日本語のアップデートはこちら（英語のアップデートより遅れて日本語のアップデートが更新されます。）
Mighty greetings, Mighty Beckers!

2 Player Productions here again -- and you know what that means (engage caps lock): VIDEO THURSDAY!

...You DID know that’s what it meant, right? That we’re releasing new video content every Thursday of our Mighty No. 9 Kickstarter campaign? If not, you might want to go back and check our first update from last week. Go ahead, we’ll wait...

Okay, then: as ALL of you now know, we previously released a little teaser for our video piece this week: an interview with one of the main composers for our project, Manami Matsumae -- responsible for all the songs and sound effects in the original Mega Man, as well as the main theme of Mighty No. 9!

We here at 2 Player were 100% on-board from the moment we heard about Mr. Inafune’s new project, but the more we learned over the following weeks about the depth of talent involved -- people like Matsumae-san, who were just as involved in creating those cherished childhood memories… Well, it’s honestly been a bit overwhelming.

As part of our trip to Osaka to film the Kickstarter pitch video, Matusmae-san was kind enough to let us into her home studio for a brief interview, parts of which you see here. Rest assured, now that we have our documentary stretch goal funded (thank you, again!), this is just a taste of what we have in store with many of the aforementioned game dev heroes to be found on this project.

Welcome back, Beckers (say that fast three times), to the first of our “Comcept Concept Wednesdays," our weekly exploration of official Mighty No. 9 art and character design, including the people and processes used to create and refine it.

You're in for a bit of a twofer today -- or perhaps we should say five...fer, as our inaugural episode actually focuses on a previously unseen boss: Mighty No. 5!

Typically, new boss reveals happen every Monday during our Kickstarter campaign, but with the holiday and general excitement of hitting our initial goal on that day this week, we thought it better to hold back. But that time is over now -- so let's jump right in!

Our host this week will be our director on Mighty No. 9, Mr. Koji Imaeda, who works with the artists at Inti Creates as well as Comcept's art director and internal artists to make sure necessary designs are created and move through the approval process. Today, Koji will explain to us how Mighty No. 5's current design came about...

PHASE 1: ROUGH IDEAS

We started off by asking our developer, Inti Creates, to come up with a boss design with a military motif utilizing heavy weaponry. These are some of the first images they delivered to us:



PHASE 1: INAFUNE’S FEEDBACK:

“The gatling gun is a personal favorite when it comes to heavy weaponry, as it packs a lot of aesthetic impact. It would be great if these designs could shift focus to the gatling. Additionally, the overall look should hint at how the character will attack in-game.”



PHASE 2: CONCEPTS REFINED

Next, new concepts were constructed incorporating Inafune's feedback. Designs from this point onward consisted of ideas from both the Comcept and Inti Creates sides:



PHASE 2: INAFUNE’S FEEDBACK:

“The Inti designs are too elaborate, and need to be simplified. Meanwhile, the Comcept designs feel a bit too restrained by the standards of the past. Designs reminiscent of the human anatomy are not a must here; instead of featuring a gatling held by a humanoid robot, let’s go with a gatling that looks like it’s actually sprouted limbs.”


PHASE 3: REBOOT

The design at this point was starting to become a bit unusual, so we decided that rather than finalizing just this one boss, it would be better to establish base concepts for all eight first. Then, based on those concepts, we would move onto drawing their silhouettes, and finally, we would seek approval from Inafune. So, staff from Comcept took to brainstorming the remaining boss concepts...



(above) The team put together documents with detailed info on each boss, such as their weapons, the type of stages they’ll inhabit, what weapons they’re weak against, and basic background info, which then led into the creation of basic silhouettes for all eight Mighty Number bosses.


PHASE 4: GETTING CLOSE

Now that No. 5’s basic silhouette was decided, the brainstorming continued into the advanced stages.




(above) That dude at the bottom left looks pretty creepy, doesn’t he? And it probably didn’t take too long for the devs to realize that the design of the guy next to him wasn’t gonna fly...


PHASE 5: A MIGHTY NUMBER IS BORN!

At last, we narrowed down the candidates and came to a consensus on the final design for the boss. Ladies and gentlemen, may we present to you... Mighty No. 5!



Handsome, eh? That about does it for this week’s edition of Comcept Concept Wednesdays -- as always, your feedback means the world to us, so let us know what you think, not only about Mighty No. 5, but about this kind of update in general! We’ve got more amazing boss designs to reveal in the weeks to come (you would not believe the sketches that passed through our hands today – so hot!), so stay tuned for those, and be sure to check back tomorrow for a look at our PAX panel debut.

-The Mighty No. 9 Team

A Conversation with Keiji Inafune - Mighty No. 9


2 Player Productions here, back for another Video Thursday -- and our meatiest (and hopefully tastiest) one yet! This week, it’s a full interview with the main man himself, Mighty No. 9’s leader in every sense of the word: Keiji Inafune!

