Totally Mega, Man: Mighty No. 9 Released
The crowdfunded Mega Man 'em up
Mighty No. 9 [official site], the crowdfunded Mega Man 'em up from Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune's new studio, is out today. Our review is still in the works but Wot Others Think seems not wholly positive. I could tell you to wait for our say then bosh in the launch trailer and call it a day but oh my gosh, I am fascinated by its launch livestream. While many video game launch streams are hype-o-ramas, this is also a bit of a post-mortem, disarmingly earnest and mildly apologetic after seeing the first wave of launch reviews. It's surprisingly human.
But first, the game: Mighty No. 9 is very Mega Man-y, as you'd expect. A little robot man runs, jumps, and air-dashes through 2.5D levels zapping robots and ultimately facing a series of mighty bosses. Its little twist on the formula is getting power-ups from every robot if you dash through 'em at the right time.
It's out for Windows on Steam, with Mac and Linux versions still to come, for £15.99/19,99€/$19.99. Well, out in the Americas. We're still waiting in Europe. That Eurogamer lot say it has good things going on but is difficult in silly ways; others are less favourable. Have a launch trailer:
So, that launch livestream! You might've seen folks on this here Internet swinging quotes like "At the end of the day, even if it's not perfect, it's better than nothing." Which, yep, they do say, but it's in the context of a stream where they've been talking about mistakes they've made and troubles they've faced. How they're frustrated about cyberpeople throwing its $3.8 million crowdfunding total back at them as if they blew it all on lollipops - as if that's even the budget they had, when fees and rewards and whatnot mean they only got about 60% to make the game. How they realised too late how foolish it was to commit to launching on ten platforms at once. How the game faced years longer in the light than most non-crowdfunded games, leading to both hype dying down and expectations being inflated. How making a game is more difficult and expensive than most people realise. How it's tired and stressed them. How they're still proud of it. Devs want their games to be good too, you know.
I wouldn't call it riveting viewing but, if you have a quiet mo, you might want to pop the stream on in the background while you do something else. Weirdly disarming games happenings. Or fuel to gloat over some imagined victory, if that's what you like.