My Franchise Festival co-host Hamilton and I recently had the opportunity to interview Nadia and David Oxford about their new book, Mega Man X: Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide. It’s the definitive encyclopedia of the Mega Man X franchise’s extensive character roster and a lovely read to boot.

You can find the audio on your favorite podcast app by subscribing to the Franchise Festival podcast or listen to the embedded version below. I’ve also produced a transcription, edited for clarity and length, that you can read just past the embedded audio.

Chris (@SingingBrakeman): Udon Entertainment has just published Megaman X: The Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide and, as big fans of that series, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to chat with the books’ two authors. Could you please introduce yourselves? 

David: My name is David Oxford. Though some Megaman fans may know me better as LBD_NyteTrayn, even if they have no idea how to pronounce that last word. I’m a freelance writer who writes for Nintendo Force, Mega Visions, Old School Gamer. I’ve done some Mega Man books you might have heard about. I write for my own website at poisonmushroom.org. And also the Mega Man Network, which is currently under reconstruction; I’m hoping we’ll have some things to announce on that soon. But for now it’s kind of MIA.

Nadia: I’m Nadia Oxford, I helped co-write the Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide. I’m also a freelance writer and a podcaster with the Axe of the Blood God RPG podcast and Sharlayan Dropouts, a Final Fantasy XIV podcast. I just do stuff here and there. I do a little bit of localization, and a little bit of games writing if someone needs me to write basically 1000 words shitpost. Anything to do with gaming? I am your woman.

Chris: Both of you were previously involved with the classic Mega Man Robot Master Field Guide, right? 

Nadia: Yes, indeed. We wrote that, plus I think it was updated a couple of times at least. 

David: I forget what the initial update was, it might have just been fixing a few errors here and there. The recently updated edition, which I believe is hardback, has been updated to include the Mega Man 11 Robot Masters. 

Nadia: We took a different narrative tone for the Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide, where we kind of wrote it in-universe.

David: Yeah, that was basically the intent, we want to do something different this time. Because with the rise of Wikipedia and stuff, people are gonna say, “Oh, this is just info, I can look that up.” I want to make it a little more of an experience for the readers, something kind of in-universe. The idea is that you’re a new Maverick. This is your field guide. This is getting you caught up to speed on all the important things you need to know about the major players and participants of battles, and basically the stuff that happened in the games, but in a more in-universe tone. We even had an intro that was like, “Welcome to the maverick hunters.”

Chris: It makes a fun plug about how you’ll probably be looking this information up on your tablet or what-have-you, but – just in case you’re stuck in the field – sometimes it’s good to have an analog copy. 

Nadia: Exactly. Like if you’re out in the wilderness and you have no 5G or whatever they have in the future, and Sigma was there for some reason. You’re like, “Oh, crap. Oh, thank God, I have my trusty guidebook!”

David: One thing I wanted to do, and I don’t think it made it in, was… you remember how some like books would have, “if lost, please drop in a mailbox,” and you’d write your name. I wanted to have something like “return to Maverick Hunter Headquarters.” 

Nadia: Yeah, but if you did that, then you’d have to really start committing to it and have dicks scrawled all over it like a second grader does. 

David: Well, that would be for the user to do that. 

Hamilton: The young Reploids reading this, exactly. 

Nadia: Think of the children!

Hamilton: So what was the process of writing this book? And what was Udon and Capcom’s involvement in it? 

David: As far as Capcom goes, I don’t remember much involvement. Much to my chagrin, because sometimes there were multiple terms for something without a definitive version. For instance, Zero’s ability is sometimes just called his learning system, but it’s also been called a DBZ. Or the Saber Tactics system. I think I just kind of ended up running with multiple variants just to be all-inclusive. I did something like that with making the infamous Guns and Roses names for the X5 Mavericks aliases for the regular names. Udon kind of helped rein me in because I wanted to go a lot further with this in some ways. I wanted to go with Mega Man X DiVE and Mega Mission, which are these trading cards that tell further stories in Japan. I’m hoping we can come back around to some of that stuff at some point, like a Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide Declassified kind of thing, in keeping with the theme. But for now we just kept to the main core game stuff, which is what I was instructed to do. What’s really funny on that front is that one character I wanted to include called X-Kai, who was basically a recolor that was sort of canonized by a TruForce action figure, wasn’t in the game so we decided not to use them. And a couple of days before the Field Guide started going out to people he showed up in Mega Man X DiVE in Taiwan. 

