The Story of Mega Man on DOS | Gaming Historian

in 1990 capcom and high-tech expressions released mega man on dos it's a strange game especially when compared to the nes titles the bosses are wacky the enemies seem out of place and gameplay feels sluggish the game is infamous within the mega man fandom even capcom wants fans to forget about it in the mega man official complete works book mega man on dos is missing but behind the game is a story about a mega man fan who followed his passions programmer steven rosner worked on it by himself in his spare time after work one could argue that mega man on das is an early example of a fan game that actually got published and if you can believe it rosner and his brother made a sequel too let's dive into the strange world of mega man games on dos [Music] this episode of the gaming historian is sponsored by honey these days it feels like all we do is online shopping and luckily i have honey to help me out it's the free browser extension that scours the internet for promo codes and automatically tests them when you're checking out it's super simple to use when you go to checkout honey will pop up just click apply coupons honey will find the best coupon and apply it to your cart as you may know i recently started grad school and i have to buy a lot of expensive academic books honey saved the day and got me 13 off my halfpricebooks.com order that's awesome it's a no-brainer if you shop online you should have honey installed it works with every browser and again it's free go to joinhoney.com gaming historian click install and start saving money today that's join honey dot com slash gaming historian [Music] throughout the 80s the average price of the personal computer kept coming down which made pcs more and more accessible this brought computer programming to the masses suddenly everyday people were learning how to make software including video games steven rosner of thousand oaks california was one of these people he taught himself to program with whatever computer he could get his hands on the apple ii a trs-80 the commodore vic-20 he ported the game berserk to his friend's old s-100 bus computer the same type of computer found in the movie war games that's pretty much what told me programming was gonna be my my deal and then my dad after seeing this yeah he paid the what it was 600 for the commodore 64 when it first came out and another 600 probably within a year or two to get the you know disc drive for it that's pretty much how it started and it was really just doing little games and trying to come up with things that would help us play dungeons and dragons after high school rosner enrolled in community college but he quickly learned that he was ahead of the curve when i got into college probably got like at least an associate's degree work but i never you know finished you know occasionally i would know more than the teacher i remember dropping a class you know after this after i corrected the teacher twice i knew i wasn't going to get a good grade so you know there was that so i was like pretty much self-taught at the same time rosner got a job at hughes aircraft through his father's connections he programmed databases for the accounting department it was a mundane job that didn't pay much rosner hoped that eventually he could work his way into the video game industry then came a very lucky break i was toying around with a karate game it was like a karateka or whatever like you know the very one of the very first karate games was i basically made like a copy of that um on my commodore and then some friends who you know had started a pizza joint delivered to a little company out near thousand oaks and the guy said hey if you know anybody programs you know just give them the business card so i went over there with this game that i was you know making as kind of like a demo rosner interviewed at a small software company named pacific dataworks which primarily did contract work one of their biggest clients was capcom usa located in sunnyvale california the company was the u.s subsidiary of capcom japan and brought over their coin-op games for distribution in the united states but in 1986 nintendo of america chose capcom usa as one of the first four licensees for their new console the nintendo entertainment system capcom usa learned quickly that the real money would be in consumer sales executives put joe maurici a regional sales manager in charge of capcom usa's consumer division they ported their most popular coin-op games over to the nes brokered a licensing deal with disney and hired subcontractors to port titles to the personal computer one of those companies was pacific dataworks capcom hired the company to port street fighter a popular arcade fighting game to the commodore 64. so when steven rosner interviewed for the job at pacific dataworks and presented his karate game demo they immediately hired him to help program street fighter there's two versions there's one that came out of the uk that's not very good and then there's my version which it doesn't have the last guy because he was too big to kind of get the sprite system you know to build so rather than make something poor we decided to you know just leave out you know sagat but it was actually you know a very good you know commodore 64 port in addition to street fighter rosner worked on bionic commando hat-trick and even an unreleased nes version of street fighter boarding games proved challenging when i was working at pacific dataworks literally what you would do is you would play the arcade game and then you would basically copy as best as you could the artists would redraw everything you know you would reprogram everything the whole nine yards eventually rosner and two other employees left pacific dataworks and joined another software company riggs international they only made