The trailer for Mighty No. 9 features graphics that have left prospective fans of the franchise with a bitter after taste. Most notably, a fiery explosion in the trailer has been panned as appearing cheap and of low quality. James Rolfe, otherwise known as the Angry Video Game Nerd released a video parodying the narration style and explosion graphics.
The official Sonic the Hedgehog Twitter account has also poked fun at the graphical quality. The Twitter account replicated the explosion by editing together slices of pizza.
Dear Anime Fans: On Prom Night, at least we'll still be there for you. pic.twitter.com/y5p6BPHHi1
— Sonic the Hedgehog (@sonic_hedgehog) May 26, 2016
A recent Gamespot article pointed out that, at the time of its publication, the video had over 11,000 dislikes. As of today, that amount has doubled to over 20,000 dislikes.
Mighty No.9 is an upcoming game created by Keiji Inafune, the previous main illustrator of the Mega Man series. Issues regarding delays, the management of Kickstarter funds, and the overall quality of the game represented in the latest trailer have created problems for Inafune and the Mighty No. 9 brand.
Another issue from the trailer that the Internet has pecked at is the narrator. The line “[You can] make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night” has led to confusion and a lingering feeling of hypocrisy due to the upcoming Mighty No. 9 anime series. The series was first teased at with a trailer at Anime Expo on July 5th, 2014.
With promising promotional art and the its heavily implied status as a spiritual successor to Mega Man, Mighty No. 9 garnered a massive amount of attention when initially announced. Mighty No. 9 received 400% of the funding initially proposed for the project on Kickstarter, with a goal of approximately 1 million dollars and the result being almost 4 million dollars. There have been accusations of mismanagement of these Kickstarter funds.
These accusations are due partially to Inafune creating both a Paypal fund for “bonus content” for Mighty No. 9 and a Kickstarter for another game entirely called Red Ash. As mentioned in an article from Kotaku last July, with almost 4 million dollars, there has been confusion as to why more funding was necessary. Why another game was announced when Mighty No. 9 had faced three delays was another question. Mighty No. 9 was initially planned to be released in April of 2015.
As for Red Ash, the game was picked up by Chinese game publisher FUZE. The money pledged towards the Red Ash campaign (which fell short by $300,000) has been reallocated towards “stretch goals” for the game. Fans of Mighty No. 9 and backers for Red Ash have criticized this move as an improper use of crowdfunded income.
Mighty No. 9 is slated to release on June 21st of this year.