Nadia: With any luck, if this does well then we can have future guidebooks in a similar vein or update this one like the Mega Man Robot Master Field Guide. Udon also supplied original art for some of the characters because the X8 Mavericks didn’t have full body portraits and only got headshots.

David: I don’t know that X7 even had that much. So both of those got new art. You’ll find a lot of new original art in the book. Even of major characters like Lumine from Mega Man X8.

Chris: The quality of art in the book is really great. And for characters that have multiple versions, there’s often two pieces of key art for them. Or, for characters in the more pixelated Mega Man X games, it shows a field image of the pixelated version of the character. It’s a really inspired choice.

Nadia: Yeah, I think so. 

David: That one came from Matt Moylan, the managing editor who oversaw the book. So credit where credit is due.

Chris: What’s your history with Mega Man X?

David: So here’s the thing – I got in on Mega Man not quite at the ground floor but close enough. I wasn’t there when the NES had launched, but I came in a couple of years later around the time Super Mario Bros. 2 was launching. My mom was keen on getting me into Nintendo for some reason, something she’d probably regret. There was a lot of hype going towards Mega Man 2 so I started with Mega Man 1 and it didn’t quite click with me, but it was enough that I gave 2 a shot and history was made. However, I didn’t own any of the games. I was always renting them and in most cases I could beat them in a weekend. So I was like, “these games are gonna be there forever so I’m not gonna bother buying them.” Mistakes were made.

Then came Mega Man X and the hype and the previews and stuff going around. I was actually a little turned off initially, because there was this art of Mega Man X with all of his upgrades. The facemask was basically two or three colors. You had the black outlines, it’s maybe one shade of blue and just like a little bit of flesh, not even the white of his eyes; I’m not even sure what that’s from because you never see it in any Capcom art. But then I started seeing more of the finalized stuff and I’m like “okay, sign me up.” And that ended up being the first Mega Man game I ever actually went out bought and owned. I got my money’s worth out of it and played the following games. I met my wife through the games. And it kind of led to me actually having a career in writing because of doing the Mega Man Network and that stuff. It’s been a wild ride.

Nadia: I was always a Mega Man fan – probably not as long as my husband, but I bought Mega Man 3 used and I was like, “oh, this is cool.” But then I fell off for a while. I was a late adopter with the SNES in 1993, which actually was a great year jump in because that was the year that Mega Man X was released. I saw it in the game store and I thought, “well, why not just go ahead and rent it.” And of course it’s incredible. I didn’t really read a lot of game magazines until much later. I just kind of went with the flow because I didn’t really pay much attention to the media out there. So it was a nice surprise to kind of stumble on X, then graduate to X2 and eventually Mega Man X3, which came out around the same time as the internet was starting to be a thing. So I connected with the community there. And yeah, eventually I did meet David and we’ve been married for 20 years.

David: It’s kind of funny that you just happened to come across Mega Man X in the store. Meanwhile, I’m calling Walmart on a daily basis and asking “do you have Mega Man X?” 

Chris: The old ways of finding out if a game’s come out.

Nadia: The old days! I remember when Ocarina of Time came out I was actually in high school and I called from our payphones there. And the person who answered at EB Games said “Yes, we have Zelda,” so I actually skipped the rest of school to pick up Ocarina of Time. 

David: Release dates weren’t set so much back then aside from the one-off special occasion. Sonic Tuesday, I think, began the trend and then we had Mortal Monday. And at some point it just started building and they’re like, “yeah, you know what – maybe having actual set release dates is the way to go.”

