Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
Inafune recalled that the Mega Man development team worked extremely hard to complete the final product, with a project supervisor and lead designer who sought perfection in every possible aspect of the game.
He said, "We didn't have [a lot of] people, so after drawing character designs, I was actually doing the dotting (pixelation) for the Nintendo.
Although he is often credited for designing the character, Inafune insists that he "only did half of the job in creating him", as his mentor, director Akira Kitamura, developed the basic character concept before Inafune's arrival.
"That title was horrible," Morici said.
"So I came up with Mega Man, and they liked it enough to keep using it for the U.S. games." 1UP.coms Nadia Oxford attributed this change to Capcom's belief that American children would be more interested in a game with the latter title.
Thomas of IGN described the game as an "undeniable classic" for the NES, noting its graphics, innovative weapon-based platform gameplay, and music.
IGN editor Matt Casamassina proclaimed, "Mega Man is one of the best examples of great graphics, amazing music and near-perfect gameplay rolled into one cartridge".
GameSpot writers Christian Nutt and Justin Speer identified the game as a "winner in gameplay" granted its "low-key presentation".
According to 1UP.com, the "Nintendo-hard" Mega Man bosses set the game apart from its two immediate and more popular sequels.
IGN listed the game at number 30 on its "Top 100 NES Games of All Time".
Nintendo Power ranked Mega Man at number 20 on its "100 Best Nintendo Games of All Time" in its September 1997 100th issue, then at number 61 in its "Top 200 Games" in its February 2006 200th issue. 1UP.com included it in their "Top 5 Overlooked Videogame Prequels" and as number 17 on its "Top 25 NES Games" list.
Due to "overwhelming demand", Capcom reissued the original Mega Man in North America in September 1991.
Producer Tetsuya Kitabayashi stated that redesigning the character models was a result of the PSP's 16:9 widescreen ratio.
Around the same time, Capcom released Rockman, its first original Family Computer title, which became a worldwide hit.
The first port of the original Mega Man series to a mobile phone app.
The stage select at the start came from a measure to keep the operation rate up when the game was planned as an arcade title: if players got stuck on one stage they could take on another, which kept them from drifting away. The shuttered corridor in front of the boss room is a remnant of a technical measure taken when the Disk System version was developed: the boss character's data was read from the disk while the player passed through. Even in later titles, where such measures were no longer needed, these elements have been carried over up to the newest game.
The first installment in the Mega Man franchise and the original video game series, Mega Man was produced by a small team specifically for the video game console market, a first for Capcom, which up until that point focused on arcade games.
Although he is often credited for designing the character, Inafune insists that he "only did half of the job in creating him", as his mentor, director Akira Kitamura, developed the basic character concept before Inafune's arrival.
Mega Man has been re-released several times since its 1987 debut.
Mega Man was later released as part of the Mega Man Legacy Collection, a compilation of the first six entries in the series, in 2015 for Nintendo 3DS, PlayStation 4, Windows and Xbox One, and for Nintendo Switch in 2018 as both a standalone release and a bundle with Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, which comprised the latter four games in the classic series at the time.
The title changed several times before release. At the planning and development stage, names such as Battle Kid and Rainbow Warrior Miracle Kid were considered. When screenshots and release notices appeared in game magazines, it was announced as The Battle Rainbow Rockman, stressing that the body colour changes with the weapon. In the end the simpler Rockman was settled on.
When the game was localized for distribution in America, Capcom changed the title of the game from Rockman to Mega Man.
Capcom's sales department originally believed that the game would not sell, but after Japan had received limited quantities, it had been seen as successful enough to quickly commission an American localization.
As part of the rushed localization, the president of Capcom U.S.A. told the marketing representative to have a cover done by the next day, so he had a friend draw it within about six hours.
Mega Man was compiled with nine other games in the series in the North American Mega Man Anniversary Collection released for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2004 and the Xbox in 2005.
Nintendo Power ranked Mega Man at number 20 on its "100 Best Nintendo Games of All Time" in its September 1997 100th issue, then at number 61 in its "Top 200 Games" in its February 2006 200th issue. 1UP.com included it in their "Top 5 Overlooked Videogame Prequels" and as number 17 on its "Top 25 NES Games" list.
Due to "overwhelming demand", Capcom reissued the original Mega Man in North America in September 1991.
Mega Man for the NES was reissued on the Virtual Console service for three different systems: the Wii in Europe in 2007 and in North America and Japan in 2008, the Nintendo 3DS in 2012, and for the Wii U in 2013.
Around the same time, Capcom released Rockman, its first original Family Computer title, which became a worldwide hit.
Critics praised Mega Man for its overall design.
The title changed several times before release. At the planning and development stage, names such as Battle Kid and Rainbow Warrior Miracle Kid were considered. When screenshots and release notices appeared in game magazines, it was announced as The Battle Rainbow Rockman, stressing that the body colour changes with the weapon. In the end the simpler Rockman was settled on.
Capcom's sales department originally believed that the game would not sell, but after Japan had received limited quantities, it had been seen as successful enough to quickly commission an American localization.
In the "Cross Review" feature of the magazine Famitsu,the game scored a total of 24 out of 40. In the "Game Report Card" reader poll run by Family Computer Magazine,it scored 22.60 out of 30, as shown below.
Inafune recalled that the Mega Man development team worked extremely hard to complete the final product, with a project supervisor and lead designer who sought perfection in every possible aspect of the game.
Whether positive or negative, Mega Man has been commonly perceived as very difficult and is listed among the difficult games of Nintendo, being described by USGamer as “the introduction of the Nintendo Hard difficulty”.
The passages quoted on this page are taken verbatim from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles.Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — reusable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.