Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man

Sketches and Surveys!
about 1 month ago – Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 11:58:30 AM

Hi everyone,

Hope you've all been well! By this point we have almost entirely fulfilled the project and hopefully you're happy with how things have turned out. If I could ask a small favor of you, I would greatly appreciate it if you took a few minutes out of your day to fill out this Google survey for us. Whether you were happy or unhappy with the final product, we'd love to know how we could improve in the future.

And since you clicked this, I thought I'd share something fun! As you know I did 200 custom ink sketches for our two highest tiers. I wanted to show you all what I came up with! So, I hope you enjoy taking a look through this sketch gallery. Thank you so much for everything. Have a great weekend!

~Phil

Progress Report #11 – The Fulfillment Finish Line
3 months ago – Wed, Jan 14, 2026 at 12:17:50 PM

Happy New Year, Mega Man fans!

(We're still allowed to say that on January 14th, right?)

Today marks exactly one year since this Kickstarter campaign for Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man went live! And I'm happy to report on this anniversary date that the book was completed, printed, packaged and sent out to each of you before this 365-day milestone arrived.

. . . Well, nearly all of you! We have been diligently sending out physical packages containing print copies of Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man every day since receiving the big freight shipment of final copies a few days after our last Kickstarter update was posted. And as of this writing we have dispatched over 3,400 shipments! That's just about everyone covered.

But! If you have not yet received tracking information for your own package, you have most likely fallen into one of two categories:

1) You still need to complete your post-campaign survey on BackerKit. This is how you finalize your order, how we get your address information sent to us and how we can see the unique set of items you ordered, to be able to assemble your shipment and get it sent to you. After I post this update, I'll hit the "Resend" button to send another wave of reminders to the email addresses of each of you who are in this boat. But as I said in an earlier update, those reminders might be getting blocked by your email service! So contact me through the Messages feature here on Kickstarter if you need a unique survey link generated and sent to you.

2) The other common circumstance here at the fulfillment finish line is that some people have completed their surveys, but their address information has been flagged as incorrect or incomplete. I've been reaching out to people in this situation one by one, and will continue to do so until everyone's had their shipment sorted out. If you haven't yet gotten tracking info for your order, keep an eye on your Messages here on Kickstarter as I might need extra clarification on some aspect of your address before getting your package sent.

For any other issues/problems/complaints/concerns: Contact me here through the private Messages. I'll continue to monitor the inbox there every day. Please don't post public comments asking about your individual order in response to this update, or on the general campaign page. I can't share your package's tracking number publicly, so I'll have to respond privately anyway. Just use the Messages. I'll get back to you there. 

On the other hand, do feel free to post public comments that are positive and praising Phil's great work! I so appreciate those of you who have taken the time to leave earnest compliments of the book's quality. I told you all Phil knocked this one out of the park! And I'm thrilled that you're all getting to see and approve of his hard work with your own eyes. :) Keep the good vibes coming, because he deserves every one of 'em!

Oh hey, what's that!? Yes, Capcom let a pretty big cat out of the bag shortly after our last Kickstarter update: the Classic Mega Man series is finally getting an all-new sequel! (Full disclosure: Phil and I might have had a bit of advance knowledge of this one!) Capcom is genuinely pushing the Mega Man series back into a place of prominence, and we have been thrilled to play just one small part of that grand plan by presenting the Hand-Drawn Game Guides celebration of the series' original installment. The timing ended up aligning wonderfully! 

The Mega Man brand is only going to get more active through 2026 and 2027 as the series' 40th anniversary approaches and Dual Override's release draws nearer. And one of the fun things Capcom has done to kick off this sequel's hype cycle is bringing back the old Robot Master Design Contest! Entries have already closed (that ended on January 1), so I hope you made it in time with your own submission if you wanted to contribute. Both Phil and I did! Would you like to see our designs?

Here's Ramen Man! My own unique creation. The one guideline for the contest was that your submission needed to have one long "vacuum" arm. Well, I tried to come up with the most off-the-wall and wacky interpretation of a "vacuuming" action that I could, and I thought of the natural vacuuming action that happens with your mouth when you're slurping up noodles. :p Thus, Ramen Man was born, with his signature attack: Slurp Noodle! Surely this one's going to be the winner, right? Just look at my incredible artistic skill!

As an actual artist with a much more cohesive concept, Phil's definitely got a better shot with his idea, Hazmat Man. This sludge-sucking bot has the classic NES era Robot Master design vibe perfectly in place. I could honestly picture this boss being battled in the game! 

Capcom is whittling down all the thousands of submissions to a handful of finalists that the public will be able to vote on, so keep your eyes peeled on their social media feeds for more information on that. And maybe look out for an ad or two featuring Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man coming to those social channels in the near future as well! We've got to spread the word about this book to a larger audience, you know. Not everyone was clued in to its existence right from the start, like you were!

~ Lucas M. Thomas

. . . now I just know somebody's going to ignore my request and post something negative about their package just below this, aren't they?

Progress Report #10 – The Books are Done!
4 months ago – Mon, Dec 01, 2025 at 04:41:56 PM

December has dawned, and with it comes some long-awaited news: Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man has finished print production. The books are done! They actually physically exist.

Our printing partners at Sheridan, with whom Phil and I have previously worked for the productions of The Impact of Iwata, NES Endings Compendium: Volume 2 and 202X: Video Game Reflections, contacted us this morning to confirm that our Mega Man book is complete and its initial shipments have been dispatched from their production facility. These shipments include one small set of copies heading straight to Phil, and a mega shipment of several thousand copies bound for me here at the NF home office. I will then take the books from that huge shipment, package them into individual orders, add in any extra items you may have preordered alongside your physical book and get your shipments dispatched to you. 