Chris: Mega Man 3 was actually my first Mega Man game as well. I recall playing it way back when and being baffled about what was going on with the robot masters in the second half. A little one would come down and merge into the other and I thought, “well, who are these characters and why can’t I fight them?”

Nadia: Yeah, I was wondering what the heck was going on with all of that. And what a weird game to come in on, because that’s the only real instance of something so weird happening in the Mega Man series.

Hamilton: Which series entry is your favorite, and maybe your least favorite as well?

Nadia: X is my favorite by far. It’s just one of the most perfect action games ever made. The music’s fantastic, the graphics are really incredible for their time and even hold up today. The narrative is very simple but well told, it’s just a good solid thing from start to finish. It’s one of those games where, even if you don’t play it all the way through, just playing a few stages makes you feel pretty good and a little bit relaxed if you’re having a hard day. Least favorite… It’s a close one between X6 and X7, but here’s what gives X6 the “advantage” – it’s so obviously rushed and low effort, and that’s not really on the devs since they were given a really short timeframe to do this stupid game. 

David: I think it came out less than a year after X5.

Nadia: X5 actually sold pretty well because people wanted 2D games. Everything was in 3D at that time. So this was a nice throwback and then Capcom said “oh, hey, holy crap!” So they got out X6, which was just terrible. No fun to play. Not much fun to look at either, though the music was still fantastic. X7 is absolutely terrible to play and absolutely terrible to listen to, but at least it has new ideas. It tried to be a game and didn’t try to be a bunch of elements stuffed into a cartridge or a CD as it were. And from there we got X8, which is not perfect by any means, but it was a much better departure; a much better upgrade from either X6 or X7.

David: My favorite would also be the original Mega Man X. That’s the one where I feel like there’s probably the most passion put into it because, at the time, there were a lot of [properties] going to Super Nintendo from Nintendo – Super Castlevania IV, Gladius III, and Contra – I’m naming all these Konami games. A lot of people were asking “where’s Super Mega Man,” as it was being called at the time. And that didn’t come out until a couple of years into the console’s life, so maybe they were able to take their time. You can really see a lot of the passion there. Everything from the way X breathes heavy when he’s low on life. Some of that stuff would carry forward, of course, but it was new at the time. Or if you were in Chill Penguin’s stage, you were getting puffs of breath as well. Just little touches. Maybe they knew that it was going to become another annualized thing or something. I feel like it was diminishing returns from there; not to say that X2 or X3 were bad, but I don’t think they quite reached the same sense of everything being nearly perfect. X4 was really good, I think they might have had a little more time for that one because X3 was outsourced. I really like Mega Man X8, even the vehicle sections, because if there’s one thing that the Mega Man X team seems unable to do very well it’s vehicle sections… or really just Mega Man in general.

Nadia: Jump jump, slide slide.

(laughter)

David: Let’s see about my least favorites. I’m going to go to bat for X6 because the ultimate armor code really helps negate a lot of the rough edges that the game has. With X7, it’s almost like you have to grind to find the fun. It’s one of those like, “oh yeah, this game gets really good eight hours in.” Of course, it’s only about five hours so…

Nadia: X7 never gets good.

David: I’ve heard arguments for some good parts. I’ve never gotten that far but I know that it’s like “once you have X, then things really pick up,” but that’s after you either rescue a ton of replicates or you’ve beaten all eight of the bosses. 

Hamilton: That’s when you get the titular character.

David: At that time Metal Gear was doing it and I feel like Axl stands alongside Raiden and Silver the Hedgehog. It’s just that period of time where it was like “hey, let’s introduce these other characters who aren’t the guy on the box.”

Chris: What an odd trend. You have to wonder what got into the water at the time. I guess it must have been Metal Gear Solid influencing others, but everybody was unhappy with Metal Gear Solid 2. Who saw that and thought “we could do that too?”

Nadia: Everyone was probably drinking Dr. Breen’s Private Reserve.

David: I will say this – at least Japan was honest about it. As I recall, X is in the background on the box and Axl is up front. Whereas in the States they put X front and center and you think “oh yeah, Mega Man X… I like Mega Man X… Let’s play Mega Man X… Where is Mega Man X?!” 

