have 20 years worth of games with this broad take on visuals.
I have never in my entire life played a “2.5D” game that didn’t look like confusing trash. I also disagree with your premise: design trends catch on all the time that are actually terrible. Every narrative-driven AAA game still spends half its time on combat the game’s not even about for christ’s sake, there’s so many things that people do when making games that is always bad unless you’re dedicated to doing it right.
Andi Mcclure had a more coherent take on why Mega Man specifically is bad, and I’d argue her points here are definitely not unique to Mega Man.
You raise a fair point. I don’t know about many of the later X games but I have a soft spot for X and X2 that I don’t know if I will ever be free from!
The Klonoa games are all really good examples of nice-looking 2.5D platformers. Let’s not make huge sweeping statements about design trends.
I largely disagree with Andis take. Not only does the majority of the footage weve seen take place in interiors with dark backgrounds similar to the cherry picked examples from previous games (making the “im not an artist why cant capcom notice this?” jab come off as pointlessly smug) the exterior location we have seen does take steps towards readability. It operates on basic color theory - the foreground is primarily teals,blues and greens against a yellow and brown dominated background. The idea that players cant discern the yellow bridge in the background that leads off into the distance isnt on the same plane as the predominately blue blocky shaped foreground tiles is frankly absurd. Its as disingeous as if I claimed players wouldnt be able to see Mega Man in any of the NES levels with a predominantly blue background. While I agree the yellow flying enemies could be hard to read, thats more to do with the enemies palette than the background as a whole and making the visuals into sprites wouldnt magically fix the issue.
Just because you for whatever bizarre reason think every 2.5d game is trash (unless you need to dunk on something and then suddenly its all of them but guilty gear) doesnt mean its inherently flawed. Thats a lazy, hacky premise.
Also this isn’t the first time they’ve done a 2.5D classic Mega Man game. Both Mega Man Powered Up and Maverick Hunter X on the PSP are pretty nice-looking games (the latter has an unbelievably cheesy voice performance for X though).
This looks neat. Colourful and fun. I have never actually played a Mega Man game, and I have not much desire to go back to the old ones. So maybe this will be the one. I hope it turns out good.
I know it probably seems like a nitpick but that running animation is absolute trash. Every iteration of 2D Mega Man since the original has leaned forward when ever he runs, and this one just runs with his back perfectly straight up. It looks odd.
Not a fan of the 3D either but I’ll take it if that’s what it takes to get a new Mega Man game.
