Capcom says it’s ‘considering’ how to make Mega Man games on a regular basis

videogameschronicle.com:

Capcom has claimed that it’s looking into creating new Mega Man games more regularly.

Speaking during the question and answer portion of its 45th ordinary general shareholders meeting, when asked about plans for the franchise, Capcom responded:

“Mega Man is one of our highly-valued IPs and we are considering how to create games for it on an ongoing basis.”

Capcom recently shared a survey asking which classic Capcom franchise fans would like new entries in. Capcom regularly releases these surveys, which ask about dormant series like Dino Crisis.

While a number of retro compilations of older Mega Man titles have been released in recent years, entirely new entries in the series are few and far between.

The releases of Mega Man 9 in 2008, Mega Man 10 in 2010, and Mega Man 11 in 2018 have marked the only major Mega Man games in the past 15 years.

According to Capcom’s own internal data, the Mega Man series has sold more than 38 million units over its 36-year history.

Nintendo recently added all five Game Boy Mega Man games to the Nintendo Switch Online service.

The five games, known as Rockman World 1-5 in Japan, are not straight ports of the NES games but have some similarities, with most of them featuring bosses from the console games.

All five games, with the exception of Mega Man II, were outsourced by Capcom to another studio called Minakuchi Engineering, and were received positively by critics.

For Mega Man II, the game was outsourced to another developer called Japan System House. Mega Man co-designer Keiji Inafune said this was the Game Boy Mega Man game he liked the least, claiming the studio wasn’t familiar with the series, and as such Capcom returned to Minakuchi Engineering for the third game.