Mega Man 6 — stories left

Its first release in Europe and PAL region was June 11, 2013, for the Virtual Console on the Nintendo 3DS, nearly twenty years after the game's initial release.

This late-era game was also the last in the series released on Nintendo's 8-bit console, and the last game in the series with an 8-bit graphics style until Mega Man 9 in 2008.

Mega Man 6 was developed at the same time as the franchise's first spin-off, Mega Man X for Nintendo's newer console, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

A few months after the publication of Mega Man 5, Capcom announced the sixth installment in the original series, as well as Mega Man Soccer and Mega Man X for the SNES, making Mega Man 6 the last title in the franchise to be released on the 8-bit NES.

While the first five Mega Man games are available on the Wii's Virtual Console, Mega Man 6 is absent from the Wii Shop Channel; however, the game was released via the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console in Japan and Europe, with North America on June 20, 2013.

Craig Skistimas of ScrewAttack also appreciated these innovations and regretted missing out on the game when it was first released.

Series artist Keiji Inafune, credited as "Inafking", stated that having a video game franchise with six titles is very rare, and one of the advantages to this is that players expect certain aspects of each game to be repeated in the next.

He argued that the game "was retro before retro was cool" due to Capcom's decision to develop it as a higher profile game on the NES during the era of fourth generation consoles.

Nintendo Power listed Mega Man 6 as the best NES game of 1993, stating, "His sixth NES adventure, in which he uses two new, Special Power-Ups, might just be his best".

GameSpot editors Christian Nutt and Justin Speer labeled Mega Man 6 the "cheesiest" among the NES titles: "If you're looking for mega-laughs, you might want to try this one out." 1UP.com contributors likewise found that the game's "inane" storyline and villains both insult fans of the series and outweigh the game's good soundtrack and interesting power-ups.

Its membership was shown to include numerous identically costumed grunts and Madame Y, a character based on an "alternate universe" concept by former Capcom and Mega Man artist Hideki Ishikawa.

The game received positive reviews, with critics praising the gameplay and use of the established gameplay model from preceding chapters in the series, though it was criticized for not innovating much compared to its predecessors.

The graphics, play control, challenge level, and added power-ups were generally praised.

Six of the Robot Masters were designed by Japanese fans, while the remaining two (Knight Man and Wind Man) were designed by North American fans who entered the Nintendo Power contest.

A port of the Complete Works edition was released on the North American-exclusive Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2004 and Xbox in 2005.

It was originally released in Japan by Capcom in 1993, and in North America by Nintendo in 1994.