Canned Mega Man FPS by Armature Studio revealed as “Maverick Hunter”
Armature Studio, the company founded by key Metroid Prime developers, hasn’t produced many games since its inception in 2008. But it did work on one huge project that eventually made its way to the trash bin: Maverick Hunter.
This first-person shooter was a new take on the Mega Man X series. Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune even signed off on the game, but right around the time when he left Capcom, Armature’s work on Maverick Hunter was scrapped.
Tons of details have now emerged on the cancelled Mega Man project through a new Polygon report. For a full summary, read on below.
– Would have built upon the mythology of Mega Man X
– Stayed true to Mega Man X gameplay concepts
– X-Buster arm canon reimagined
– Mega Man’s dash and his ability to appropriate the special powers of his fallen enemies also rethought, same with platforming elements such as X’s wall jump and classic characters
– Prototyped and fully playable according to Capcom sources
– Only around six months of work in the first half of 2010
– Game was deemed a big gamble and was quietly killed before Inafune publicly exited Capcom in late 2010
– Armature’s take on the X fiction would “be like taking an 8-bit game that doesn’t have a very deep story to it, and then building around it and keeping some of the key pieces intact”
– Those pieces included X and Zero
– New human sidekick for Mega Man, a Bruce Willis-like police officer
– The man versus machine contrast between the two was meant to be an overarching theme of the game, with Mega Man’s personality sometimes making him seem more human than his sidekick
– Capcom Japan developed the basic plot off key story points and twists from Inafune, but ultimately the plot would be in the hands of a Western scenario writer
– Trilogy of Maverick Hunter games had been planned
– Third game would let players control Zero, forced to destroy a Mega Man who had grown incredibly powerful and infinitely intelligent over the course of two games
– Game would have been overseen by Bionic Commando and Bionic Commando: Rearmed producer Ben Judd
– Didn’t progress much beyond a playable proof of concept
– “The playable was a proof of concept build rather than something intended as the real game or even a vertical slice. This is sometimes done to explore a new concept for games before they are approved for full production. You see some of the core ideas in action, and extrapolate based on that to what it could become.”
– Had strong internal support but was scrapped in greenlight meetings
– In the prototype, Mega Man’s more realistic, humanoid character design grips a menacing gun that forms around his hand but he still mixes rapid fire attacks with more powerful shots.
– Mega Man’s armor transforms to create the gun, instead of morphing his entire arm into a cannon
– Mega Man dashes forward along corridors and in the air, evoking one of Mega Man X’s signature moves
– Also throws a grenade that resembles the Gravity Well from X3
– Armor designed by Adi Granov (sharply rendered comic book covers and work on bringing Iron Man’s iconic red and gold suit to Marvel’s film franchise)
– Maverick Hunter’s approach to weapons and attacks were more grounded in realism
– Mega Man’s gunfire rocks with the metallic sound of a machine gun, and his more powerful shots are missiles, not charged up energy blasts from the classic X-Buster
– Mega Man can charge into enemies, kicking the camera out to a third-person view as he demolishes them with a close quarters melee attack or energy burst
– Defeating bosses and swapping out weapons on the fly would be kept intact
– Could absorb the weaponized abilities of foes after defeating rival robots
– “Comboing weapons together” would have been part of Maverick Hunter’s combat system, as would disposable weapons — bombs, sentry guns and tank turrets — that could be snatched from some enemies and used only a handful of times
– Enemies would be weak against certain weapons
– Branching paths
– The design of the original Mega Man X, with its upgrades and sub-tanks secreted away in various corners, influenced Maverick Hunter’s
– Branching pathways and context-sensitive areas that could be discovered by players would have offered variety to the game’s level-based design
