While the Mega Man series is popular today, the first Mega Man was not successful. Keiji Inafune was transferred from Mega Man to work on a baseball murder mystery game for Famicom.
Inafune persisted on creating a sequel because he believed there was potential for Mega Man 2. He struck a deal with the sales team to allow him to create Mega Man 2 on top of finishing the baseball murder mystery game. The team sacrificed their time because they wanted to create something they love.
The original Mega Man was done with a staff of six, if you include the sound engineer. When Mega Man 2 was being planned, I was allowed to design one of the bosses. Teams were so small in those days, people had multiple roles. I took on the role as a planner and eventually a producer, but I have always been an artist too.
Inafune was surprised why Mega Man looked different with the infamous box art made for America. The US office at Capcom said to Inafune, the Japanese art style "does not pop in the West, nobody gets it. This is what we get," when explaining Bad Box Art Mega Man. At the time, Inafune didn’t know the differences so he didn’t question it, but at the time he thought Westerners really don’t get art.
Mega Man X was the first game Inafune was in charge of everything. He wanted the main character to be Zero to surprise people. The sales staff told him this doesn’t look like Mega Man, so he designed Mega Man and made him a main character, but I took out all of the cool parts and left those for Zero.
