The difference in number is minimal, but the difference in effect is substantial. Whereas Mario and Link each contain a total of four colors (white included), Mega Man contains a total of five. If you were a gamer in 1987 playing Mega Man 1 for the first time, you might have noticed how colorful the Blue Bomber appeared in comparison to familiar characters from other games, such as Link from The Legend of Zelda and Mario from Super Mario Bros. But with, I actually had an idea of the story and gameworld before that…nothing fully formed, but an idea.” 5 And indeed, Kitamura’s dedication to story is made evident in the game’s Japanese instruction manual, which contains a lengthy backstory to the game in the top-right corner on one side, and a detailed history of each robot master on the other. As founder of Mega Man Akira Kitamura recalls, “Normally, when I make a game, the first thing I think about is the gameplay system. Wily) that ties the individual titles together. Unlike most series developed for the NES, and especially those of the action-platformer genre, the original Mega Man series places a strong emphasis on narrative-an ever-developing story involving a hero (Mega Man) and a villain (Dr. The six games released for the NES ( Mega Man 1–6) form part of what fans call the “original series,” whose core games are Mega Man 1–11 and Mega Man & Bass. 4 The game was a smash hit and cemented the success of the Mega Man series for decades to come.Īs of June 2020, the series had 158 titles, most of which belong to one of several sub-series-a group of games that develop a single storyline (albeit loosely) within the Mega Man universe. 3 Working twenty-hour days, the team perfected the graphics and gameplay of Mega Man 2, and in December 1988 they released it to an audience perfectly primed for a sequel. With their finger firmly on the market pulse, the game’s designers asked to work on a sequel, which Capcom authorized on the condition that they do it on their own time-or at least without hindering progress on “official” assignments. Despite its initial flop, however, the game became a “sleeper hit” in North America, with its popularity spreading by word of mouth from playground to playground across the continent. This led the company to produce an English version for the NES, but mediocre sales in the United States and Canada nudged the company to suspend further development of the series in both Japan and North America. By treating deviations from normative musical traits as hermeneutic windows, my work draws on Japanese cultural studies, postwar Japanese history, and anime to interpret Capcom’s Mega Man series, and in particular Mega Man 2 (1989), as an allegory of cultural imperialism.ĭeveloped specifically for the Japanese home-console market, Mega Man met with unexpected-yet moderate-success. This article moves beyond the details of technique and form to examine NES music from a new angle, one that centers on the impressive network of cultural meanings with which it engages. Innovative as they are, these methods capture only a portion of the NES repertoire’s sophisticated makeup. On the other hand, they employed modular and layered compositional techniques to simultaneously maximize and disguise repetition. On the one hand, they pushed the limits of the 2A03 sound chip by crafting timbral and textural effects to deepen its well of possibilities. In response to this challenge, composers developed ways to create the illusion of variety. With its diverse “orchestral” palette and complex forms, the Nintendo NES repertoire stands as a monument to innovation-a creative outpouring driven by a compositional challenge inherent to the NES medium: how to create music that repeats extensively without drawing attention to the fact that it is repeating.
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