Thank you all for your patience throughout this whole process! My apologies for not hitting the target quite right regarding when we would get to this finish line and actually be able to fill people's orders. I had hoped to be at this point a couple of months ago, and everyone please give full credit to Phil, because he worked tirelessly to complete all of the actual creative work on this project on exactly the timeline we established over a year ago. There was never any hold-up from him. 

The delays we've experienced came from 1) the licensing approval process with Capcom taking longer than we'd estimated it would, since we had to translate the entire book into Japanese and submit every page individually to Capcom's Mega Man brand team in Japan, then wait for their feedback on every word and bit of art, and 2) print production at Sheridan taking longer than any of our previous books did with them. I just need to readjust my expectations on that timing going forward! When I submitted The Impact of Iwata to them to print two years ago, they finished it in just three weeks! But HDGG Mega Man took them two full months to finish. Staffing shortages, weather delays, who knows exactly why. But I'll learn from this experience and will set the release targets for future books better, allowing for more production time.

Keep an eye on your email in the weeks ahead, as when your package is prepped and its mailing label printed, you should receive a shipping notification with a tracking number attached. Use the Messages feature to contact us here through Kickstarter if you have any questions. I will work as quickly and diligently as I can to get everyone's packages out the door as soon as possible, but please have one final measure of patience as we're rounding third base and heading for home here — there are literally thousands of these shipments to get put together, there are only so many hours in each day and I don't want the nearest post offices to want to kill me when I roll up with literal truckloads day after day, so some people will naturally get their packages dispatched earlier than others. We'll get everyone taken care of as quick as we can!

Now, to end with some cuteness, please enjoy some preview photos of a few of the bonus items we've prepared to accompany the book, demonstrated by my three youngest sons:

Thanks again for your support, Hand-Drawn Game Guides fans! It won't be long now before Phil's new guide is in your hands.

~ Lucas M. Thomas

Progress Report #09 - Getting Close!
5 months ago – Thu, Nov 06, 2025 at 07:27:19 AM

Hi everyone,

Hope you've all been well. We're still in the "it's at the printer" phase of this whole process, but we want to keep being as transparent about this process as we can be, so here's a short update on what's been going on!

Things could change but the books are currently scheduled to be finished printing next Friday, November 14th. They'll then be shipped over to Lucas, who will then begin to fulfill orders. Books should hopefully begin showing up shortly thereafter for Backers. In the meantime all of the extras that come with the books have been ordered, so at this point we're literally waiting just like all of you!

In more exciting news, on Monday, November 17th, we'll be releasing the Digital version of Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man! And also the digital version of 202X: Video Game Reflections for the people who picked that up from BackerKit. If your order contained either of those digital books (or the digital version of Lucas' The Impact of Iwata), then your links to download those should land in your email on that day.

Speaking of Video Game Reflections, if you were one of the 100 people who managed to grab a physical copy from BackerKit, I've tucked a little something into every copy. Everyone gets an additional bookmark, and some kind of sticker! I went through all of my leftover stickers and tried to divide them up the best I could. I hope you enjoy them and the book!

And finally, as a reminder, everyone should have received an email recently to confirm their mailing address. So if anything has changed, now's the time to lock that in!

We know this process has taken a little longer than we initially planned (the content approval/submissions process with Capcom ended up taking longer than we'd estimated, for one thing), but we learned a lot from the experience. Lucas and I have already been discussing ways to make this a smoother process for Backers in the future, but hopefully these updates have helped somewhat. Thank you again for your patience!

~ Phil

Progress Report #08 – Print Production Has Begun!
6 months ago – Tue, Sep 23, 2025 at 02:02:29 PM

Hey there, Mega Man fans! Publisher Lucas here jumping in with the news that we've hit an exciting milestone. It's in bold up above! But here it is again:

Print production has begun!

Yes indeed, the physical copies of Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man are being manufactured as we speak. That naturally means a couple of other things are also now true: All work on content creation for the book has wrapped, and Capcom has fully approved all that content as well! It's just thumbs-up all around over here.

As with Phil and I's past book projects like 202X: Video Game Reflections and The Impact of Iwata, print production is being handled here in the United States by the Sheridan publishing group. They do great work (we hope you agree, if you have one of our previous books that was printed by them to judge for yourself), and with them being here in America, that means the turnaround time is much, much faster than the alternative. Lots of book publishers do their printing in China, but if we did that, then we'd have to wait several months for the finished books to sail across the ocean! Printing locally, the books get freight-shipped to the NF home office within just a few days after rolling off the production line and we can start fulfilling orders much faster.

Everyone who completed their BackerKit survey should have received a notice yesterday that orders are in the process of being locked. You've got until tomorrow to update your shipping address if you need to! (Note that if you preordered directly through BackerKit rather than first pledging here on Kickstarter, your orders are already locked.)

Next up, cards will be charged to totally finalize everyone's orders. You'll get another notice before that happens — look for that notice to hit your email next Monday, September 29.

We don't have an exact date yet for when the books will be done and when orders will begin to be filled, but we'll let you know when Sheridan shares that date with us. (Their rough estimate was that production would take about five weeks.) It won't be too much longer! (And again, it's going to be a lot faster than printing in China would have been!)

Thank you all for your support of this project — the first of hopefully many new Hand-Drawn Game Guides from Phil to make it across the finish line! As a fan of Phil's work myself, let me just tell you that I've been delighted by the finished product. I think this book has really turned out to be something special, and it's Phil's best work yet! Can't wait to get it into your hands soon. We're one big step closer to that day now!

~ Lucas M. Thomas