I just took notice of a new game being developed by Keiji Inafune, called Mighty No. 9. Well, It’s not in development at this very moment. More exactly, it’s a Kickstarter campaign that you can back up, and if they reach their goal, production kicks off. Here’s a video about the project.

Inspecting the video, I can’t help but feel sorry for the current sad state of affairs. Inafune can’t work anymore directly with the Mega Man franchise. You can feel his nostalgia when he talks about his past works. But considering the situation he was at when he decided to leave Capcom, I thought because of such a bitter experience he would have wanted to separate himself from the past, let go the Mega Man name and do his own completely new and original stuff. While risking to alienate his fans for being too innovative, I thought only a veteran like him would be able to have the vision and persistence to do such a thing, no matter how much the world either accept or reject his proposals. He would do his own stuff and move on with his life.

It doesn’t seem to be the case. After inspecting the Mighty No. 9 proposal, I’m really impressed that in this time and age you can get away professionally with a game that looks so similar to the original Mega Man. I thought he would be completely discouraged to do such a thing. Maybe obscure indie and fan games can get away with that because they won’t reach the mass market or risk to call the attention of a copyright holder, but this is Keiji Inafune’s game. The industry will know. Is it fine? If it is fine, I’m all for more games like this. His team must be very well informed so I guess it is fine.

As for the game, the protagonist is a robot kid called Beck in a futuristic setting. You have to battle six (potentially eight) Mighty Numbers, who previously were your allies but suddenly went berserker and now are causing havoc around the world.

Um, okay.

They didn’t mention this, but I’m guessing you can beat them at any order you want. You can steal their weapons after all, so most likely they’ll have a weaknesses system similar to the Robot Maters. I mean if you borrowed this far, that would not be any more stretching.

One of the proposed designs for a support character, which I guess will play the role of operators, looks just like Roll. And The pink one reminds me of Nana. You do remember Nana, right? Ok, I could go on and on with the similarities, but just give me a “dash” move and I’m sold.

In all seriousness I’m glad to see that you can assemble a team of Mega Man veterans and create a non-Mega Man game that plays totally like Mega Man. This is amazing. And I’m really excited about the production process that apparently we’ll all have access to. I can’t wait to see the updates of this team in action, no matter the results. I just hope to have the time to follow up. The only bad thing is that we won’t be able to play it until 2015, if started at all. I won’t hold my breath but at least is something to look forward to.

Update:
Well, the project seems to be on the right track to be funded. Here’s a picture of my favorite characters so far. I wish I had time to do more but this will have to do for now.

Update 2:
Game just got funded. That was crazy.