THQ Nordic, publishers of the Darksiders games and recent jankfest Elex, have bought Koch Media, the companies have announced. Koch are the father-company of Deep Silver, who publish games like Saints Row, Metro, Dead Island, and Homefront: The Revolution. That means THQ Nordic now own alllll of those bad boys, among others. Due to all the combined plates this company now spins, they could now make a game where the hero of Mighty No. 9 fights jazzy paint-monster De Blob in a doomed bid for supremacy on Mars, aka, Red Faction 3. Although, they probably shouldn’t do that.
]]>The problem for most new studios is making anyone pay attention. Comcept, founded by ex-Capcom developer Keiji Inafune, has had no such issues - and the studio's kickstarter for Mighty No. 9 [official site], a spiritual heir to the Mega Man series Inafune co-created and stewarded through its greatest years, blasted past expectations. Comcept raised just under $4 million to make this game in 2013 and, following several delays, have delivered what the fans wanted. Or so you might think.
]]>Mighty No. 9 [official site], the crowdfunded Mega Man 'em up from Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune's new studio, is out today. Our review is still in the works but Wot Others Think seems not wholly positive. I could tell you to wait for our say then bosh in the launch trailer and call it a day but oh my gosh, I am fascinated by its launch livestream. While many video game launch streams are hype-o-ramas, this is also a bit of a post-mortem, disarmingly earnest and mildly apologetic after seeing the first wave of launch reviews. It's surprisingly human.
]]>"Do you like awesome things that are awesome?" asks the latest trailer for Mighty No. 9 [official site] - the incoming 2D Mega Man-a-like from Comcept, Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune's new studio - before showing off a sequence of largely underwhelming visuals and grating dad-voiced narration. It then suggests we: "make bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night." A month before release, I was honestly hoping for something a bit more substantial.
]]>Mighty No 9 [official site] has a new release date, one that might actually stick: June 21st in North America and Asia, and the 24th elsewhere. Mighty No. 9, to refresh your memory so tired from all these things we're expected to internalise in this day and age, is a new Mega Man-ish 2D shooty platformer from Comcept, the studio founded by Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune. They took to Kickstarter in September 2013 and drew a remarkable $3,845,170 (about £2.6 million) - still the fifth-highest amount a video game has raised on the crowdfunding site. Many miss that little roboman.
]]>Mega Man 'em up Mighty No. 9 [official site] was due to launch in two weeks, but the Man spiritual successor from creator Keiji Inafune has ended up delayed once again. This time, wonky multiplayer is to blame. It's now expected in spring, which could put it a year behind the April 2015 launch pitched when it was on Kickstarter. Hey, making games is tricky, and not all problems can be solved by exploding robots. Very few can, in my experience. Apparently crying children are not at all cheered by you filling their remote-controlled BB-8 with firecrackers, no matter how colourful the flames are.
]]>Every time I see the name Mighty No. 9 [official site], something in me sees it as Wonderful 101 and my heart skips a beat. But hey, a new Mega Man-ish game from the co-creator of the mega-busting robot is still a pretty exciting idea - enough for folks to bung it $3,845,170 on Kickstarter. When will we found out how the reality rises to that dream? In both ages and no time at all.
Following an indefinite delay from its planned September launch (itself a delay from the April release its Kickstarter billed), Mighty No. 9 now has a new release date: February 9th (possibly the 12th for us, depending whether digital oceans interfere). Sooner than that, though, a demo (also delayed) is now out for Kickstarter backers.
]]>With Mighty No. 9 almost out (it's due in September), developers Comcept have turned to Kickstarter again to crowdfund another Mega Man 'em up. This time, they're thinking along the lines of open-world action-RPG Mega Man Legends.
They're rounded up a few Mega Man Legends folks and launched a Kickstarter seeking $800,000 (£515k) to make Red Ash [official site]. The pitch is pretty barebones, with only art and ideas to show for it, but Red Ash is already drawing big bucks in pledges. Curiously, a second Kickstarter is running for an anime studio to make a movie set in the same world.