one game pocket rockets a motorcycle racing game not long after capcom usa's joe maurici offered to acquire riggs international and make them capcom usa's internal development team they accepted and soon rosner was working for capcom the kind of motive of three of us you know that actually got brought into capcom was the idea that capcom uh usa would start actually you know trying to develop stuff it was generally going to be pc games unfortunately the internal development team never materialized there there was a couple of little projects that we that were being worked on when we got there that never actually saw the light of day there was a little like world war one uh aircraft it was basically you know the allies versus you know the germans you know and kind of like a little barnstorming game like i don't think any i don't think i really worked on anything or got anything produced while i was at capcom or published while i was at capcom instead rosner had to review pc titles from external developers he missed his true passion programming with nothing on the horizon at work rosner programmed something for himself in his spare time he developed a dos version of one of his new favorite nes games mega man mega man was one of capcom's newest characters and it became a powerhouse franchise mega man graced the covers of video game magazines had a starring role in cartoons and was consistently a top selling game on the nintendo entertainment system yo the fact that you had to learn to understand what weapon would damage somebody and so you kind of had to create an order in which you would go and do things you know and this is before the advent of books that would tell you exactly what order to do stuff right you had to literally parse these things out by just playing the game 10 000 times so i thought it an extremely intelligent game you know the fact that you kind of had to put all this thought into it you couldn't just like willingly go through rosner did everything himself graphics sounds level design enemy emboss patterns it was a daunting task for one person to complete but he pressed forward the game has an electricity theme mega man must enter a top secret compound take down three robot masters and defeat the evil dr wily previous mega man games began with a stage select to choose which robot master players wanted to fight but mega man on dos begins with an introduction stage mega man must get past the security gate and a robot guard dog before reaching the stage select screen this is a way for the player to get used to the game before jumping into a level over the years the mega man games have become somewhat famous for having opening stages mega man x in particular mega man on doss's opening stage is by no means great the guard dog takes a lot of hits to kill and instantly respawns it's best to just run through it but it is technically the first mega man game to have an introduction stage there are only three robot masters dynaman voltman and sonic man levels feel somewhat empty but that could be because there is no music control wise mega man feels pretty close to the nes games he even has that little foot shuffle when you press on the d-pad quickly one of the big differences between this game and the nes games is how players progress through levels due to technical limitations the mega man games on nes had horizontal scrolling but no vertical scrolling stages were sort of chained together into sections but mega man on dos has both types of scrolling and so the stages feel like one big level the enemies are somewhat strange mega man fights against rats mosquitoes birds and bees there are a few familiar enemies like sniper joe but they rarely pop up on the surface mega man on dos feels like an outlier in the series but it has unique origins it was a fun side project made by one programmer and rosner received no assistance from capcom he made what he wanted it was essentially a fan game i just made the game period like everything sound graphics i see every once in a while on the things when people talk about it you know they just don't get it well my name's on everything because like literally you know i had to do all the audio bleeps and bloops you know i had to do the artwork the design of it was just something i did it mimics other mega man games in the fact that you have to you know get weapons to defeat different bosses but yeah it was just me while working on the game steven rosner realized he couldn't stay at capcom he wanted to make games for a living again i guess that would be hey boredom's not the right word i mean it was just like missing programming i really really really liked programming you know i couldn't tell you exactly why i think it's uh it's got both artistic and logical sides and you know my brain was always both when rosner told joe maurici he was leaving he got a surprise maurici knew that rosner was working on a mega man game for dos as a side project because the series was so popular mauricio wanted to get mega man on as many platforms as possible for exposure and extra revenue he offered to publish the game so in 1990 capcom and publisher high-tech expressions released mega man for dos to save money on the cover capcom slightly altered the box art from mega man 3 on nes this art was also used for the game boy game mega man dr wily's revenge rosner was back to making video games he started doing freelance work for various companies under the name rosner labs rosner worked on the great waldow search on nes and darkwing duck for the turbografx 16. he even ported the ninja gaiden arcade game to computers soon his brother william who had a background in art and architecture joined him to assist with development we pretty much were kind of co-developing you know i would do the programming i would create the tools to do the artwork and everything and then bill