[MM#26] Why We Had to Make Mega Man2 (Patreon)

It became part of my daily routine to look over the rough planning notebook I had left open when I got home. Across its pages were two production timelines, one for Willow and one for Mega Man2, drawn one above the other. Countless tasks had been erased and rewritten over and over again on both lines.

Many of the anticipated tasks still contained uncertain elements. I spent my time thinking about how to fit those unknowns into the schedule—and whether they were even possible in the first place. Whether I was eating dinner or taking a bath, I kept rearranging tasks in my head, erasing one item only to write it somewhere else.

Late at night, with the schedule spread out before me, I opened another notebook I had been filling over time. It contained ideas I felt Mega Man still needed, new gameplay concepts, things I had wanted to accomplish during the first game's development but couldn't, and questions that had occurred to me throughout production.

As a programmer, I estimated how many hours each item would require. No matter how I calculated it, my own sleep simply disappeared from the schedule. Realistically, there seemed to be no choice but to abandon some of those ideas before development had even begun.

There were several new challenges I wanted to tackle in Mega Man's sequel. As I mentioned earlier, these centered on gameplay mechanics unique to Mega Man. The concept of defeating enemies and acquiring their weapons was unlike anything seen in action games at the time. The real challenge was deciding how to build original gameplay around that distinctive idea.

The stage structure—what we would now call level design—also needed significant changes. In fact, this was the part that had troubled me the most during the development of the first game. The overall flow was enjoyable, yet the actual stage action still felt too similar to conventional action games. It was something I couldn't fully recognize until I actually built the game and played it myself.

Something wasn't right.

But I couldn't identify what that "something" was.

Even while fighting enemies throughout the stages, I couldn't feel the excitement I had imagined. Each individual gimmick contained original ideas: spring-loaded blocks that launched upward, suspended platforms that detached midway, even pillars of fire that could be frozen to create footholds.

My notebook was filled with hastily scribbled questions.

"How can weapons be used more effectively?"

"What's the difference between the first half and the second half?"

"Why isn't it fun?"

The exhausted handwriting—written without any memory of when I had written it—carried a strong sense of frustration.

The Significance of Mega Man2

When I submitted the proposal for Willow to my supervisor, I decided to tell him what I was really thinking.

Mega Man was CAPCOM's first serious action game aimed at younger players. As the company's focus shifted from arcade games to home consoles, the project was intended to demonstrate the technology and design philosophy CAPCOM had cultivated, while opening a new chapter for the company as a long-established game developer.

The Famicom existed in the marketplace primarily as a toy for children, and I believed that games developed by CAPCOM needed a different approach to fit that audience. That didn't mean arcade games weren't suitable for children. Rather, I felt we needed to move closer to the children who were actually playing them.

Children loved Commando, GUN.SMOKE, and Ghosts 'n Goblins. Their gameplay was simple and easy to understand, so there was no problem there. What distinguished those games from Mega Man was how the character was presented.

Mega Man had facial expressions. He opened his mouth when he jumped. When he took damage, he squeezed his eyes shut in pain. His body stretched and compressed with exaggerated, anime-inspired animation. It was a clear departure from the character designs of previous games, which had been created primarily around collision detection.

Games are built upon rules.

Many of the rules I envisioned came from the games I had played as a child. One example was 面子(Menko), a traditional Japanese card-flipping game. Players slam thick paper cards onto the ground, using the force of the impact and the air pressure to flip over their opponent's card. Each player places one card face down, and if your opponent's card flips over, you get to keep it. The captured card then becomes part of your own collection and can be used in later games.

In many ways, that simple childhood game became the very foundation of Mega Man's weapon-stealing system.

Mega Man was still unfinished.

It had been released before the gameplay rules I believed were essential had truly taken shape. That was entirely due to my own inexperience as both a planner and a developer.

But I believed that by completing the ideas and gameplay concepts I had learned through that experience, we could more than make up for those shortcomings.

That was the point I emphasized.

"We can't stop Willow."

I understood that completely.

Of course I had planned with that assumption in mind.

Even so, I was fully aware of how close we were to the limit. If we made even a single mistake and fell behind schedule, there would be no way to recover.

Still...

Mega Man2 had to be made.

I was convinced that completing this unique game system would one day become enormously important for CAPCOM's home console business.

That was how much confidence I had in Mega Man's gameplay.

I had no hard evidence to support my argument.

What I did have was the fact that Mega Man had already found an audience among children.

So I poured out everything I had learned up to that point.

