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  • Bad Export for You: The Anniversary Collection versions of the Complete Works games did not have all the features from the Japanese versions.
  • Cash-Cow Franchise: One of Capcom's mascot series, alongside Street Fighter, Resident Evil, and Monster Hunter.
  • Colbert Bump: After several years of inactivity, Mega Man's appearance in Super Smash Bros. helped reignite interest in the franchise.
  • Executive Meddling: The franchise has been a target of this from the very beginning, and each sub-series has suffered through this in some way.
    • As mentioned below, this is the reason for the Market-Based Title (Mega Man is known as Rockman in Japan and most of Far East Asia). A Capcom USA executive simply didn't like the name Rockman and demanded a name change before he'd allow it to be published in the region. Executive Meddling has been bothering the franchise since its inception.
    • One of the earliest instances of this trope in the series is Mega Man 6, whose development was egged on by Nintendo to get in one last Mega Man game on the NES before the SNES overtook it. (Another reason may be that Nintendo, via their Nintendo Power magazine, helped two American kids get their Robot Master designs approved to be in a real game; Nintendo wanted to make sure the kids didn't feel ripped off.) As a result, MM6 hit more of a middling quality than the rest of the NES games.
    • A push to keep selling the Mega Man X series has led to the creation of three sequels, despite X5 being the intended end. The resulting games tend to be ranked among the worst of the X lineup, with X7 generally ending up as the least liked installment in the franchise.
    • The Battle Network series has a similar issue; despite the third game capping the end of the series pretty well, development for another three sequels was forced again. BN4 is regarded as the worst installment of the Battle Network series, but thankfully, BN5 and BN6 are regarded far better and are typically on par with the rest of the series.
    • Mega Man Star Force had a fourth game in development around 2009 to 2010, but due to poor reception due to being compared to the Battle Network series and low sales of the second and third games along with the remake of the first Battle Network game featuring a crossover scenario with the Star Force series, Capcom decided to end it at the third game.
    • Mega Man Zero was originally going to end at the third game with Inti Creates originally wanting that to be the end and the next game they planned was originally meant to take place between the first two games. However, Capcom changed this into the fourth game in order to give the series a more definitive conclusion by resolving the last remaining loose end regarding Dr. Weil as well as Inti Creates intentionally killing off Zero so a Mega Man Zero 5 wouldn't be made. Unlike most of the other examples, while some people believe that the gameplay changes from the previous game were inferior to Zero 3, many agree that the fourth game serves as a solid conclusion to the Zero series.
    • On the opposite end of the problem, Mega Man ZX Advent and Mega Man Legends 2 both end on very blatant Cliffhangers, but due to a declining interest in Mega Man at the time, both series seem to have gone into a hiatus with no followup games in the foreseeable future.
      • While Inti Creates did have a third ZX game called "ZXC" in development around 2008 when they were also helping develop Mega Man 9, it was cancelled at Capcom's decision.
      • Before leaving Capcom, Keiji Inafune started development on "Mega Man Legends 3" as a game for the Nintendo 3DS. While he left early in development, the team involved with it attempted to continue it's development as well as tried to create a unique playable teaser for the Eshop that wouldn't be in the game and acted as it's prologue in order to try and get the game greenlit for development based on how many people downloaded it. However, Capcom cancelled the game before the prototype was even completed.
  • Follow the Leader: This series inspired both Touhou's Gaiden Game Mega Mari and the series RosenkreuzStilette, and both know it.
  • Market-Based Title: The franchise is known as Rockman in Japan. They changed it for the rest of the world because a Capcom USA executive didn't like the name.
  • No Export for You: Capcom had no plans to release Great Adventure on 5 Islands! and Rockman DASH Golf overseas.
  • The Other Darrin: In Japan, Mega Man's voice went from Hekiru Shiina (The Power Battle and The Power Fighters), to Ai Orikasa (8, Battle & Chase, and Super Adventure), to Kaoru Fujino (Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age Of Heroes), to Yumiko Kobayashi (Powered Up). In English, Ruth Shiraishi ( who was also the voice of X in X4) in 8 to Cole Howard in Powered Up.
    • Dr. Light: Shōzō Iizuka to Tomohisa Aso as of Powered Up and Maverick Hunter X.
      • On the English side, he went through a few actors before currently settling on Randall Wiebe (X8, Maverick Hunter X and Powered Up), who also voiced Earthrock Trilobyte and CWU-01P.
    • Proto Man: Ryōtarō Okiayu in 8 was succeeded by Daisuke Sasaki in Powered Up. In the English releases, it went from Jack Evans (8) to Jonathan Love (who was also Burn Rooster in X8) in Powered Up.
    • Roll: Hiroko Konishi (8 and Battle & Chase) to Konami Yoshida (Super Adventure Rockman) to Yoshimi Ninomiya (Powered Up) to Hiromi Igarashi (Tatsunoko vs. Capcom).
      • In English, she was voiced by Michelle Gazepis in 8 (Gazepis was also Iris in X4) and Angie Beers in Powered Up.
    • Dr. Wily: In English, he was voiced by an unknown/uncredited VA for his brief cameo in Zero's intro from X4. In Powered Up, Dean Galloway, who was also Chill Penguin in Maverick Hunter X, voices him.
  • Reclusive Artist: Akira Kitamura, the franchise's creator and director of the first two games, is notoriously reclusive. He abruptly left Capcom after the release of Mega Man 2 with only a few ideas for its sequel (among them Proto Man and Rush) to start his own video game studio. Said studio eventually folded and Kitamura retired from the industry altogether, and Kitamura has given very few interviews since.
  • Series Hiatus: Prior to the announcement of Mega Man 11 (which was released in October 2018), no new titles in the franchise were released since Mega Man 10, which was initially released in 2010. 11's producer, Kazuhiro Tsuchiya, said that there was a big desire within the company to continue the franchise, but the departure of Keiji Inafune left a void within the company that no one was willing to fill until director Koji Oda finally stepped up to take the reigns for 11.
  • What Could Have Been:
    • Mega Man Mania was going to be a GBA compilation with remakes of all the Game Boy games. It ended up being shelved, with one reason of it being due to some of the source code for the games being lost, although an ex-Capcom employee said this wasn't true and claimed it was "much stupider reasons". The Game Boy games were eventually re-released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop.
    • Legends 3, Star Force 4, ZXC, Universe, and Rockman Online were canceled before they could be made.
    • Around 2010 an unannounced game called simply Maveric Hunter (not to be confused with Mega Man: Maverick Hunter X) was quietly cancelled. It would have been a Darker and Edgier First-Person Shooter reimagining of Mega Man X series, with designs made by the same person who made armor for Iron Man.
    • Bass was almost named "Baroque" to highlight that he is the opposite of Rock/Mega Man. In the original Moonspeak, it was even more obvious: "Barokku" vs. "Rokku".
    • A feature-length Live-Action Adaptation was announced back in 2015 with 20th Century Fox and Chernin Entertainment producing it with Capcom. Plans fell through in 2019 following the former's acquisition by The Walt Disney Company, but a film is still in development as of 2022.
    • In 2024, one of the creators revealed that, had the limitations of the NES not been an issue, Mega Man would've worn white instead of the blue he became known for. By the time the technology was there, not only had he long left Capcom, but the blue was grandfathered in, even influencing his successors and later versions of the character.

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