December 2012 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of Capcom's beloved Mega Man franchise, and to mark the occasion the company has commissioned several new remixed soundtracks spanning the history of the series for the Japanese market.  First out of the gate next week are another pair of rock and techno albums in the tradition of the twentieth anniversary commemorative soundtracks featuring famous stage themes for Robot Masters such as Heat Man, Galaxy Man, Splash Woman, Hard Man, and Skull Man.  The Mega Man Network has the complete track list and samples of each song (most of which are medleys this time around).  Following on in December comes the sequel to last year's We Are Rock-Men album listed simply We Are Rock-Men 2.  It's contents are still to be announced.

I love quality Mega Man remixes, and both of the previous anniversary releases and Rock-Men were solid musical gold.  While the themes from the older games are more familiar and therefore more likely to show up on remix albums like these (Dark Man's theme from Mega Man 5 turned up again and again in different styles on the last Rock-Men, and everyone loves to take a crack at rearranging music from Mega Man 2), it's great to see that some recent tunes from Mega Man 9 and Mega Man 10 are garnering some attention as well.  I can't wait to hear what the sound teams behind them all have come up with this time.  Capcom seems to have put Mega Man's video game career aside for the moment, but as long as the music keeps coming, I think the blue bomber drought can last a bit longer.