How Mighty No. 9 Is More Inspired By Onimusha Than Mega Man

Speaking with Siliconera, Mighty No. 9 project lead Keiji Inafune recently talked about how the game is actually more inspired by Capcom’s Onimusha series than any of the Mega Man games it’s usually compared to.

“Any time I do a new production, whether it’s Mega Man game I made ten years ago or Mighty No. 9 now, you look at It based on what you’re trying to do at the time. There’s never really been something I couldn’t put in a Mega Man game that I’m now putting into Mighty No. 9,” Inafune said.

“That being said, the sort of key areas we’ve drawn inspiration from—and this may be surprising for some people to hear—rather than Mega Man, it’s Onimusha.”

“In Onimusha, you had a system where the end user would be put into a scenario where they had to either suck in a soul to get the soul bonus, or attack an oncoming enemy. That risk represented a moment-to-moment gameplay scenario. What we wanted to do with Mighty No. 9 was include an absorption dash, where you can shoot an enemy from afar to make him weak, and dash through him to gain his power. Alternatively, you can be safe, and shoot him until he’s dead.”

“Moreover, you could choose to bring him to the brink of death so that you can absorb that enemy at 100% to get the highest score. For each even average enemy, that moment to moment risk-reward scenario is always there, and that always represents the adrenaline rush for the end user.”

Mighty No. 9 is planned for release sometime in April 2015. At present, a beta version of the game is available to Kickstarter backers that pledged $80 or more towards its development.