I’d held on some shred of hope that the “Secret Level” shorts might drum up some interest in the franchise again, but give it was the shortest of an already short series (literally shorter than many cinematic trailers), it feels like the blue bomber has pretty definitively left the public consciousness.
Shame is, I feel like Mega Man X SPECIFICALLY would be SUPER relevant today. The games never told an amazing story per se, but there were clearly themes the team wanted to explore, and I feel like those conversations are highly topical, given the increasingly divisive nature of AI today. How different would people feel about a story about robots trying to achieve sentience and eventually independence? X4’s story would probably hit super hard right now if tackled well, or even finally exploring the mysterious “gap” between the Classic series and the X series.
But alas, this is just kind of “an old franchise” now, one I would be shocked if many kids were even familiar with the name or the appearance. Funny thing is, I don’t feel like Capcom ever “squandered” the name, like some of the lesser Sonic games did, but rather once Inafune left, they just decided to leave the series in the dust. Even Mega Man 11’s success wasn’t enough to get any traction.
What’s sad is that it doesn’t even feel like there is a fan community left. There’s no news, so pretty much all of the old sites have closed down; I THINK Protodude still posts sometimes, but probably not a whole lot.
I genuinely feel like getting dude into Fortnite could spur some amount of interest, maybe generate some excitement for the character again (like putting X in the battle pass, capsules hidden across the island for new styles, Zero and Vile as bosses on the map).
Who knows, though. Maybe whenever we get the Switch 2 Direct from Nintendo, they might have some updated collection for us to buy.
Shame is, I feel like Mega Man X SPECIFICALLY would be SUPER relevant today. The games never told an amazing story per se, but there were clearly themes the team wanted to explore, and I feel like those conversations are highly topical, given the increasingly divisive nature of AI today. How different would people feel about a story about robots trying to achieve sentience and eventually independence? X4’s story would probably hit super hard right now if tackled well, or even finally exploring the mysterious “gap” between the Classic series and the X series.
But alas, this is just kind of “an old franchise” now, one I would be shocked if many kids were even familiar with the name or the appearance. Funny thing is, I don’t feel like Capcom ever “squandered” the name, like some of the lesser Sonic games did, but rather once Inafune left, they just decided to leave the series in the dust. Even Mega Man 11’s success wasn’t enough to get any traction.
What’s sad is that it doesn’t even feel like there is a fan community left. There’s no news, so pretty much all of the old sites have closed down; I THINK Protodude still posts sometimes, but probably not a whole lot.
I genuinely feel like getting dude into Fortnite could spur some amount of interest, maybe generate some excitement for the character again (like putting X in the battle pass, capsules hidden across the island for new styles, Zero and Vile as bosses on the map).
Who knows, though. Maybe whenever we get the Switch 2 Direct from Nintendo, they might have some updated collection for us to buy.
