Grega Man Gets Interviewed by GMOTM

It’s been just over two years since Greg “Grega Man” Moore bid a fond farewell to the members of Capcom Unity. And while he’s still active on Twitter, we haven’t seen as much of him in Mega City as we used to.

That is, until now.

Recently, as part of their year-long celebration of Mega Man Legends, the folks over at Get Me Off The Moon had a chance to chat with the longtime liaison to the fans about some things, most notable among them being Mega Man Legends 3 (of course).

You’re going to want to put a pot of coffee on — this bad boy is nearly 90 minutes long.

And if I’m being completely honest, I haven’t even had time to listen to the whole thing myself yet. However, if your interest needs piquing (or you’re just as time-constrained as I am), here are some handy excerpts provided by the folks over at GMOTM (complete with time stamps):

 On why Capcom decided to get the fans involved with MML3:

51:07 – “Well, the biggest strength that this series has is its really passionate fanbase. And Christian Svensson [former SVP at Capcom USA] had already established that you can generate a lot of good will and ultimately do a lot of good for the company if you acknowledge these fanbases . . . And we had just had this big success story with Street Fighter IV by pulling Seth Killian on board — he basically played this instrumental role in churning out a very polished product that ended up being a big hit. And, y’know, there were other successes in that vein happening in Capcom at that time . . . so, I think it [getting the fans involved in MML3] probably made sense [to Capcom] at the time. It’s like, ‘Okay, let’s REALLY invest in community and basically do this experiment: We’re going to take a game where, like, basically the only thing going for it in 2010 is this community following.’ Y’know, ’cause it was also a matter of where games as a whole were . . . Like, what does the alpha of 3D action-adventures have to offer in 2010 when there have been thousands of these? As opposed to 1998 where not even Ocarina of Time had come out yet.

“So, I think there were a lot of things working against it, but it was an experiment. Looking back, it was very haphazard to announce something that had all these caveats, and not talk about the caveats.”

55:24 – “You could argue that Mega Man has always been a community-outreach IP, right? Like, they’ve always done these little things like ‘design a boss.’ So, there’s a narrative there, right? This [the decision to get fans involved in MML3] is a logical evolution of that [design a Robot Master] idea. And Legends specifically has always been this ‘fan darling’ sort of sleeper hit . . . So it makes sense to make this [the MML3 project] all about the community — especially since Legends needs all the help it can get in 2010. It’s not particularly relevant, especially coming to the 3DS, which is just a giant question mark at that point in time.

“So, it made sense from that angle. I just think that there was a very high risk, and the fans were not made aware of that risk until they were already pretty invested, unfortunately.”

On what the heck happened to get MML3 and the Prototype scrapped:

58:18 – “I mean, I don’t think we’ll ever know the full story there, but for whatever reason, it didn’t get a pass. We had seen the same slice [of MML3] that Nintendo Power saw. And I dunno, I can’t say that I completely understand what happened behind closed doors that damned this game, because that slice… it was fine.”

On what his time was like working on MML3:

1:04:03 – “It was very challenging. That was maybe one of the most challenging periods of my whole life. Because I was just so green — I had no frame of reference for how these things normally ran — and this was a very unconventional and dysfunctional project, as you know (chuckles). So, for that to be my first one, I was just freaking our constantly . . . and I’ll be honest: when we finally pulled the plug [on Legends 3], the first feeling I had was tremendous relief… And then it was like, ‘oh crap.’ Because we had unleashed this terrible news on the world.

“But… it was hard, and I think part of it was that we had all collectively been passed this baton kind of unexpectedly. Y’know, this game had a very clear champion behind it [initially], and then it didn’t.”

LBD "Nytetrayn"

David Oxford, or “LBD ‘Nytetrayn’,” as he is sometimes also known, is a freelance writer of many varied interests who resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. If you’re interested in hiring him, please drop him a line at david.oxford (at) nyteworks.net.

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