- Can I use stuff from this site?
Generally, yes, provided you follow the guidelines on the Request page.
- Why haven't you answered my e-mail?
Did you supply me with a valid e-mail address to send the reply to? If you don’t, I can’t send you a response.
But aside of this, I do have a life outside of MMHP, so I don’t always have the time to reply to the volume of e-mail that I receive. So some may go unanswered, for which I apologize. However I do read all e-mails and I make an effort to respond where appropriate. It won’t necessarily happen any time soon, though. I don’t have a set schedule for reading e-mail, so you may find I answer within a day one time you mail, then take two weeks the next. Don’t take it personally.
You can try checking the site if your e-mail doesn’t get answered. If I get a lot of e-mails about a particular subject, I’ll often update the site accordingly rather than sending individual replies.
- Where can I buy...?
See the Buyer’s Guide. If I know of a definite place, I’ll stick it there. But for the most part you’ll probably have the most luck just doing searches online.
- Where can I download Mega Man games?
You generally don’t download Mega Man games, you buy them. (With the exception of Steam, where you do both.) See the Buyer’s Guide.
- Why don't you have a message board / forum?
Because I don’t need to. Check out this page and tell me why it’s necessary to add yet another to the list? Notwithstanding that, I wouldn’t have time to moderate the stuff that would get posted to such a forum. If you want to see some classic examples of what would end up happening, check out
Capcom’s Black Hole list (man, that was funny). Now just imagine trying to manually ban all these sorts of folks yourself... (Capcom’s employees are paid to do this. I’m not. Case closed.)
- Can I link to this site from mine?
Sure!
- Will you link to my site?
If the site has something to do with Mega Man, submit a link to the Links section. (Note: If you are a company selling Mega Man products, consider requesting to be placed in the Buyer’s Guide instead.)
If the site doesn’t have anything to do with Mega Man, then no, I likely won’t be linking to it. This is a Mega Man website, after all.
- Would you like to affiliate with my site?
MMHP does not have affiliates; however, I’m more than happy to post links in the Links section to any Mega Man related website. See the link submission section for more details. (Note: If you are a company selling Mega Man products, see the Buyer’s Guide. I will accept affiliate links for that page if they can be text-only.)
- Can I advertise on your site?
In case you didn’t notice, MMHP does not have advertising. So, no, sorry. Having said that, if you are a company that sells Mega Man products, you can request a link in the appropriate section(s) of the Buyer’s Guide.
- What if I have a question about a particular game?
Visit that game’s Game Hints page and check its FAQ and other sections. Each game has its own dedicated FAQ.
- Do you want any help with [insert game here]?
If the game has a complete Game Hints page already posted, feel free to mail corrections, suggestions, etc. (But see another question regarding this.)
If the game doesn’t have a page yet and is relatively new, then no; I may be working on playing through it and I like to do so without spoilers.
However, if the game is quite old and I don’t own a copy or don’t have plans to play it, then I do sometimes accept outside contributions to the Game Hints section. This is rather rare, but it does happen, as you can see when you peruse the Game Hints. I pretty much determine these on a case-by-case basis, so I can’t give you an overall guideline here.
- I have a technique for beating a game. Why isn't it on the hints page?
The Game Hints pages try to tell the easiest way for the average player to do something. This is by no means ever the only way. The game hints are just that—hints. They are not and were never meant to be the end all that ends all, the “you have to do it this way” means of beating the game. Feel free to experiment. The purpose, after all, of playing a game is to have fun. If you let someone map everything out for you, it destroys this fun. Figuring things out for yourself and designing your own little tailored methods for winning is where the real enjoyment comes in. For those that run into snags, the game hints are meant to give you ideas and get you past trouble areas with as little effort as possible. They are not meant to play the game for you. And besides, there is no way I could possibly post every person’s own personal way of playing the games. This is why all game hints (unless otherwise stated) come from my personal playing experience. No two people play a game exactly the same way, so take my hints as merely that and apply a grain of salt.
