Rockman Elysium

"I Want Rockman Fans to Wait Patiently"

The fans nurtured us

To be honest, the first time I drew Rockman, I didn’t consider what contemporary children… the children of 1987 would think of it. I did all my designing thinking only of what sort of heroes and robots there were, and what I thought was cool, when I was a child. I also didn’t have time to spare to think about the users. But at the time of the first game, I had a somewhat self-centered sense of drawing what I myself thought was cute or was fun.

When that changed was around Rockman 3 or Rockman 4. While looking at the loads of postcards for the boss character contest, I became intensely aware of the existence of the fans.

Previously, at the 20th anniversary event (held Nov. 18, 2007, at Ikebukuro in Tokyo), a really large number of fans came together. It impressed on me anew that even now there are an incredible number of people who love the old-fashioned Rockman. I’d like to make a Rockman for those fans, one that wouldn’t betray their expectations.

[T.N.: C’mon, Inafune, don’t be shy, who’s your favorite character?^^]

p. 116, X1 major characters
Inafune: In the regular course of events, I would do the main character and ask Kaji to do the sub-character, but this time we reversed it. I left Rockman up to Kaji, and I did the sub-character “Zero.” And as I’ve said in many places, personally I wanted to make Zero a player character. I wanted to try an “altered Rockman” in my own way, and make the story a little harder. [T.N.: “Hard” here is not game difficulty, more like “hard-boiled” fiction.]
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p. 6, very first game
Inafune: I was assigned to Rockman, in charge of character design, in the days when I didn’t know anything about making games. Everything was strange in a strange world to me -- do I do this, do I do that? It was great fun, but very hectic. The man who originally planned the project, my mentor, had started as a designer, and he made the dot picture [T.N.: I’m pretty sure this is “sprite”] for Rockman, and prototypes of Roll and Dr. Light. I turned them into working illustrations, and touched up the designs, and such.

[T.N.: I’m disappointed he doesn’t give the name of his mentor, because that would be the person with the very first concept of Rockman. Maybe it’s such a V.I.P. at Capcom Inafune assumes the Japanese fans already know who he means? Or maybe it’s someone who’s left the company, so they don’t like to talk about him? Inafune refers to him as “Projectman,” like a Rockman character.^^]

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I’ve seen it. My friend let me borrow her copy.

Hasty first impression: it’s an artbook, there’s very little text. Many of the captions don’t provide any more info than who drew the picture or for what purpose. And for some, the staff don’t even remember that, leading to captions along the lines of Either A drew this or B did, or This was for an instruction booklet, or maybe an advertisement.

I have a bad habit of putting the negative part of a review first, but I just want to make it clear, the captions don’t always help as much as you might think. However, there are a lot of pictures here, both rough sketches and color! The book is crammed with them -- be sure to look under the slipcover! There is also a one-page special message from Inafune in the back, which I will have to read carefully before I return the book!

And every now and then, just when I’m getting accustomed to ignoring the captions, something interesting pops up. For example, one page about Rockman Rockman quotes Inafune as saying, “Why didn’t it sell?! In my head, I was all set to continue with Rockman Rockman 2, Rockman Rockman 3, etc. If you like Rockman, you’ve got to have this! Even now, it’s not too late (laughs).”

The (laughs) part at the end bothers me, but apparently the fans are taking him at his word, that if they buy it even now he’ll make more, and driving up the sales on e-Capcom. I hope it works! I bought it, and I don’t even have a PSP!^^;

RPM has it:
http://www.rockmanpm.com/forum/index.php?PHPSESSID=7e72e88d0b4bdd68cfa4b7896a353152&topic=6120.msg189071;boardseen#new

http://blogs.vandal.net/769/ has many pages up as well- Check out the early form of Zero! AHAHAHAHA...

Zero under construction

MMN has a thread as well: http://blue-bomber.jvmwriter.org/community/index.php?showtopic=1264

Neat: Duo and the Evil Energy Robot's original forms

Have you guys noticed this link yet?

http://werou.com/r20/r20_0.html

I went fishing around Capcom's Japanese site and found it. It looks to be... an official blog about the making of the book? *puzzle* I can't babelfish it for some stupid reason... and google's translation makes no sense whatsoever. (I usually rely on babelfish as being SLIGHTLY more lucid, though both are awful ;p)

Tucked in there is this adorable piece of art:



I've seen sample pages from the book floating around, but so far, it's nothing we haven't already seen online, or too small/obscured to be of any use. *sadface*

ETA: BTW, here is Capcom's official page on the topic:

http://www.capcom.co.jp/rockman20th/goods/r20.html

I'f I'm understanding this correctly, the book is largely and primary an art collection- every scrap of art for every game they could find, more or less. (They do say. "イラスト収録点数は3000点を超え、さらに当時の開発者が語る“ここでしか読めない裏話”も収録しております。" but that could be like, y'know, a PAGE or two.)

I don't anticipate there being a great deal of illuminating text... however, it's too early to say. No text=no more goddamn retcons, but also no answers...

And here's the list of contents... it's the last three items that are piquing my interest.

OKAY. I have just filed a pre-order with PlayAsia for the R20 sourcebook. I WILL BE PURCHASING THIS. R_E WILL HAVE ACCESS TO A COPY. (The cost is $50 US, inc. shipping, FYI.)

I'll let you know as soon as I get information about when I can receive it. I am willing to scan as much as necessary, though I'm not sure I'll have time to scan the entire book. Anything that's clearly hot and relevant will go up as first priority.

What I want to know: What image sizes are preferred for scans? Do the images need to be as large as possible, or is it better to scan just sections under question at high resolution, and smaller images for overall page views?

P.S. Did you know R_E is on the first page of Google search results for 'rockman 20 sourcebook'? XD Result number 9!