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Fandom is a subculture composed of fans characterized by individuals coming together for a common interest, often spending large amounts of time with this interest and can include many things, such as cosplaying, fan games, art, music remixes, and so on. The Mega Man franchise created by Capcom has a large fandom, and is often centered around his video games, with many often remixing their favorite songs or attempting to make their own Mega Man game through various methods.

This article outlines the Mega Man fandom. Additional fandom content can be found on the Mega Man Fanon Wiki and Fan Fiction Wiki.

Fan activities

Members of a fandom engage in a large variety of activities to show off their love of the franchise. The advent of the Internet has significantly facilitated fan association and activities, and it is also used for archiving detailed information pertinent to their given fanbase. Often, fans congregate to share their love for and criticism, leading to a high level of organization and community within the fandom. There are multiple websites and forums dedicated to it, as well as internet memes and animated GIFs, fan art, fiction, wallpapers, videos (even a fan film), music, games, among other content.

There are also active fan organizations that participate in philanthropy and create a positive social impact. For example, the Games Done Quick events are speed running marathons done for charity. GDQ has done several Mega Man games since their inception.

Cosplay

Cosplay (a portmanteau between costume and play) is the creation and wearing of costumes designed in the likeness of characters from a source work, which can also be combined with role-playing and reenacting scenes. Mega Man fans cosplay as the various characters and iterations of Mega Man in the franchise from all different expects, even cosplaying as characters such as Bad Box Art Mega Man and Air Man.

Fan art

Fan art is artwork drawn by fans of a given series that is normally not commissioned or licensed by the company that owns the series. Sometimes fan art appears in official media, such as the ending credits from Rockman DASH 2 and in a dedicated section from the Archie Comics Mega Man series.

Fan club

A fan club is a group of dedicated fans that is usually run by fans who devote considerable time and resources to supporting them. Despite the name, there are also "official" fan clubs that are run by someone associated with the person or organization the club is centered on, such as My Capcom and its predecessors Capcom 'Fun' Club and u-Capcom.

Fan fiction

Fan fiction, or fanfic, is a type of written, drawn, or recorded made piece of media that is made by fans and it may or may not tie in with the story's canon. This may also portray a character in a wildly different tone, personality, or atmosphere that is not at all like the character they are derived from. Despite this, at times the fandom has had influence over what is generally accepted by the community or even the franchise's story itself.

Fan fiction is almost never regarded as canonical. However, certain ideas may become influential or widely accepted within fan communities, who refer to such ideas as "fanon" (fan + canon). Similarly, the jargon "headcanon" is used to describe a fan's personal interpretation of a fictional universe. One example of this is the "cataclysm" theory from Bob and George.

Fangames

Fangames are video games created by fans of the series. Many fangames attempt to clone or remake the original game's design, gameplay and characters, but it is equally common for fans to develop a unique game using another only as a template. Though the quality of fangames has always been variable, advances in computer technology and in available tools, e.g. through open source software, have made creating high-quality games easier. Fangames can be seen as user generated content, as part of the retrogaming phenomena and as expression of the remix culture.

Examples

• Street Fighter X Mega Man - Was given official funding and input from Capcom when the creator, Seow Zong Hui, showed Capcom U.S.A with a proof of concept.

• 2D Ver. Mega Man Legends 3: The Prologue! - Developed by Japanese fans of the cancelled Mega Man Legends 3, with the assistance of Hideki Ishikawa and Makoto Tomozawa.

• Mega Man Unlimited - A fangame that was formerly known as Mega Man 10. The official North American Mega Man 10 website accidentally used content from this game.

• Quint's Revenge - A fangame based off Mega Man II with Quint as the protagonist that uses the updated soundtrack by RushJet1. Quint can dash, crouch and call Sakugarne to pass through some traps, and some of the Special Weapons he obtains from bosses are completely unique. The game also has its own story, which is set towards the end of Mega Man II: Dr. Wily abandons Quint as punishment for getting defeated by Mega Man, but two hours later, Quint realizes that his command protocols are deactivated and regains his memory of who he is, and he sets out to defeat Wily as revenge, and in the process, he gets back the time machine he stole, the Time Skimmer, and returns to his time in the future, reuniting with his family.

• Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch - Takes the style of the Doom series and turns Mega Man into a multiplayer first-person shooter game with many arcs and chapters. Its protagonist is the player's avatar, Maestro.

• Mega Man Maker - A Mega Man level creator based on Super Mario Maker and the cancelled Mega Man Universe.

• Mega Man 2.5D - A 2.5D multiplayer game.

• Rockman 7 Famicom and Rockman 8 Famicom - "Demakes" of Mega Man 7 and 8, bringing the series back to its 8-bit roots, whereas 7 and 8 were 16 and 32-bit respectively.

