MM Universe: Looking Back on Something Old with Something New

It’s been a full year since the cancellation of Mega Man Universe. It happened to be on my birthday too, making it just a little more special! Anyway, as much as I’ve racked my brain, I don’t have much insightful to say on the matter. Some say this marked the beginning of Mega Man’s downfall, though honestly there are so many ways to analyze it that I can’t really be sure of that. But it did definitely shake the fanbase, even as relatively unpopular as the game seemed to be prior.
Since coming to Japan, however, I’ve been able to snag some promotional items for the game from TGS 2010; sticks and postcards. It’s not much, but there are a few bits of art and such that never saw wide circulation during MMU‘s short lifetime. And anyway, there’s little else positive I can extract from the whole mess!

Hey now, it’s Mega Man doing something other than looking straight forward. A number of people criticized this game’s art style… and I agree that it was out there. But I also kind of got used to it; it has a simplistic charm. What I really think was the problem is that nearly all the character art released was just of people standing still and looking straight forward. I get that there was a method to it, but it made them look a lot more dull.

And here we have a Met, just… bein’ a Met. I don’t have much else to say about it.

Here’s a scan of Roll. Unfortunately, the friend who was cleaning these up for me ran into some computer trouble, so the finished Roll art will have to be added later. I remember really turning my nose up the first time I saw Roll in this game, but really she has kind of a cute style.

Here’s the Rockman type postcard. These are nice because, so far as I recall, they’re the only published close up models of the game sprites. I don’t think they look too bad like this, even though they were intended to be rendered small scale.

And here’s Old Man Mega, before he put on all that weight. I was always kind of miffed they referred to this as U.S. Mega Man, as if we in the US preferred this look or something. A joke is one thing, but come on. Sadly I do not have the new style Mega Man post card so far.

Here’s what the back of both cards looks like. Hey look at that handsome guy on the right, it’s Joveth. Remember him? Even more startling is a helmetless Ucchy-san standing next to him. That’s the clearest you’ll see his hair since he censors it now.

Anyway, that’s all I have to show off. Sorry it’s not anything more interesting. You know, I can understand a lot of the criticism this game endured, and based on what aspects we did come to know of it, I do doubt it would have done very well. There’s probably never going to be a 100,000 Strong for Mega Man Universe. But darnit, I still would have liked to try it out.

Many thanks to Kevin for cleaning up the Mega Man and Met images.

TMMN Staff