Since its inception three years ago, Keiji Inafune’s spiritual successor to his Mega Man series, Mighty No. 9, has gone through its fair share of PR turmoil. Only recently has it seemed to have escaped from the game delay abyss, emerging with a solid release date of June 21 for North American and Asian regions, and June 24 for the rest of the world.
But that doesn’t mean Mighty No. 9 is free from the stern gaze of gamers. A trailer posted yesterday for the game by its publisher, Deep Silver, has plunged Mighty No. 9 into new realms of Internet infamy. It’s called Masterclass, and you can watch it below:
The Masterclass trailer was quickly reviled across the Internet by Mega Man fans and non-fans alike for its patronizing dialogue and its unflattering representation of Mighty No. 9’s visuals. Among other things, viewers tore apart a certain segment of the video in which the narrator states that main character Beck’s dash attack will “make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night.” A strange boast, considering many Mega Man and Mighty No. 9 fans enjoy Japanese animation (and especially considering Mega Man‘s own roots in Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy/Mighty Atom).
Even SEGA joined the fray by poking fun at the fact that the explosion graphics in the Masterclass trailer look like… pizza.
But the most damning reaction came from Takuya Aizu, the CEO of Inti Creates, who is co-developing Mighty No. 9 alongside Keiji Inafune and his studio, Comcept.
Aizu didn’t explicitly name who he was calling out. Fill in the asterisks, though, and you get Deep Silver. Aizu’s astonishment implies that Deep Silver did not get approval from either developer before publishing the video, but we can’t say for sure.
Though the Masterclass trailer isn’t quite as disastrous as some of gaming’s more infamous marketing blunders (see: Daikatana), it’s still notorious enough to tarnish the popularity of a game whose reputation was already soured by numerous development delays and a particularly contentious episode involving Mighty No. 9’s Community Manager. How Deep Silver manages the bedlam surrounding the Masterclass trailer remains to be seen. They have not yet released any statements regarding the trailer or its critics.
Mighty No. 9 is set to (finally) release on June 21, 2016 in North America and Asia, and June 24 worldwide for PS4, Xbox One, PC, Mac and Linux. Ports for the 3DS and Vita are projected to release in the future.