Although only in its infancy, Mega Maker is already a compelling addition to the Mega Man fan scene. The creation tools are intuitive and addicting, and a tongue-in-cheek tutorial starring Drs. Wily and Light explains everything players need to create their masterpieces. Unfortunately, many of the levels shared during the early days of the game’s release fall into the same trap of Super Mario Maker’s disappointing stages—puzzle levels overstuffed with enemies that bear little resemblance to the finely tuned battlefields of the originals. I rolled my eyes at attempts to recreate Castlevania or levels built solely of leaps of faith.

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But there are also stand-outs that feel like they could’ve easily slipped into the NES games. One of my favorites, KnightNapalm Fury, is a perfectly tuned mix of platforming and run-and-gun gameplay. By the time I defeated the boss, my controller was slippery with sweat, and I felt a legitimate sense of accomplishment. Similar levels like The Lair of the Royal Knight or Tower Above the Forest give me hope about the future of Mega Maker and tough-as-nails 2D gameplay.

But WreckingPrograms and the Mega Maker crew aren’t the only ones keeping Mega Man alive. Chris King’s game 20XX also feels like a spiritual successor to Mega Man, but unlike Mega Maker, King built his entire game from scratch with original art, so he can sell it. 20XX marries classic Mega Man gameplay with the random, procedurally-generated roguelike systems of Spelunky.

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“I’ve played through all the games several times each,” King said. “I’ve always just wanted more Mega Man, and endlessly replayable Mega Man X sounded like a pretty solid hook to me, so I went for it as soon as I could afford to. I built a garbage-art prototype, hired [Zach Urtes] to do our not-garbage art, and got chugging.”

King started 20XX in 2013 when he decided to leave the corporate world and follow his dream of developing a commercial video game. He unveiled 20XX on Kickstarter a year later, and fans shelled out $20,000 to make it a reality.

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20XX is another one of those ‘million dollar ideas’ that a fan just so happened to make,” Rockman Corner’s Brian Austrin said. “It feels like a natural extension to the Mega Man formula. I’m happy it’s seen such success not only within our community, but gamers as a whole.”

Applying roguelike mechanics to something ultra-tough like Mega Man sounds like a recipe for a game only the hardcore could love, but 20XX wisely adapts to the skill level of the player. Before each run, you can modify the difficulty or opt into a program where rewards like extra health or stronger attacks carry over, allowing casual players a sense of progress. Unlike Keiji Inafune’s much-hyped but ultimately disappointing Mighty No. 9, which feels like a weaker installment of the Mega Man X series, 20XX takes the feel of older Mega Man games and meshes it seamlessly with 2017 game design. Both 20XX and Mega Maker scratch a gaming itch Capcom seems to have given up on. Like Brian Austrin told me, “Where Capcom slacks, fans are more than happy to pick up the pace.”

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In 1992, the noted media scholar Henry Jenkins published a book about participatory fan culture called Textual Poachers.“Fans do not simply consume preproduced stories; they manufacture their own,” he wrote. This “manufacturing” is an appropriation of media, a remixing that serves the fanbase even if it resists the media producer’s intent.

Although Jenkins was writing about television, you can easily apply his analysis to gamers. What is Mega Maker if not an appropriated remix of media that stands in stark contrast to the goals of Capcom? “Fans construct their cultural and social identity through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images, articulating concerns which often go unvoiced within the dominant media,” Jenkins writes. “The fans’ response typically involves not just fascination or adoration, but frustration and antagonism, and it is the combination of the two responses which motivate their active engagement with the media.”

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Adoration mixed with frustration? That’s Mega Man fandom to a T.

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Brian Austrin launched Rockman Corner in 2008, when he was 17. Today, it’s been accessed over five million times. “The Mega Man brand is so diverse it invites many different kinds of people,” Austrin says. “I don’t think it’s a stretch to say Mega Man fans are some of the most creative artists, musicians, programmers and fan-game designers out there.”

Google Mega Man songs and you’ll stumble across the Protomen, Megas, Minibosses, and dozens of bearded guys on YouTube strumming the series’ greatest hits on acoustic guitar. A search on Fanfiction.net produces 808 Mega Man stories. You can also sample tons of fan games in addition to Mega Maker—Mega Man Ultra, Mega Man 2.5D, Mega Man Rock Force, Mega Man Unlimited, and so on.

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“Fans possess not simply borrowed remnants snatched from mass culture, but their own culture built from the semiotic raw materials the media provides,” writes Henry Jenkins. These fan products are not simply funhouse mirror regurgitations of Mega Man. They build on the foundations established by Capcom and twist them through the cultural lenses and influences of the fans. The longer Capcom goes without continuing to generate “official” new Mega Man creations, the more the franchise begins to become defined by the fan creations.

For the future, Capcom’s committed to at least doing something with Mega Man. In 2018, Cartoon Network will air a new Mega Man series starring an ugly version of the character complete with a brand-new alter ego named Aki Light. Predictably, the fans slammed this revamp all over the internet. Capcom has also said that it is in talks with the directors of Catfish and actor Masi Oka write and direct a Mega Man movie. No matter how ill-conceived a live-action Mega Man film is, that has to mean more games, right? Not necessarily.

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Since 2010, Capcom has trickled out the occasional Mega Man rerelease. Some of these have been sublime like the recent Mega Man Legacy Collection in which development studio Digital Eclipse took a Criterion-style approach to the original six Mega Man games. The recent smartphone releases of those six games, on the other hand, were not nearly as good—they’re just reworked versions of old Japanese flip phone games and play as terribly as they sound.

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So, with a TV show and film on the horizon, Capcom may capitalize on the Mega Man franchise and develop new games. But so far, all we’ve seen are compilations of varying quality. Both WreckingPrograms and Chris King say they don’t see a true sequel happening any time soon—in fact, King says, he wouldn’t have started 20XX if he thought Capcom seemed even remotely likely to make another Mega Man.

Brian Austrin, though, hasn’t given up hope for an official revival. “Mega Man is… just as iconic as Mario, Link, and Pikachu. It’s loved by many, but I think it can be so much more,” he said. “Of things I should be hopeful and optimistic for in my life, my faith in a new Mega Man game is unwavering.”

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Salvatore Pane (@salpane) is the author of the book Mega Man 3, from Boss Fight Books, as well as the novel Last Call in the City of Bridges. His writing has appeared in American Short Fiction, Paste, and elsewhere. He teaches English at the University of St. Thomas and can be reached at www.salvatore-pane.com.