In 1987, robot rights were at an all time low. For decades, the portrayal of our metal counterparts were harsh and unbalanced. On TV and in the movies, robots were often shown as cold, soulless killing machines (instead of the cold, soulless productive members of society that they really are). For every R2D2, Al Gore, and Bender to show the positive side of robots, there were a hundred Cylons, HAL9000's or Alpha 5's to show the dark, violent side.

Robot hysteria was on the rise. People were afraid to leave their houses for fear of robot attack and some were even selling Robot Insurance. George H.W. Bush surged to the presidency with his "Read my lips, no new robots" speech. It was in this era of chaos that noted mad scientist and part-time video game designer Keiji Inafune took a bold step and changed human-robot relations forever.

Mega Man was released by Capcom in late 1987 for the NES. It was, like everything else at the time, a side scrolling platformer where you took control of a trigger happy hero who must save the world from an evil doctor and his horde of robot minions. What made this game different was the fact that the hero himself was a robot. Fearing the inevitable anti-robot backlash, Nintendo changed the box art to downplay the main character's "condition." Mega Man went from being a killing machine with a wicked cannon arm to some dude in a funny suit and a pistol (and what appears to be a blue 50's era leather football helmet).

Oddly enough, the game didn't sell very well. Although the box art certainly had a hand in this, the fact that the game was ridiculously hard certainly didn't help. Mega Man 1 might rival Contra as the game most likely to result in broken controllers and smashed carts. So why did the Mega Man series hang on and spawn enough sequels to fill a large library? The reason was the solid gameplay and memorable characters that would become the staple of the Mega Man series.

In the year 200X, the world was a futuristic paradise. Mankind had created legions of machines to do all kinds of work for them while they sit around all day and watched reruns of Nightcourt. Humans are something of an endangered species in this game as we only get to meet two of them. The first is Doctor Thomas Light.


Dr. Light was a master roboticist (which is one of the only real careers available in the future since most other jobs have been taken by robots). He finished first in his class at the aptly-named Robot Institute of Technology (not to be confused with The Robot Institute of Culinary Arts) where he recieved PHDs in Advanced Cybernetics, Do-Gooderism, and 2D Platforming. Dr. Light created many advanced humanoid robots, also known as "Robot Masters," who had humanlike personalities and were far superior than the mindless drones that populated the world. These creations helped Dr. Light win the Nobel Prize for Physics, which has nothing to do with roboticism but it was either that or the Nobel Prize for Interpretive Dance. Dr. Light's impressive victory came at the expense of his own assistant, and the second human protagonist, Dr. Wily - fashion god, uber genious, and evil man of science.

Dr. Wily's career mirrored Dr. Light's. He also attended the prestigious Robot Institute of Technology, where he majored in Evil, Backstabbing, Menacing Eyebrow Waggling, and False German Accents. He and Dr. Light were natural picks for lab partners and worked together on many projects. Dr. Wily's greatest creations included the bug-eyed helicopter bot, the slow moving snake robots, and his magnum opus, the mighty Metool.

Although Wily and Light worked well together, friction began to tear the two apart. Wily was jealous of Light's Nobel Prize and a little creeped out by the fact that Light wanted to make himself a robotic family. Dr. Light didn't like how Wily would refuse to take the garbage out or how he kept trying to turn the robots into evil killing machines. The tension finally reached a boiling point when Wily stole Light's Robot Masters and reprogammed them to take over the world. It was then that Dr. Light revoked Wily's lab privileges and refused to refund his security deposit.

Wily's new evil Robot Masters were on the loose and the world's human population (wherever they were) was in danger. Luckily, Dr. Light had an ace up his sleeve. One of his Master Robots resisted Wily's reprogramming. A simple housekeeping robot, built for peaceful but demeaning work and pacifict at heart but willing to do whatever it took to help, this robot would go on to make history. His name was Rock.