10th June 2023
backA little over 2 years ago, a massive data breach occured at Capcom. This leaked the company's entire games schedule for the next four years. Among which were Street fighter six, Dragon's Dogma 2, and a Mega man game called Rockman Taisen.
Unlike the other two games on this list, there has been no information other that what was revealed in the initial leak regarding Rockman Taisen, despite it's release date being... the third quarter of 2023. The document reveals that it will have the largest budget of a mega man game yet, online multiplayer and some sort of DLC a year after it's release. No mention of genre, series or platforms.
Now, with such a game having had no official news despite being several months past it's release date, many fans believe that the game was cancelled or even a hoax. However I believe that if it were to be cancelled, we would have heard about it by now. Capcom haven't exaclty been quiet about cancelling mega man games in the past and there has been word from Protodude that there is something that isn't the Mega Man battle network legacy collection in development as recent as December last year. Instead it's likely that the deevlopment was delayed due to covid 19, as Street Fighter 6 was supposed to be releasing last year according to the leaks but was instead released on the 2nd June 2023
As for what Taisen will be in terms of gameplay, we can only speculate. "Taisen" translates to "match", implying that this could be a fighting game. While many would be dissapointed that it won't be a platformer, Mega man has proved that it can diversify and still deliver great gameplay, such as the Battle Network and Star force series and the Mega Man X spinoff command mission. Taisen can also translate to "Wars" which could imply that it's set in the Elf wars, the era between the X and Zeros series.
Regardless of your opinion on a theoretical Mega Man fighting game, I think we can all agree that that would be much preferable to what other genres a large budget game with online features could entail. The last thing Mega Man needs is a league clone or one of those live service micro transaction filled piles of crap that have plaguing the AAA games industry recently.
Despite there being no official news on Taisen or any other new Mega Man games, the recently released 35th anniversary art does contain some interesting details that could potentailly relate to a new game.
X's design in particluar is interesting, it was specifically requested that his design combine his X8 and X1 designs, this could be that Capcom wanted to honor both designs of X it could also be a redesign for Taisen or even an X9, however I think that we'll get Taisen before X9, due to the fomer being on the leaks. None of the ZX series mega men are present either,which is rather unusual.
Unfortunatley all we can do untill we hear anything from capcom is speculate. In a couple days time there will be a general Capcom presentation at 3pm pacific time (11pm for me as I'm britsh) so perhaps, we will finally get some offcial information.