See, now this is why I know longer give a fuck about Mega Man.
I liked it WAY back in the day when Dr. Wily would just build 8 robots, and Mega Man would kick his ass. That’s all the storyline it needed. Sure, there were some other minor things, like Dr. Cossack, or a Protoman-clone, but we all knew it was just Wily behind everything, and the plot remained basically the same. Then the X series came around and the story got all convoluted. Then the regular Megaman series probably got all convoluted too (I’ve only played a tiny bit of Mega Man 7, none of Mega Man 8, and a little of Rockman and Forte).
Now all this storyline crap is like a foreign language to me. Back in the early 90s, I was the king of Mega Man. Now it’s just too weird. I’ll still play the games when I get the chance, but I’m mostly apathetic, and I don’t give a rat’s ass about the storyline, because it’s too complex for an action series, and I don’t like that (I pine for the days where storyline didn’t get in the way of action games).
Also, Vile fucking kicks fucking ass. Holy shit, what an awesome guy. I know he was in X and X3, but was he really in X7 or X8? Because that’d be awesome.
And I know people always like to say “GRAH!!! ROCKMAN AND FORTE ISN’T MM9 U N00B!!!”, but who gives a fuck, really? Capcom could have named it Mega Man 9 and it would have made perfect sense in every way, but they didn’t. So, in a way, it’s a surrogate Mega Man 9. Storyline and gameplay wise, it IS the ninth game in the main Mega Man series. But that’s just arguing semantics.
But yeah, give me good ol’ NES Mega Man any day (despite the god-awful cover art the games had). I can’t wait to get home and play my newly-acquired copy of the first Mega Man (2 dollars at a pawn shop! =D).
No, because Final Fantasy Tactics was a radical departure from the rest of the Final Fantasy (in that it was an entirely different sub genre). It COULD have been called Final Fantasy 8, I suppose, in the same way that Final Fantasy 11 probably should have been called “Final Fantasy Online”, since it too was of an entirely different type of game from the rest of the series.
Rockman and Forte, on the other hand, is still a side-scroller like the rest of the Mega Man games, you still have the 8 robot masters like the rest of the Mega Man games, you still gain weapons from the robot masters like the rest of the Mega Man games, still has Dr. Wily as the final boss, like the rest of the Mega Man games, is the exact same format as the rest of the Mega Man games, and is a continuation of the storyline, like the rest of the Mega Man games.
Err… I don’t really play Megaman X for the story. I play it instead of the original games cause it isn’t moving at 3MPH, it looks good (Yes, because it looks good), Zero kicks ass, you can dash, you can wall jump, you get kickass suits, and the bosses are cooler than “FLYING WOODCHUCK, dodge his leaf attack (That’s all he has)!”, not because it has a story.
For once I completely agree with you, X is perfectly playable without knowing what the fuck’s going on (As a matter of fact, that’s how I played X1, X2 and X3). I care a great deal about the plot, but it’s not necessary to do it to enjoy the games.
And for the record, the X saga isn’t ALL that different story-wise. Up to X6 you know that you’ll beat 8 Mavericks, one or two sub bosses and that in some way or another Sigma is behind it all.
I knew there was something up since I couldn’t remember who Prometheus was for the life of me. Arac kept talking about him and I knew I hadn’t beat every game, but still couldn’t remember who he was or think he was.
As for “Rockman and Forte,”, it is all right to call it “Megaman and Bass.” The game has been released in America. No need to call it by its Japanese name, especially since Rockman and Forte is more likely to confuse more people.
I call it Rockman and Forte because I’m far more familiar with the Super Famicom version than the Game Boy Advance port (I’ve been familiar with the game since far before the GBA port came out, and the GBA port is just a tiny blip on my radar screen… it’s really of no consequence to me). I grew up calling it Rockman and Forte, ever since it first came out, and I’ll probably go to my grave calling it Rockman and Forte. And I hate the name “Bass” anyway. I always think of fish when I think of Forte’s American name. >_<
I mean, I call the Dragon Warrior series “Dragon Quest” more often than not, even though it’s always been called Dragon Warrior in America (although that will soon be a moot point, since Dragon Quest VIII is apparently going to be called Dragon Quest VIII in America too).