- Can I send you my tips for beating a game?
Sure, though I am fairly selective about what I will actually post. I always try to test every cheat and suggestion out myself before I post it. For example, if someone suggests using a different weapon on a boss, I’ll actually try it out first to make sure that the weapon is in fact easier and more effective than whatever I’d posted. Don’t take offense at this, but do note that this means it may take me significant time to get around to any particular hint, because it depends on when I decide to pick up the game in question and play it again.
Just please don’t plagiarize from other websites. If you do send tips, they should be your own, not something copied off some other site.
- Is Capcom going to make [insert game here]?
Keep an eye on their websites and on the Previews page to find out about new Mega Man games. I sometimes play guessing games in the Commentaries, but for the most part, I don’t know what Capcom’s going to do until they announce it.
- Have you heard about the Mega Man movie?
In a sense. The live-action movie that you are probably referring to is a fan project. It is not official. That’s why I don’t cover it on any of the portions of MMHP that cover officially licensed products. You can, however, find the link in the Links section, as with all fan-made things that I am aware of.
- What about games in Europe?
I sincerely apologize, but I know next to nothing about most of Capcom’s dealings in Europe. This is not because of any dislike of Europe but simply because I do not live there. So if you ask me anything about whether a game is going to be released in Europe I will have no idea. You can try Capcom of Europe’s website (although I understand the frustration when sites are not regularly updated). The only reason I tend to know more about Capcom’s Japanese products than their PAL games is simply because their Japanese website is kept up better. There you have it.
- Is this site ever going to support emulation?
No. Emulators are used for primarily one thing, and that is to play games without paying for them. Making copies of games is illegal regardless of whether you delete the game after 24 hours or whatever else the pirate sites claim. Please don’t argue with me on this—because the important factor is this site was created with Capcom’s permission. It simply cannot support anything which is illegal.
- Isn't there a Japanese TV show of the original series?
To my knowledge, no—and trust me, if there was, I would have heard about it long before now. If you’ve seen screen shots on a Japanese website or something, probably what you are looking at is the 3-video set Capcom put out. This isn’t technically a TV show; it’s just three episodes. (You might also be looking at Super Adventure; this isn’t a show but a game.)
- Can I submit MP3s/etc. to be posted on this site?
I do not accept submissions of MP3, WAV, or similar digital file formats at this time. Sequenced formats (MIDI, MOD, and its derivatives) can be submitted using the Submission Form if they are your own creations.
- Why don't you post songs in NSF, SPC, or etc. format?
There are several reasons, the top ranking one is that I don’t have to. They are already posted elsewhere. I don’t have the time or equipment to make such files myself, and it’s not polite to swipe somebody else’s work off their website and re-post it. If you have need of such files, do a web search in your favorite search engine for “NSF” or whatever the file extension is for the system in question, and you shouldn’t have any troubles turning up sources.
- How do you record music and sound effects from games?
To be honest, I used a Power Macintosh for most of the recorded sounds on MMHP, but any PC with a line-in port will do. Most modern sound cards seem to come equipped with one; however, depending on the quality of your sound card, the quality of your input will vary.
A line-in jack looks like a headphone jack; generally, sound cards will have three such ports—one for headphones/speakers, one for the line-in, and one for the microphone. The symbols on the PC casing should clue you in as to which one is which. (Don’t confuse the line-in jack with the microphone jack; they look the same but make sure you know which one is which. While a mic jack will work, the sound quality will be hideous.)
Now, since most video game systems offer audio as A/V (the red and white plugs for left and right audio), if you don’t have A/V inputs you’ll need to convert them to a stereo jack (like what headphones have). Look in Radio Shack for wires to do this. Remember that two bands on the plug is stereo, and one band is mono, so make sure to buy two bands. (Ask someone in Radio Shack if you don’t know what I’m talking about; if the employee you ask is clueless, don’t buy from him and go find somebody else.)
