I thought Mario or Link would be the Herald of the Apocalypse (Apocalypse being the hardcore fear of Expanded Market games taking over ALL gaming). Rather, it was Mega Man who was the Herald of the Apocalypse all along. Mega Man 9 is totally the opposite of hardcore gaming. It relishes 8-bit graphics and attempts to reach toward the former Mega Man players which would be in the Expanded Market. A game being hard does not make it ‘hardcore’. Wii Play tanks is hard and Brain Age’s Sodoku can be hard. But they aren’t ‘hardcore’. And a game being easy does not make it ‘casual’. Most ‘hardcore’ games are easy to beat as any old time gamer can testify. What is hard about the hardcore games is that they suck up tons of time to finish. Games like Mega Man 9 don’t take much time at all to play or to master which is why it cannot be ‘hardcore’.
The fact that the hardcore are embracing this Expanded Market game as one of their hardcore titles makes it the perfect Trojan Horse, the game that will bring down the walls and burn the towers of Illium. Some hardcore know better and are attacking the game as if it were a ‘casual’ game. They know that if Mega Man 9 succeeds, more franchises will go the ‘simple’ route in graphics and gameplay.
This online Wall Street Journal article about Mega Man 9 laughably falls for Mega Man 9 as a ‘hardcore’ game (as most of the Internet is doing). What is important to note is that only one quote comes from a Mega Man 9 producer. Does he say that Mega Man 9 is a hardcore game. Let us listen.
“It’s not just difficult for difficulty’s sake,” says the game’s producer Hironobu Takeshita.
*gasp* Doesn’t that contradict that Mega Man 9 was designed to be hard so it would be ‘zOMG Hardcore!!11!!”? This being the only quote from someone who worked on Mega Man 9 in the article says yes. Apparently, the other quotes did not fit this article’s narrative and were promptly discarded. Inafune himself says that the purpose of Mega Man 9 was to get back to the roots of Mega Man 1 and 2 and deliberately make things simple to hopefully get back the fans that had left the series.
Mega Man 9 is simply unfamiliar. Once people get used to it, they will find that it is an easier game than Mega Man 1, Mega Man 7 (most people couldn’t beat Wily), and Mega Man 8 (“jump”, “jump”, “slide”, “slide”).
The article writer then cherry picks his quotes to talk about ‘hardcore’ gaming.
The audience for videogames is so varied now “that a developer can make hard games for core gamers,” says Yuichi Sugisaki, the producer of Bangai-O Spirits.
The author loves Bangai-O Spirits as he keeps citing it. But this Treasure producer doesn’t have anything to do with Mega Man 9.
One of Treasure’s previous titles, Ikaruga, re-released in April for Microsoft Xbox’s Live Arcade, is so tough that some fans post their best performances on YouTube.
Ikaruga is an arcade game. Arcade games are extremely accessible and are difficult because the business model is about having the player feed the machine coins. Ikaruga is extremely accessible and is difficult because its business model was about getting people to feed a machine. Arcade games are more in the Expanded Market. Even Ikaruga. But since the author uses only stereotypes to define ‘hardcore gaming’, then it must be ‘hardcore’.
The ‘hardcore’ actually love many of the ‘expanded market’ games but they simply cannot admit that to themselves. They can call Metal Gear Solid 4 ‘hardcore’, which is fine, since that matches the Core Market pattern of doing games like cinematic presentations and all. But Ikaruga, which is a relic from bygone shmup era, as well as Mega Man 9, is declared ‘hardcore’ solely because the ‘hardcore’ enjoys playing them.
But we must recognize that the Trojan Horse has been accepted. The Herald of the Apocalypse has been wheeled into the Hardcore Capital and all the little hardcore are dancing around it with song and drink. But when more games are announced following Mega Man 9’s philosophy, the hardcore are going to realize they’ve been had.
Some hardcore already see the huge, huge threat that Mega Man 9 represents to their Lucid Dream Kingdom. They know that if other games follow Mega Man 9, it is good-bye to more sophisticated gameplay, good-bye to longer time sink games, good-bye to yet even better graphics.
When hardcore can no longer differentiate between the Core and Expanded Market games is when they will be enveloped by Doomsday.
