Mighty No. 9's hero looks a little less like Mega Man now

Comcept's Mighty No. 9 has been an obvious spiritual successor to Capcom's Mega Man franchise, but the development team under Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune is making a slight change to the game's hero that makes him look a little less like the Blue Bomber.

In a Kickstarter update, Comcept revealed a change to Mighty No. 9's Beck, who's no longer a bluish-gray. From now on, he's mostly white, a change that game director Koji Imaeda explains.

"From the very beginning we designed Beck to have a neutral, grey base, with the idea of wanting to make something completely new and unique," Imaeda said. "But development soldiered on, and as we approached the last leg, we started looking closer at Beck. As a protagonist that could absorb the abilities of his siblings and take on various forms, our image of his appropriate color shifted from 'neutrality' to 'containing all possibilities'... and since white is a combination of all colors of light, we felt that would actually suit his character better!"

Here's a comparison between old Beck and new.

Clearly, Beck still retains a lot of design elements that give the character a Mega Man vibe, but it's interesting to see Comcept make the change this far into development.

Mighty No. 9 is slated to come to a wide range of platforms — Nintendo 3DS, PC, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Wii U, Xbox 360 and Xbox One. Developer Comcept is planning on an April 2015 release.