Mighty Number 9 - What Happened?

[Music] hey there kids and welcome to another i peeling soul-crushing episode of what happened the show or we analyze and agonize over the many big failures of the mighty game industry and for speaking of might there is no other project title or evil curse comparable to the mighty levels of failure of Keiji Inafune a's mighty number 9 this is the first Kickstarter game we've covered here at what happened and while it won't be the last it'll certainly be the hardest to top in terms of sheer infamy so how did so many people get swept up in the fever of woe look Keiji Inafune a might get sent to the next dimension we gotta save them everyone open up your hearts your minds and especially your wallets [ __ ] I love Megaman how can we bring them back oh okay well that guy doesn't look nearly as charming or as cool as Megaman but but whatever make it rain y'all umm delays sure sure here's a buck or two wait three separate please for more funding wait woah you're being delayed again cry like an anime fan on prom night [ __ ] this okay well who so wha haha now if you're one of the lucky few that missed this menagerie of Mirana tea when it was happening you need to get caught up so kid jenna fuuny worked for capcom he's the father megaman but he's actually not he didn't come up with his design i'm merely shepherded the franchise he rose to the ranks for decades and forced the company to a big stupid Western push that damaged it for years he was then promoted again and just as quickly quit the company as he predicted doom and gloom for the Japanese gaming industry oh how right he was he then opened up to weird-ass company's concept and intercepts and then had a big huge really important life-changing announcement at PAX West in August of 2013 there he officially announced a spiritual successor to mega man mighty number 9 and launched a Kickstarter live on stage to thunderous applause at the time Capcom had a long history of kicking the [ __ ] out of Mega Man whenever it suited them however before those fans could settle into a nice long bouta depression Capcom would announce a bunch of new Megaman games and then just cancel them on you just as you were in mid blink in a foon a was banking on those Mega Man fans to make this new kickstart a success due to that ill will they had for Capcom and let's be real he was right to do it happy days were here again for all involved at first as each and every stretch goal was smashed Rhys mashed and then smashed again so despite asking for $900,000 for the bass game concept was able to amass a grand total of over 4 million dollars making it the most successful video game Kickstarter at the time who made this all possible well now before we get our hands really nasty I'll take a moment right here to let you know where I'm headed with all this the mighty number 9 Kickstarter is a masterclass and mismanagement miscommunication and pretty much any other negative term that has mists in the title if you want to see an excellent rundown of every single thing concept dead wrong in that department and there's a lot please check out the stop skeletons from fighting video on the subject as I can't do a better job than that so I want to focus as much as I can on the development itself with the information that's been made public in other bits and bobs that are fairly safe to assume with that in mind we're gonna do something a bit different on this episode and what I propose is breaking down the main problems of this garbage fire in three digestible chunks for easier consumption [Music] Keiji Inafune a's concept was not a developer in the original sense a rather a studio that would pitch ideas and weld concepts they would then farm out set ideas to other studios to do the heavy lifting and in this case the heaviest of lifting was done by inti creates an independent studio that cut their teeth developing the Mega Man Zero series as well as 9 and 10 respectively since inafune 8 had worked with them before it was only natural for them to team up again so far so good however the first signs that coms up was biting off more than their mouth could possibly chew was right there in the stretch goals one key tenant of any creative project is to know your limits and not to over promise or over stretch as it will inevitably lead to complications down the road and I present to you complications down the road mighty number 9 was promised to come out on 10 different platforms all together which is an insane amount for any studio or studios to handle well some people can't even get one version of a game race so promising 10 of them is the type of naive foible that makes this show possible now while producing so many versions of one game is a monumental amount of work there's another aspect to it that some people might not realize to make the porting process go as smooth as possible you need to design for something something called the lowest common denominator in this case that would be like the xbox 360 or the 3d acid it doesn't matter what does is that inti creates had to make something that could run across a variety of different machines from PC to Japanese consoles to American ones it just needed to be flexible and basic so no one platform would give them any trouble since we are talking about mighty number 9 however trouble had a way of cropping up regardless the year this whole thing was announced 2013 is a date that's intrinsically linked to a lot of its core problems concept and friends found themselves smack dab in the middle of a technological generation that was transitioning a new one their campaign kicked off in August several months before the launch of the ps4 and the Xbox one but tons of people still own 360s and ps3 so wasn't exactly wise to leave them out of the loop and and don't forget about the Wii U yeah lots of people tend to do that hey guys would you go up there oh cool can I have some so by the time mighty number 9 was first scheduled to come out in 2015 the ps4 on the Xbox one would be established so Jesus just throw those onto the pile and the end there wasn't much inti creates could do about all this I I bet they're [ __ ] themselves with each and every stretch goal reached like okay right oh oh oh oh oh now the last thing we'll be touching upon when it comes to