Mega Man 9 To Stay True to 8-Bit Limits

Aug. 5 3:48 PM by Alicia Ashby

This entire Gamasutra interview with Hironobu Takeshita is great, but this is worth noting by itself:

You talked about how people were trying to graphically exceed the capabilities of the Famicom, but what about the temptation to exceed some other capabilities, such as flicker, slowdown, sprite limits, and stuff like that? Was it really hard to get people to stay within the confines of what they could have done, if this had come out after Mega Man 6 in 1993?

HT: Yeah, there were some things, like you couldn't have more than three enemies on the screen at once, so we had to make sure that that's how it stayed in our game. In the part with the dragon with the flame, [there should be] flickering, and whatnot.

In the options of this game, you can adjust that, unlike the old games. We purposely put some of those old-school bugs into this game, so it does recreate that feel.

That's right: this game will contain apparently user-controllable bugs and flickering options. Better than authentic.

Comments

That has got to be one of the weirdest things I have ever heard about a game. I like it. ^^

 

Oh, I was about to be pissed off until I saw that they were optional. Seriously, the slowdown was one of the most annoying things when we were playing Super Castlevania on VC. I'm all for having it as an option, though.

 

I'm all for this, for more than nostalgia's sake. Mainly, to see if having no flicker or slowdown actually makes the game that much harder or if it is a trick on the mind. Because I remember more than once using the sprite slowdown to my advantage (Or so I thought!)

 

This kind of makes me wish they truly were making this game with actual Famicom/Nes hardware. Imagine a limited release of this game on an actual Nes cart that could be played on an actual Nes.

I know wishful thinking. Still this game is looking very nice.

 

ArnoldRimmer, I had the same thought. I think they even designed a box cover and everything.

I mean, people still make Dreamcast games, so why not?

 

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