Megaman is known in Japan as Rockman or Rokkuman. The Rockman name would be influenced by Rock’n Roll music as well as his little sister who is named Roll.
Mega Mans creators
Megaman was designed as pixel art by Akira Kitamura and later illustrated by Keiji Inafune at Capcom for the first Megaman game released December 17th, 1987. “A.K” Akira Kitamura was a graphic designer who was in the planning team for the game development. He was involved in game design as well as character design for the game.
Their programmer colleague Nobuyuki Matsushima did the sprite design consisting of a 2 layered sprite in 5 colors which was unusual at the time.
Unfortunately it is hard to find any decent pictures of the “crew” on the internet. It would have been really nice to have some pictures from 1987 during the development.
Akira Kitamura seems to have retired from game development during the 1990’s after working at game developer Takeru.
Keiji Inafune now runs a game development company called Level5 Comcept.
Nouyuki Matsushima seems to be at Capcom and working as Head of Research and Development Division.
That’s why Mega Man’s is blue
Kitamura drew Mega Man in white as default because he thought that would strengthen the character when he changed weapon and got other colors.
Mega Man was the hero of the game and heroes are more like loners. He should be a strong individual. A light color like white could indicate a weaker character. Red symbolized a warmer kind of person and did not fit to the description of a lonely hero.
A strong color makes the figure dark. Kitamura liked him to be white but blue was the next best choice. They settled for two shades of blue.
Mega Mans dog
Megaman has a red robotic dog named Rush. He was introduced in Megaman 3. Rush can transform himself into vehicles and platforms that Mega Man can use.
Zero
The red Megaman is named Zero and was introduced in Mega Man X.
Games
Here is the complete list of all games in the classic Mega Man series.
- Mega Man, 1987
- Mega Man 2, 1988
- Mega Man 3, 1990
- Mega Man 4, 1991
- Mega Man 5, 1992
- Mega Man 6, 1994
- Mega Man 7, 1995
- Mega Man 8, 1997
- Mega Man & Bass 1998, 2003
- Mega Man 9, 2008, 2009
- Mega Man 10, 2010
- Mega Man 11, 2018
External links
shmuplations – The birth of Mega Man – 2011 Developer Interview Akira Kitamura