planning is another aspect that some might point to as the saving grace or the safety net of mighty number 9 the budget hey yeah you screamer your computers but number 9 made over 4 million dollars that should have enough to fix any problems during development 4 million dollars huh that's how much they may well if that is indeed what you think then is something that may surprise you something that may shock and discredit you mighty number 9 didn't make four million dollars at all it's been reported that concept like a lot of Japanese companies at the time we're not fully aware of the risks of crowdfunding to begin with concept unfortunately didn't account for this in their budget for the actual game so with some quick math at four million six hundred and forty percent carry the three we wind up with a rough total of 2.4 million dollars Wow so a budget that was almost halved wasn't accounted for and yet still needed to be stretched to fund all those ports not an auspicious start now because of this money mismanagement a lot of things like voice acting and DLC needed more money after concept realized the miscalculation unfortunately all three of them never made their initial goals that later but make no mistake minor gameplay decisions level design and technical hiccups aside this is really what crippled mighty number 9 right out of the gate [Music] the next thing we need to address is that game development is hard not gonna lie a million things can go wrong at any time designs can change an unforeseen [ __ ] can jump out at you from behind an office desk 24/7 bearing that in mind from the initial pitch to the finished product a couple of things were altered during mighty number 9s development and a lot of them could probably be chalked up to the same thing keeping things in line across all platforms in various promotional materials we can see that early on concept had produced artifact the new playable hero transform into various machinery like industrial hammers and power lifters gaming tank like treads to cross bike paths this obviously shifted somewhere down the line and was never mentioned again for the rest of the campaign instead the absorbing mechanic were upon caused enough damage to enemies would let Beck instantly kill them through dashing was emphasized this ability was underutilized to say the least as Beck could simply dash infinitely through the air anyway which trivialized certain stages letting players skip a lot of sections this really seems like a system that wasn't given enough time or thought as just limiting the amount of midair dashes or putting a cool-down on it could have halted it from abuse you could then build challenging platform sections around the idea of dashing from enemy to enemy but instead it's just a slightly novel way of killing them and not much more this wasn't even the biggest thing in t create struggle with however oh no as that distinction goes to mighty number 9 small t player wait ahead [ __ ] multiplayer there was a competitive racing element where two players would square off online to see who could get to the end of a set stage first it was a throwaway mode that was a stretch goal some I guess it had to be there but was it worth it frankly no because this mode caused in calcul damage to the game in the long run as well as for inti creates Bart why well because it was the first online mode they had ever worked on yes prior to money number nine this little studio had never tried their hand at direct online way so it's fairly understandable it would be a little rough and yeah it was a little rough even at launch actually especially at launch players would constantly be out of sync run at different frame rates and counter crashes all of the etceteras it was the single most unpolished bit of the game and lots of people hated it how many exactly [Music] so that's it for the main development but of course we have to point out some of the many many many problems that the Kickstarter had backers god backers never actually went in on any of the additional costs or funds that I mentioned earlier stuff like the voice-acting for English Japanese and the radio see all demanded their separate campaigns and budgets because again concept didn't actually have four million dollars now why these features were being added to bloat the already massive workload in the first place is anyone's guess but since all three failed to meet their initial goals concept diverted money from elsewhere to fund just one round of voice-acting it's really weird though that they're pushing so hard for features that the majority of backers then want I guess Mega Man fans weren't really interested in voice acting knife I can't imagine why don't run away coward you'll pay for this insult when we find that media will find dr. Walley anyway there was one other crowdfunding snafu that no fan of mighty number nine wanted anything to do with and that was red ash the indelible legend now be honest I don't really want to go into this whole thing as it doesn't really have anything to do with mighty number nine per se it's a whole other energy tank I don't feel like drinking - [ __ ] it Cliff Notes version then let's go money number nine is not finished comcept opens another Kickstarter for a Mega Man Legends spiritual successor it looks very poor its campaign fails very fast in 2015 Inafune a said he had procured an outside source to fund it and that it will be completed it's 2019 now by the way and there hasn't even been a soft fart about it since remember though comcept was an idea factory they were free to pitch this idea since their design work on mighty number 9 was done so by that measure it wasn't really shady just completely and utterly tone-deaf one last thing though what the indelible mean anyway oh that's that's actually hilarious back on track we're now entering the last major pivot point from my knee number nine the involvement of Deep Silver and the cavalcade of poorly timed delays it saw in the last few months before launch comps at the nouse in April 2015 they had found a new partner that would publish physical copies for myriad of platforms and with the extra capital procured from the deal could afford more voice acting that radial C and oodles of localized languages however along with this glorious partnership meant