First six Mega Man games coming to mobile next month

The first six entries in the Mega Man franchise — that’s all of the 8-bit titles in the original series — will be released on Android and iOS in early January, publisher Capcom announced today.

Here’s the full list of games, for the uninitiated: Mega Man (1987), Mega Man 2 (1988), Mega Man 3 (1990), Mega Man 4 (1991), Mega Man 5 (1992) and Mega Man 6 (1993). All of them debuted on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Capcom will sell each of the mobile ports for $1.99 on the App Store and Google Play, with the word “Mobile” appended to the titles. A Capcom Mobile representative told Polygon that the purchase price will cover each entire game; the titles will not offer microtransactions.

This will be the first time that all six of the original 8-bit Mega Man games have been available on mobile devices — but they may not offer the original NES experience. Capcom Mobile, the company’s mobile division, said in a press release that the games have been “optimized for the mobile devices with adjustments to game speed.” The Capcom Mobile spokesperson confirmed that the ports will use touchscreen controls.

Mega Man doesn’t have an encouraging history on mobile platforms. Beeline Interactive released a port of Mega Man 2 on iOS in 2009, and it was lambasted for gameplay tweaks that were supposedly intended to make the game better suited to mobile devices. In its zero-out-of-10 review, IGN said the game was “virtually unplayable in its current control setup” and “could go down in history as the worst Mega Man offering ever.”

In late 2011, Capcom itself released an iOS port of 1993’s Mega Man X. That version didn’t fare much better initially, partly because it offered microtransactions that allowed players to pay to unlock weapons, health boosts and other content. (The port now has a 4.5-star rating across thousands of reviews.)