]]>Keiji Inafune's decision to create Mighty No. 9 [official site], presumably by chanting "Mega Man" into an old mirror until it was called into existence like some sort of eternal Gilgamesh, suggests the kind of industry power I too hope to one day yield. "What year is this?" I'd bellow to my staff. "It's 2015, Ma'am," they squeak and shudder. Then, as if planned ahead of time, I'd point knowingly at the Blossom fan club newsletter I've been writing on my IBM and remind them it's 1994 and it has been for over 20 years.
This is the sort of dedication to retro I expect went into Mighty No. 9.
]]>Being fairly clueless about console platformers for most of my life, I had been awfully surprised to discover Capcom made a long series of So Solid Crew platformers. (That's a joke about PC isolationism and early noughties English pop culture. You don't get gags that rich every day.) After Mega Man co-creator Keiji Inafune left Capcom, he, well, decided to make more Mega Man, crowdfunding Mega Man 'em up Mighty No. 9 [official site] to the tune of almost $4 million.
Now it has a release date, though a bit later than its once-planned spring launch: September 15th.
]]>Mighty No. 9 is Mega Man and Mega Man is Rockman. I don't know if it's better to be mighty or to be mega, but I do know that when it comes to platformers, it's generally better to be Shotgunman than Rockman. It's hard to jump if you're a geological anomaly and there tend to be plenty of things to kill between the platforms and the spikes. Kickstarter success Mighty No. 9 is the creation of Comcept, with input from Mega Man co-designer Keiji Inafune. We've seen plenty of progress shots and videos since the crowd funded the game, and there should be a great deal of footage to come now that the backer beta has been released to high tier ($80+) supporters. An official video shows some of the new content.
]]>Mighty No. 9 is looking mighty fine, as we've established previously. It's Mega Man in all but name, with original creator Keiji Infafune at the helm, boss fights, power-stealing and a (nearly) spot-on visual style. Now, despite raising $3.8m on Kickstarter at the tail-end of 2013, Comcept have called to the crowd once again, seeking extra cash.
]]>Somewhat shamefully, I was always too weak for real Mega Man growing up. I knew all the principle players - Mega Man/Rock Man, Roll, Rush, King Crimson, Procol Harum, pre-Phil-Collins Genesis - but my hopping fell flat, my bopping landed with a wet thud. I'm actually rather happy about Mighty No. 9's existence, then, as it gives me a second chance at that most quintessential of gaming experiences, only I'm not a tiny frightened child anymore. I'm a big frightened child! Sometimes people even ask me to pay loans.
There's a new trailer showing off Mighty No. 9's development progress below, and the Kickstarter mega-success is definitely showing its roots. In (I think) a good way.
]]>Every game series you never played will return to taunt you. I have no experience of Keiji Inafune's Mega Man, but its Kickstarter-funded spiritual successor Mighty No. 9 is too big, and too full of heroically upbeat platforming music, to ignore. There's a trailer below showing the project's healthy development progress.
]]>Just like that time when I was a bairn and predicted the internet by placing our house phone on top of my Etch-A-Sketch (the Etch-A-Sketch had a scribble of a cat on it), I also predicted that Mighty No. 9 would easily achieve its Kickstarter goal. The side-scrolling action platform from Keiji Inafune, the creator of Mega Man, launched a hunt for crowd-funds just over two weeks ago, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to see how my prediction skills were doing. Wowsers. It currently sits at $2,173,615* of the $900,000 goal, and I'm now two for two prediction-wise. Now where's my TV deal?
]]>I feel like Keiji Inafune is winking at us all. The Mega Man creator has turned to Kickstarter to fund a new PC game, a "classic Japanese side-scrolling action" game called Mighty No. 9 that's not Mega Man, *wink*. According to the pitch: "You play as Beck, the 9th in a line of powerful robots, and the only one not infected by a mysterious computer virus that has caused mechanized creatures the world over to go berserk. Run, jump, blast, and transform your way through six stages (or more, via stretch goals) you can tackle in any order you choose, using weapons and abilities stolen from your enemies to take down your fellow Mighty Number robots and confront the final evil that threatens the planet!"
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