a delay from spring of that year to September 15th which totally makes sense all of this new content needed a few extra months to be integrated into the base package and a single delay is common for most kick starters anyway however on July 23rd that September date turned into a I don't know date as online retailers started slotting in placeholders with no communication from the mighty team as to why then at the very end of the month they finally spoke up and confirmed that yes mighty number nine would slip to 2016 why well remember that online multiplayer mode that they were working on inti creates his first online multiplayer mode that's why bugs were cited as the main reason for the delay so who would require more time to iron the mount the new date was set for early February 20th never mind the date is now set for spring 2016 yes and a late January concept announced a third delay again blaming instabilities and the multiplayer matchmaking also in case you forgot since there's 8 or 9 10 versions of the game this one bug will require a lot of extra work to fix across all platforms how long exactly well let's just say up to June 21st of course before that we're all blessed with deep Silver's now textbook example of how not to make a trailer for a video game do you like awesome things that are awesome there's probably a - that makes you breakfast I don't know I'm ready no one's talking to you burden mighty number 9 - inti creates his credit they did not approve of this ad and were pretty vocal about its qualities like a lot of people were we are now entering launch week and if you weren't wearing your surprised face you'd be excused because the launch of the actual game went rather poorly the 360 version was late by a few days DLC codes the Ray level were missing the Wii U version was a hot jar of mayonnaise the 30s in Vita ports were delayed and physical rewards were only shipped out to Kickstarter supporters over a year later waitwhat fangamer was to supply physical NES style boxes to backers but we're waiting on comcept to provide the funds to do so the problem with an the concept had no money there's some guesswork here but the regular physical and digital sales of mighty number 9 that any Joe Schmo could buy weren't particularly soaring thus there wasn't enough money to power the production and shipment of those NES boxes it is until 2017 where level 5 a professor lane and ninokuni fame purchased comcept for some reason one month later thank Deemer mysteriously started shipping the physical goods to Kickstarter backers almost a year after the fact but better late than never I suppose it's safe to assume that the financial security of being bought by level-5 was what made this possible but yeah who knows also the NASL boxes and manuals were mis sized I gotta say one thing you do so well mighty number 9 is always staying 100% on brand of course the fact that the game wound up being a middling derivative platformer lacking much of the charm of the original Mega Man stood at no favors maybe if the Kickstarter communication had gone smoothly or like well at all and there had been no delays people might have cut it more slack regardless into crates were put in an unenviable position had to be beholden to a number of stretch goals and restrictions have less money to work with and initially thought were under constant pressure to not disappoint fans at couldn't have been easy anyway where are they all now concept now level 5 concept are apparently working on a dragons and colonies title that seems to still be in development although it's really hard to tell and a foon a who has since shied away from doing any public appearances for his part has placed the blame squarely on himself I own all the palms that came with this game and if you want to hurl insults at me it's totally my fault I'm the key creator I will own that responsibility he has also echos some of the statements and assumptions made here specifically that maybe shipping on 10 skews was probably a massive mistake in my many years at Capcom they were known for their multi-platform strategy but never did they do 10 skews all the same time 10 different versions all for one title usually you have the base game and work on the port after it was done in this case it was do the base game and do the port all at the same time it ended up being a huge amount of work more than we actually estimated now he says 10 skews but let's remember those Vita and 3ds ports never actually shipped the last official statement regarding this issue is that both versions would be completed and made available by the end of 2017 what the [ __ ] things aren't all bad though despite the massive amount of stress uncertainty and some ill-will from fans NT creates has gone on to great success with a streak of well-received games chief among these is their gun vault franchise blaster master 0 1 & 2 dragon work for death and the crown jewel gal gun galkin just goes to show that these types of scandal O's don't always result in instant closure just most of the time now listen Kickstarter's are never a sure thing in fact they're susceptible to a whole host of problems that are unique to them but it's unfortunately a fact that mighty number 9 damaged some people's perceptions of crowdfunding which I don't think is really all that fair every form of media can disappoint and have things go wrong during the creation phase and that's whether you are just supporting it with hype pre-ordering it or in the case of Kickstarter's donating to Mining mr9 was obviously mismanaged from many fundamental standpoints but its intentions of course were good although far far too ambitious to deliver on if you look at a campaign like shovel knight and how they structured and delivered on their promises resulted in one of the most loved and polished platformers in recent memory so my neighbor 9 is on a thing 2.2 so you can say crowdfunding socks or doesn't work but rather a cautionary tale that simply states learn from our mistakes coz damn we made a lot of them if you know of any other massive media misfires slap them comments down on the video below or hit up the flop house BFP patreon to participate in our next official poll see you next time mighty ones and thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 650,275

