Capcom marks Mega Man’s 25th Anniversary with iOS social game Mega Man Xover

Not content canceling games that people wanted like Mega Man Legends 3, Capcom kills its iconic series with iOS social game Mega Man Xover.

Capcom is celebrating some big birthdays this year. Street Fighter turned 25 and the pub’s throwing an appropriate birthday party. The Street Fighter 25^th Anniversary Collection is bananas. It has  Street Fighter X Tekken, Super Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, Street Fighter II HD Remix, Street Fighter III: Third Strike Online Edition, all the DLC, documentaries, animated movies, a statue of Ryu, soundtracks, a cool box—The only thing it doesn’t come with is a Chinese lady with big thighs who will beat the crap out of you.

Mega Man, Capcom’s only other series as iconic as Street Fighter, also turns 25 this year. So what’s the plan? A massive box compiling the Blue Bomber’s zany cartoon adventures? Maybe include of his more existential outings from the Mega Man X series?

Nope. Just a “social RPG” for iOS called Mega Man Xover.

That’s what we call in the industry a “swift kick to the fans’ junk.”

Series villains like Dr. Wily have teamed up in “Xover World” and locked up all the Mega Men—the original, X, Zero, and the rest—and are finally getting on with this world domination business. The player gets to design their own Mega Man and team up with their friends to win the day. For anyone with a keen understanding of Japanese, you can read up on the game at the game’s official website . It’ll be out in Japan this fall and in the US soon.

It has an “AutoPlay” button. One of video game’s foundational action games, with nerve-destroying platforming challenges and patterned boss fights, has an AutoPlay button. In a social mobile game. Made for the series 25^th anniversary.

That is just about the most depressing thing to happen in video games this year, and I’m counting all the horrific violence at E3 and the rampant sexism in Tomb Raider and Hitman: Absolution.

Mega Man Xover could be good, but it seems first and foremost like Capcom’s final insult to its former head of R&D, Keiji Inafune. Inafune created Mega Man in 1987 and was still intimately involved in the series until he suddenly resigned in 2010. After his departure, Capcom systematically axed every major Mega Man project in production, including Nintendo 3DS action RPG Mega Man Legends 3 and the MMO Mega Man Universe. Universe was actually similar in subject matter to Xover, but far more ambitious. It was a platformer like the old games, but it let players create and share their own Mega Men and levels. There was no AutoPlay button.

Mega Man Xover is the very definition of a quarter-life crisis. For shame, Capcom.