Chris: I was really happy to see the lesser known Mega Man X offshoots like Mega Man Xtreme and Command Mission represented in the book. Have you played those and, if so, do you recommend folks seek them out?

David: Just taking them in order – play Mega Man Xtreme only if you’re a Mega Man X fanatic who just wants to absorb every bit of lore firsthand rather than read it in the Field Guide. You have to experience fighting Geemal and Zain, which are almost the only new elements in play besides Middy and Techno. Pretty much everything else is lifted straight from X and X2 and de-made into 8-bit. 

Xtreme 2 I would more strongly recommend because it’s more of a remix. You can play as X and Zero, and Zero is in an 8-bit style. The story is a bit more elaborate, with more new characters. For returning bosses, I wish they used the Mega Mission style where their looks were different, but they changed some of the attacks and some of the weapons you get. Also, Zero gets to face characters that he didn’t normally get to on his playable games because he wasn’t fully playable before X4 and here he is fighting X2 and X3 bosses. That alone might be worth it for some Zero fans. 

For Command Mission… I’m not a huge RPG person. When I played it, I really enjoyed it. And then after that I ended up playing Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door and I was just like, “wow, this is what RPGs are?” But I liked it well enough at the time. It’s not what I wanted from a Mega Man X RPG, which was to elaborate on the world we’d seen in the games. Instead, they just dropped a rock in the ocean and sent us to explore that. But I like I like it a lot for what it is, I really like the characters they introduce. There’s a lot of neat stuff going on there. But overall, since it’s an RPG I feel I should defer to my wife.

Nadia: Yes, that’s usually the best thing to do. Command Mission is a very basic, middle-of-the-road RPG gameplay-wise. It’s actually by the team that made Breath of Fire 5: Dragon Quarter, which is an extremely controversial RPG in itself. It plays things more safe than Dragon Quarter but I really enjoy getting up there and fighting classic Mega Man enemies in a JRPG menu style. I think that’s a lot of fun. But the environments in Command Mission are very dull, there’s nothing to do with them.

David: That was actually one thing that drove me nuts in Command Mission. It has a 3D world with random encounters – you don’t see the enemies – and somehow those two elements just don’t work for me. If it’s a 3D world, I want to see the enemies before their encounters; if it’s an abstract, chibi style moving around the world with screen transitions I can buy into it more easily. But Command Mission mixes the two and it doesn’t work for me.

Nadia: By that point in RPG history, random encounters in general were on the way out and they decided “okay, we’re gonna put them in even though nobody likes them,” especially – as David said – in 3D environments. It made the environments look all the more flat and empty when you could have put some enemies in there to jazz things up a bit. The story is mostly nonsense characters. There’s a rebellion fighting a resistance and I’m just like, “what is going on? I don’t understand.” I did find the NPC design cute though. Party members were a lot of fun – I liked Cinnamon, Maximo, and Marino. I like the battle system too. It’s very sleek, likely the Breath of Fire 5 team’s influence. It’s so-so if you’re a real lore-hound. There are certainly worse RPGs you can play, but it’s not going to be the best RPG of that generation that you’ve ever played. 

Mega Man Xtreme… I’m going to echo David. There’s really no reason to play the first game. Xtreme 2 is much more of its own experience and much more self-contained. It’s not the most incredible Mega Man X game out there. But again, if you want portable nostalgia, it’s pretty solid. It’s pretty fun.

David: And if you want to see Iris’ chronological debut, that’s a point for it as well.

Chris: I’ll confess that, until I was looking at the Field Guide, I’d thought that the Mega Man Xtreme games had no original characters.

Nadia: The thing I don’t get about Xtreme is the henchman Geemal and Zain. I don’t understand why they’re named after Hebrew characters. Geemal is ghimel (ג) and Zain is zayin (ז‎). But why? I don’t know. If you write the characters in Hebrew script, they mirror each other. Did Capcom make a really specific choice here? Or did they just completely stumble on something random, which happens a lot with Judaism and Japanese game developers, sometimes with incredible results. I don’t understand to this day.

