This year will mark the 30th anniversary of the Mega Man franchise. First release in December of 1987, Mega Man has been one of the flagships of Capcom. To commemorate 30 years of everyone’s favorite fighting robot, special edition cartridges will be available for purchase for Mega Man 2 and Mega Man X.
The fine folks over at iam8bit will be hosting this commemorative event to honor the past 30 years of exciting Mega Man action. What makes these cartridges special is the fact that they are 100% compatible with their respective consoles, NES and the SNES. However, these cartridges will only be playable of NTSC consoles, but other than being on a brand new PCB board, the game is the original game code.
The release of Mega Man X and Mega Man 2 Special Edition will not just come with a neat collector’s cartridge, however. Included with each order will be a specially crafted box to house the cartridge, which will be designed by Jango Snow Art & Design, premium instruction booklets created by Jirard “The Completionist” Khalil and Salvatore Pane respectively, and a few pack-in surprises will accompany the games. For Mega Man X, 7,500 opaque white cartridges will be made, and 7,500 opaque light blue cartridge will be made for Mega Man 2.
In addition, to make these even more special, 1,000 translucent, glow-in-the-dark blue cartridges will be made for each game. There is no option for selecting what color you want, and each package will be unmarked, so it will be a complete surprise if you manage to get your hands on one of the rare glow-in-the-dark cartridges.
Pre-orders for these special edition cartridges are currently ongoing on iam8bit. Each cartridge will run you about $100 each, and these items are expected to ship out in September of this year. This event will only last until supplies last, so time is running out to get your hands on a special commemorative Mega Man item.