Those of you with an unquenchable appetite for behind-the-scenes information for Mega Man games should get READY and check out the recently published (in English, no less!) Mega Man: Official Complete Works which contains pages and pages of official Mega Man concept and promotional artwork along with little tidbits from the creative talent behind the series.  Protodude's Rockman Corner has sample pages and quotes for your perusal.  Here's a taste:

- Keiji Inafune on the subject of Mega Man's inability to 'crouch':

"I often heard people say, 'Mega Man can't crouch,' but we actually had a dot graphic of him crouching while we were working on '1.'  On the NES, with only a split second to see the slight height difference, the player wouldn't really be able to differentiate between a projectile that could only be dodged by jumping, and one that could only be dodged by crouching. That was the reason why we decided to go with a jumping-only system for Mega Man 1and 2, and I think we did a good job refining it."

- Inafune discusses the decision of releasing Rockman and Forte on the Super Nintendo as opposed to a PlayStation or Sega Saturn release:

"When we made the shift in hardware to the PS and the SS, there were many children who couldn't play Mega Man 8 because they didn't own either of those consoles. As kids, they didn't have the ability to go out and buy consoles.  Even though 'X' had opened its world up on the SNES, the original Mega Man series only went to '7' on that console.  That's why we decided to bring out a new title for the SNES that was based on '8.'  Even though trying to bring out a new title on the SNES was a little backwards at the time, we didn't want to make a halfhearted attempt at it.  We decided to reexamine the game from the ground up and make it something that our players could really sink their teeth into."

I was on the fence about picking up this book, but after seeing a little of it, I'm sold.  There's a Mega Man X volume as well, each carefully translated from the original Japanese publication.  If you're interested in this kind of stuff, be sure to support it if you want to encourage more of these sorts of books.  Wouldn't you love to see similar books like these with a focus on Castlevania, The Legend of Zelda, or Super Mario Bros.?  I know I would.  We need more material like this on the bookshelf.  Specifically, on my bookshelf.

(image via The Mega Man Network)