In an interview with Gamasutra, Capcom's Hironobu Takeshita discussed the move to retro for their newest game, Mega Man 9. Most of the information was stuff we already knew, discussing the game's feel and the need to bring it back to its roots. What we didn’t know is how much they planned on keeping it like the original, right down to the issues.

You talked about how people were trying to graphically exceed the capabilities of the Famicom, but what about the temptation to exceed some other capabilities, such as flicker, slowdown, sprite limits, and stuff like that? Was it really hard to get people to stay within the confines of what they could have done, if this had come out after Mega Man 6 in 1993?

HT: Yeah, there were some things, like you couldn't have more than three enemies on the screen at once, so we had to make sure that that's how it stayed in our game. In the part with the dragon with the flame, [there should be] flickering, and whatnot. In the options of this game, you can adjust that, unlike the old games. We purposely put some of those old-school bugs into this game, so it does recreate that feel.

That’s right; Mega Man 9 will have intentional glitches. The game will stutter, flash, and freeze just like the original, but only if you activate that option in the menu. It’s a nice attention to detail, no doubt, but I wonder how important of an addition it is and how far they are planning on going with it.

Will you need to occasionally restart the game and blow into the disk slot? Will you need to connect the Wii via an RF adapter? Will your hard drive erase when the watch battery inside the system dies? All I know is that I can’t wait to get the game, play it, get frustrated, and never play it again. Retro games are so much fun.

Related Articles:

Original Megaman Games Heading to Virtual Console

MEGA MAN 9 Rated By Australian ESRB

Mega Man 9 Box Art Keeps It Real