Mega Man 8 - Reception and Legacy

Reception and Legacy

Mega Man 8 received mostly average reviews from critics. One universal complaint involved the game having virtually nothing in terms of gameplay or features that hadn't already appeared in previous installments of the series, and very little change in the gameplay formula that had been used since the first Mega Man game appeared a decade ago. Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot commented "Even the robots seem to be clones of enemies from earlier MM titles," while Matt Rubenstein summarized "...this whole premise has been done seven times before and, for those who have been paying attention, it's starting to get old." Some also complained that the game's graphics did not utilize the abilities of fifth generation consoles outside of the FMV cutscenes. The English-dubbing voice acting in Mega Man 8 was considered some of the worst in video games by publications including EGM, IGN, and the Australian radio show Good Game.

In a 2007 retrospective of the Mega Man series, Jeremy Parish of 1UP.com described the eighth installment as "redemption after the Mega Man 7 train wreck". He elaborated, "It would be better off without the boring autoscrolling stages and the awful final boss that can only be defeated with the game's worst weapon, but otherwise, it's a charming update that captured much of what made the NES games so enjoyable." IGN's Lucas M. Thomas took a similar look back on the franchise, calling Mega Man 8 the worst in the core Mega Man series because it took Capcom's iconic hero off of Nintendo consoles, utilized animated cutscenes with bad voice acting, and further changed the visual style. "Now there are plenty of people who like Mega Man 8 -- that's fine, it's still a good game in its own right," Thomas proclaimed. "But when lined up alongside all the other series sequels, as we're doing here, it just falls flat."

Initial sales of Mega Man 8 were good. Major gaming retailers in North America including Electronics Boutique and Babbage's reported selling 55% of their stock within three days of the game's release. Electronics Boutique additionally noted having sold 75% of its stock within ten days and many locations of Babbage's being sold out in similar period of time. "Mega Man is one of Capcom's longest running and most popular action heroes and this marks the first time that a Mega Man game has entered the 32-bit market," stated Capcom's president Bill Gardner. "The response that we've gotten from the retailers was so overwhelming that we had to allocate product based on the fact that our orders were far greater than anticipated." In 2002, the PlayStation version of Mega Man 8 was re-released as part of Sony's Greatest Hits label of best-sellers, confirming that it had sold at least 350,000 units. In Japan, the game received budget re-releases as part of both the PlayStation the Best for Family and the Sega Saturn Collection. The PlayStation version was ported to the North American Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the PlayStation 2 and GameCube in 2004 and the Xbox in 2005.

In 1998, Capcom released Mega Man & Bass on the Super Famicom with many of the same sprites, animations, and backgrounds as taken from Mega Man 8. Ten years later, Capcom announced another follow-up, Mega Man 9, which changed the graphical style of the series back to its 8-bit appearance similar to the first six installments. Capcom did not replicate any of the gameplay gimmicks introduced in the eighth installment for this sequel.