Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man

Progress Report #02
11 months ago – Tue, Apr 22, 2025 at 07:32:34 AM

Hello everyone,

I hope you all had a nice holiday weekend. I ate entirely too much candy and treats, so I have some work to do to make up for that!

Most of the major production work on the Mega Man 1 portion of the book has wrapped up on my end. The last few weeks I've been full steam ahead on the Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge portion of the book. The Mega Man 1 guide is currently being edited, and pages are being translated and handed off to Capcom for approval. It's all coming together!

Production on Wily's Revenge will move at a quicker pace. The general format will be similar to what we're doing with Mega Man 1, but it's going to feel much more like an extended Nintendo Power feature. We're working in all sorts of fun ideas, and I'm hoping to give you all a closer look into that next month. In the meantime, here's some new art featuring Mega Man with Fire Man's ability and a handful of enemies that are new to Wily's Revenge, but originate from Mega Man 2.

This also means I've been playing plenty of Wily's Revenge! I played through it last year when we decided it was going to be a part of this book. It was actually the first time I had ever played through the game before! Honestly, I didn't think too much of it. Now, having played through the game a handful of times, in different formats (both on Switch and original Game Boy) I've come around to it and I've had fun figuring out all sorts of tricks and tips for it. And I think you'll all have fun as well. It might be a more difficult game than the original Mega Man, though, so be warned!

Interviews Around the Net

Both during and after the campaign we received coverage from around the net in the forms of both written and podcast interviews. I wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who took the time to speak with us about this project. If you're curious, here is where we've been featured since running the campaign.

Talk a Good Game Podcast - This one is hot off the presses, but I actually recorded it back while the campaign was running. I had a blast talking with Andrew from Nintendeal / Deku Deals about all sorts of games. I got to talk about The Legendary Axe, so that was cool!

Polygon - How a Mega Man fan project got an official Capcom license - A nice written interview feature from Polygon. I've enjoyed Matt Leone's work since the 1Up/EGM days, so when he reached out to me to do a short interview, I was pretty stoked! 

The Nintendo Dads Podcast - I've done the Nintendo Dads Podcast in the past, but it was nice to be back! You'll probably hear some overlap on what I was playing at the time (Astro Bot) with Talk a Good Game. I'm always good to bring up some game no one ever plays ever, and this time was The Nightmare Before Christmas for the GBA.

Boss Rush Network - So, Then I Just Backed It - A fun written interview with Shane Kelley where he dives into various Kickstarters that he decided to back. The focus is more on the history of how we came to put this campaign together.

That's all for now. Thank you for reading!

~ Phil

Progress Report #01
about 1 year ago – Fri, Mar 14, 2025 at 05:44:07 PM

Hello everyone,

Hope that you're all well. It has been just over a month since this campaign concluded, and I just wanted to check in and let you know that things are moving along well! There is still much work to be done, but I've made lots more progress in the last month. So, while we've been pretty quiet here, we've been very busy behind the scenes!

We mentioned this during the campaign, but just to remind you, all of our work for Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man is going through Capcom for approval. That means that all of the pages need to be translated to Japanese after we write them, and whatever notes come back from Japan then need to be translated again for us! That's a huge task and we're happy to announce that we're bringing Matt Papa along for the ride to take on the role of our translator.

Currently working freelance on secret projects, Matt spent the bulk of his 10+ years in the video game space working as Producer and Head of Localization at Inti Creates. If you enjoyed games like Azure Striker Gunvolt, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night and Blaster Master Zero, then you've seen Matt's work firsthand. He's been involved with lots of greats!

In one of those "it's a small world" stories, I first heard about Matt years ago via his cousin, who happens to be a friend of mine. I worked with his cousin for a year or two, and when he found out I was into video games, he mentioned Matt and told me that he's the biggest Mega Man fan he knows. Of course I asked a bunch of follow-up questions! So when Lucas asked me if I knew anyone who could help us out with the translation phase of this project, Matt was the first (and really only!) name I had. Lucas also happened to have Matt in mind. So it was meant to be! I'm looking forward to working with Matt, and while he's currently living it up in Japan, maybe next time he's in Jersey we can get a cheesesteak together.

In other news, we also have our BackerKit preorder page up and runningfor anyone who missed out on the Kickstarter campaign and would still like to preorder a book. Send your friends and family to that link!

Finally, unrelated to the guide itself, I recently treated myself to a loose copy of Mega Man for the NES. I was thinking, "How have I spent all of this time on this project, but I don't own an actual physical cartridge of the original game!?"

Granted, I did use to own the original back in the day. My childhood copy went MIA at some point years ago, but I still had the box, manual and all the inserts in nearly perfect shape. I held on to that box forever . . . but at some point in the mid 2010s I was considering slimming down my collection. You'd think I would've just bought a replacement cartridge then, but no, I was a fool! I used my original Mega Man box as my test to see how I felt about selling off something that meant something to me. Well, I sold it (and for the time at a pretty good price!), but it was one of those things where the moment I shipped it I knew I made a mistake. I'm actually considering going through my collection now and pulling some things I don't care as much for and splurging on a boxed copy. But for now, this loose cartridge will do just fine. 

