Cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3
| Cancellation of Mega Man Legends 3 | ||||||||||||||
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 Legends never die...
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Mega Man Legends 3 was a Free Running RPG game planned to be released exclusively for the Nintendo 3DS. It was meant to be the third entry to the long abandoned Mega Man Legends series, but it was unfortunately cancelled.
Background
The game was announced at the New York Comic Con in October 2010, were Keiji Inafune has expressed his desire to make a brand new game for a long time, after Legends 2's infamous cliffhanger ending. The story would have taken place directly after that aformentioned ending, were two new characters, Aero and Barrett are joined in to save Mega Man Volnutt, who is still stuck in the Elysium colony.
A tradition within the franchise is the contest made by Capcom for fans to vote on which will be in the game, and Legends 3 is no exception, except that they get to interact with the developers in the devroom. The contest is divided into 7 events, the design for the new female character Aero, a Bonne mecha boss, creating biographies and catchphrases for the townpeople, a four-legged Reaverbot, an Easter Egg event, promotional ideas for the Devroom and a mascot for a group of Rebel Riders named The Bright Bats. There's also two side-events, one were 5 of the Reaverbots from the previous games can comeback, as well as the new armor design for Mega Man Volnutt. Out all of the events, 5 of them are the winners of the contest and that they will make it in into the game.
In preperation for the game's release, Capcom announced that a prologue game named Mega Man Legends 3: Prototype Version will be available on the Nintendo eShop, which would feature Barrett, another new character for the game, and ten missions to complete. Chris Hoffman, former Nintendo Power journalist was the only person who played the prototype and according to California-based Cup of Tea Productions, it was very close to completion.
On July 18, 2011, Capcom officialy announced that Mega Man Legends 3 was cancelled, citing "it was not felt that the [Mega Man Legends 3] project met the required criteria", whatever that means is up to speculation, but the most citing factor for the downfall is Keiji Inafune's departure from the company in October 2010, literally days after the game was announced. Many fans were understandably negative and outraged about the news, as they have been waiting for a brand new entry for 11 years, and seeing it cancelled was heartbroken to say the least. What doesn't help is Capcom Europe's tweet, blaming the fans for the cancellation, which is ovbiously deleted due to massive backlash and have to apologize. The devroom and the Prototype game were also cancelled shortly after.
Aftermath
With Legends 3 cancelled, fans gathered together to create a Facebook group called "100,000 Strong for Bringing Back Mega Man Legends 3" (or by its known nickname, Get Me Off The Moon), in order to convince Capcom to resume production. And while it hasn't been said since, it did reached its goal of 100,000 members as of April 25th, 2012. Five years later, in 2016, a documentary was released, which details everything about the game prior to its cancellation.
Since then, many fan projects were made, such as fan art, arranged music, fan games, a reproduction using Unity3D, and a 8-bit demake of the Prototype made by Japanese fans with the assistance of Hideki Ishikawa and Makoto Tomozawa. One youtuber managed to invite the fans and sing an altered version of Les Miserables' Do You Hear the People Sing? together to show support. It was later revealed in a recent Wha Happun? episode that Legends 3 was announced before the project was even greenlit, which means that the fate of the game was already sealed behind its back unbeknownst to the fans.
Ever since the cancellation of this game, along with the Super Mario Maker-style Mega Man Universe, the MMO Rockman Online and the unannounced Mega Man X reboot called Maverick Hunter, the franchise went dormant for almost a decade, until the annoucement of Mega Man 11. The now disgraced Inafune said in a 2014 interview that he would like to finish Legends 3 independently, Koji Oda, director of MM11 said that he's "well aware that there is a voice out there that wants something new for games like Mega Man Legends and Battle Network", and Legends composer Makoto Tomozawa tweeted his fans if they want to crowdfund the game. Mega Man Legends 3 will finally be brought back from the dead one day and finish the trilogy at long last so that Volnutt would finally get off the moon he desired for 21 years.