To celebrate Rockman’s 25th birthday, I’m going to make a few posts about the mythology of the various Mega Man franchises and how they tie together. First, an overview.
Broadly speaking, there are two major continuities within which there are sub-series of Rockman. They are the Robots continuity and the Network continuity (for want of a better term). Robots includes, in chronological order, the Classic series (starting in 200X), X series (30-100 years later), Zero series (100 years after that), ZX series (200 years after that), and the Legends, or DASH, series (an indeterminate period later). Network is the Battle Network series (an alternate 200X), which is followed by the Star Force series (200 years later).
The major difference is the Robots games tend to be action sidescrollers (or 3D action in Legends) featuring androids or machines, and the Network games are RPGs with cyberspace and virtual AIs, and then aliens and radio waves or something (I don’t know that much about Network to be honest). Having said that, there are sidescrollers in Network and RPGs in Robots, as well as a few racing games, sports games, board games etc.
What ties it all together though is the concept of human interactions with artifical life forms, and the behaviours of those artifical life forms. Those life forms often become antagonistic towards their creator species, starting with reprogamming by malicious individuals, to a behaviour-modifying virus, towards more dealing with the ideals of various people and groups. The creations rebelling against their creator is a strong theme, starting with the Bible of course, and it runs throughout the Mega Man franchise.
SPOILERS AHEAD. So how do these games fit together? Let’s start at the beginning, the Classic series. Rockman 1 starts with rival robotic geniuses, Dr Light (the good guy) and Dr Wily (the bad guy). Dr Wily steals Light’s robots and reprograms them to cause havoc. Rock, previously a helper robot for Light, is remodelled into a fighting machine with a unique ability to copy enemy weapons. Dr Wily consistently returns with new robots, of his own creation most of the time, and Rock shuts them down many times. This struggle never ends, and leads into the X series.
X series: Light’s last creation, X, is the successor to Rock’s legacy and has free will. Zero, Wily’s last creation, caused a ton of robots to go bad then became a good guy. So the struggle between the rival doctors continues to be played out between robot Mavericks (the ones that went bad and want to harm humans) and the Maverick Hunters (who fight them), including X, Zero, and others, many based on X’s design (Reploids).
Zero series: This conflict escalates into to a cataclysmic period known as the Elf Wars, in which some of the newly invented life form/energy source called Cyber-elves are corrupted by some guy called Dr Weil (who may or may not be related to Wily, ask your nearest fan fiction author) and lots of stuff gets killed. X is now a Cyber-elf, Zero has a new body, and a replica of X rules the remaining population with an iron fist. Now anyone who opposes Copy X and Weil is labelled a Maverick, repurposing the term. Zero has to bring down the brutal regime, and succeeds with the help of the human scientist Ciel, the Resistance, the four turncoat Guardians, the true X, and the Cyber-elves. But he dies in the process.
ZX series: Weil had merged with his robotic suit, his space station, and probably some malevolent Cyber-elves for this to make sense (they’re like magic, very convenient for plot) to form a material known as Biometal. Ciel creates some Biometals of her own from the Cyber-elves of dead heroes X, Zero, and the Guardians. They appear to have the personality and memories of their templates, and can merge with a human or Reploid host to bestow their powers. The new heroes have to fight the corrupting influence of the Biometal Model W formed by Weil’s horrific synthesis. Model W manifests itself in different ways, steals Biometals and makes regenerating robot baddies, finally revealing itself to be partly in control of certain governments and corporations. It is seemingly defeated at some point, but who knows.
Dr Light always dreamed of a world where humans and robots could live together in harmony. This theme is brought up many times throughout these series, and is sometimes twisted by crazies who want to force such a state through violence or subjugation. The last word from ZX is that a robotic recreation of Dr Light wishes to create this world through extreme means. This seemingly, with some interpretation, leads into the setting of Legends some millennia later. The humans are dead, replaced by artificially created organic humanoids— I guess there’s not much difference there. Yet another energy crisis, world flooded, ancient ruins. An ancient automated system controls the organic population… it’s pretty complicated actually. The games are mostly concerned with the Barrells (Diggers) and their enemies/rivals, the Bonnes (pirates). It’s more about interaction and characters, and summarising the real backstory is hard. Suffice to say Mega Man ends up on the moon and there are less authoritarian or violent robots at the end. It’s hard to tell exactly how it fits with the other games, but ooh look Servbots! What were we saying? Yeah.
As for the Network timeline, being RPGs there is a lot more talking and a lot more complexity. Generally though the setting of the Battle Network series is similar to the Classic Robots setting, except instead of robots becoming dominant, Internet technology was supreme. What this means is that many robots from the Classic series, and even some from the X series, have NetNavi counterparts— these are like avatars that help humans navigate the treacherous Internet or something. I’ve covered the salient points I think, I haven’t played any Network games so I think I can say that the main reason for a Mega Man fan to play these games is the buttload of shout outs and callbacks. Otherwise other people might enjoy it for the gameplay, which is a tactical turn-based RPG on a small grid or something. It also tries to cash into the whole collect and battle thing. As for the actual plot, who knows? Like I said, lots of RPGs and more complex.
Star Force I know even less about. Sorry. There’s an alien and all this stuff about radio waves. I already mentioned that… It actually consciously steered clear of the callbacks so much and was more self-contained, so in my mind even less reason to be interested. Um. It also shares the gameplay style of Battle Network. Er. So, that’s that one.
Well, kind of a flat note to end on but that’s the Mega Man continuity so far. But wait, what’s this? Rockman Xover!? Oh no! What does it mean? So there’s a new iOS game, Japan-exclusive for now. It’s a “social RPG”, seems to be based on the Mega Man X iOS port engine but with really basic gameplay, and an emphasis on again collecting battle cards or something. But the setting is supposed to be this confusing mishmash of many different series. There’s time travel, sure, and Dr Light building a new Reploid(?) called Over-1. But how does the parallel universe of Network come into it? Sure, have cards based on it and everything else, but story-wise how do you justify that? Wily and Sigma teamed up somehow and time travel and bleh! Hey! Collect them all! Crossovers are exciting, but this one’s pretty lazy. I’m still really looking forward to it though, especially if there’s Zero elements!
tl;dr How can humans coexist with artificial life? Let’s find a way, together… By blowing up some robots. Da-da-da da-da-dum da-da-da da-da-da da-dum-dum…
