On this week’s PlayStation Blogcast, the fine folks at Sony talked about this coming week’s releases for PSN. While the show focused primarily on a forthcoming title called Severed from Drinkbox Studios (Guacamelee!), the opening ten minutes or so were devoted to the new additions to the PSN store for the coming week. While the biggest release will undoubtedly be Ultra Street Fighter IV, it was what they said at 8:16 about another beloved Capcom franchise that will likely excite classic gamers even more, revealing that Mega Man’s eighth installment would be available for purchase on May 27.
This is pretty big news because this game has long been unavailable through publisher channels to modern-day consumers, forcing completists and series fans to acquire Mega Man 8 in the oftentimes nebulously-priced aftermarket. But it looks like those days are over because they will finally be able to obtain every numbered installment in the original series through virtual markets (provided they own a Nintendo console for parts 1-7, a Sony console for 8 and either Nintendo, Microsoft OR Sony for 9 and 10. Whew!)
Mega Man 8 is the eighth chapter in the story of Mega Man and his ongoing battle to stop Dr. Wily and his army of robots from conquering the world. In this chapter, a meteor possessing a strange energy source crashes down to Earth, and Dr. Wily has already gotten there and taken it. In Wily’s haste, however, he didn’t notice a mysterious robot that was also at the crash site. Dr. Light and Mega Man get the robot, bring it back to the lab and start examining it to find out its purpose. Then, because it’s Mega Man, he goes after Dr. Wily’s new batch of metallic henchmen one at a time by storming their uniquely-designed and bizarrely-defended fortresses. This all culminates as one might expect if they’re at all familiar with the franchise. Mega Man 8 was released in 1996 in Japan on the Sony PlayStation to celebrate the Blue Bomber’s tenth anniversary. It was the first in the series to be released on 32-bit platforms and took full advantage of the stronger hardware to bring, at that time, a truly next-gen touch to Mega Man’s adventures. A year later, the game was ported over to the SEGA Saturn in Japan and localized for the US on PlayStation.
The Blogcast gave fair warning that all dates were subject to change, but, with the release imminent, it would be a big surprise to see this one get pushed back. So, get ready for for awesome classic platforming action, along with some of the worst dubbed anime cutscenes of all time this Wednesday!
