Mega Man shooter...?

(Written March 7th, 2006)

So I've been 1. Playing Star Wars Battlefront II, in which a franchise is turned into a battlefield-style FPS, and 2. Watching a few Mega Man game speedruns, and I was thinking, I can see why megaman hasn't been an FPS, but maybe it's not being looked at from the right perspective.

Rather than break the good mechanics by converting the platformer to first-person format straightaway, perhaps the mechanics should be shifted from a single-player story-driven game into something more like the Battlefield/Battlefront games. Maybe "Robot Wars" pitting the 2 robot forces of the "X" series against each other? NPCs could litter the battlefield as non-master robots that defend the team's base as well as occasionally dropping powerups as in Battlefront. Meanwhile players would choose classes as per BF games to fulfill certain roles.

Power absorbtion is one outstanding issue. On the one hand it's a critical factor of the MM games, but on the other, that's because it was Mega Man's unique ability. There are several options, my 2 favorite I can think of being:

• Players all have unique abilities based on their class, which can then be augmented by hitting a button to absorb either the last defeated enemy or the one whose corpse you are near/facing
• As per battlefront, a player is periodically selected to become the "hero" of their side (mega man, zero, sigma, bass, etc.), mega man being the only one who is actually less offensively powerful than a typical player, but becomes more powerful with each kill

I think a lot of the mechanics in MM would translate well into FPS format. Imgane sliding to cover feet-first in first-person perspective... I bet that would look cool. E tanks have already proven to be one of the most tactically engaging assets FPSs have, in the form of TRIBES 2's med packs. And unlike most platformers, there are precendents for limited ammo, pits/spikes to force players to watch their step, and complex architecture, usually focused around furturistic urban or fortress environments.

Make no mistake, I have no intention of starting a Battlefied 2 mod or anything, just thought it was an interesting idea.