A Mighty No: Mighty No. 9’s Troubled Release

There are few games with a development as rocky as Mighty No. 9, the Mega Man-esque game from former Mega Man producer Keiji Inafune. After being Kickstarted for a whopping $3.8 million, 400% of it’s estimated budget back in 2013, the game has been pushed back over and over again with fans questioning its release more and more each time. Finally, after three years of waiting, we got to see the finished product and a release date. Then another release date, and finally a solid release date of June 21st, 2016.

There were rumours of an animated series. These have since disappeared

Pretty much all hope for the game was abandoned right around the release of the launch trailer, with such cringe-worthy lines as “Make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night” and effects so bad they became a Twitter joke. Regardless, the game has finally shipped and fan’s reactions haven’t exactly been great.

A rumour started this morning that suggests the game might be disastrous on the Wii U. How disastrous? At best it runs and looks terrible, at worst some reports are saying it runs the risk of completely bricking the console. That’s if your codes work at all, as backers are starting to report their copies of the game, both digital and physical, are not showing up on time,  working at all, or their keys are for the wrong DLC.

The game is currently available on all modern systems, although the Mac, Linux, and Xbox 360 versions have been pushed back a few more days, with no news on the supposed 3DS or PS Vita versions.

the exact moment most fans lost faith.

All of this, on top of the fact the game looks nothing like what was promised three years ago. Eurogamer has done a great job of comparing the original game to the actual release. Even Mr. Inafune seems distraught with the final release, calling it “better than nothing”. It’s unfortunate that games like Mighty No. 9 or FleetCOMM cause such harm to the idea of Kickstarter games since there really have been some fantastic games to come out of crowdfunding. Maybe Mighty No. 9 will find it’s niche, but given its welcome on the scene, it is not probable.