Mega Man (TV Series) - History

History

Mega Man starred in a Saturday-morning style cartoon that premiered in 1994. Ruby-Spears, one of the producers of the show, redesigned the characters from the Mega Man video games to varying degrees. At the time the show was undergoing its early development, anime had not yet achieved a "mainstream" acceptance, plus the producers felt the look skewed too young for the retro-80's-style action-adventure cartoon they had in mind. The final look of the characters was among many different interpretations proposed and was the most well received by test audiences (it is worth noting that characters who appeared for the first time in season two were considerably more faithful to the original models, only given slightly different proportions and the occasional nose). The series was targeted towards the late preteen boy audience, though Roll's expanded and much more active role in the series was calculated to try and draw in more girl viewers as well (producer Joe Ruby joked "Also, it showed we're not male chauvinistic pigs as our wives think"). X, along with Vile, Spark Mandrill, and "Cigma" (Sigma) made a guest appearance late in the second season, and was planned to make more appearances in later shows, with the potential for his own spinoff cartoon as well.

Despite consistent high ratings and being a series producers Joe Ruby and Ken Spears really enjoyed working on, the show was cancelled after 2 seasons. A single post-season-2 episode was created to complete Ruby-Spears' contractual obligations; no true "season 3" plans had been put into motion at the time of the cancellation. The decision to end the cartoon was handed down from Capcom, most likely due to merchandising pressures from toy-partner Bandai, which cut several other popular toy lines at the time short due to not meeting sales expectations (including The Tick, Sailor Moon, and Dragon Ball).

Episodes were released on VHS by Sony Wonder beginning in January 1995.