Character Spotlight: Mega Man

Built to help but taken in a different direction. Reprogrammed from caring to fighting. Able to take on the abilities of those he takes down. In a constant war to save humanity from his reprogrammed brethren. Mega Man has been around for over 30 years stopping world take overs and gaining new powers. How did he become the Blue Bomber? Let’s find out!

Rock Light was built to help around the house and work with his sister, Roll, they lived with their father, the brilliant Doctor Light. His father had helped build new Robot Masters to revolutionize industrial work and the world in general. Unfortunately his father’s old collaborator, Doctor Wily, stole the new robots and reprogrammed them from helping to harming. Things were thrown into chaos and Rock volunteered to be rebuilt to protect the world. His father complied and rebuilt him from a young housekeeper into a warrior. His main weapon was the Mega Buster, an arm cannon with energy blasts that can take on new abilities from enemies, he’d take his new name from the arm cannon to become Mega Man.

Rock would begin down a path he wasn’t originally made for, his personality was still that of a kid who loved his family and wanted to help people, but now that meant shooting other robots down to stop them from hurting anyone else. He’d take down the Robot Masters, gaining new weapons and learning that none of the Masters wanted to hurt anyone either, but as robots, they had to follow their programming no matter how much they hated it. Rock would also suffer from his own identity crisis as he didn’t care for fighting but was now really good at it and was kind of liking it.

Sadly, it seemed like Rock’s work was for naught as whenever he could capture Wily, something else would happen that caused him to break free and start with a new round of Robot Masters to fight Mega Man. New programming gave these Robot Masters more single-minded pursuits to stop him, which they all loathed as much as Mega Man. He would struggle with the constant need to fight his fellow robots, the comfort of knowing that once defeated, the robots could be reprogrammed to not be dangerous and live happier lives kept him going.

As time went on, Rock would get companions to help him out such as his dog Rush and his bird Beat. He’d also find out he had an older brother, Blues, who was the mysterious and sometimes adversarial, Protoman. He’d often try to be close to Doctor Light and Roll when he wasn’t in battles, the times between Wily or other dangers was always his favorite. He’d meet people from other times and dimensions like Sonic the Hedgehog and his own sort of future little brother, X, who would be the next step in robotics and no longer have any programming and have his own free will entirely.

There you have it! Mega Man has been a beloved video game character who has been animated on TV many times and had several comic series. The Archie Comics series was one of the best takes on the character and dealt with some very heavy philosophical and psychological concepts with robotics. If you ever get the chance, read that series. See you next time!