Capcom has tried to take Mega Man into the third dimension for years, but never has managed to quite capture in 3D what made the 2D games so much fun.  Now an unofficial add-on for the original Doom via Skulltag is in the works by a dedicated fan that aims to turn the original Mega Man for the Nintendo Entertainment System into a 3D deathmatch battle royale. 

Mega Man 8-bit Deathmatch will play as if Mega Man suddenly turned 3D. Everything will play as if it was being played back in 1987. Levels will use purely 8-bit textures and sprites. Mega Man will jump high and take damage recoil. Weapons will behave exactly as they did back then, only from a 3d perspective. The plan is to eventually have all the levels and weapons from Mega Man 1-6 (and maybe 9). Obviously some weapons will have minor changes because there are a lot of clones throughout the series.

The game can be played in pretty much any game mode in Skulltag (except map specific modes like CTF obviously), but will be designed for Deathmatch. Obviously there will be no Robot Masters to steal weapons from, so you will have to find them and pick them up. The catch is you can only use one at a time, but they can be discarded for the Mega Buster at any time. The Mega Buster has infinite ammo, but weapons will use a global weapon energy found around the level. Along with the weapons are special inventory items which can be used at any time, such as the Rush Coil and E-Tank.

There's a public alpha version of the add-on available for sampling, but you'll have to be patient if you want a full, finished version.  The creator anticipates finishing the project sometime late next year, but in the meantime there's Cut Man's level and Guts Man's level to explore.  It's an interesting idea and makes for a heck of a graphical tease (tell me you didn't become intrigued when you saw the screenshot up there), but I'm curious if the final gameplay will hold up.  Let's check back in late 2010.

(via Protodude's Rockman Corner)