Chris: I was wondering if it was that era, right around the turn of the century, because that’s when you also see the folks at Square doing a lot of the same thing with Final Fantasy.

Nadia: Yeah, biblical. Exactly. It was a sign of the times. Evangelion just sparked that and it spread like holy wildfire across the world 

Chris: That must have been it.

Hamilton: So as we know, there’s quite a cast of characters with the Mavericks or irregulars, as they’re called in Japan. Which do you think is the wackiest one?

Nadia: The goofiest of the bunch. What do you think, David? 

David: That’s a tough one. 

Nadia: I know on a previous podcast, someone asked us “who is the worst Maverick and why is it Tornado Tonion from X7?” He’s a really good candidate. The worst part is he has a voice and he doesn’t need a voice, by God. Because you have goofy Mavericks from other games like Wire Sponge from X2, a sea cucumber; Split Mushroom’s also a goofy fungi/plant-based Maverick, but Tornado Tonion talks in this goofy, non-sequitur stuff and it’s just like “okay, stop. Please stop.”

David: I guess an honorary mention has to go to Duff McWhalen just for the name.

Nadia: People are so mean about Duff McWhalen. There used to be a live journal where Duff McWhalen would RP (role-play) and he’d just write all this crazy stuff about going to the grocery market, and it was all written in l33t-speak. 

Chris: Classic McWhalen.

Hamilton: Doesn’t help that all the X5 characters were named after, what, Guns ‘N Roses members?

Nadia: Guns ‘N Roses members. That’s just fine with me because I love Guns ‘NRoses. 

David and Nadia: There’s Axle Rosered, who’s Axl Rose. There’s Duff McWhalen, who I think was the drummer. There’s Grizzly Slash, Slash obviously. There’s Mattrex and The Skiver. I think it was one of their producers or something. Izzy Glow, of course. I can’t remember what he played. Is that all eight?

Chris: I should’ve been counting on my fingers as we went.

Nadia: I have to say that, even though we were talking about the trend of plant Mavericks being joke Mavericks, Axle Rosered was pretty cool. And his stage has literal guns wrapped in roses in the background. They didn’t make it subtle.

David: Which is weird, because the names were like a localization thing. And completely unrelated to the development of that side. 

Nadia: Yeah, but if Japan gets a chance to reference Guns and Roses, they will. That’s why Japan is great.

David: There’s a real weird thread going on. But as far as localization, I don’t even understand the full picture to this day.

Chris: I wish I could remember the story of why it got localized that way. I seem to recall it had to do with the main localizer being somehow romantically involved with somebody who was a big Guns and Roses fan. It’s a big name involved, I want to say a voice actor? 

David: It was the actor for Claire Redfield at the time if I’m not mistaken. 

Chris: Yes, Alyson Court! I think that’s the connecting thread.

Nadia: She was also in The Big Comfy Couch. It was a real Canadian thing. In other words, it’s supposed to be educational, and it’s scary but kind of awesome. So there you go – Mega Man X5 has connections with clowns on couches.

Hamilton: And Claire Redfield, and Resident Evil!

Chris: So where did you pull most of the lore on these characters from? Was there much supplemental reading involved?

Nadia: There was quite a bit of supplemental reading. With a lot of source books and stuff that was originally only available in Japan. We’d have good friends who helped us out to kind of translate those resources and help us with our research. We owe a lot to them. And it was a lot of studying videos to make sure our Maverick attack information lined up with what was actually happening on screen.

David: A lot of it is just experience and osmosis over the years. I referenced some stuff from Mega Man Knowledge Base. Just to make sure there wasn’t anything we’re missing. We asked folks who are well-versed like Kobun20 and ProtoDude. 

Nadia: Since we’ve both been in the fanbase for a very long time, we know who to go to for resources and what some of the resources are. Because, as you can imagine, in Japan they got a lot of supplemental stuff – especially around the SNES era – that we didn’t get. So Kobun20 is a very good friend of ours and he helped enormously with translating that old source stuff. ProtoDude was really helpful on research as well. Ash Paulsen, who I think freelances with Udon, he double-checked a lot of stuff for us.