• Mega Man: Rock N' Roll: This fangame was made by Dennis Engelhard as a tribute to his father, and Mega Man and Roll are playable together. In the story, a group of eight Robot Masters is kidnapped, and when they return, they're turned evil because of Dr. Wily. Fire Man, Skull Man, Honey Woman and Dagger Man from Mega Man Unlimited are also kidnapped, followed by Proto Man, and Roll almost meets the same fate, but Mega Man sacrifices himself to protect her. Dr. Light panics, but Roll requests him to convert her into a fighting robot like her brother, and he reluctantly does so, while she rescues Mega Man and they fight the Robot Masters together. Both Rock and Roll can slide, but they have exclusive skills: Rock can charge shots and summon Rush, while Roll can use rapid-fire, summon Beat to carry her in high areas, and perform a small double-jump, but takes more damage than him. Collecting all the R-O-C-K and R-O-L-L plates also powers up Rock's charge shot and Roll's double jump. Both characters are playable in the Wily Stages with two stages each, splitting up taking different paths before reuniting: Rock attacks the castle from the main entrance below, while Roll enters from the roof. They also alternate being playable at some points, like the bosses towards the end of the game. The kidnapped Robot Masters are hidden in four stages, and if they're defeated, they won't appear in the boss rush, instead being replaced by generic threats, and they turn good again, helping Rock and Roll in the Wily stage they appear in to locate and destroy one of the four security systems that hold Proto Man in a containment cell. This is required to get the good ending, but he first has to defeat a Copy Robot that takes the appearance of himself, Rock and Roll before he can escape. If Proto Man was saved and escaped, he stops Dr. Wily from escaping, leading to his arrest.

Doujin games

• MegaMari - Marisa no Yabou
• Rockmen R: Dr. Wily's Counterattack - A PC game starring Roll.
• Rosenkreuzstilette
• Rosenkreuzstilette ~Freudenstachel~

Modding

Modding, Mod for short, is the process of modifying a video game to alter one or more of its aspects, such as graphics, dialogue, stages, and gameplay, ranging from small changes to complete overhauls, including creating a new, unofficial game by using the original game as a template. It is usually done by technically inclined video game fans to breathe new life into a cherished old game, as a creative outlet. Modding can be done in many ways, such as ROM hacking, which is done by modifying a ROM image or ROM file of a video game.

ROM hacking is generally accomplished through use of a hex editor and various specialized tools such as tile editors, and game-specific tools which are generally used for editing stages, items, and the like, although more advanced tools such as assemblers and debuggers are occasionally used. Once ready, they are usually distributed on the Internet for others to play on an emulator or console. There is such a big number of hacks available on the Internet, that searching for "Mega Man hacks" on YouTube will easily reveal at least a dozen.

ROM hacking is also done to provide fan translations for games that were not officially released on specific languages, with varying quality. Examples of Japanese exclusive games that gained an English fan translation include Wily & Right's RockBoard: That's Paradise,^[1] Rockman.EXE 4.5 Real Operation,^[2] Rockman.EXE Operate Shooting Star,^[3] Rockman.EXE WS,^[4] and Namco × Capcom.^[5]

Cheat devices such as Game Genie, Action Replay, and GameShark can also be used to make changes to a game, but they are mainly used for cheating, manipulating the code to provide different beneficts. Many games with multiplayer and online features may have anti-cheating measures to prevent unfair play. After an incident during the Rockman.EXE 2 NetBattle tournament, where the winner used the unannounced Gospel event Battle Chip, most games from the Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force series (mainly in the Japanese versions) included a subtle change to the save message to detect modifications, such as the removal or replacement of a dot or comma, preventing the entrance from cheaters on tournaments.^[6] On that note, depending of the modification and method, modifying a game's coding may cause permanent changes or even flaws to a game if not done properly, backup copies being more suited for them. Depending on the severity, errors that may occur include the corruption or loss of saved data and making the game unplayable. Some glitches may also scramble game data, such as MissingNo. in the original Pokémon games.

Below are some examples of ROM hacks. For more, see ROM hacking in the Mega Man Fanon Wiki.

• Roll-chan - A series of ROM hacks that replaces Mega Man by Roll in several games, including the six NES games and the five Game Boy games. In these ROM hacks, Tango from Mega Man V takes Rush's place in gameplay.

