Fan Hits the Mother Lode with Discovery of Mega Man 8 Animation Cels

Mega Man 8 is perhaps one of the most notorious entries in the entire Mega Man franchise, and there is perhaps no greater contributor to that status than the game’s animated cutscenes — or at least, the voice acting which accompanied them, as well as other parts of the game.

But the animation itself was pretty nice for its time — not Disney motion picture quality or anything, but at least the characters tended to be drawn on-model with the accompanying promotional art for the game and colored correctly, which is more than we can say for its sister release, Mega Man X4. So how cool would it be to actually own a piece of that slice of gaming history?

For freelance games and anime writer Heidi “Zerochan” Kemps, it turned out to be too cool to resist, which is why she recently walked away from the Fanimecon 2017 Swap Meet with a whole boxload of animation cels from the game for just a few Ben Franklins (one Ben = $100 USD, for those of you less familiar with American currency).

With so much of video game development history either being made digitally, tossed in the trash when no longer needed (holler if you’re at the dump and happen to find the source code for the Game Boy Mega Man games), or locked in a vault somewhere (hi, Nintendo), finds like these are pretty rare (though the buying and selling of animation cels being a bit more commonplace was probably these samples’ saving grace, though those from video games are still a bit rarer).

During the recent Portland Retro Gaming Expo’s Retro Games Roadshow panel, gaming historians Chris Kohler of Kotaku and Frank Cifaldi of GameHistoryOrg (who you might also remember helped with Mega Man Legacy Collection) estimated that the value of the contents of Kemps’ haul could actually be thousands of dollars.

Kemps has said that she’ll be making a video of the collection before offering a few of the individual cels up for sale, so keep an eye out for those. On the one hand, I can’t imagine breaking up a set like this, but on the other, I know bills gotta be paid.

The two images above are but a sample of what can be found on USgamer’s article (Full disclosure: Written by my wife), so head over there if you’re interested in seeing more of this fantastic find.

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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