The Four Year Mortuary Anniversary of Legends 3

Four years ago today on July 19th Japanese time, Capcom announced the cancellation Mega Man Legends 3. Most games have a launch date; far fewer a cancellation date. Legends 3's legendary cancellation came as a shock to the world precisely because production wasn't troubled leading up to the moment the plug was pulled. Fan participation in the project devroom was strong, the game was getting press coverage around the world, and the worst roadblock the game had encountered was its prototype being delayed to not be a launch title for the 3DS eShop. One day Legends 3 was the most anticipated Nintendo title of 2011, and the next it was an article on Unseen 64.

While many jokes have been told this past year about imagining hating any man as much as Konami hates Hideo Kojima, hating people is one of the few fronts Capcom can proudly claim to be a pioneer on. The cancellation of Legends 3 was preempted by Keiji Inafune's departure from the company, despite his repeatedly stated willingness to continue working on the project. That hate was seemingly turned on fans as the company stopped the complete Legends 3 demo from reaching the Nintendo eShop. (To date, the prototype has only been played by one man not working for Capcom, former Nintendo Power editor Chris Hoffman.) The cancellation of Mega Man Universe, and the launch of Rockman Xover--possibly the worst Flash game not blammed by Newgrounds--to celebrate the Mega Man franchise's 25th anniversary marked the lowest point with Capcom since Star Force 2.

The company continued to drag the Legends' corpse through the mud up through 2014, including supporting character Aero in their Otoranger rhythm game to sell copies despite canceling anything and everything else related to Legends. And while not coming from Capcom themselves, it certainly added insult to injury that singer Reika Morishita claimed Legends 3 could be revived if her 2012 digital-only album Another Sun 2012 sold more than 20,000 copies. Yet on this anniversary, it's not false hope that I'm here to observe.

This announcement of Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, Inafune's bid to retake control of Legends while filing off the serial numbers, was doubtless made with this specific month in mind. Today the legend died; what better time to revive the dream? Looking at the initial concept material and pitch video, it's clear that Inafune's overarching vision for Red Ash is to use the ideas that Capcom won't.

Unlike his previous Mighty No. 9, the Red Ash kickstarter has been plagued by funding problems throughout, suspicions of foul play, and questions as to whether it's really ethical for Inafune to use ideas from Mega Man at all. Inafune helped create the Mega Man character, but is reinvisioning him as Beck for No. 9, or for that matter reinvisioning Rockman DASH as Red Ash ethical? Some would go so far as to accuse Inafune of infringing on Capcom's intellectual property, while others would argue that since Inafune created those properties in the first place, he has every right to take his ball with him over to Comcept. The decision to launch Red Ash now was sensible from a business perspective, as in the lead-up to No. 9's release this September, Comcept needs to keep making use of its resources--they can't pay their employees to do nothing for three months. But Red Ash has also been a promotional nightmare because of the timing of the kickstarter, when as the first real opportunity to revive Legends 3 since its death, the game ought to have been an overnight success. Why?

The Hideki Kamiya echochamber would have it that Inafune is a conman lurking on the Osaka backstreets, selling fake Rolexes and discount condoms while lying about his taxes to protect his offshore Swiss bank accounts. The buzzword of the month is "businessman;" he's a businessman, not a game developer. Inafune doesn't really make games, he's just a sellout. Not one of "us;" an "other," outsider, unwanted, no better than Capcom. Get out of the industry and go make smartphone games.

Kamiya himself clarified that he wasn't attacking Inafune when he first called him a businessman back in 2012, and that he respects Inafune's work as a businessman, but this isn't convenient for a quick tumblr post. Notice the disparity? At this time there's nearly three hundred favorites on the businessman tweet and three on the respect tweet. The gamer community wants Inafune to be a conman, and cherrypicked Kamiya's old tweet to support the narrative of a beloved childhood creator betraying fans, selling out, and making T-shirts.

Keiji Inafune is an illustrator.

He's a producer now, but Inafune started out as and remains an illustrator. By his admission, the original design for Mega Man already existed, and Inafune simply took over for creating the series' artwork. Creating Zero in the Mega Man X franchise was where he was able to get the creative freedom to not base his work on an existing design. Why should he need to prove himself again? We know that trying to exclude him from this boys' club of gamers and game developers is ridiculous. Inafune's made on-the-ground contributions to the industry before. His current work is in coordinating and directing the production of games. No, it's not as exciting as Iwata debugging Melee in three weeks; but I'd remind you all that at the end Iwata chose to pursue a very similar path to Inafune in helping set up funding and development staff for games rather than being a hands-on developer. This industry needs more Inafunes and Iwatas. Producers that have experience working very closely with developers. The producer is in a macro position, but that doesn't make their work any less essential to the creation of video games.

