Hey gang,
Time for another quick history lesson. This time for for the blue bomber himself: Rokkuman, aka Rockman, AKA MEGA MAN!
First appearing in 1987 in his self-titled NES title Mega Man, the most infamous original Capcom character this side of Ryu is called Rock Man (pronounced “Rokkuman” in Japanese) in Japan, as a reference to rock and roll (hence why his sister in the series is called “Roll”). During localization, the name was changed to Mega Man for western audiences simply due to the fact that the head of the Consumer Products Division at Capcom hated the name and thought it was dumb (I like both names personally, so whatever).
Lets be real, the artwork for the North American version (seen below) is pretty bad.The designer, Marc Erickson, even admitted to knowing nothing about the character when he took on the design.
Damn that's bad... Moving on, though...
The original designer of the appearance of Mega Man (the Japanese cover, not the shitty American one) was Akira Kitamura, who’s appearance was later further refined by Keiji Inafune starting with Mega Man X (a different character than the original Mega Man) on the SNES (which you can see pics of below from our Bandai Mega Man X and Bandai Mega Man X Truforce Designer Series figures from our store).
Mega Man has gone on to star and cameo in tons of games since 1987, so many that it would take way too long for me to list them all here. My personal favorite however would be Mega Man Legends for the original Playstation (which, of course, is one of the only ones that hasn't seen a re-release on current consoles yet).
Are you a Mega Man fan? What's your favorite Mega Man title? Let us know in the comments!