David: ShadowRockZX was especially helpful because, while we didn’t draw from Mega Man X DiVE for anything – like we didn’t include RiCO in the book – there’d be something like X3’s Bit not use the shield that he’s always shown within pictures. And there’s even a model with this huge honkin’ shield, but he doesn’t use it in the game. I don’t think there was a canon explanation until DiVE came out. So he started getting info from there because I wasn’t playing Megaman X DiVE at the time; the English recently just happened here. So he and others were helpful on stuff like that.

Nadia: Like David said, there’s also a lot of just research involved making sure that the Maverick’s using the right weapons at the right time. Which was hard for some bosses –  especially Lumine, that bastard. The worst, in my opinion, were the ones in Command Mission.

David: Here’s the thing – when you’re looking at footage on YouTube, most of the time, they’re not there to show off what an enemy can do or what to do in the circumstances. There were a few good videos that do that, but most of the time it’s “hey, look how quickly I can waste this guy.” So they might use the same attack three times before they die and it’s off to the next video.

Nadia: Yeah, it could be a bit of a pain searching for all of that and it was worth having those tidbits of information. I personally found it a lot of fun to write around. I did the biography of Zero, who’s a character I know very well, and Dynamo’s was really fun because Dynamo was just such a weird-ass character to begin with.

Hamilton: I was curious to read his. I also laughed out loud at Dr. Cain’s weaknesses: old age and nuclear weapons.

Nadia: That was David’s! I wrote Dr. Cain’s bio but we had to collaborate on this and I remember the nuclear explosions thing. We thought “is this gonna get in? They gotta cut this.” But they kept it. Of course, Dr. Cain’s different. He’s kind of MIA because in the “Day of Sigma” anime he literally got nuked. But in the Mega Man X games Dr. Cain kind of disappears after X3… he’s maybe mentioned in the X4 instruction booklet in America. But that’s it. 

David: Working Maverick Hunter X in there was a bit of a trip because there is a lot of stuff that’s the same, but there are little differences and we tried to reconcile it as best as we could. For instance, Spark Mandrill in Maverick Hunter X can turn his fist into a big drill. He doesn’t do that in the original game. So it’s kind of like, “okay, maybe he could do it. But he didn’t.” So we tried to massage everything to follow the Mega Man X of your choice I guess. We tried to avoid any sort of speculation or conjecture on our part and keep it as factual as possible. Much like the games, it’s up to the reader to determine what happens. We’re leaving that part to you, the Maverick Hunter. 

Hamilton: Yeah, and the most probable thing is that they probably just forgot Dr. Cain existed.

Nadia: It’s definitely a matter of, let’s face it, Capcom being there to give you a kickass action game. Not necessarily write the most incredible story in the world. We’re the nerds who absorb all the lore, not them. 

Hamilton: I’m a lore person too – Chris knows this very well from our podcast. So when I was reading it, I was just like, “what happened? What’s happening now? I want to know!”

Nadia: Exactly, I was the same way.

David: Mega Man has been such a wild ride in that regard. Because for years, I thought there was just not an explanation for a lot of stuff. I thought the robots – not the robot masters, but the stage enemies in the classic series – were just cool designs. “Let’s put it in.” And then you come to find out later that, like, this thing was made to dispose of garbage, that thing was made to play hockey. So they actually put a lot of thought into this. Then eventually you get to a point where you’re actually putting more thought into it than Capcom.

Hamilton: For me, I like expanded universe stuff. I like to know Chill Penguin’s history. 

Nadia: Hell yeah. 

Hamilton: But I’m not gonna put too much thought into how that compares to the universe because it doesn’t it doesn’t fit into the universe. 

Chris: Yeah, it was very impressive to see everything pulled together into a cohesive whole in this book.

Nadia: It’s a lot of fun. I’ve always been a story writer and I always love the chance to write fiction. This was basically fiction based around a lot of “fact,” and I had a lot of fun just kind of molding my characters. 