would pretty much do all of the artwork and stuff that would go into things while porting games brought in money it was not as fulfilling as making an original game so the rosner brothers came up with a concept for an environmentally themed game called eco man players took control of eco man a little guy in a hazmat suit who went around oil rigs underwater caves and boats transforming mutated enemies back to normal they worked on the game for several months before pitching it to publisher high-tech expressions high-tech expressions which had an exclusive licensing deal with capcom agreed to publish the game under one stipulation change eco-man to mega man rosner labs agreed and began making the necessary changes in 1993 capcom and high-tech expressions published mega man 3 the robots are revolting many people find the title of the game confusing what happened to mega man 2 there is no mega man 2 for dos the game was only titled mega man 3 because of the cover art one of the bosses from the nes version of mega man 3 closely resembled one of the bosses from the mega man 3 dos game so once again to save money capcom reused the box art and called the game mega man 3. if people thought the first mega man dos game was strange mega man 3 was even stranger but that's because the game was originally never supposed to be a mega man game the levels are massive living worlds enemies don't respawn even if mega man loses a life this time around the robot masters are bit man shark man wave man oil man blade man and torch man their portraits are based on bosses from the nes games for example blade man is a modification of metal man's portrait from mega man 2 on the nes another surprise is that for the first time ever mega man can swim the feature wouldn't return until mega man 8 on the sony playstation william rosner stated capcom didn't hate it otherwise we would have had to change it out after mega man 3's release stephen and william rosner officially incorporated rosner labs as rosner labs software group they attended trade shows looking to elicit work from bigger companies they aimed to get high paying console work but their specialty was porting games to the computer they continued to work with high-tech expressions in capcom on various projects one of those projects was mega man x capcom had recently reinvented mega man with a new franchise that took place 100 years after the original games mega man x came out on the super nintendo in 1993 joe maurici still at capcom approached rosner labs about porting the game to the computer and this time capcom was willing to help that one was great because i think we got we got dat tape audio we got the graphics we we basically got most everything although i couldn't get the code for mega man x so with that that was one where literally we had to play the super nintendo and recreate you know everything from the ground up capcom released mega man x for dos in 1995. it came packaged with a six button controller the game sold well but it is by no means a perfect port and has some minor differences from the super nintendo version bosses feel more aggressive x controls much differently and all the right armors are missing but if players didn't have a super nintendo it was a way to get in on the mega man craze again you know it was a whole different market there weren't really a lot of pc games a lot of the pc views weren't great i think that's why a lot of people if you see the people who really like you know the mega man pc games like you know what was out there was really not great ports that were out there were really really horrible you know where yeah people just coded it as poorly as possible i was told on the number of ports that i worked on you know do it fast it doesn't matter if it really you know is horrible and even with bugs you know they would say no we're just gonna like push this out two years later the rosner brothers sought new opportunities and shut down rosner labs steven rosner bounced around the industry for a while including a stint at electronic arts where he worked on a variety of sports titles today the rosner brothers are running their own company again fun spray games currently they are working on their passion project the rosner brothers always wanted to make their own rpg so together they are working on one for android and ios the mega man games on dos are certainly strange when compared to the other games in the mega man franchise and they aren't necessarily good games the awesome games done quick charity has featured both mega man and mega man 3 in its lineup capcom has never officially acknowledged the game since their release although they have reused some boss names like oilman and blademan they have nothing to do with the dos games i mean they are what they you know were they're kind of like you know homages and what have you capcom has always been about you know fan art and whatever if nothing else i mean it was a super early version of you know fan art programming capcom has since taken a neutral approach to fan games they've stated that they can't legally sanction fan games but they also won't go after them either in 2012 they even officially licensed a fan game street fighter x mega man and released it for free people love to make fun of the mega man games on dos but by looking at their backstory it's easier to see these titles in a new light at the time capcom was trying to expand its consumer division by porting popular games to the computer there was little to no concern about continuity or quality the mega man dos games were essentially fan games that capcom agreed to publish for a quick buck that's all for this episode of the gaming historian thanks for watching funding for gaming historian is provided in part by supporters on patreon thank you [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Gaming Historian

