On September 25, 2015, after multiple delays, a release date for Mighty No. 9 was announced for February 9, 2016! Finally, we would get our hands on the spiritual Mega Man successor. Being a fan of the Mega Man franchise myself, I was extremely excited for a definitive date. Now in just a few months I would have the game – or so I thought…..

Let’s give some history on Mighty No.9.  To do that, I have to talk about another company called Double Fine Productions. On February 12, 2012 Double Fine would announce their newest project would be crowd funded using Kickstarter. This project, tentatively called Double Fine Adventure, would be a new point-and-click adventure game. With a goal of  $400,000 for production costs (the largest sum for Kickstarter at the time), various incentives were given to fans who pledged certain amounts. The incentives ranged from early access to the game, to even meeting the staff.  Fans jumped at the chance to fund this project, shattering the goal in merely nine hours.

When the Kickstarter closed, they had received $3.3 Million in donations.  This amount of money lead to a total redevelopment of the game. Additional platforms for the game were introduced, as well as expanding upon its original concept.  Backers, however, became upset; due to incentives not being met, as well as the multiple delays in the games release.

The Double Fine Adventure Kickstarter will go down as one of the biggest gaming debacles in history.  The company did not seem to know how to handle surpassing their monetary goals, and they over-promised on the features; ultimately realising only half the game initially, and banking on fans to fund the second half.

Do Double Fine’s over-promising and under-delivering problems sound familiar? because if not, they will. Soon.

Keiji Inafune and his team at Comcept began work on a spiritual successor to the Mega Man franchise, since Capcom seemed to have no plans for the little Blue Robot. The new IP would have similar game mechanics, feature a side scrolling 2D/3D world and a brand new Robotic protagonist named Beck.  Keiji decided to bring this project to Kickstarter after the success that Double Fine had experienced; shooting for a PC release on April 2015. The internet seemed to explode from the news of a Mega Man-like game. Not to mention the Inafune was a former Capcom developer and his team Comcept had people that worked on previous Mega Man titles, so this looked absolutely promising. The Kickstarter did amazingly well, and even found its way to a publisher based in China named Deep Silver.

With this success, Inafune now wanted to add more features to the game, such as multiple game modes, that would help bolster its replay value. An online component and now a release on multiple platforms. The new additions caused the development team to push back its April release to September 15, 2015. In late July, 2015, Deep Silver moved the release date again from Sept. to a place holder date of Early 2016. However, to keep fans interested, PlayStation released a playable demo & a trailer, demonstrating all the new modes and the online component:

On January 22, 2016, a press release was posted on the official website, stating that Mighty No.9 would once again be delayed. This time, until some time in Spring 2016. The reason for this, would be due to the online  matchmaking issues for each platform having coding issues, and the fixes for each gaming platform are different. So the team has to fix each problem, one system at a time. Not to mention the game is running on Unreal Engine 3, which is an out-of-date source engine that no longer receives updates.

So now, how am I supposed to wait for a game  with this many issues running rampant? Granted, Comcept has been up front about their problems with the game. Also, they aren’t willing to just release a buggy mess, especially after being delayed so much. Yet I’m scared that Mighty No.9 will go the way of Duke Nukem Forever – a game lost in development hell. As a fan, I don’t need the online matchmaking feature, as long as the core side-scrolling gameplay is solid. Plus, as the year goes on, will Mighty No.9 survive in a gaming landscape set to be populated by games like Street Fighter V, Hitman and The Division (just to name a few)?  As gamers, at that point, will we even care? Mighty No.9, I will give you till Spring to shape up, after that you’re on your own.

What do you think of Mighty No. 9’s delays? Let us know in the comments, and for more gaming news and editorials stay with us at Pop Culture Uncovered!