Apparently Capcom was so pleased with the community's reaction to the retro treat of Mega Man 9 that they've decided to run with it. Today, they've announced that Dark Void will be getting a Nintendo DSi prequel, due out in January for 500 points, and made in the style of an NES game that never was. They've even released a press release full of fictional information and box art that looks more Mega Man than Mega Man does. The plot follows Rusty, the first human born in the Void, who must "take on the Watchers in a quest to stop their domination of Earth."

Apparently, in true Assassin's Creed II style, Rusty is going to enlist the aid of Nikola Tesla, creator of the rocket pack and laser turrets, in order to take down the Watchers and their minions across "three intense levels of action and intrigue." Yes, three levels. Three as in one more than two, and one less than four. Here's hoping the next-gen version is longer than that, because I can't see this lasting for more than a half hour. Then again, if they add in retro difficulty, that thirty-minutes might actually be ten hours.

The press release is below, and you can view a view some images here and in the gallery. I'm fairly excited for this, and I really hope it's as tongue in cheek as hell. This is a trend I can get behind.

As the ‘80s were drawing to a close, the developers at Capcom began work on a top secret project that aimed to set new standards for the platformer genre. That game was called “Dark Rift”, and it blended the intense shooting action of Section Z™ with the latest innovations in platform jumping from Mega Man. In order to properly fulfill the producer’s vision for Dark Rift (later renamed Dark Void), the hardware engineering team at Capcom was enlisted to design and produce an all-new chipset that would be included in every cartridge, enabling huge numbers of sprites and never-before-seen special effects to be displayed on the aging NES® platform and the PlayChoice-10 NES arcade cabinet.

Alas, time waits for no man and game developers are no exception. The dawn of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System® made the additional hardware requirements for Dark Void redundant. Capcom suspended development on Dark Void as it began to evaluate the SNES. Before long, the game was shelved and drifted into the annals of gaming history. Even the internal tape-based archives were lost due to an unfortunate magnet incident which even today is best left un-discussed. Dark Void became a legendary “lost project” at Capcom…until now.

Nearly twenty years later the next gen version of the game, Dark Void, is back on the Xbox 360, PS3, and PC! But to commemorate the game’s humble origins, Capcom has commissioned this recreation of the original 8-bit classic, now re-titled “Dark Void Zero,” on the DSi platform. You play Rusty, the first human born in the Void, who must take on the Watchers in a quest to stop their domination of Earth. With the aid of Nikola Tesla, and his state-of-the-art rocket pack, Rusty must take down the Watchers and their minions across three intense levels of action and intrigue.