Views: 344,142

Rating: 4.9561214 out of 5

Keywords: mega man, capcom, megaman, DOS games, DOS, gaming history, mega man 1, mega man games, mega man DOS, megaman dos, mega man dos remake, snes, nintendo, ms dos, arcade games, video game history, mega man history, gaming historian, MS dos games, dos games, classic dos games, retro gaming, mega man gameplay, mega man review, video game preservation, retro game console, n64, history of video games, video games, classic video games, documentary, mega man legends, mega man x

Id: gwt5yWJqCzU

Length: 22min 51sec (1371 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/doctortrento]

As weird as those games are, you've gotta admire the amount of work that went into reverse-engineering Mega Man completely by yourself

[u/shawnhopkins]

This was really well-done. Much more than some guy ranting at a camera about how much something sucks. I recommend it to anyone who likes documentaries about the oddball side of gaming.

[u/Shardwing]

Anybody know what the error in the original upload was?

[u/Klepto666]

A lot of people point back to the terrible Mega Man on DOS, but there was an even-worse Mega Man from around this time that I vaguely remember from my childhood. However it's very likely it was some sort of unofficial version despite having Mega Man sprites.

Also on the PC, it had less colors than the DOS version, there was no "introduction stage" to the level select, it had no power-ups, the robot masters had the same buster cannon pellets as Mega Man, but the levels were the same huge sprawling horizontal-and-vertical layouts as the DOS game. I can't even remember how many robot masters there were but I want to say 4 or 6.

All I could remember is that that dinky old PC basically had two games on it: Clyde's Adventure and that Mega Man whatever game that I cannot even find information about anymore.

[u/Aromatic_Ant4886]

I enjoyed watching this, it was very informative. I really knew very little about the game's past.

I actually bought both of these in the store. Capcom was certainly counting on kids assuming these games were the same as their NES counterparts, perhaps better in some way. Capcom re-using that art might have saved money, but I'd also argue they had no issue tricking kids into thinking these games were similar. Any kid with some Nintendo Power or whatever lying around recognized those pictures.

I only had Mega Man 2 on the NES, so when I saw I could get 1 and 3 on my PC for less money... Well, I bought them. And I imagine like most kids I couldn't figure out what the hell it was about once I put the disk in. I had never heard of the Hi-Tech company that's shown when the game loads up, going from 8 bosses to, in one case, only 3, was noticeable. I assumed I had set something up wrong because there was no music. I had one of those joysticks most similar to an Atari 2600 joystick, so playing it was an absolute chore... particularly the platforming.

I hated these games even at the time. They perhaps were better than some of the average shovelware, but even back then it was easy to get shareware of things like Crystal Caves that controlled well and were fun.

Still, it's interesting to find out one guy did these. I thought the story about him was really interesting, I'm glad he participated. Even having disliked those as a kid, I can respect what he managed to do with so little support. Pretty impressive.

[u/officeDrone87]

It was really cool to see how much better his ports turned out once he actually had support from the original developer. If he had been given the code for MMX I really think he could've made a perfect port.

I think this dude really had the creative spirit that went into the indie game revolution of the 2000s. He just didn't have the tools to really make the most out of it. I feel like trying to make an indie RPG is a bit ambitious, I would love to see him work on a platformer using the modern tools available to indie developers.

[u/RadiantOdium]

I played these a ton as a kid. We had an NES growing up, but it eventually died. While I had it, I rented megaman games obsessively. After it died, she saw one of these games(to this day I have no idea where) and despite knowing nothing about games recognized Megaman and got it for me. I loved it just because of that <3

[u/sapper2345]

I love the gaming historian! I think his videos are great quality and think they should have a collection on Netflix or prime!

[u/X-pert74]

I've known about these games for years now, but never knew about who made them or why until now. Really interesting to learn that the first one started out as a fan project made by Stephen Rozner in his spare time... and then the second ("third") one was originally intended to be an unrelated game, until it got turned into a Mega Man game at the last second.