Mega Man was made for the Famicom by a small team of young Capcom staff, and it shows its hardware in every frame: a blue robot boy, built from two sprites so that his face could change expression, jumping through six stages in any order the player likes. Beat a stage’s boss and Mega Man takes his weapon. Use the right weapon on the right boss and a fight that seemed impossible becomes short. The game came out in Japan in December 1987 as Rockman, reached the United States with one of the most mocked box covers of the era, and did well enough that an American magazine called it “the sleeper hit of ’88”. The series has run, with one long gap, ever since.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Capcom.
- Release: December 1987, Famicom (as Rockman) and NES.
- Director: Akira Kitamura, credited as “A.K”.
- Artist: Keiji Inafune, then new to Capcom.
- Programmer: Nobuyuki Matsushima.
- Music and sound effects: Manami Matsumae.
- Bosses: six Robot Masters (Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man and Elec Man), then Dr. Wily.
- Series: five NES sequels between 1988 and 1993, Mega Man X (1993) and many spin-offs; Mega Man 11 in 2018, and a new main-series game announced for 2027.
Who made it
Credit for Mega Man has often gone to Keiji Inafune, who became the face of the series at Capcom. The team was led by someone else. Wireframe, telling the story of the game’s art in 2018, named its director as Akira Kitamura, with Inafune as an artist “then fresh out of college”, and credited programmer Nobuyuki Matsushima with its best-known technical trick. In a 2011 interview with the illustrator Hitoshi Ariga, translated by Shmuplations, Kitamura, the game’s planner, described working out the hero’s look with Matsushima; he had wanted him white, and settled on blue as a compromise because lighter colours looked weaker on screen. Shmuplations introduced the interview by saying that although Inafune is often cited as the man who created Mega Man, Kitamura “should probably be the one accorded that honor.” Inafune also drew the art around the game: in Japan he designed the covers and manuals of the first few games himself.
Kitamura and his team took their cue from Japanese animation, and in particular from Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy, the story of a robot boy built by a kind scientist. “The [Mega Man] character is really based on Japanese animation,” Inafune told Play magazine in 2004, as Wireframe quoted him; when they were making him, “Nintendo games really did not have a huge focus on the characters.”
Manami Matsumae wrote both the music and the sound effects. In her interview with Mohammed Taher, she recalled aiming for memorable melodies that suited an anime hero. Cut Man’s theme was the first approved. She also shortened sound effects to keep them from cutting into the music, although some notes still disappeared during play.
Two sprites and four frames
The NES lets each sprite use only three colours plus transparency, which is why most of its heroes have faces that never change. Matsushima got round it by building Mega Man from two sprites. The body is one, in two shades of blue and black; the face is another, drawn in white, black and a skin tone, so it can change as he runs, jumps or takes a hit. Wireframe credited that trick, and Kitamura’s “simple yet dynamic four-frame run cycle”, with making the character stand out among the NES platform heroes of the late 1980s. The design worked so well that it stayed almost unchanged through the five NES sequels.
Robot Masters
The story, as Club Nintendo told it to British readers, casts Dr. Wily as the co-creator of Mega Man and six other “super-powered humanoids”. Wily reprograms the six to help him take over the world from his base in Monsteropolis; Mega Man resists the reprogramming and sets off after him. Each Robot Master has a stage themed on his power, full of hazards: the magazine warned of disintegrating blocks, fire shooting from lava pits and spikes that “cause instant death”.
The player chooses which stage to tackle. Defeating a Robot Master gives Mega Man that robot’s weapon, and he can switch between the weapons he has collected. The order matters. Club Nintendo called Elec Man “one of the stronger super-humanoids”, but said a player who had already beaten Cut Man “shouldn’t have too much trouble polishing him off with the blades”, and that Elec Man’s beam in turn was “pretty much essential” against Ice Man. Wireframe traced the idea behind the name to the same system. “Rockman” was a nod to its makers’ love of rock ‘n’ roll and to a power-up system inspired by rock, paper, scissors, in which every weapon beats something and is beaten by something else.
Rockman becomes Mega Man
The name did not survive the journey west. Nintendo Power explained in 1993 that the hero was almost called Rainbow Man, because he had seven weapons and the rainbow has seven colours, before someone decided that was “a pretty wimpy name for a superhero” and paired Rock with his sister, Roll. Joe Morici, Capcom’s senior vice president in the United States, thought Rock Man “had little meaning to the U.S. audience” and came up with Mega Man. As Wireframe pointed out, the American games kept Roll’s name, which left the pun with nowhere to go.
