Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man

Progress Report #07 - September Survey Reminder!
7 months ago – Mon, Sep 01, 2025 at 09:34:06 AM

Hi everyone,

It's hard to believe that summer is winding down, but here we are! Personally speaking, I'm ready for the fall. Being in overly humid New Jersey, I'm ready for that nice fall breeze.

Anyway, down to business! Most of you (87%!) have already filled out your surveys, so thank you so much for that! But as September has now arrived, we wanted to give anyone in that remaining 13% one last nudge to do so. 

We'll plan to lock down the "Your Name Printed in the Book" name preferences this Friday, so that we can finalize those pages for print. If your pledge included that reward, your survey will ask you which name it is that you would like to have printed. If you preordered directly through BackerKit then that question may not have been asked to you during checkout, so keep an eye out for an email from Lucas soon to confirm your name preference. (Again, if we don't hear from you otherwise, then the name that we'll print will be whatever name is already attached to your order/your Kickstarter account.)

Some Kickstarter backers who live in Singapore have encountered an issue trying to complete their surveys/finalize their orders through BackerKit. We'll be working with BackerKit to resolve that problem, hopefully by tomorrow. (BackerKit's staff is out of the office for the Labor Day holiday today.) Stay tuned for that and we'll get it all worked out for you Singaporeans. 

In our previous update we let you know that if you couldn't find your survey email, that you could DM NF Publishing right here through Kickstarter to receive a new survey link. DMing a Creator is a little tucked away, so here are some instructions for how to do it!

Scroll up to the top of the Campaign page and you'll see a newly added "Creator" button. Simply click this link to pull up NF Publishing's profile.

Once you're on the profile page you can click on the big 'ol Message button, and from there you can reach out for help! Also, it's worth clicking the Follow button too so you can see what NF is up to next! (More Mega Man books are in the works!)

With 87% of the surveys already finished and turned in, we're happy that this part of the Kickstarter/BackerKit process has gone smoothly for the vast majority of you! But there are always some frustrations and miscommunications at this point, so our apologies if you're one of the people who has hit an obstacle. We'll keep working to ensure everyone is able to get their order squared away, and their book on its way to their mailbox!

As far as book production goes, things are now wrapping up on Capcom's side of things! We just handed off the final 10 pages for approval, and Capcom's licensing team is reviewing them now. The rest of the book is essentially all ready to go. Matt has done an amazing job translating all of these pages for us!

Speaking of Matt, I had the chance to meet him in person last week! (I can't believe I forgot to take a photo of the two of us for this update!) But it was great getting to meet him after knowing of him for all of these years. Matt loves Mega Man, and it was reassuring to see how excited he was about being a part of this project. Hopefully we'll get to hang out again in the near future, and he'll certainly be part of what we're cooking up next!

Finally, I have also been busy working to fulfill the higher-tier Backer rewards over the last month!

Here's a look at the Original Production Art tier. Backers in that tier will get an actual piece of Tip art used in the book. I wanted to make it feel legit, so each piece comes packed with a signed, stamped and sealed Certificate of Authenticity. Pretty cool!

I also did all 200 sketches for the two highest tiers. I tried VERY hard to make sure each piece was unique, and aside from a handful, I have succeeded! Lots of them are based on art directly from the book. I want to keep them secret for now so people can be surprised when they arrive, but I took pictures of all of them and plan to share them in a future update once the book is in everyone's hands. All of these are also signed and sealed!

And that's all for now. Our next update should be the one letting you all know that the book is officially in production! Thank you and have a great week!

~Phil

Progress Report #06 - Surveys Have Been Sent!
8 months ago – Fri, Aug 15, 2025 at 01:09:07 PM

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all well. This is a friendly reminder to let you know that the surveys have all been sent out! 

Many of you are filling out your surveys as I type this up, but we understand that sometimes the alert emails linking you to BackerKit's survey site may slip through the cracks. So make sure you received your email! (It was sent by "NF Publishing, LLC" if you want to search for it that way.) Completing the survey is the only way to finalize your order with us!

Note: If you look through your email and don't see your survey link anywhere, it's possible it was sent to your Spam folder — or got blocked by your email service entirely. If the email you have connected to your Kickstarter account ends with something like "privaterelay.apple.com" for example, you might not get the survey alert from BackerKit at all. But all is not lost! If you're in that situation, send us a DM here on Kickstarter and we'll generate a new survey link for you to click. No worries. 

And another "Your Name Printed in the Book" reminder: If you've pledged to have your name (or a friend's name) printed in the book, but you haven't responded to the survey by the end of August, we'll have to default to just printing whatever name is connected to your Kickstarter account. We'll be moving into print production at that point, so we'll have to cut off the name submissions then. (We can't very well wait until October or November for late survey submissions to confirm different name preferences if printing is happening in September, you know!)

We'll be sure to send another reminder right before the deadline!

We're in the final stages of buttoning up the book. Nearly every page has been handed off to Capcom for approval at this point, and assuming things go well, we should actually be in production by September. We'll be sure to update you during the production and fulfillment phases as well.

I'll keep this one short today. Have a great weekend!

