Rockman Online Demo Details

This has definitely turned into a Rockman Online week. And while you’ve no certainly seen tons of footage, how does the game itself play? Japanese gaming site 4Gamer has a hands on report with the G-Star demo, along with the video footage, and they were also able to speak with NeoWiz’s assistant manager Min, Woon Gi.
In the final game, players will be able to join together in up to teams of up to four, although the demo was only single player. When you start the game, you select your character and transfer to a “town” that serves as the lobby. At the town you can purchase avatars and weapons, and select the stage you want to go to. According to Min, the ability to use stronger equipment when you level up, and how it relates to your avatar design, will be very “Rockman-ish.” In the G-Star version the town was not implemented, but the town is already complete (for the final game).

The characters are controlled simply with the keyboard. Directional keys are used to move right and left, pressing down crouches and you use up when the area moves (not sure what this means). You can dash by double typing right and left on the directional keys, or by pressing C. X is jump, Z is attack, and holding Z lets you charge your attack. A gamepad was not available for use with the demo, and there’s no word if the final game will support one.

In this version of the game, special attacks could be assigned to A, S, D and F. There were empty slots in the demo, so the number of keys may increase as you gain new weapons. Furthermore, four kinds of Battle Disks could be cycle through with the tab key, and activated by pressing B. Battle Disks give special abilities, such as becoming immune to spikes, causing your character to attack automatically, and increasing speed and defense. The player was using X, but it’s likely these keys are the same for every character type.

Finally, the 1 and 2 keys let you use refill tanks; 1 is for HP (like energy) and 2 is for MP (weapon energy). There’s a “cooling time” after using a tank that prevents you from using another for several seconds, though the writer speculates this was only for the G-Star demo.

As a final note, the writer adds that when you die, it makes the classic “tiun tiun” noise in the headphones when you die.

Rockman Online is expected to go into public beta sometime in 2011, though its formal release is not set. Furthermore, there is also no plans for service in Japan yet (nor anywhere else, I’d imagine).

There is also an event report from Capcom’s own Ucchy-san. Largely the same info, but many fun pics from G-Star if you’re interested, including Rockman ring toss. Yes, really.

News Credit: CAP Kobun

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