The Mega Man DVD Set That Almost Was

Like so many things do, it all started on Twitter.

Protodude mentioned that the Discotek DVD set of the Mega Man animated series from Ruby-Spears was on sale, and I remarked… well, see for yourself:

Some folks responded that they wanted to know what I was talking about, so I guess that “someday” is now today.

Over the years, I’ve had my hands in a few official Mega Man products. The Mega Man Robot Master Field Guide and Mega Man X Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide are probably the most successful for my involvement by far, while on the other end of the spectrum, some never came to pass.

I guess technically, this one falls in the middle. It did get released, after all, but not as it could have been.

Over a decade ago, Discotek announced that they were going to be re-releasing the Ruby-Spears Mega Man series on DVD. But aside from a spiffy box, it was pretty bare bones. For someone like me, who had the previous ADV release (which was itself pretty bare-bones), there was almost no incentive here to purchase the new set, besides the shiny new box.

Then I got to thinking to myself, “what if there was more to it than just a new box? What would it take to make me buy it again?”

That’s when I realized, “wait a minute — I have stuff that would make me buy it again! And so do others I know!”

So, in early 2014, I started reaching out. First, to my fellow Ruby-Spears fans in the Mega Man community, and then to Discotek themselves.

They were pretty amenable to the idea, but had little budget for the project, and “the licensor has absolutely /nothing/ to include.”

Us, on the other hand? Oh, we had oodles of stuff to include that we were willing to bring to the table for little compensation — I think we were mainly looking for credit and copies of the DVDs for promotional purposes and the like (and, you know, a copy for us to keep for ourselves), though I will say that some cash was offered.

Here’s what we could provide:

The First-Draft Series Bible

This was my big contribution. Yeah, I’ve had this thing kicking around for a number of years. I had other plans for it that didn’t come to pass, but this seemed like the perfect way to get it out there and effectively immortalize it. Maybe I’ll find another good way to do it someday (that isn’t just scanning the pages and throwing them on Twitter. I want something a little more worthy and worthwhile than that).

Character Model Sheets

Some years ago, M Sipher had a chance to talk to Joe Ruby about the Mega Man cartoon for an interview with ASM, and featured there were several model sheets and other things from the cartoon. The plan was for him to reach out and see what, to that end, he could obtain for the DVD set, along with the interview itself (at least the Mega Man parts).

Episode Commentary

The Mega Man cartoon had its lows (“Curse of the Lion Men”), and it had its highs (“Mega X”). The idea here was that for a few of these (only two or three), M Sipher and I would provide some audio commentary about them, as well as some of the things that the cartoon got right from the game canon.

Lots of Toy Content

The Mega Man cartoon produced an unprecedented amount of merchandise for the brand at the time. The idea was to feature a gallery of as much of it as we could, including the above toy commercial (but ripped fresh from a VHS tape), along with pictures and maybe even some videos featuring turnarounds of the action figures and demonstrations of their action features from the collection of Andrew Dickman. We were also hoping to include some images of some of the unreleased toys from the line, too.

VHS Cover Art Gallery

The Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon had four different VHS tape releases from Sony Wonder, each featuring unique artwork for the show. We had hoped to provide these at high resolution for easy perusal. Incidentally, it’s tough to find these in good quality online today.

If possible, we were also hoping to include scans of the covers for the ADV DVDs, including Mega Man: Upon a Star, though those were said to be unlikely to be usable.

The Awesome German Theme Song

This might have required some extra string-pulling, but yeah, the idea was put forth to include this theme on there somewhere as well.

Mega Man Album Cover Scans

Getting the contents of the CD? Probably impossible, save for maybe one song. But high-res scans of the covers and liner notes and such? Those, I was ready to provide, if they could be used.

The Pilot/Sales Pitch Trailer

Last, but certainly not least, we were going to include a copy of the famous pilot/sales pitch trailer for the cartoon, courtesy of David Minter. While the full version includes some stuff for Mega Man: The Wily Wars and Mega Man X, I was informed that we’d likely only be able to use the cartoon stuff.

In addition to these features, there was also some brief talk of things like game magazine coverage of the cartoon from back in the day, or a look at some of the major names from the voice cast, as they’d gone on to do other popular shows, such as Dragon Ball Z, Transformers, ReBoot, and more, but none of that went very far.

So, then. What happened? Why was none of this included in the set?

Talks slowed down in June, when I last heard that Capcom was being “picky” about things. I finally heard what was going on in August — the month before the set was due to be released. My contact told me that they’d gone back and forth with the guy in charge of the set, and “essentially everything we suggest requires a herculean amount of approvals, and would have to be completely finished. And even after it’s done, they could be gutted at any time. (edited for clarity)”

“Even the pilot, they were like, we need to get permission from the person who owns it… and it’s like… you guys own it!!”

And that was pretty much that, much to their disappointment and ours. We set out to create a definitive edition of the Ruby-Spears Mega Man on DVD, but it just didn’t happen. Maybe it can happen someday, but that day was not in 2014.

But hey… at least it’s got a nice box.

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Banner pic courtesy of Protodude.