MegaMaster Musings

Be Careful What You Wish For
November 7, 2002

I often receive e-mail or read postings on public Mega Man forums from self-proclaimed Mega Man fans who say something along the lines of:

“I really love the original Mega Man series! When will Capcom end it?”

This question just totally boggles my mind. If you like the series, why do you want to see it end? If you really like the characters, why do you want them to die? If you’re truly a fan, why do you want to kill the base of your fandom?

One person suggested to me once that it’s a case of “jumping the shark” (or as I would call it, jumping from a ship that isn’t even sinking). That is, that it would be better for the Mega Man series to just die elegantly now, before it suffers through too many bad episodes. I personally don’t subscribe to this. For one, if Mega Man dies now, he’ll probably just be resurrected again later—and trust me, bringing characters back to life is always much more absurd than any possible plot that could have resulted from the series running too long.

Besides, I really can’t see a good way to close the series without making an even bigger hash of things, particularly if the X series is the future of the original. Think about it from Mega Man’s point of view. Here you are, a hero who has risked your life countless times to stop the evils of Dr. Wily, arguably saving the entire planet multiple times in the process. So what happens? One day you’re told you’re an antique model that has out-lived its usefulness, so either your memory is wiped and you’re tossed into a capsule because you can’t be trusted, or you’re simply obliterated off the face of the map... destined in either case to fade away into obscurity because less than 100 years from now, nobody will even remember your name, much less the fact that you saved the world multiple times from Dr. Wily.

I mean, come on, we here on Earth in 2002 know what happened hundreds of years ago—even if the details are a bit sketchy, we have a basic grip on the major facts, and that was back when there wasn’t as much technology for storing history. Yet in the X series, with the technology supposedly boasted in Dr. Cain’s time, they can’t even read computer databases or piles of books, videos, CDs, DVDs, audio tapes, newspaper microfilm, or who knows what else, and figure out what happened in their own past?

One final reason for ending the series, of course, is that doing so would at least give the original Mega Man some attention, which he’s been severely lacking lately when it comes to Capcom (not counting Rockman & Forte which is really a relatively old game). I can somewhat see where people might be coming from in this regard. However is the choice really between either ending the series or letting it dangle forever? Personally, I don’t like to think so. Therefore, I will always look forward to Mega Man’s next adventure with anticipation.

- The MegaMaster