The American box went further astray. Capcom’s American marketers, Wireframe wrote, chose not to use Inafune’s anime-style artwork and commissioned new art, and “the cover for the first Mega Man has long since gone down in history as one of the worst ever.” American players did not see an anime-style Mega Man on a box until Mega Man 8.
Reception
Nintendo’s new magazine Nintendo Power printed its first readers’ charts in the summer of 1988, and Mega Man was in both the players’ and the professionals’ top 30. In January 1989 Electronic Gaming Monthly, announcing Mega Man II, called it “A follow-up to the sleeper hit of ’88!” and said that many considered the first game “one of the best games ever for the Nintendo Entertainment System”. In Britain Club Nintendo introduced Mega Man in its 1989 Christmas issue.
The series
Mega Man 2 followed in 1988 in Japan and 1989 in America, and was Kitamura’s last: he left after completing it, and the series carried on under producer Tokuro Fujiwara with Inafune as artist. Four more NES games followed by 1993, although Mega Man 6 was never released in PAL countries. Mega Man X (1993) moved to the Super Nintendo with a darker, older-looking hero, designed by Inafune for the new console’s larger palette, and started a separate series. Mega Man 8 (1996) brought the original line to the PlayStation and Saturn, and Mega Man Legends took the character into 3D. The Battle Network games were popular enough for Capcom to start a television cartoon based on them in 2003.
After a long gap the main series went back to its roots. Mega Man 9, a download-only game for the Wii in 2009, and Mega Man 10 (2010) deliberately used 8-bit graphics and sound, and were co-developed by Inti Creates, a studio set up by former Capcom staff. Then, in 2010, Inafune left Capcom, several Mega Man projects were cancelled, and the series went quiet for eight years. In 2013 Inafune turned to Kickstarter for Mighty No. 9, a game openly in the Mega Man mould. Capcom returned with Mega Man 11 in October 2018, drawn in 3D but played in two dimensions, with designs by Yuji Ishihara. In December 2025 Capcom announced Mega Man: Dual Override, a new 2D game in the classic style, for release in 2027.
Sources
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Mohammed Taher, “A Conversation with Manami Matsumae”, translated by Alexander Aniel, Brave Wave — primary interview: music and sound effects for the original game, the anime-song approach, Cut Man’s theme and shortening effects to reduce interruptions.
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Nintendo Power issue 1, July/August 1988, pp. 103–104: Players’ Forum top 30 charts.
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Electronic Gaming Monthly issue 1, January 1989, pp. 8, 27: Mega Man 2 previews (“the sleeper hit of ’88”).
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Club Nintendo (UK) issue 5, 1989, pp. 4–5: “See Mega Man in action” (Dr. Wily, Monsteropolis, the six humanoids, their stages and weaknesses).
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Nintendo Power issue 46, March 1993, pp. 101–102: Capcom profile (Rock Man, Rainbow Man, Rock and Roll, Joe Morici and the Mega Man name).
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Retro Gamer issue 101, April 2012, p. 82: Mega Man 6 never released in PAL regions.
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Edge issue 259, November 2013: Inafune’s Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter. Edge issue 263, February 2014: Inafune’s career at Capcom and departure to found Comcept.
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Dan Root, “The changing face of Mega Man”, Wireframe issue 2, November 2018, pp. 44–47: Kitamura as director and Inafune as artist; Astro Boy; Inafune’s 2004 Play interview; Matsushima’s two-sprite hero and Kitamura’s run cycle; the Rockman name and Roll; the Japanese and American box art; Kitamura’s departure after Mega Man 2; Fujiwara; Mega Man X, 7, 8, Legends, 9, 10 and Inti Creates; Inafune leaving in 2010; Mega Man 11.
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Akira Kitamura, interview with Hitoshi Ariga (2011), translated by Shmuplations, 2 January 2022 (web, secondary): Kitamura as planner “A.K”; the hero’s colour; Matsushima. https://shmuplations.com/megaman/
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Capcom, “Corporate History”, Capcom investor relations (web, secondary): Mega Man released December 1987; the Mega Man Battle Network television animation from March 2003. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/company/history.html
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Chris Scullion, “A new Mega Man game is finally coming in 2027”, VGC, 12 December 2025 (web, secondary): Mega Man: Dual Override, announced at The Game Awards. https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/a-new-mega-man-game-is-finally-coming-in-2027/