InSephtion – Mega Man’s Blue Bomber Brats

The InSephtion is a semi-frequent (read: when I feel like it) series of opinion pieces were I attempt to implant, or otherwise remove, a thought or series of thoughts from your mind.

The InSephtion is back with its second episode, and I figure I’m going to stir up a proverbial hornets’ nest with this one. What I have to say will undoubtedly get mixed opinions from people, some will praise it and people will likely come down on me for it, but it simply needs to be said.

Mega Man fans are the worst fans in gaming.

Usually fans of Sonic the Hedgehog are dragged through the mud as the worst fans in gaming because of their unyielding amounts of nitpicking and undying ability to bitch about anything and everything. But you know what, at least Sonic fans have an actual reason to bitch about Sega and the Sonic franchise. While not the strongest defense ever, Sonic fans at least have some fraction of logic to cling to because Sonic games of today are clearly inferior to the Sonic games of yesteryear. They get upset at every new thing Sega does because they want to see Sonic return to its quality days when it was a legitimate alternative to Super Mario games.



Mega Man fans just complain because Capcom hasn’t invented some Johnny Mnemonic-esk device that can plug new content directly into their brain, because that clearly must be what they want. I can't find any other sound reasoning behind why fans of a franchise that has remained active in its own franchise as recently as two years ago, plus appearances in other franchises, would be pissed. They want something like The Matrix, except everything is in 2D and everybody shoots yellow tennis balls at each other.

For a while the rallying cry we heard from Mega Man fans was “Mega Man is dead!” and it was an utterly hilarious thing. Why hilarious? Because Mega Man 10, at the time of this blog, is not even a two year old game yet. Hell, Mega Man 9 is only three and a half years old. Not only are these two games still relatively young, critics and fans enjoyed the hell out of them! So how is a franchise that put out two great games within the last four years even remotely dead? Well, the answer likely boils down to one reason.

Mega Man fans are still butt-hurt over Mega Man Legends 3 being cancelled.

Legends 3 is still a sore-spot for a lot of fans, heck Jonathan Holmes managed to sneak a reference to MML3 in a recent kickstarter article. The defenses I’ve heard for the Legends 3 anger is decently amusing, ranging from stuff like “but the fans were involved in this project too!” to “they didn’t release the Prototype Version like they said!”. Regardless, it sounds like spoiled Mega Man fans with an oddly high sense of entitlement acting like they were “owed” Legends 3 for some reason. Yet they deny looking at one obvious fact; Legends 3 probably wasn’t going to make Capcom that much money and Capcom came to realize this. Capcom determined that, while there was interest, there wasn’t enough interest to continue with the project and on top of that the 3DS simply wasn’t selling well at all at the time.

Don’t believe me? Well think about it for a minute. This is Capcom, the same company that has milked titles for all their worth with “Super” & “Turbo” editions for a couple of decades. If there’s one thing they are experts at it’s how to make money. Hell, they used a natural disaster as an excuse to double-dip with Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3. My point is that Capcom will do just about anything to make every last buck they can make as long as it doesnt dip them in the negative, and if they didn’t think they could make enough dough with Legends 3 then I’ll actually give them the benefit of the doubt and believe it. And just for the record, I’m very aware that Mega Man Universe was also cancelled roughly around the same time period that Legends 3 bit the dust. But let’s all be honest, Universe looked neat but it didn’t look like it was going to be that great.



Capcom hasn’t exactly ignored Mega Man’s existence, or the franchise as a whole, since Legends 3’s cancellation either in spite of what some pigheaded fans will try to make you think. Despite Mega Man apparently being “dead” there’s at least seven different references to the Mega Man franchise within Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Zero, Tron, Zero’s X skin, Frank’s Mega Man armor, the Days of Future’s Past stage, the Servbot stage, and Nova’s ending), which I’d say is pretty good for a dead guy. Yet for some reason Mega Man fans apparently said “that’s not good enough!” , interpreted the Days of Future’s Past stage as trolling (and not just a clever Marvel/Capcom tie-in), and took the Mega Man X skin for Zero as a slap in the face… even though X and Zero would probably fight relatively similar anyway. Capcom did everything they could to reference Mega Man in that game besides actually put him in the game (a move I was personally happy about, since I didn’t want many retread characters from MvC2), and these spoiled fans couldn’t accept that.

Then we get to Mega Man’s appearance in Street Fighter x Tekken, a move that erupted the fanbase into accusations of Capcom trolling its own fans again. (Don’t believe me? Google it.) I have to say I love how it was perfectly okay to have Bad Box Art Mega Man as a character in Mega Man Universe, and essentially pay homage to him in the covers to Mega Man 9 & 10, but bringing this version of Mega Man back for SFxT is terrible trolling that should be condemned. There’s totally not a double standard happening here at all. Just like the terrible boxart for the previous two Mega Man games this was supposed to be a nice joke at itself, and it was a joke that whiney brats refused to accept.



I won’t lie though, SFxT’s Mega Man does seem pretty trollish, even though it was a joke. But you know what, Mega Man fans deserve it. When you’re so overly sensitive to the point where a simple joke gets you angry like that then you have a problem. You all became annoying spoiled brats who threw a hissy fit because you couldn’t have what you wanted even though you’d already had plenty of good things before. In my opinion SFxT’s version of Mega Man is a message from Capcom trying to tell you fans to shut the hell up because if you try to force too much of a good thing you’re just going to ruin it overall. Mega Man isn’t, nor was he ever, dead. If you “fans” had enough decency to be patient and shut your mouths for a little while maybe Capcom will actually do something nice for you. In the meantime, you’re just going to further your stance as the biggest spoiled brats in gaming.