Hamilton: Speaking of the world of Mega Man X, what would you two want to see in Mega Man X9 if/when it gets developed?

David: I know the one thing I don’t want to see is a cliffhanger ending. Because that’s always bad news. And it’s especially bad for Mega Man. I’m thinking about the end of X8 where Lumine has struck a harmful blow to Axl and we’re left to wonder what his fate is. For the next, let’s just say two decades, we’re left wondering what happens. And, well, Mega Man Legends – enough said. 

Chris: Right, right.

David: As for what I’d actually want to see, I’d definitely like to have different playable characters, including Axl. Because he wasn’t great in X7 but I love using him in X8. And there’s a fan game that’s been in development for quite some time now…

Nadia: Mega Man Corrupted. 

David: Yeah, Corrupted, where it’s got a Metroidvania thing. It looks like the Super NES games. But the animations and the frames are different. And it’s almost a hybrid of different styles of gameplay. If they were able to turn that into an X9, I’d be happy about it.

Nadia: I think I’m in the same camp. If you haven’t seen Mega Man Corruption, definitely look it up on YouTube. It looks like it’s very far along [in development]; it’s shaping up really nicely. And I love the idea of a Metroidvania in an open world starring Mega Man X. I’d love to see a scenario where Capcom brought this team on and said, “hey, we’ll help you finish this game. We’ll distribute it for you.” It actually has a fully original score and fully original sprites that emulate the 16-bit are almost all new. It’s really, really cool what they’ve done. I think a Metroidvania would be a bold choice. Of course, there’s a lot of competition these days with Metroidvanias, so Capcom would really have to bring their A game if they did that.

Chris: If you could produce a similar, in-universe book for another series, what would it be?

Nadia: Probably Final Fantasy XIV – I’m a nut. 

Chris: That would be amazing.

Nadia: That would be real, real deep lore, though. It would probably be way over my head, but still might be fun if I had help. I’d love to do Castlevania. Especially Symphony of the Night. I’d love to do Symphony of the Night, holy crap.

David: I don’t know how well it would work, but Yakuza has a certain appeal. Outside of gaming, I would say Transformers but I think that’s ground has been tried before. So I don’t know if there’s really much room for me to do anything like that, but maybe Ninja Turtles. As far as Mega Man goes, I’d definitely love to do a Mega Man Legends or Mega Man Battle Network Field Guide. Actually, one of the things that was dialed back is that some of the entries were going to be reports filed by other characters; the original draft had Chill Penguin being written from the point of view of Zero.

Nadia: I would really like to see a Legends Field Guide, so, if you like this book and you like the way it’s formatted, let us know. Let Udon know and, who knows, it could lead to good things in the future.

Chris: Thank you so much for being here with us today, folks. Where can people find you online?

Nadia: I’m at @nadiaoxford on Twitter. I’m also the cohost of the Axe of the Blood God podcast; you can listen to us and support us at patreon.com/bloodgodpod. I also host the Sharlayan Dropouts Final Fantasy XIV podcast under the Blood God umbrella. We talk about all sorts of things, all kinds of RPGs: big, small, Eastern, Western, computer, console. We cover it all and have a great time doing it. We’d love to have you as a listener someday if you’re not already a listener.

David: You can find me on Twitter at LBD_nytetrayn. I also do writing at various places: Nintendo Force and on my own website at poisonmushroom.org. If you go there, you should know when the Mega Man Network is back up and operational. I do keep the Twitter operational, retweeting a lot of Mega Man stuff at @themmnetwork. Besides that, you can also find us streaming on Thursdays around 8:00 PM EST at Nyteworks.

---

Mega Man X: The Maverick Hunter’s Field Guide is currently available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Target, and other retailers.

You can check out the Franchise Festival website for more podcast episodes and email us at franchisefestival@gmail.com to let us know what you think. Please consider backing us at patreon.com/franchisefestival or sharing articles/episodes online if you enjoy the work we’re doing.