The Hope and Despair of the 'Mighty No. 9' Kickstarter Campaign

It's great to help fund games that have great concepts, especially ones that AAA developers hardly touch upon these days. But crowdfunding comes at a price, both for developers and the people who back them. The developers need to provide updates, and the backers need to deal with disappointment. But when the developer fails to provide consistent updates, it leaves the backers feeling out of the loop and rightfully angry.

Mighty No. 9 is a textbook example of what can go wrong with a Kickstarter project. The game's current release date is the second quarter (April-June) of 2016—its fourth release date. But it's nearly May now, and questions have started to mount given that Comcept hasn't said anything about the status of the game since January.

"Any updates comming [sic] soon, been silent since January," said Kickstarter backer Jeremy the Jinx earlier this week. "Would be nice to have some info after yet another delay but instead you add insult to injury by leaving your backers out dry."

"So is this game vaporware…?" recently added another backer.

Things started out pretty promising. The game's Kickstarter campaign launched in August 2013 by Keiji Inafune, the creator of the Mega Man series. After leaving Capcom in October 2010, he launched a new development studio, Comcept. The idea behind Mighty No. 9 was simple—it was virtually the same as the original Mega Man on the NES. Beck, a combat robot, must go through the eight previous robots created before him that will allow him to gain skills to destroy the villain that corrupted his fellow robots. It was wildly successful, bringing in $3,845,170 in total.

But as time went on, bad news started pouring in.

Mighty No. 9's first delay came late in April 2015 (it was supposed to be released that spring), when it was given a more firm September 15 release date. But a month before the intended release, Comcept delayed the game yet again, this time to a vague first quarter 2016 release, citing bugs and other issues. It was then given a February 9 release date.

On January 25 of this year, again just weeks before release, it was delayed again, citing problems with its network modes.

Delays in crowdfunding games happen all the time. Two years ago I backed Unsung Story, a tactical RPG developed by Final Fantasy Tactics developers that has suffered its own troublesome development schedule Originally scheduled for July 2015, the game has faced numerous delays, though recent updates seem to indicate it's still being worked on. I grew frustrated as time went on, but at least the developers were somewhat consistent with updates.

But after so many promises, Comcept has pretty much failed to deliver in every way in terms of being straightforward with its backers in a timely manner when it comes to Mighty No. 9's release. I can say that I played the game at last year's E3, and was exactly what Mega Man fans have been wanting—a modern take on an old but cherished franchise. I just hope sometime soon, those who backed the game will actually be lucky enough to play it.