Arika Vice President and former Mega Man producer Ichiro Mihara has caused something of a kerfuffle on Twitter by sharing a previously unseen Mega Man design.
Mihara, who worked on Mega Man: Network Transmission and Mega Man 5, shared a cropped image which shows a version of the character that hasn't previously been used in any Mega Man outing (thanks, Rockman Corner).
The image was accompanied by the following text:
I used to make Mega Man's **** and **** and **** official **** ****, so I know a little bit about Mega Man!
Mihara's tweet was a reply to Hitoshi Ariga, who was sharing his past experiences of working on the series.
Shortly afterwards, Mihara voluntarily deleted the tweet, saying:
It's more than I could have imagined that there would be people who would go so far as to quote and skip my tweets without even reading my daily tweets, and it made me realize how much this content is still loved. I apologize if I cause any trouble to the rights holders.
It's unknown if the image is taken from a cancelled Mega Man project or if it is related to a forthcoming venture between Arika and Capcom, but one thing is for certain – Mihara clearly didn't expect it to cause such a high level of drama.
The Mega Man series kicked off with the Famicom / NES original back in 1987; its most recent mainline entry, at the time of writing, is 2018's Mega Man 11.
It was recently revealed that Akira Kitamura, the creator of the character, is working on the series again after 36 years away.