Finally, you need software to do the recording; Sound Recorder that comes with Windows will work in a pinch, though you may want to prep yourself an empty file first, since Sound Recorder will only record to the length of the currently-opened file (and “New” produces a blank file of only 30 seconds). Look online for alternative sound recording software. For the Mac I use SoundEffects. For Windows, more recently I’ve found I like WavePad and Audacity.
- How do you take screen shots from games?
I used an A/V Power Macintosh in the past, or a PC with an s-video TV capture card (sometimes known as a TV tuner). Try to make sure that whatever you buy has HDMI or s-video input (best quality).
Once you have the input, you can then plug into your computer literally anything you can plug into a TV (including things like the Game Boy Player), although unless you have the right cables for your video game system (you can usually buy them separately), you may need to buy adapter plugs to convert everything (Radio Shack will sell these). Note that you need software to actually do anything with the video input, but most of the time video hardware comes bundled with the software necessary to operate it, so this shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
- How did you create this site?
After doing three revamps by hand (which took about six months each to complete), I finally got wise and wrote myself a parsing program which helps me to manage the layout and style of the site. Now revamping the site takes only three months instead of six. Heh. Believe it or not, I write all of my HTML by hand using a plain ol’ text editor. Graphical editors tend to drive me batty and they wouldn’t mesh very well with my parser anyway.
- What did you use to draw the images?
Through the years I’ve tried different paint packages, so actually MMHP represents art done on a wide variety of platforms. Of course, in order to answer this I’ll have to name products, but here we go.
At first I mostly used Deluxe Paint, but you can’t buy that anymore. There’s a program known as Pro Motion that does pretty much the same job though, and can replace Deluxe Paint for most things. Overall, Paint Shop Pro (version 6; they butchered the interface in 7+) has been my all-around paint package for drawing, converting files, applying special effects, working with layers, and such. It handles almost everything you would need for a website, including all file formats you can possibly imagine and certainly every variant used on the Internet (animated GIF, interlaced JPG of various compression levels, PNG with full alpha, etc.). I draw some images from scratch using it, and others I touch up after drawing them elsewhere. And finally of course is the fabled Photoshop, which I actually don’t like very much, but it has some really nice brushes and a couple of filters that Paint Shop Pro is missing.
And that’s about it. I’ve tinkered with a few other programs, but these are largely what I use. I draw everything by hand, and I do most of my anti-aliasing by hand as well. Yes, I’m insane. Oh yeah, and if you want to do any serious drawing on a computer, get a drawing tablet. Personally I use Wacom tablets; one even came bundled with Photoshop LE—not a bad deal.
- Are you on Twitter/Facebook/etc.?
No. I am not on any social media (sole exception is the LiveJournal account which is actually not a MMHP blog but rather is just a backup method of contact I created years ago). If you ever do find an account on social media claiming to be MMHP, it’s not me, so don’t be fooled. If you need to contact me you can do so via e-mail.
- What's your favorite Robot Master/Maverick/etc.?
I don’t have one. No kidding. I tend to prefer the bosses with a more humanoid appearance (for example, Shadow Man over Toad Man) but that’s just me. Even narrowing it down to those who look mostly humanoid, there are too many for me to pick a favorite.
- Who created the Mega Man games?
Video games are made by teams, not a single person. However the person you’re probably thinking of is Keiji Inafune (also known as “INAFKING”). If you look in the credits, he’s usually listed as producer, although in some Mega Man games he’s listed only in “Special Thanks” which probably means he didn’t have anything to do with that game in particular. Still, he is the one who came up with the original ideas for the first Rockman game, and being producer for so many games means he’s had a lot of say about them over the years.
- Wasn't Mega Man originally called Rainbow Man?
Not exactly, from what I’ve seen. Apparently, very early on they tossed around the possibility of naming him “Rainbow Senshi Miracle Kid” but dropped that after a while. (Thanks to Joshua Savage.) There were other possible names bandied about before they settled on “Rockman,” which you can see in one of the interviews. As far as the English games go, I don’t know what other names they considered before choosing “Mega Man” once they’d decided to change the name.