~Phil

Progress Report #05 - Look for Surveys Soon!
9 months ago – Thu, Jul 17, 2025 at 07:26:26 AM

Hi everyone,

I hope you're all doing well and enjoying the summer. I just wanted to give you all a quick update on where we are with the book.

First things first, we plan on sending out surveys to our Backers the first week of August. This is where we'll collect your shipping info, and if you're on one of the tiers to have your name printed in the book, this is also where you'll be giving us your preferred name to print! So please be on the lookout for those! We'll be sure to make a bit more noise throughout that period to give people a reminder to fill them out. We'll need the names before we go to print, so we don't want to miss anyone during that period! 

(Note that if you pledged to have your name printed in the book but you haven't responded to the survey after two weeks, we'll default to printing whatever name is connected to your Kickstarter account here. We can't hold up book production past that point!)

As for the book itself, as of this week I have handed over everything for translation and approval. There is still a little production work to be done on the book (like title pages, adding all of your names to the back of it, putting actual page numbers on the pages, etc.) but the core of the book is basically complete! The final book will clock in at 208 pages total!

Now that the book is mainly out of my hands, I'm starting to move on to the Backer rewards. I'll be finalizing all of the extras (like the stickers and posters), and I plan on getting through all 200 sketches I need to do for the higher tier Backers throughout August. I have a lot to keep me busy!

The other night I started gathering the art pieces that will go to Backers on the highest tier. It was a little scary ripping up notebooks and then slicing up the pages. These suddenly felt like a precious resource!

I did this process with two different notebooks! I don't want to ship them loose like they are here, so I came up with a fun package for them that I hope the Backers enjoy. I'll be sure to share some of the sketches on our next update to show you how things are coming along.

We're into the final stretch, and I can't wait to get all of this into everyone's hands! Thank you for all of your patience!

~ Phil

Progress Report #04
10 months ago – Tue, Jun 17, 2025 at 05:19:09 PM

Hi everyone,

Hope you're all well! I don't have too much to share this month, but I still wanted to keep you all informed of our progress.

The big news is that I'm nearly finished with all of the major art needed for the book. This is a pretty huge milestone, and it feels good to be so close to wrapping up the majority of the book. At this point I have well over 500 unique illustrations completed! This book is going to be packed with things to look at!

We're also deep into the editing and approval process. As mentioned, we need to translate every page into Japanese, which we then pass off to Capcom for their official stamp of approval. If any notes come back, we then need to adjust and resubmit for approval. The approval process has been going well, so we haven't had too much come back that needs to be resubmitted.

Once I'm finished with all of the pages, I'll then be moving onto finalizing all of the Backer rewards. Most of the items like the art cards, bookmarks and stickers are already laid out from when we put the campaign together, but I'll be giving everything another pass. Then I have 200 custom sketches to do! So, there's plenty to keep me busy while we make it through our approval and printing phase. We'll be sure to keep you informed of our progress!

Thanks for your continued patience while we work to finish up this first book! We're heading into the home stretch now. Take care everyone!

~Phil

Progress Report #03 - Dr. Wily's Revenge Preview
11 months ago – Fri, May 16, 2025 at 06:01:47 AM

Hi everyone,

Hope you're all well!

Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man will present a fully hand-illustrated guide to the Blue Bomber's original NES game, as you know. But just as a reminder to you all, it'll also cover the series' first Game Boy game as well!

So today I wanted to share with you all a preview of how the Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge portion of the book is shaping up. Last month we showed you a few character illustrations, but this month we want to show you some real pages! We have some fun ideas planned with this one that I hope you enjoy.

Since we have mainly shared the Cut Man pages from the NES Mega Man guide, I figured that sharing the Cut Man pages from Dr. Wily's Revenge would be a nice way for you all to directly compare the different artistic approaches of each half of this book. Let's take a look together.

I think you'll get a good sense of where we're headed with this one just from the introduction pages! They're much more playful than the NES section of the book. You'll notice in the bottom corner there is a Super Game Boy color palette: I created custom colors for each stage using the classic Super Game Boy adapter, and then took it a step further by incorporating those colors into the actual book layout. (I spent probably too much time tweaking Super Game Boy colors for this, but I think it helps give this part of the book a unique identity. Hopefully you'll agree!)

Unlike the maps in the Mega Man 1 guide, these are contained to just what you see in the game. I'm going for more of a Nintendo Power feel with these layouts. Cut Man is having a bit of fun with the map! You can expect something like that from each of the Robot Masters.

Like the Mega Man 1 guide, we'll also feature a look at each stage's unique enemies. The write-ups about the enemies are more tip-focused this time. As you'll notice we've made a special call-out for enemies and hazards that are unique to this game.

And, finally, we have our Robot Master pages. These pages feature tips on how to tackle the bosses, along with a look at how to use Mega Man's newly acquired weapon. Like Mega Man 1, we're giving Mega Man a unique look when he has each new ability equipped.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look at our Dr. Wily's Revenge pages! Overall, the book is moving along at a steady pace, and I'm thankful for everyone's continued patience. We really want this to be the best book it can be!

Thanks again, and take care!

~ Phil