And saying that “up to X6 it isn’t different story-wise, because you fight 8 mavericks, etc.” is totally missing the point. That has nothing to do with story. I’m talking about weird crap like the Zero virus, those army dudes that were in X4 for some reason, cut-scenes all over the place, and all that which just confuses me. The first few Megaman games didn’t even have an opening cinema explaining the story. If you wanted the storyline, you’d have to read it in a manual or something. You popped the game in, it took you to the title screen, you chose some robot master named after an element or something, and you started blowing up random shit, even though you didn’t know why, and you didn’t care why. The existence of Roll, Rush and Protoman is about as complex as I think the Mega Man games’ storylines should have gotten.
It can’t possibly bug you that much. Fine, X5 and X6 aren’t the usual, but you can’t complain about the scenes up to X4. Between X1 and X3 you have about four cutscenes AT BEST and X4’s anime crap can be skipped.
It’s all perfectly ignorable and if you wanna get to the stage-choosin’-robot-killin’ part of the game then you don’t have any problem at all. On the other hand, if you wanna bitch about the fact that it exists even though you can ignore it then that’s your problem.
That’s entirely possible, I’ve read webcomics, forgotten I’ve read them, and then taken ideas from them in the past. (Not sarcasm, by the way, I’ve actually done that).
However, there still is the Blues Resurrection manga, sometime during which he changes his name, to something like Protoman/Blues, only vaguely more ominous, which is probably why ‘Prometheus’ came to mind. It probably isn’t to Prometheus. He’s defenitely never mentioned in the games, though.
Sorry for the errors.
On another subject, I definitely like the storylines behind games, which is why I rarely play the oldest megaman games. Stroyline and character are some of the most important elements to me in games. I tend to pay lots of attention to them. Sometimes way too much attention, to the point where I notice innuendo or foreshadowing that was probably never intentional. Anyway, I pay a lot of attention to the storyline, and actually work on my own to fix plotholes. I’m currently writing a megaman story about the cataclysm to do just that, even tying in as many of the manga as I can find in languages I can read.
EDIT: Reading the last part of SE’s last post, I agree. If you don’t like it, ignore it.
That still isn’t the game though and that isn’t a name change. “Blues” is Protoman’s Japanese name, much like Rockman (or just Rock) for Megaman. It also goes with Bass being “Forte” in Japan. In Blues Resurrection (which I haven’t read), he isn’t changing his name, they are just using his Japanese name.
As for your second part. Blasphemy! You take your stories for granted. Back in the old days, games didn’t have much of a story beyond save the princess (and even that was fairly extravagent). Besides, games can have awesome stories, but crappy gameplay and you just can’t play it.
No, I know that’s his Japanese name. He changes his name for secrecy sometime in the middle. It goes to something like Protoman, but more ominous, in the version I read (Edit: This is a British ‘subbing’ which refers to him as protoman, so I’m assuming they changed his new name, as well). I tried to say that in the post by slashing the names together (Protoman/Blues), but I guess it didn’t work…
Also, Bass’ dog’s name was Gospel or Classical, right? I know the whole name thing. In fact, in the story, I’m even using both names for different reasons. Megaman seemed like a shitty name to me, more of a superhero-type alias, so I had him be named Rock, but called Megaman by people who didn’t really know him. It actually, so far, works surprisingly well, for one of my ideas.
It bugs me because I try to follow it, and I pay attention (since I’m an attentive gamer). But I don’t want to have to remember a bunch of extraneous crap.
It’s like playing an RPG with an awful storyline. You’ll still pay attention to the story, but you won’t necessarily like doing so. It wouldn’t be as big of an issue if there were storylines that make sense, but trying to weave a huge complex world around Mega Man is just contrary to Mega Man’s humble origins.
I see the difference, and I was being playfull in my response…
But really, why care about somthing like that so much? I mean, they did that crap with all the Armored Core games as well. There are lots of video games that fall under the same circumstances you’ve described.
Because I long for the nostalgic days of yore, as I already alluded to…
And as for "huge complex world, just read Gilmech’s post. I can’t make heads or tails of any of it. There is some interpretation there, but the fact that enough official material exists that such interpretations could be made in such a way indicates the complexity of the MMX universe. Which gets even more confusing when you start to factor in the MMZ games and everything. >_<
As I said before, GilMech’s post was just a bunch of guesses made based on what we already know, and he made it a lot more complicated than it truly is.
If you really wanna know, I can post a summary of the X saga like I did with BoF, and you’ll see that the plot isn’t complex at all.