Mega Man Legacy Collection on the Switch has been my go-to version to play and re-play while working on this guide, so I'm really looking forward to playing through this on original hardware on a CRT. It'll be a real treat!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

~ Phil

THANK YOU!!!
about 1 year ago – Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 08:34:07 PM

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to throw a quick update out to everyone that Backed this project. Thank you all SO MUCH! I'm so glad to see that after all these years people are still into this whole crazy Hand-Drawn Game Guides idea. All of your support means the world to me, and you can be sure that I'm going to try my best to deliver you the best product I possibly can. I'm confident in saying you're going to end up getting the best guide ever created for Mega Man!

There is still much work to be done, and we'll be sure to share updates as the project comes along. That said I don't want to reveal too much over time, because I really want it to be special when you finally get this book and crack it open for the first time.

Also, in celebration of the campaign ending, let's take a moment to see who won Giveaway #4! If you forgot, ONE lucky winner will end up with the original Prize Man art we used throughout the campaign, as well as the Mega Man sketch that was used to represent our Sketch tier. And the winner is . . .

Daniel Crisp!

Thank you all for your comments about your favorite box art. So many great choices of amazing artists and artwork in there.

As we mentioned previously, we'll be getting in touch with all of the prize winners early next week, so keep an eye on your inbox if you won one of the Giveaways.

And with that, we'll wrap up for now. Thank you all again! And thank you so much Lucas for being the one to make this happen. It's going to be great! Enjoy your weekend, everyone!

~ Phil

Stretch Goal #4 Revealed!
about 1 year ago – Fri, Feb 07, 2025 at 07:30:28 PM

As we've entered the final week of our campaign, the support is starting to roll in faster and faster! Tons of people are jumping in now, and as well they should, because everyone who backs now is helping us climb toward hitting our Stretch Goals . . . and doing their part to secure those promised extra items for themselves, too!

It's nearly 10:30 p.m. Eastern as I'm posting this update, but I wanted to go ahead and send it out even at this hour, since we're barreling toward Stretch Goal #3 being met and we haven't yet revealed #4! So, let's do that now.

Stretch Goal #4 is set at the $140,000 mark! If pledges can reach this level before the conclusion of this Kickstarter campaign, then we'll create another totally unique item to gift for free to all backers at the Physical Tier and above: a large, prismatic sticker featuring everyone's favorite antagonist, Dr. Wily himself! This item will show a little more love to the Game Boy content contained within the book, as it's drawn right out of Phil's key art for Mega Man: Dr. Wily's Revenge. It will uniquely catch the light and shimmer on any surface upon which you choose to stick it. Or just leave it unstuck, unpeeled off its original backing! Do whichever you choose!

You'll note that we've added extra clarification to this item's promo image. (And we've gone back to do the same to the Yellow Devil Art Card as well). Both of these promised unlockable extra items will stay exclusively available only to Kickstarter Backers! They won't be sold separately to non-Backers after the campaign. You've got to be a Backer to get it! (But we have to hit $140,000 to unlock it in the first place, of course!)

We're offering these extras only to you diehard fans who have gone first to support the vision of Hand-Drawn Game Guides by becoming Backers during the one-month window of this Kickstarter campaign. Thank you for doing your part by preordering now, and not waiting around until later! It really helps us out to have as many confirmed, locked-in preorders as possible here on the front end. Especially when we walk back into our next meeting with Capcom after this book is finished and start the planning for Hand-Drawn Game Guides: Mega Man 2!

Thanks again! Let's keep this thing rolling!

~ Lucas

Final Prize Man Giveaway + Giveaway #3 Winners!
about 1 year ago – Wed, Feb 05, 2025 at 10:02:11 AM

Hi everyone,

Prize Man here! Today will be our final giveaway for the campaign, but before we get into that, let's reveal the winners of last week's giveaway. The following three winners have won themselves a whole year's worth of Nintendo Force Magazine!

Jade Data

Derek Larson

Brent Lindquist

Let's give our winners a huge congrats! (Speaking of winners, we're going to reach out to all of our winners from each giveaway on the Monday after the campaign ends. That's when we'll make plans to get your prizes to you!)

Now on to the final giveaway!

Yes, you've read it correctly, you can win the original art piece that has been featured in all of our giveaway posts! In addition to that, you'll also get the sketch that was drawn as our example sketch for the Unique Sketch & Autograph Tier! ONE lucky winner will receive both pieces! Note: Sketch example will NOT be on a branded piece of paper, it's on a piece of paper torn from a spiral-bound book!

Since there is only one winner this time, I'll be switching up the rules a little and only choose a winner from the Comments section. This week let's talk game artwork! What is your all-time favorite video game box art or artist? Let us know down below for a chance to win both of these original pieces. The winner will be chosen next week when we wrap up the campaign!

And with that, Prize Man is out. Thanks for playing!

~ Prize Man