Ask Capcom Mega Man Round-Up: Reika Morishita’s Numbers, Tron’s PSone Classic, & More

Many questions are asked in Capcom Unity’s “Ask Capcom” forum, but not all of them get answered. On occasion, some do– by actual Capcom staff, at that– and some of those are even Mega Man questions. Here are a couple of the latest.
Following a tip from Sketchman3, we found one post from Jake Hans, one of the people responsible for the 100,000 Strong for Mega Man Legends 3 movement. He also had a hand in the recent controversial report that Rockman DASH theme singer Morishita Reika believes that selling 20,000 copies of her upcoming album featuring those themes could see the Prototype Version released.

There, he states the following:

This is Jake Hans, the person that published the figure of 20,000 sales for the Prototype.

There appears to have been a translation error. Reika has talked to Capcom Japan about this project (I’m sure Sven can back me up on that), but there was no negotiation of 20,000 sales for the Prototype.

This was fan speculation amongst myself, some guys in Japan, and a translator. Reika did not say 20,000 sales of an album would result in a Prototype. Please forgive me, Reika should not be judged for my mistake. I don’t speak Japanese, and I was not at the meeting.

I’ve also PM this to Sven.

So, there you have it; you can put down your pitchforks and effigies of Reika now.

Meanwhile, as chatter about Mega Man in all of its iterations commences, one person asked about the Legends spin-off, The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. In particular, they note that it would be nice if the game were to see a release on the PlayStation Network, likely as a PSone Classic.

Capcom Unity’s Gregaman added his two Zenny, noting that “Unfortunately, my understanding is that MoTB had some copyrighted music in it preventing a rerelease =\ A bummer, to be sure!” And while the Japanese version does feature a theme song which is undoubtedly licensed, one must wonder about the U.S. version, though word has been that voices and other things we may not even notice could contribute to other licensed issues.

Capcom Unity moderator Deva Ashera adds the following:

For how Capcom would, most likely, release Mega Man Legends 1, 2, and Misadventures of Tron Bonne, they couldn’t simply swap out or change anything, since they would release them as PSone Classics.

The reason why they simply can’t swap or change anything is due to how Sony does the PSone Classics, stating that each PSone Classic has to be kept exactly as it was originally, meaning all the same music, voice acting, types, errors, etc. (For example, in Final Fantasy VII, Aerith was kept as ‘Aeris’ and they kept in the translation errors and typos).

In order to fix that, Capcom would have to actually port the title, including giving it trophies and an extra budget rather then using Sony’s PSone Emulatation as they would do for a PSone Classic.

The easier way is to likely try and find a way to get the rights to the music, voice acting, etc.

Incidentally, if we ever did get Legends 3, they’d likely have to start from scratch on the voice acting anyway, so casting anew in a port would make sense, to say nothing of keeping things consistent.

In any case, that seems to be the state of things for now. Hopefully Capcom figures something out, and negotiates better contracts in the future so we don’t wind up in messes like this again.

Finally, not much to extract in the way of quotes from this one– mainly as Capcom has yet to respond to it– but one thread which continues on is “Does Capcom understand why GetMeOffTheMoon reached 100,000 people? We love Mega Man Legends!” Now at 10 pages, it has largely become about people explaining what Mega Man Legends, and sometimes just Mega Man in general, mean to them.

TMMN Staff