Mega Man 10: A Blast from the Past, in More Ways Than One?

We all know that a large part of Mega Man 10‘s hook is that it’s a retro-styled title, a blast from the past, made in the style of the 8-bit NES titles which brought the Blue Bomber to prominence. But it appears that the game gets a little more oldschool than we thought… or perhaps even more than Capcom intended.
Odds are, many of you reading this are only too familiar with the Nintendo Power Robot Master Design Contest held many years ago, with the results shown in the very same issue which covered Mega Man 5 for the NES and Mega Man 4 for the Game Boy, all as part of one huge collective Mega Man blowout. Scans of the contest feature have been posted across various parts of the internet for years, and of course, two winners not shown in the feature went on to be bosses in the sixth and final NES Mega Man title: Knight Man and Wind Man.

Now, years later, it appears that the contest had two more unexpected, belated winners… that is, assuming that Capcom themselves are even actively aware of it.

EmCeeGramr of the NeoGAF recognized two of the newly-revealed Robot Masters for Mega Man 10 as bearing an uncanny resemblance to two of the contest entries, and made a post illustrating them side-by-side:

While it appears that Capcom took inspiration from these two entries from long ago, Producer Keiji Inafune told Nintendo Power “this time around, we invited young designers to design bosses in hopes of giving them a chance to grow from the experience. I supervised their work and provided direction to maintain the MM universe.”

Admittedly, there are only so many ideas to go around, but even then, this seems rather odd– particularly in Blade Man’s case (as RMC of GoNintendo notes, they’re even the same colors). It’s a most peculiar circumstance, and we will try to learn more as we try to figure out who will be receiving credit for these Robot Masters.

News Credit: GoNintendo

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