Rating: 4.9030509 out of 5

Keywords: Mighty Number 9, MN9, Mega Man, Video Game Disasters, What Happened?, Wha Happun, Matt McMuscles, Keiji Inafune, Capcom, Kickstarters

Id: kCIYMPfDQW4

Length: 20min 56sec (1256 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 06 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Dalek_Kolt]

I did not know about the budget getting halved. Part of me wishes they were honest, but I feel that they didn't want to look incompetent.

Also I actually thought Beck's design was kinda dope, up until the animated series promo, and then it just devolved from there.

[u/eyereadcomics]

lol the Vita and 3DS versions are totally coming, you guys.

[u/Mikeclick]

Holy shit. I knew they really bungled this up, but I never really knew how badly they did so. Using kickstarter without knowing they take a cut? Trying to make sure the game is playable on every system possible? Adding a multiplayer mode and not scrapping it after it causes multiple delays? Damn, what a disaster.

[u/Moist_Crabs]

I choose to believe that Mighty 9's from-orbit level flop was what finally inspired Capcom to start working on MM11, because if anyone was gonna make more Megaman games then bah gawd it may as well be them.

[u/PrimeName]

The only real memory I have with this is when [REDACTED] and Pat got into that huge fight about it on the podcast that ended with [REDACTED] saying that your contributions to a Kickstarter don't matter.

[u/DragonPick]

I enjoyed Matt's optimistic little ending there and totally agree with the idea that not all Crowdfunded games are bad and it's a total shame that Mighty 9 gave them all a bad rep. I mean look at Bloodstained!

Also, I had no clue there was multiplayer, wtf

[u/NorrisOBE]

LIKE AN ANIME NERD ON PROM NIGHT

[u/Commando_Joe]

I gave this game 500 dollars and all I got was a game that I barely wanted to play, some t-shirts I'm too embarrassed to wear, an art book I can't stand to look at and a plush that just sits on my shelf.

Fuck this game.

Also props on the use of Mega Man Legends music.

[u/ContraryPython]

TIL Mighty No. 9 had multiplayer