This is the kind of interview we typically would mine for bits of material to use in our documentary-style pieces, like the sample episode you’ll be getting next week (and then three more times throughout development). But since we often might only end up using five minutes of a one-hour interview, and since Inafune covers so many topics in this one that are relevant to the Kickstarter campaign and Becker interests in general (i.e. big dev teams vs. small, how much the team is enjoying their work, how and why devs should listen to their fans, balancing old and new design ideas, etc.), we figured it was just too good not to share it all! Have at it:

日本語のアップデートはこちら（英語のアップデートより遅れて日本語のアップデートが更新されます。）

Hello, fellow Mighty Beckers!

Monday. For some of us it means back to school, but for many of us it means back to work -- so we wanted to give you one boss each Monday you’d actually look forward to seeing!

And our original idea was just that: drop a new, final Mighty No. boss image for you to see each Mighty Boss Monday of our Kickstarter campaign. But given the HUGE response to our design-evolution walkthrough of Mighty No. 5 for the last Comcept Concept Wednesday (still our most commented update so far!), director Koji Imaeda and lead character designer Kimo Kimo volunteered to give you another peek behind the process on how another of our big baddies came about! Take it away, guys:

PHASE 1: FIRING BLANKS

Imaeda:As we mentioned in our previous boss design update, part way through the creation of Mighty No. 5, we decided to flesh out the basics of all the other Mighty Numbers. As part of that process, Mighty No. 1's theme was set as "fire."

We asked Kimo Kimo to come up with a design that was more than just breathing fire, or using a flamethrower, or any of the usual stuff; we wanted his entire body to be like a flaming sun or a furnace -- difficult to even get close to.

After that, Kimo Kimo and Inafune worked together to develop and refine Mighty No. 1’s look. I've asked Kimo Kimo to provide comments on his illustrations below.



Kimo Kimo: We’ve been thinking of the Battle Colosseo that the Mighty Numbers fight in as something like a cage deathmatch -- which is where I got the idea for the illustration above on the left: a boxer-type robot, burning with fighting spirit. At this point, I wasn’t officially assigned as the designer for Mighty No. 1, so it was just a rough sketch.

The images on the right side are from after I took on design responsibilities. Inafune told me that the design didn't have to be humanoid, so I took Imaeda’s ideas literally and came up with sun- and furnace-themed robots.



Kimo Kimo: Around this time, we starting having trouble on the design for Mighty No. 5 (Note: if you haven't already, see Phase 3 of our update on the making of Mighty No. 5), and decided to set basic designs for all the bosses, so I came up with this wrestler-like body for No. 1. But I still didn’t know exactly what the end-goal was for this boss design, so every day was just non-stop trial and error, over and over. I started having thoughts like, "Well, if the world ended today, at least I wouldn't have to worry about (Mighty No. 1) anymore!" (laughs)

Inafune asked me to add some kind of special feature to the design, so I came up with this mechanism on the boss’s back that can fire out ropes to create a wrestling ring, and then he could do moves off those ropes. Looking at it again now, I'm surprised I thought something so plain would be a good idea. In retrospect, the whole design was a little too hung-up on the whole wrestling-robot theme.

PHASE 2: INAFUNE’S SPARK OF INSPIRATION

Kimo Kimo: When I showed the above illustrations to Inafune, he drew the following sketch as a counter-proposal:




PHASE 2: INAFUNE’S FEEDBACK:

“The key element here could be the change in appearance from one form to another: Maybe when he’s on fire, Mighty No. 1 looks big and muscular, but when the fire is extinguished, it turns out he’s actually quite thin, revealing gas burners and such responsible for the massive flames. Gameplay-wise, it’d be fun if Beck, too, would get all bulked-up after he steals this ability and transforms, but then he could turn off the flames to enter smaller passageways.”

PHASE 3: ALL FIRED UP

Kimo Kimo: With a clear direction set by Inafune, I changed the main body to have it composed entirely out of flames, and soon, Mighty No. 1’s design was finally complete!



(above) No. 1 in the nude, as it were (left), and fully ignited (right).

Kimo Kimo: The roaring flames make the chest area resemble a face, giving No. 1 a very aggressive feel -- but with the fire extinguished, his body brings to mind a gas lantern, or the top part of a (Zippo-style) lighter that actually produces the flame.

Imaeda: With a design like this, he's dangerous when his body is burning, so perhaps when the flames go out, that's the time to attack. Maybe the flame on his head could be his weak point? Hmm... We’ve still got plenty more to think about!



(above) On the left, we see the color of his flames change as he takes damage; on the right, we see another view where his inner skeleton is starting to show.

And that wraps it up for the Mighty Boss Monday portion of our update