Category:Mega Man

Mega Man, alternatively written as Megaman and MegaMan, known as Rockman (ロックマン) in Japan, is a video game franchise created by Capcom, starring the robot character Mega Man, or one of his many counterparts. Mega Man, released for the Nintendo Entertainment System or NES in 1987, began a series of over 50 games on multiple systems. By March 2015, the series had sold approximately thirty million copies worldwide, and is often cited as one of the most renowned video game franchises of all time.

The classic Mega Man series consists of ten main titles and a spin-off, Mega Man & Bass, as well as all Game Boy, Sega Genesis, Sega Game Gear and other console titles featuring the original design of Mega Man. The classic series is considered to be the origin of the story, with Mega Man being the first installment, and continuing with ten direct sequels. Chronologically after Mega Man 8 comes Mega Man & Bass, followed by Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10.

Although the classic series has yet to reach an ending, the storyline shifts to the Mega Man X series, followed by the Mega Man Zero series, Mega Man ZX and Mega Man Legends. Although it is confirmed that the Legends series takes place sometime in the distant future after the ZX series, there is an uncertain amount of time as to when it actually takes place. All series follow one continuous timeline except for Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force: Pegasus, Leo, and Dragon, which exist in an alternate universe (one in which network technology flourished instead of robotics technology), with Star Force occurring two centuries after the Battle Network series.

The official source book Rockman Perfect Memories outlines the Classic, X, and Legends series and makes mention of the Battle Network and Zero series (which were fairly new at the time of the book's publication). While the ZX and Star Force series were not yet conceived when the source book was published, Capcom is explicit within the games themselves regarding their placement in the timeline(s).

Mega Man Backstory
To understand the story of Mega Man, one must look back at the events which occur before the game takes place, and to do so, once can look to sources such as Rockman Perfect Memories which have taken the time to document the information reported by Capcom over the years in regards to the series:

The story of the Mega Man universe begins in the mid-20th century with the birth of Thomas Light and Albert W. Wily (circa 1958). These men would become friends and attend the same university, studying the field of electronics and eventually receiving PhDs. By the 1990s, the two men would go into business together and form a company called Light Labs, a team whose ambition it was to use computer and electronic technology to benefit mankind in the coming era.

In the early 21st century, Light Labs made its first leaps in the field of robotics, creating the Sniper Joe police robots, Mettool construction robots, and various others to benefit mankind. Yet, Light and Wily both realized the potential of their project. They wanted to create robots that were human-like. They wanted to build robots that contained artificial intelligence within them.

Thus, around the year 2005, Light Labs produced the first one of such robots: Proto Man. Proto Man was based on the design of the Sniper Joe robots, but was instilled with an artificial intelligence unlike anything the world had ever seen. Yet, Proto possessed a true sense of independence, one that made him much like true human beings, and because of this he ran from the lab before his diagnostic testing was completed.

Still, Light and Wily did not give up. The following year they set to work on building a pair of robots, thinking that two would work together and overcome the independence issue. It was thus that Rock and Roll were born. Rock became the lab's new assistant and Roll became a housekeeper. With the success of this project, the two scientists went on to create eight more robots, each for industrial assistance purposes: Fire Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Oil Man and Time Man.

It was for the success of these projects that Dr. Thomas Light received the Nobel Prize for Robot Master Design in 2007, an award which Wily felt he deserved as well.

Note: In the original version of the story, Doctors Light and Wily only built six robots in their industrial series, but Capcom modified the story with the release of Mega Man: Powered Up to contain two additional Robot Masters in order to make the game more in-line with its sequels.

Game list
The following table shows all the main video games in the Mega Man franchise, organized by sub-series, excluding remakes and compilations.

Classic Mega Man
Sorting the table by N., the games will be listed according to plot continuity.

Mega Man X, Zero, ZX
These three sub-series are set in the same fictional universe as the classic one, but they are set decades or centuries in the future.

Mega Man Legends
"D.A.S.H." stands for "Diggers Adventure Story in Halcyon age".

Mega Man Battle Network & Star Force
Two series of role-playing games with similar gameplay and several elements in common. Star Force is the sequel of Battle Network, centuries later.

Gameplay evolution
The following table shows the evolution of gameplay elements. The Tanks column shows not only the maximum number of tanks, but also their type (E, M, W or S). Game boy titles are inserted in the table so that their gameplay elements are consistent with the general gameplay evolution.

Gallery

 * Title screens
 * Notes:
 * The official title of Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge is different from its true title.
 * The true titles of the localized NES games and of the localized Game Boy games are identical.

Spelling of character names
There is some debate as to what the proper spelling of the name of each character actually is. The reason this happened is because throughout each mini-series, Capcom's translators have mixed up their naming scheme, even within a series; anyway, the original name is always written "Rockman".

The localized name is sometimes written "Mega Man", sometimes "Megaman". For example, Mega Man is the title of the games, however when used in a game like Mega Man 7 the characters reference him in text as "Megaman" (usually in all capitals).

Originally the naming scheme for the bosses was the name of the boss plus "man" together as one word (like Bombman), however in Mega Man 3 and IV, they started putting spaces in them (like with "Charge Man"). This continued until Mega Man 6 where they returned to the original scheme with names like "Centaurman" and "Windman". In Mega Man 7 they switched it to the alternate way again, this time presenting bosses such as "Freeze Man". Many years later, with the creation of Mega Man Powered Up, they returned to the original scheme where they supported the names like "Gutsman".