Another Mega Man Cancellation? (Updated)

Well, seeing the response to this should be fun.
As we reported previously, reasons unknown led to the release of the PlayStation Portable Mega Man Dual Pack being delayed in Canada until today. After an early breakfast at the mall but before departing for the airport to see family off after the local Thanksgiving holiday, we stopped in to our local EB Games/GameStop to grab a copy of the two-in-one Blue Bomber bundle to send with as a gift, and that’s when we were met with the unfortunate news.

According to the clerk at the store, they had received an e-mail from the vendor/publisher that the bundle had been canceled. Which, of course, made no sense to us, given that the pack had already been released in the U.S. a month prior. So, it was apparently a Canadian cancellation, then.

Needless to say, this was disappointing. Fortunately, we have the original releases, and since the pack was going to someone in the States anyway, it probably isn’t anything sending $15 won’t solve. Nonetheless, this is still unfortunate for any Canadian PSP owners who like Mega Man and don’t have either game… which, admittedly, is perhaps a rather specific demographic.

Beyond that, though, this does raise a couple of questions. The first would be whether the pack is well and truly canceled, and not just in Canada– might the run which was released to U.S. stores be the only one? And of course, there is the big one: is there some greater meaning behind this? Is this another sign that Capcom is trying to stamp out the Mega Man brand (in video games, anyway)? Or is there something else to all this?

Given that Canada tends to see releases for video games, movies, and other media day and date with the United States, this was already a strange situation, but now things are all the more bizarre. We’ve reached out to Capcom to see if we can get any answers regarding this most bewildering turn of events.

And as an aside: they didn’t have the new issue of Game Informer with the Transformers: Fall of Cybertron cover story, so we wound up leaving empty handed.

Update: On an Ask Capcom thread devoted to the matter, Senior Vice President Christian Svensson noted “It’s a Gamestop exclusive. You’d have to ask Gamestop if they’d sent any North of the border.”

Huh. So EB Games/GameStop says it was Capcom who told them it was axed, and Capcom says it’s up to GameStop. Going by some of the comments below, we can imagine that a few of you may take it as GameStop employees not knowing that of which they speak.

TMMN Staff