I didn’t want to use the same old Mega Man. And so I made this new character, and of course I knew the character I created, Zero, wasn’t anything like the old Mega Man and people were going to say, That’s not Mega Man!’ So I redesigned Mega Man as well, and we had this other new high-techno sort of Mega Man, and then we had Zero. I really liked this character, so I used him as a sub-character in the game.” In an interview with Polygon at Tokyo Game Show last year, Inafune discussed his idea of a Mega Man first-person shooter, but would not acknowledge the existence of Capcom and Armature’s collaboration on Maverick Hunter. Inafune referred to the Mega Man shooter as little more than an idea. “At the time, I thought about the good old Mega Man fans from the past, that was an audience from 20 years ago,” Inafune explained. “They’ve grown up. They’re adults. And when I thought about what people were enjoying the most right now, especially in the west, the answer was first-person shooters. “That’s why I thought the people who grew up with Mega Man might http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Call-Duty-Ghosts-Xbox-One-Runs-Smoothly-60387.html like it. I felt that it would be a huge hit for Capcom.” Development of the game was to be overseen by Ben Judd, producer of the Grin-developed Bionic Commando and Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Capcom’s earlier attempts to modernize a classic franchise. Like several other Mega Man games in development at the time, Maverick Hunter was canceled upon or around the announcement of Keiji Inafune’s departure from Capcom, and the game didn’t progress much further beyond a playable proof of concept as seen in video clips herein created by a small team in a few short months. “The playable was a proof of concept build rather than something intended as the real game or even a vertical slice,” a source said of the prototype. “This is sometimes done to explore a new concept for games before they are approved for full production. You see some of the core ideas in action, and extrapolate based on that to what it could become.” According to sources, while the game had strong support internally, Maverick Hunter was ultimately scrapped in greenlight meetings. Priming Priming Mega Man When Nintendo tasked Retro Studios with adapting the Metroid series into a 3D first-person shooter, the developers turned to established weapons, enemies and abilities to serve as the game’s foundation. Samus still had a charge beam and an ice beam and missiles. She could still roll into a ball and use bombs to open up hidden paths. She still battled Metroids and Space Pirates. In other words, Metroid Prime felt right because, despite the added dimension, it was still Metroid to the core. Armature and Capcom planned to give Mega Man the same treatment. In the prototype, Mega Man’s more realistic, humanoid character design grips a menacing gun that forms around his hand his armor transforms to create the gun, instead of morphing his entire arm into a cannon but he still mixes rapid fire attacks with more powerful shots. He dashes forward along corridors and in the air, evoking one of Mega Man X’s signature moves. He even throws a grenade that resembles the Gravity Well from X3. Mega Man’s armor in Maverick Hunter was designed by Adi Granov, known for his sharply rendered comic book covers and work on bringing Iron Man’s iconic red and gold suit to Marvel’s film franchise. Granov, who once worked as a concept artist at Redmond, Wash.-based developer Nintendo Software Technology on games like Bionic Commando: Elite Forces and Wave Race: Blue Storm, brought his trademark aesthetic to Mega Man’s appearance. The robot’s bright blue armor integrated and modernized classic elements, resulting in something clearly Mega Man, accented with a glowing red X slashed across his face. Maverick Hunter’s approach to weapons and attacks were more grounded in realism. Mega Man’s gunfire rocks with the metallic sound of a machine gun, and his more powerful shots are missiles, not charged up energy blasts from the classic X-Buster. He can charge into enemies, kicking the camera out to a third-person view as he demolishes them with a close quarters melee attack or energy burst. The core of Mega Man gaining powers by defeating bosses and swapping out weapons on the fly would be kept intact. Mega Man would have been able to absorb the weaponized abilities of his foes after defeating rival robots. “Comboing weapons together” would have been part of Maverick Hunter’s combat system, as would disposable weapons bombs, sentry guns and tank turrets that could be snatched from some enemies and used only a handful of times. In classic Mega Man fashion, enemies would be weak against certain weapons, requiring players to switch weapons on the fly to take them out. And despite the linear path shown in the prototype, the full game would have included branching paths. The design of the original Mega Man X, with its upgrades and sub-tanks secreted away in various corners, influenced Maverick Hunter’s. Branching pathways and context-sensitive areas that could be discovered by players would have offered variety to the game’s level-based design. Armature All quiet at Armature In April 2008, three of the key minds behind the Metroid Prime trilogy director Mark Pacini, lead art director Todd Keller and lead technical engineer Jack Mathews left Retro Studios. They departed after accomplishing something that seemed impossible, only a few short years before: they took a beloved Japanese series, reworked it into a first-person shooter, and won the adoration of fans who were at one point convinced Metroid would be ruined forever. Pacini, Keller and Mathews stayed at Retro in lead roles on Metroid Prime 2 and 3; Pacini even moved from his role as lead designer on the first game to the position of game director for the sequels. Eight months after Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’s August 2007 release, they were gone, and in September 2008 they announced what they were doing next. The trio formed Armature Studio in Austin, Texas, just a few miles away from their old Retro digs. Metroid Prime environmental artist Elizabeth Foster and senior engineer read more Steve McCrea soon joined them, and in 2010 two more former Retro developers started working at Armature. Despite the obvious talent collected at the small studio, it’s hard to tell, from the outside, what Armature has spent the past four years doing. The company website lists a single released title: Metal Gear Solid HD Collection for the PlayStation Vita, a port of Sons of Liberty and Snake Eater released in June 2012. The studio seems to have been cursed with bad luck since the beginning. When Pacini, Keller and Mathews announced Armature’s formation in 2008, they also announced an “exclusive publishing deal with EA” to develop games for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.
The original article was published here: http://www.polygon.com/2013/4/9/4179628/mega-man-fps-maverick-hunter
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