Recently, the relatively young toy company, TruForce Collectibles, launched a Kickstarter campaign. Essentially, the company wanted to finance a project to produce an official action figure release for a radical new design of concept art for Mega Man X. The problem? It all started as an April Fool’s Day joke by Capcom. Capcom released some concept artwork for a model/figure of X from Mega Man X. Fans loved the design so much and were disappointed that it was all a joke. Mega Man has sort of been out of the video game scene until recently, but fans were definitely interested in seeing see a brand new design and artwork for Mega Man. TruForce Collectibles actually worked out a deal to license the character from Capcom and try to get the figure made. The Kickstarter campaign is over, and TruForce successfully blew past the company’s pledged goal of $200,000 and finished with over $290,000. The brand new Mega Man X figure and an alternate colored variant, based on the amazing artwork by Mizuno Keisuke, will eventually become a reality. Hopefully, the passion that TruForce and Mega Man fandom showed for this project finally sends the message that it is time for a glorious return of the Mega Man franchise.
New collectibles for Mega Man are great. It is exciting that there is going to be a new visionary design of X in figure form. However, it would be even better to see a new Mega Man X video game that actually utilizes the awesome new design. It could be an alternate character skin. The Mega Man and Mega Man X series have been dormant for far too long. This Kickstarter campaign shows that people still love Mega Man and are starving to see something new with the Mega Man X franchise. This whole endeavor was nothing more than an April Fool’s joke by Capcom, and now it has become real. When does that ever happen? Usually, when a big company makes an April Fool’s day joke, it is nothing more than a joke. It is similar to the time that IGN made a trailer for Titanfall featuring an Optimus Prime mecha. Fans loved it and probably would have liked for Respawn Entertainment to have made a Titan with an Optimus Prime skin for the game, but it did not happen. The mere idea of an April Fool’s Day joke like this turning into something real that fans can buy is insane. TruForce Collectibles is obviously comprised of true and passionate fans. Fans voted with their wallets and made this action figure a reality.
These new figures and collectible for Mega Man and Mega Man X are fantastic, but they are not enough. The obvious next step is a new game project. If Capcom needs incentive, why not put it to the fans and let them pitch in to set a sales goal? In a perfect world, that would not be the case, but it worked for Keiji Inafune and his Mighty No. 9 video game. With Mega Man’s appearance in Super Smash Bros., a new Nintendo Amiibo figurine and a new X figure from TruForce, the Blue Bomber is overdue for a next-gen video game title.
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