• Mega Man Revamped - A ROM hack of the first Mega Man game, released for the 38th anniversary of the original game. It has looping music in the title screen, a window after a boss's defeat to indicate the obtainment of its Special Weapon, and graphical updates, like new sprites for the bosses, icons for Special Weapons in the pause menu, an upgraded UI that shows the number of lives below the health bar, icons for Special Weapons in the pause menu, and different color schemes for Mega Man when he activates some Special Weapons (like altering the Ice Slasher color scheme into the one used for the Blizzard Attack, changing the Thunder Beam's color scheme to dark gray and yellow to purple and yellow, giving the Fire Storm color scheme slightly darker colors, and changing the Hyper Bomb color scheme into the one used in Mega Man Powered Up). The capsules that restore health and Weapon Energy use their designs from Mega Man 2 onwards and the score system was removed for consistency with later games, including the orange power-ups that increased the player's score. Hyper Bomb was also buffed to function like in the New Style from Powered Up, now making the bombs explode as soon as they touch enemies.

• Mega Man 2 Revamped - A ROM hack with a few graphical updates, like the gems on the walls in Flash Man Stage. It also rebalances some aspects of Mega Man 2, including its Special Weapons (such as doubling the energy cost for the Metal Blade to nerf it and make it more balanced compared to the other Special Weapons of the game; speeding up the Atomic Fire's charge time and altering its weapon energy cost to match its lower cost from Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge; increasing Bubble Lead's power and making many enemies no longer immune to it, allowing Mega Man to deactivate Time Stopper on command; making Crash Bomber explode much faster when it clings to a wall, making it much easier to deal multiple damage with the explosions; and altering the Leaf Shield's attributes, improving its defenses, reducing its energy cost from 3 units to 2 and keeping it active while moving at the cost of consuming weapon energy over time and dissipating when the leaves touch anything that is immune to Leaf Shield; lastly, Crash Bomber's energy cost was decreased from 4 units to 3, giving it nine uses instead of seven and thus reducing the risk of soft locking during the boss fight against Boobeam Trap).

• Mega Man 3 Revamped - A ROM hack of Mega Man 3 that is the culmination of earlier ROM hacks of the game, like Mega Man 3 Ultimate. It adds a proper intro scene to explain the plot, makes Proto Man appear as Break Man until he's defeated before the Wily Stages, fixes spelling errors, gives Proto Man's theme a full loop in the ending scene and the boss roll call, and rebalances the difficulty curve in the second half of the game by making the Doc Robot stages easier and shorter to prevent difficulty spikes and adding Weapon Energy capsules before the mandatory Rush Jet section in the second half of Doc Needle Man Stage to prevent soft-locking, while the Wily Stages were altered to make them longer and harder, adding new portions of level design and removing many of the items scattered through them to keep a proper challenge. Some Special Weapons were also buffed: Top Spin no longer hits during invincibility frames, alleviating a bug that drastically drained its energy, Gemini Laser is significantly faster, and Mega Man can change weapon after paralyzing enemies with Spark Shock, though this also cancels the paralysis from the enemies.

• Mega Man World 1-5 DX - A series of ROM hacks of the five Game Boy games released from 2022 to December 2024. They make the games in color (including using the sprites in color from Mega Man 10 for the Mega Man Killers and their Special Weapons), give the game logos a new font on the title screen that match with the Japanese logos and remove all slowdown from the gameplay. Due to the ROM hacks making the games being in color, the UI and pause menu was altered, giving each Special Weapon icons and changing the color schemes on Mega Man's sprite and the life icon to show they're equipped, Quint, Sunstar and the Stardroids now have sprites in color to match their artwork, and Spark Chaser gives Mega Man a unique blue and green color scheme. Mega Man World 2 DX also improves the sprites by replacing some of them with pre-existing sprites from other games and uses a higher-quality soundtrack from the Improvement patch (though the original game's soundtrack can be picked in the title screen), and Mega Man World 4 DX has an option in the title screen that lets the player activate or deactivate the recoil from charge shots. Also, Proto Man's special S capsule is replaced with a Yashichi in Mega Man World 4 DX and Mega Man World 5 DX.

• Mega Man Ultra - A Mega Man 2 ROM hack with multiple changes, including the addition of new enemies, music remixes, and bosses with different strategies.

• Rockman 4 Minus Infinity - A hack of Rockman 4 made by Japanese ROM hacker Puresabe that redesigns the game, changing the weapon functions, stage design, and boss patterns. This hack has been covered by Destructoid and The Mega Man Network in the past.

• Mega Man X5 Improvement Project - A Mega Man X5 hack that makes several improvements to the game, such as improving its translation, disabling all interruptions from Alia with the options in the menu, making it easier to obtain parts and simplifying the part system, making Heart Tanks work for both X and Zero if one collects them, and making armor parts always active once obtained instead of only becoming active with the full sets. Some Special Weapons were also updated to reduce backtracking, and Tidal Whale Stage is faster paced. Also, the chance of success for the two plans is proportional to which parts X and Zero have instead of being luck-based: they always fail with no parts and are always successful with all parts.

