The following is an open letter to all readers of the Facebook page "Get Me Off The Moon: 100,000 Strong for Bringing Back Mega Man Legends 3", and will be reposted there.
Dear friends, Servbots, Beckers, and other miscellaneous netizens,
As I started writing this, it has been three years to the day since Capcom took the inexplicable step of killing development of Mega Man Legends 3. And let me tell you, my faith in humanity has never been the same since. As far as I’m concerned, Capcom has joined the ranks of such Western-based publishers as EA, Activision, and King, who eschew creativity and good will in favour of short-term profits. “Revive a unique series that’s lain dormant for over a decade?” they seem to say. “That’s not what the people want! You want us to rehash the same niche-interest versus-fighters and a former survival-horror series!” And I’m thinking, that’s gotta stop.
To this very day, Capcom -- and when I bring them up, I am referring to their Japanese headquarters -- has not directly given a valid reason for their actions. (And for the record, I choose not to count that Capcom Europe tweet.) Until such rationale comes to light, I have no choice to blame Capcom’s ill will with Keiji Inafune. And for the record, I do harbour some ill will of my own towards Inafune-sama; after all, if he hadn’t left the company so early, he might have been the insurance policy necessary to see Legends 3 to completion. (But that would be like blaming the Jews for World War II. The problem wasn’t that they existed, but that someone reacted poorly to them.)
But despite not yet having reached our ultimate goal of bringing Legends 3 back to the public, a lot has happened to our fandom among these past three years. Our cause has brought together fans from all corners of the world. (Seriously, we’ve got people from the likes of Malta and Bahrain.) We have produced fan games galore, and even launched a model rocket in its honour. A comic-book serial starring Mega Man has been launched -- and a thumpin’ good one, I’d vouch. Mega Man himself has also been honoured with a playable crossover appearance in the upcoming Super Smash Bros. 4 games (so renamed because screw this business of recycled titles). I myself have snuck countless references to our cause on my own blog, the Strawberry Dragon Project, which you are reading right now. It would seem that Mega Man’s 25th anniversary was celebrated by literally -- OK, not really, I’ve become conscious about the overuse of the word “literally” these days -- virtually everybody except Capcom, who holds the keys to the licence itself.
Perhaps chief among all our accomplishments would be the successful kick-starting (in more ways than one) of Mighty No.9, a new IP bestowed upon us by no less than the co-creator of Mega Man himself, Keiji Inafune. I don’t know about you, but having viewed this development in the context of what Legends 3 could -- nay, should -- have been, I wasn’t entirely satisfied with getting this in its place. It’s like getting a consolation prize on a game show. But when considering the big picture, the story of Mighty No.9 is, in essence, about a force for creative individuality (Inafune-sama) pitting himself against a giant bureaucratic entity (Capcom) and the souless stasis it enforces. So yeah, I ended up backing it in the end, and I regret nothing.
But if anything brought closure to this matter, or at least the next best thing, it would be the news that not one, but two of the fangames are attempting to re-create what Legends 3 could have been. One seeks to incorporate the story and some gameplay elements of the equally-cancelled Legends 3 Prologue into classic 2D Mega Man gameplay. And one is a straight-up, full-3D reconstruction of the game. Who knows how far that last one will get, but just announcing it with whatever progress they've made thus far is a heartwarming achievement in and of itself. If you have not already done so, I invite you to watch their (currently Japanese-only) trailer, the intro of which really hits me in the feels. But now I feel I am at a point where I can let this whole ordeal free from my soul. I'm not going to un-Like the Facebook page or anything like that, perish the thought; it's more of an emotional thing, you know?
In conclusion, to those reading this letter, I offer two pieces of advice. First, don’t obsess over this matter. If you let this cause cloud over your mind, you’ll never think a happy thought again, and you’ll never get to enjoy life. Even if it’s just another cause to obsess over, like how Hayao Miyazaki’s farewell masterpiece The Wind Rises got snubbed for the Best Animated Feature Oscar, simply because the jurors respected animation so little as a serious art form that they couldn’t be arsed to do their job properly. ...Fat lot of good that did, then. Of course, don’t forget about our cause completely; come back to it once every couple of months or so, and make a positive contribution.
And to that effect, my second advice is: know your enemy. We need to direct our focus onto the top-level management of Capcom in Japan. It’s all well and good to score interviews with Inafune-sama and other such people who wanted to make Legends 3, but I think it would have been even better to land an interview with Capcom’s CEO or somesuch. That way, we’d be asking the right questions to the right people. As I learned from the villain in a James Bond movie (brownie points for guessing which one), “the key to a good story is not who, or what, or when, but why.” Only by knowing the “why” of all parties involved, and acting based on them, can we make true progress in the world.
Legends never die,
Kevin M.
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