Actually Megaman 9 with 8-bit style was the best idea they could come up with. This is not a cheap cash-in system as you might think. It was a design choice to bring the franhise to his roots
the Megaman franchise hasn't aged well. With each new iteration new features were added,while some were pretty good, they all helped it to branch it out and in time it lost the escense. Look at the different games.
- Megaman (original)
- Megaman X
- Megaman Zero
- Megaman Legends
- Megaman Battle Network
- Megaman ZX
- The new other Megaman which name I can't remember (lol)
When the branching started, the franchise went out of control. I'm not saying that these branches suck, but in many you don 't have the same Megaman game feeling with the latest iterations and they aren't being as successful as they wanted. There is a high posibility that in the future it will die.
You guys remember Megaman Powered up and Maverick Hunter X? Yes, they were remakes of Megaman and Megaman X with 2.5D graphins and improves gameplay with many features.... and Guess what... they both bombed in sales. Inafune was proud of those games but they had bad sales.
So in order to save Megaman and make it evolve properly, they must start all over. Throw everything away and start over from the best Megaman game ever created (for the developers and most fans): Megaman 2
Megaman 2 was the best game due to many reasons: there was no publisher pressure, they had full freedom and the purpose was making it a fun game. This is why their purpose was to surpass that game with Megaman 9. They wanted to forget about polygons or high quality sprites, voice acting and surround sound. They want this game to be one thing, what really matters the most, FUN.
