This weekend it was announced that Marvelous AQL has canceled Comcept’s newest 3DS game Kaio: King of Pirates after it’s missed its already once delayed release. The game was the brainchild of Keiji Inafune, who many consider to be the father of Mega Man. He helped develop many of the games in the series, including Mega Man X, Zero, and Legends while he was with Capcom.
Kaio: King of Pirates was to be set on the high seas, involving three swashbuckling races of buccaneers battling it out for control. The story was to be based on the infamous ‘Romance of the Three Kingdoms’ tale from Asian culture. It would’ve told a variant of the classic story; one king who feels he’s meant to rule over all of China and enrolls the help of two loyal friends as they try to overthrow a northern territory with the help of another.
Not much was known about how the game would play, or if it would be similar to Mega Man. The game did seem to feature several antagonist pirates, so we can assume the game would’ve had similar boss battles. The story would’ve also taken place over three games.
An anime and manga were also announced, however the future of those are now uncertain. Perriot, the studio producing the series and is behind Naruto and Bleach, was unable to be reached.
What might be more disappointing is the looming question of what will happen to Keiji’s studio Comcept? He created the studio after leaving Capcom to offer a creative outlet for game designers. He wants to encourage developers to create new ideas and offer younger directors the opportunity to spearhead projects.
Inafune has been vocal against the Japanese game industry as a whole, and their lack of enthusiasm for the creative process. He once said in an interview “It’s the classic style in Japan to respect the company as a whole and not the individuals that contribute to it. It’s a hard environment for creators to be noticed in. Especially with the current state of the industry — it’s never been totally destroyed before. There are multiple revolutions through the years in all kinds of other industries, movies and so forth, but games is still a young industry, so that hasn’t happened.”
Keiji Inafune is also currently working on a spiritual successor to Mega Man called Mighty No. 9. The game was crowdfunded and is set to be released next month.
Trevor Anderson's Personal Website 