• Mega Man X6 Tweaks - A Mega Man X6 hack that makes several improvements to the game like in the X5 Improvement Project: X can use armor pieces even without having their full set, he and Zero now share powerups, Nighmare Souls and Hunter Rank, and the system that requires a specific rank to equip parts was altered, allowing them to equip one from the start. X can also Air Dash with the Shadow Armor or without any armor, Injured Reploids that don't have parts have been removed and Reploids corrupted by a Nightmare Virus can now respawn if they were killed, and Zero's techniques have altered control layouts, making it less likely for him to accidentally use Sentsuizan and fall to his death in sections like the rope jumps in Infinity Mijinion stage. Some parts of the level design were also changed to make it more approachable and less reliant on specific parts or armors for X, like in Secret Lab, and the difficulty of the bosses was rebalanced, like halving Nightmare Mother's health bar and reducing the damage output on other bosses like Commander Yammark. It also has a new English script, improving the localization's poor quality.

• Mega Man X7 N's Edition - A Mega Man X7 hack that makes improvements to the game, including more consistent wall jumps, faster Z-Saber swings for Zero, an improved Copy Shot for Axl, a significantly faster pacing for text and in-game cutscenes, including the possibility of speeding them up, X, Zero and share all upgrades, X is now unlocked by rescuing 32 Reploids instead of 64 (thus unlocking him after just two stages at minimum instead of four), and Reploids are more durable. Bosses have less health and take more damage like in the Japanese version of the game. and some sections have a more comfortable camera angle and allow the player to manually move the camera. Some aspects of the physics were also improved, improving more consistent wall jumps, dash jumps occur properly, and the character no longer gets pushed back if they land at the edge of a platform or move on moving surfaces like the planes in Wind Crowrang stages, removing the risk of falling to their deaths and improving the platforming. Special Weapons also received some improvements: two Sniper Missiles can be fired instead of just one and X's charged version fires three of them at the same time instead of one right after the other; Gaea Shield can be held by keeping the special weapon button held at the cost of consuming its gauge and its charged version forms the rocks faster; a charged Wind Cutter is faster; Hadangeki can pierce enemies and projectiles; and Zero can change direction when he's preparing to counter with Gokumonken.

• Mega Man Star Force DX - A mod that improves and adds new features to Mega Man Star Force, such as including the Japan-only Lunar Knights scenario, BrotherBands, and Battle Cards.

• Mega Man in Sonic Battle - A hack of Sonic Battle with Mega Man as a playable character. He replace Miles "Tails" Prower in gameplay, though not in story, with some unique attacks to him: his mines are based off his Search Snake, while his aerial attack is the Top Spin, which can be used repeatedly and slows down his momentum while falling. Mega Man also uses the Mega Buster for Tails' projectile, the Energy Ball, and a downwards shots that replaces the Tails Dunk. To fly, he calls Beat to carry him.

• Mega Man X in Sonic Battle - A hack of Sonic Battle similar to the previous one, with X taking Tails' spot as a playable character in combat. He also has some moves of his own, like the Z-Saber slash from Mega Man X3. To fly, X glides with his boots.

Fansites

A fansite, fan site, fan blog or fan page is a website created and maintained by one of more fans. The content of Mega Man fansites vary, including specialized information on the franchise (e.g. The Mega Man Network), specific elements (Sprites Inc), and dedicated to a single subject (Dust Man's Domain).

Most fansites are unofficial, but a few are officially recognized and may interact with each other. To state that they are unofficial, many fan webmasters put a disclaimer on a visible place on the website, which sometimes also includes the copyright of the site.

Relationship with the industry

The entertainment industry refers to the totality of fans devoted to a particular area of interest, whether organized or not, as the "fanbase". The Mega Man franchise often received fan content via boss character contests.

Media fans, have, on occasion, organized on behalf of canceled series, one successful example being Star Trek in 1968. The cancelation of Mega Man Legends 3 led to the creation of the Get Me Off the Moon group. Such outcries, even when unsuccessful, suggests a growing self-consciousness on the part of entertainment consumers, who appear increasingly likely to attempt to assert their power as a bloc.

The relationship between fans and professionals has changed because of access to social media platforms. These give fans greater access to public figures such as creators, authors, and actors.

Music from OverClocked ReMix's album For Everlasting Peace: 25 Years of Mega Man was used in the Mega Man Legacy Collection 3DS trailer, and three fans from the series were invited for the Mega Man 30th Anniversary podcast that unveiled Mega Man 11.

External links

• Fandom article in Wikipedia
• Mega Man Fanon Wiki - A wiki dedicated to Mega Man fandom.
• Robot Master Database Wiki - A wiki listing fan made Robot Masters.
• Mega Man in the Cosplay Wiki
• Mega Man Home Page links

References