Mega Man 9 - WiiWare

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...

There are several ways to gauge how far videogames have come since their bleep-blorp beginnings. You can look at graphics, gameplay complexity, or as we’re about to illustrate, how your character actually dies in the game. As technology improved, so did the deaths suffered by the myriad protagonists, eventually progressing to the point where, today, you live through that death in the first person, forced to watch your hero’s grisly final moments

Has it really only been 12 months since the last avalanche of “Best Games of 200X” awards? Well, we all love a good list, and you won’t find a better barf bag of random praises than our own Platinum Chalice awards, the place to have someone else’s gaming opinions shoved upon you. How important are these awards? So important. Real important. What do the other guys have, gold trophies? Screw that.

We’ve been trumpeting Mega Man 9’s release ever since we first revealed it back in July. Now that it’s out for WiiWare and PSN (and on its way to XBLA), we’re finally able to share some of our favorite nuances the developers threw in to make the experience all the more rewarding.

None of these are major, but their impact elevates the game to Miyamoto levels of greatness; Miyamoto is known for getting all the "little things" perfect, and this is the first game we've played in a long time that paid such attention to innocuous nothings that most gamers will pass on by.  

If you’re here, odds are you’ve had your ass handed to you a dozen or so times by one of the toughest games 2008 has to offer. Make no mistake, Mega Man 9 is one hell of a challenge, but with our handy guide there’s no way Tornado’s Man stage will give you any more guff. Unless you just plain suck, that is.

Capcom has revealed to us today that Proto Man, Mega Man’s mysterious robo-brother, will indeed be playable in Mega Man 9 via paid DLC. The materials we received say it’ll arrive the week of October 6 for 200 Wii Points, 160 Microsoft Funnybucks and plain ol’ $1.99 on PSN.

For the most part he plays the same as Megs, though he’s able to slide and charge his blasts.

Mega Man 9 is nearly upon us. Yesterday we revealed two new bosses from the game, Splash Woman and Plug Man, and today we’re slapping up some pics of the delightfully retro asset package.

Sound boring? Hm, then perhaps you should see for yourself

 The time is almost upon us, dear retro gamers, when we bend over and happily have Mega Man 9 kick us square in the ass with its unrelenting, borderline unholy level of difficulty. We’re reviewing the game right now and uh, yeah, it’s hard. More on that later – today we’ve got two EXCLUSIVE looks at bosses that will soon be laughing at how many Game Over screens they cause.

Last week we brought you ten photoshopped images of game names infiltrating popular logos. It was a huge success, and most of you cried out for more. Well, one reader provided us with enough great ideas to create another entry in this ongoing article.

Have an idea? Post it in our thread and maybe you’ll see your ideas brought to life on the site. Special thanks to reader Ravenbom for the standout submissions. See, we do read

TalkRadar welcomes its very first industry guest this week, Mr. Seth Killian of Capcom fame. He’s involved with all things community, primarily at the Capcom Unity blog and jaw-droppingly hardcore Evo tournaments. Far more interesting than that, however, are his tales of Street Fighter hustling at arcades, infiltrating E3 and harassing the company enough to finally give him a job. See kids, you too can live the dream.