One thing a lot of people complained about for Mega Man Universe was its revamped "American cartoon" based grumpy Mega Man art style. Before that, Mega Man Powered Up got equally rough treatment for its cutesy super deformed art direction.

Seems that every time Mega Man tries to get updated to modern hardware nowadays, he gets a new art style. I'm sure they try to do this to both distinguish the new brand and appeal to a wider audience, but it seems like every time they alienate part of their fan base. I wonder if they'd be better off not creating a new style at all?

With Mega Man 9 they returned to the old MM3-6 style to nearly universal acclaim. It's old, it's simple, it's what people remember, and out of those three games I mentioned, it's the only one to garner a sequel. Do gamers just not want a new art style for Mega Man? Is Capcom just making things harder for themselves trying out all these new artistic directions?

Personally, I was more than happy to give both Powered Up and Universe's art style a try. But it seems to me that with both of these games, if they hadn't gone to such extremes (in fact they're practically polar opposites) with the promotional art, the games may have actually sold and reviewed far higher (or at least some fans would have had much less to complain about). Would Capcom be better off reusing the old styles (and that could be MM7 or MM8 or Complete Works re-releases art as well) over and over? Or is pushing the envelope an important thing to do as well? Would people just complain anyway, citing developer laziness? Is it a total catch 22? What do you guys think?

p.s. I didn't just create this post to get an achievement... OR DID I?

I was honestly more annoyed with the fact that it was just MM2 with a level editor. I really think that's mostly the reason why it tanked.

I guess that perception is another good reason why they might have wanted to change the art style, so that it didn't appear to be your typical rehash. (Like Rockman 2 Complete Works which I think is already on PSN?)

It really makes me sad to hear people repeat that though. "Just Mega Man 2." With a level editor. With updated graphics and sound. With multiple playable characters, even from other media. With a character editor to create your own playable character. With (presumably) completely new levels and enemies thrown in, challenges and gamer achievements, and a limitless potential for additional downloadable content that could expand far beyond its starting point of MM2.

A Mega Man game that combines classic series nostalgia with never before reached levels of personal customization and social interactivity (or as close as you can get to the latter without making it a 2 player game). Which part of that is so annoying?

I will give you that! Jumping animation, from what I could tell, looked super odd. Not just odd. Super.

As a random aside, I thought it was a clever idea to make the save point an actual robot/character instead of Powered Up's marker flags. Not sure why they didn't use a character that already existed, but new blood isn't bad either. I wonder if it was going to have a name and a personality.

Doc, you didn't love the BBA Mega? Remind me not to show you this then. :hehe:

I'm kinda annoyed with it being cancelled because now I'll never get to see how Ryu would work in the Megaman world, or at least, not officially.

I thought the graphics were pretty garish, but had it been released I doubt I would have ever aired complaints about them. Realistically, the Megaman fanbase is too diverse for everyone to be pleased over the artstyle. I'm not even sure what not changing the art style would be, considering how many art styles they've used at this point. And even if this suggestion could and would happen, people would still complain.

It's not something that would effect my purchase, (though the animation thing Doc mentioned would), but I'm not gonna lie. I definitely prefer the NES look Megaman 9 and 10 have.