There was only one thing I kept to myself.

I never mentioned the promise I had made with Mr. N from the Sales Department.

It felt too personal...

Too important to me.

In the end, we agreed to revise the plan under one condition:

Willow would always remain the highest priority.

And I was entrusted with coordinating the entire schedule.

Walking a Tightrope

Oddly enough, I didn't feel much excitement.

Just as when Mega Man had first appeared on the production schedule, what filled my mind wasn't joy but the crushing weight of responsibility—and the anxiety of attempting something as outrageous as developing two production lines simultaneously.

Yet the feeling reminded me of mountain climbing.

Before the climb begins, you stand below the mountain imagining the joy of reaching the summit.

But once the climb starts and the ascent becomes brutally difficult, you inevitably wonder:

"Why am I putting myself through this?"

Then, when you finally reach the top, the sense of accomplishment is all the greater because of the hardship.

Among climbers there's a slang term for this feeling:

Type 2 Fun.

It perfectly described how I felt.

The most important goal of this project was eliminating wasted time.

Game development begins with a proposal, after which each department plans its own work schedule. At that stage, however, almost nothing has been finalized—not the total number of characters, not the complexity of the programming, not even how many music tracks the game will require.

The staff cannot truly begin production until the detailed design documents are completed.

Until those documents arrive, artists create temporary characters, and designers experiment with screen layouts.

If I wanted to eliminate that idle time, the design documents had to be ready on the very first day development officially began.

That meant finalizing Willow's core game system as quickly as possible so character production could begin immediately. The game's genre and camera perspective had to be decided first.

The two projects didn't have separate workspaces.

Development would continue in the same team area where we had previously made Mega Man and Legendary Wings.

That meant the Willow staff would move into our area, while F (development name: YASUKICHI) and INA from Mega Man2 would work while sitting with other teams.

At the time, INA belonged to M.K.'s team in another planning department, and I asked if he could temporarily return to the Mega Man project.

Fortunately, permission was granted.

Had INA belonged to a different team, they might never have agreed to release him.

TOM (development name: TOM-PON) also remained on the staff.

Although officially assigned to Willow, he had experience working on Mega Man, so I asked him to help wherever he was needed.

You cannot tell the story of Mega Man2 without talking about the trust of every member of the team.

Even for such an absurdly ambitious project, everyone simply said,

"We'll do it."

I could feel their faith.

Watching them quietly build a united front despite the doubtful looks from those around us filled me with gratitude.

Then...

Something unbelievable happened once again.

The cartridge capacity for Mega Man2 was doubled—from 1 Mb in Mega Man to 2 Mb.

It was a massive miscalculation.

During the development of Mega Man, I had casually told Mr. N from Sales,

"If we only had a little more memory, we could do so much more."

But while pushing this reckless dual-project plan, I never asked for additional capacity.

Even today I don't know why it was increased.

Perhaps Mr. N quietly helped make it happen.

But this completely changed everything.

Every inch of my production schedule was already packed with tasks planned almost hour by hour.

Many ideas had been abandoned solely because there hadn't been enough memory.

Doubling the cartridge size meant doubling the amount of character creation.

The carefully intertwined production schedules for Willow and Mega Man2 were blown to pieces.

I had to redraw the entire schedule from the beginning.

In other words...

I had to rethink Mega Man2 from scratch.

While keeping Willow as the top priority, I now faced a new objective:

Raise Mega Man's quality to an entirely new level.

The impact of that decision was greater than anything I had faced before.

Unable to begin without careful planning, I returned to the very beginning and started thinking about Mega Man all over again.

The very first change was increasing the number of selectable stages in the first half of the game by two.

It was something I had compromised on during the first Mega Man.

More stages meant more Robot Masters.

More Robot Masters meant more weapons for Mega Man.

And more weapons meant every gimmick had to be reconsidered around those new abilities.

Their effectiveness against ordinary enemies and bosses all had to be redesigned as well.

I felt that this single change alone would transform the quality of the entire game.

It would become something fundamentally different from Mega Man—almost enough to redefine its identity.

It felt like climbing behind the wheel of a car powered by an enormous monster engine.

For a brief moment...

My foot hesitated above the accelerator.

My idea notebook was still filled with countless concepts that had once been discarded.

Now they could all return.

It felt as though the giant engine had finally roared to life, waiting only for the brakes to be released.

My hands trembled from the vibration.

I fixed my eyes on the long, straight road stretching ahead...

...and slowly pressed down on the accelerator.

(Automatic translation by AI)