Conception and design
Although originally the names "Mighty Kid", "Knuckle Kid", and "Rainbow Battle Kid" were proposed, Capcom eventually settled on "Rockman". The word "Rock" in Rockman is a reference to the music genre rock and roll, and is meant to work in tandem with his sister robot, Roll. However, Capcom USA Consumer Products Division President Joe Morici localized the name from Rockman to "Mega Man" because he felt "The title was horrible."[9] In addition, the original Mega Man titles intentionally incorporated a "Rock, Paper, Scissors" gameplay mechanic into defeating certain enemies.[8][10] The pixel art for the character was created by the designer of the original game in the series, Akira Kitamura (credited under the pseudonym "A.K"),[11] and later turned into a refined illustration by Keiji Inafune.[5][12][13] Kitamura originally intended Mega Man to be colored white, but instead settled on blue to make his animations more clear. Mega Man's design had a lot of little influences from various manga, anime, and tokusatsu shows, specifically Ninja Captor. Nobuyuki Matsushima, lead programmer for the original game, came up with the idea for Mega Man changing colors when his weapons changed.[14] Inafune also cited Astro Boy by Osamu Tezuka as a major influence for the character.[15]
During a special event at TGS 2007, Inafune commented on the creation of Rockman. "I'm often called the father of Rockman, but actually, his design was already created when I joined Capcom," he explained. "My mentor (Capcom senior member Akira Kitamura), who was the designer of the original Rockman, had a basic concept of what Rockman was supposed to look like. So I only did half of the job in creating him. I didn't get to completely design a Rockman [protagonist] from scratch until Rockman X. Back when the Super Family Computer was coming out, I was asked to give Rockman a redesign, so I created this character. But I realized that this design wouldn't be accepted as Rockman, so I had another designer create the new Rockman, and I worked on Zero to release him as the 'other main character' that would steal all the good scenes!"[12]
The team decided to incorporate anime elements for the game's animation. Inafune explained, "[Mega Man's] hand transforms into a gun and you can actually see it come out of his arm. We wanted to make sure that the animation and the motion was realistic and actually made sense. So with Rockman, we had this perfect blending of game character with animation ideas."[16] Across the series Mega Man was given new skills to add more variety to the gameplay. For Rockman 6, after having implemented so many different mechanics to the gameplay of past entries, Inafune thought that Rush adapter assembly was inevitable. The artist struggled with the adaptor designs and ultimately found them to be unrealistic. According to Inafune, "If you think about it, they shouldn't be able to combine like this. It would be awkward if parts of Rush like his neck were left over after they combined, so what was I supposed to do?"[17]
In the cover of the North American copies, Mega Man's appearance greatly differs from his original one. Veteran video game cover illustrator Marc Ericksen painted the North American box art of Mega Man 2, which included Mega Man firing a pistol instead of his trademark Mega Buster. Ericksen explained, "I didn't know anything about Mega Man, and [after looking at the character in action] I said to the art director, 'What is he shooting with?' ... He said, 'Well, he must have a pistol, because I don't see a rifle.' ... I said, 'So, a pistol? Do you want me to do a pistol?' And he said, 'Yeah, let's put a pistol in there.' So I did what I was told and I put the pistol in there. Add to the fact that they only had, like, a day and a half for me to do the painting and what you wound up with was not the greatest result. But certainly a result that was not my fault. I mean, they told me to put the pistol in his hand!"[18]
Ruth Shiraishi, who voiced Mega Man in Mega Man 8, voiced X in Mega Man X4.[19] Mega Man 8 and X4 were recorded in the same session and Ruth did not know her session was for two separate games. For X, Ruth believes that they altered her voice somewhat to sound a little older than Mega Man.[20]
