for Mega Man and his fans... but that’s not what the season’s about. A fan-made

production, which could’ve been shut down with a C&D letter, was adopted and provided

for free on this, the 25th anniversary of the US release of Mega Man. And it’s full

of Street Fighter, because why the hell not. Look, after the last few years, the inclusion

of Fat Mega Man in that Street Fighter X Tekken nonsense, the abandonment of... no, not gonna

say it again, gonna move past that... just watch some footage. It’ll do better to explain

this madness than I can in my present state.

There. Feeling better. As the legend goes, some huge Street Fighter fan from Singapore

started putting this thing together, then showed Capcom a single stage of the concept

at the big EVO fighting throw-down. They loved it. And so do I. He’s captured the crucial

aspects of a good Mega Man game: solid platforming physics, exciting gameplay, and inspired level

design. And it just so happens that each stage is capped off with a famous Street Fighter

figure. It’s a worthy successor to a lineage that sampled the fruits of 16- and 32-bit

technology, found them lacking, and went back to being 8-bit 18 and 20 years after that

stopped being a thing. If you’re expecting an experience as primal as Mega Man 9 or 10,

though, you should know that the inspiration for this game lies a bit later in the series.

There are charged shots. The slide returns. Some stages feature multiple paths. The first

throwbacks barely ventured past the innovations of Mega Man 2, but Street Fighter X Mega Man

draws its concepts from at least Mega Man 4 and probably closer to 5 or 6.

As this game is only available on the PC, your choices are to deal with the WASD keys

for control or find some manner of gamepad lying about, and I strongly suggest the latter.

This monstrosity channels the most brutal spite of the series’ history, and then adds

its own flourishes just for good measure. Like this little sequence here, where you

have to suspend a slide on a falling platform to hit a gap in the spikes, or this Rush Jet

side-scrolling shooter segment in Rose’s stage. Aside from the classic Mets and whatnot,

most of the foes in this game are brand-new, but look so faithful to the classic Mega Man

style you’ll swear you’ve seen them somewhere before. It’s like these debacles never happened,

and we got our legitimate Mega Man 11... just full of World Warriors, for whatever reason.

In grand Mega Man tradition, the physics are drum-tight, the soundtrack is incredible (even

if it’s just 2A03 remakes of classic Street Fighter themes with the occasional homage

to Snake Man), and the game itself pays meticulous attention to detail. Hurricane kicks travel

over projectiles. Lightning kicks slow your fall. All these little details might not matter,

but to the fans, they’re a sign that someone’s still paying attention. The passion is still

out there, and there’s a clear demand for something a little more reasonable than that

horrible-looking iPhone... thing. Perhaps it just took destroying Capcom’s servers

on a certain someone’s 25th birthday to get that fact through their heads.