Hyde has been set up as a developer incapable of tackling the project; I'm referring to one post in particular, originally from the man behind loltaku, what the gamer community would like to be the Jon Stewart of games journalism. The problem with this is that Hyde has contributed to major titles and is respected in the Japanese game development sphere--the company's been around since 2005--but those titles are not listed on the page the original poster linked because the company is contractually blocked from listing them. Hyde is a shadow developer for other companies, including Atlus, Konami, Square Enix, SEGA, Nippon Ichi, and Namco Bandai. All of these companies have outsourced development to Hyde under the conditions of a nondisclosure agreement, in exchange for a bigger check. Catastrophically mismanaged kickstarter or no, what Comcept is doing is positively noble by comparison--actually letting Hyde take credit for working on Red Ash. Other companies refuse to admit Hyde contributed anything, only letting low-exposure smartphone titles reach their list of past works, despite several triple-A developers all being in on the Hyde bicycle.

As for the franchising of Mighty No. 9, none of the money from the kickstarter went towards the TV series. Digital Frontier secured their own line of funding for the animated series, and will have to pay royalties to Comcept for the intellectual property like any other television show. (Think ABC and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Marvel doesn't pay ABC to produce the show!) The talks of a live action film have some eyebrows raised, as historically live action adaptations of video games have have a poor track record. Even the fanmade Mega Man film from 2010 was subject to poor critical reception, and the diamond in the rough is Ace Attorney, which went over far better with existing fans than with new viewers. What could Inafune be thinking? A Kamen Rider version of Mighty No. 9? More likely, he has his eye on the issue of branding and funding. Having another studio making a Mighty No. 9 product will boost sales of the game through better public recognition, as well as secure another line of funding for Comcept to ensure they won't follow the same fate as Love-de-Lic or other small-time companies. Again, the studio pays the IP owner. These deals may feel slimy, but they're no different from Nintendo's T-shirt or lunchbox deals. Ruthless product coordination is necessary to stay in the business.

Let's assume for a moment that everything bad said about Inafune is true. He's a deeply corrupt, apocalyptic incarnation of Mammon hellbent on amassing a pile of gold to sit on, and would take the fillings out of his own mother's teeth for the secondary silver market. He'd sell your soul to Satan for one corn chip.

He's still using that money to a better purpose than Capcom.

Left: Mega Man Legends. Right: Mega Man 64.

I first experienced Legends in its more polished form as Mega Man 64, so the announcement of Legends 3 was one of my premiere reasons to own a 3DS. 64 made a few trades for quality's sake; downsampled audio and a lower draw distance, in exchange for anti-aliasing and analog control. (One of the most frustrating aspects of Legends on the PlayStation is the tank controls. It predated the DualShock, and it was only after Legends 2 launched that the original game was ported to the Nintendo 64 and the controls developed for Legends 2 were applied to the port.) While there have been occasional complaints about the quality of the voice files compared to the PlayStation edition, given the hardware of the time it's difficult to tell the difference while playing. The things 64 gave up resulted in dramatically greater returns on everything it gained. Certainly we'd love the technical improvements of both systems, but that just wasn't possible at the time. You don't get to have your cake and eat it too. Any grown-up can deal with that.

Perhaps we ought to take a leaf from 64's booklet, and be more willing to make compromises. No, Inafune isn't Satoru Iwata. Nobody is! But he's not a mustachio-twirling cartoon villain either. He's a human being with aspirations, dreams, goals, and yes, flaws. He's also willing to make Legends 3, something which Capcom is decidedly against and has blocked at every level since Inafune's departure. I would take the devil we know in this case. Inafune's cash demands are predictable, mundane, and beneficial compared to Capcom's. Yet truthfully speaking, this is a false comparison--because Capcom isn't going to magically touch the Legends franchise if Red Ash fails. We're not choosing between one developer and another. Either the community funds Red Ash, or the legend stays dead. Within my lifetime, Inafune will expire; I for one don't want the one game he most consistently expressed interest in making happen, to be left unmade by that time.