The following is a guest editorial from frequent GamesRadar contributor Jim Sterling. For our response, and our thoughts on the fate of Mega Man, listen to TalkRadar podcast episode 168 this Friday.
To say that Capcom has found itself on the receiving end of some ill will lately would be an insultingly mild understatement. Since the cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 last week, the publisher has suffered a swift and thorough backlash from fans, with the exclusion of Mega Man from Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom only embittering their brewing malice. It seems that, for all intents and purposes, Mega Man is dead. With Keiji Inafune no longer at the company, the character's last big supporter has fallen away and Capcom is free to bury the beloved blue hero for good. As I see it, however, this is not the moment to grieve a fallen warrior so much as to celebrate his timely demise. Mega Man's downfall is not a tragedy...
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Anyone who grew up with videogames has had their world shaped by the experience of playing. This is mostly a good thing. We appreciate CoD 4, Grand Theft Auto IV or Braid trying to say something about the human condition. BUT it’s also a good thing those games are fun, because the message is often completely impractical. What exactly are the messages these games are conveying? “War is Hell (but also awesome fun)”? “Urban America sucks”? “Don't build a nuclear bomb”? No argument here, but that knowledge doesn’t really integrate easily into the average gamer’s everyday life.
No, if you want simple, universally-applicable life lessons from videogaming, you need to go to an older, wiser, chirpier-music-having source... or better yet, 18 of them. Drag out the cartridge-loaded boxes and two-button joypads: It's time for some words of wisdom from your elders...
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Some robots make cars. Others make candy. We need cars and candy to sustain our unsustainable lifestyles, so those robots make sense. Videogame robots, however, don’t generally make Toyotas. They don’t make Tootsie Rolls, either. They definitely don’t make sense...
While mainstream rappers express their affection for video games from time to time, the underground "nerdcore" hip-hop movement takes the connection to a whole other level. There are entire songs and albums dedicated to a love of gaming, and many of these artists plug references into their most popular tracks.
Here are our ten favorite songs and videos. Crank your PC speakers, dial the geekiness to 11 and let's get rolling.
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Today, Mega Man 10 is finally available across all three major platforms. It hit WiiWare first, then PSN and now it’s officially part of Xbox Live Arcade. MM10 continues the retro look and spirit of MM9, which was in turn an homage to the NES classics that millions of gamers gushed over throughout the ‘80s and ‘90s.
What better way to celebrate this occasion than with a video that runs Mega Man through every single boss level from every 8-bit game?
Amazing vid after the jump!
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A lot of official game art comes through our inboxes every day. Produced by game developers and distributed by their public relations teams to the media, eye-catching official game art is the stuff that magazine covers are made of and are often posted on sites like this.
There are enemies that are circular, and there are enemies that aren’t circular. These are the ones that are circular.
Euclidian geometry defines circles as the points on a plane which are the same distance from another point called the center, got it? That’s awesome. There is no geometric definition for enemies, but if there was it would define them as the guys that kill you.
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All week we've been posting articles about Mega Man, one of gaming's most beloved and long-lived characters. Capcom's official count puts him in at least 120 games over the past 20 years, a number that surely must beat out all other popular characters and mascots (save Mario).We've got a massive retrospective, an exclusive hands-on with the latest game in the series, Mega Man 9, a bad ass contest packed with 10 super-cool prizes... and that's not even all of it.
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Two massively important reveals happened this past weekend. One, Blizzard announced Diablo III, one of the most obvious and expected sequels of all time. The other was a bit more surprising, but still known due to weeks of random information leaks. That would be Mega Man 9, finally confirmed via scans from Nintendo Power
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