August Development Update

Good day, Mighty Beckers!

Our first August update is bursting at the seams with development information and other fun tidbits, so allow me to cut straight to the chase and hand the reins over to our one and only Director Imaeda! Sit back and enjoy the show.

Imaeda: Hey there Mighties, doing alright in this sweltering heat, I hope? Director Imaeda here. On today’s playable ROM check, we thought we’d keep with the theme of summer and help beat the heat with a brand new breezy stage! The latest venue Beck takes to this time is...
 

The sky!! More precisely, a skyscraper that’s been overtaken by one of the rampaging Mighty Numbers. The only way out… is up! One wrong move and you’re out of luck!

Inafune had a great reaction to this stage, too: “Ahhh I’m gonna fall, I’m gonna fall! This stage is freaking scary!!”

As you might already know, Beck’s Dash Action confers him some degree of freedom when moving through the air. In this stage, however, dashing too much could send you flying outside the stage, and enemies seen to aim for right where you’re trying to dash to. We’re making this into a stage on par with your conventional air stage, all while adding bits and pieces you can sink your teeth into.
 

And at the apex of the stage, who should be waiting but...

BAM! Talk about a dramatic entrance!

Indeed, the king of the skies, Mighty No. 6! Stuck on a narrow foothold while he blazes freely through the skies, how exactly are you supposed to fight? To be perfectly honest, even we in the dev team have had a rough time trying to take him out (a little more tweaking is in order then, I suppose…).

It’s time for Inti Creates’ own Ikegami to take on No. 6! Going for a perfect run, any damage was met with (loving) chides from the team.

Besides this, we’re also adding a bunch of other elements like the opening stage and the No. 1 boss fight (all works-in-progress at this point).
 

Though it still contains placeholder objects like the handdrawn background image and platform texture builds on the right, you can play the opening stage all the way through! This is where the story of Mighty No. 9 begins.
 

In the same vein, this other placeholder stage holds a fiery battle with No. 1! From his powers alone, it’s pretty easy to see what a heated battle this’ll turn out to be, huh?

As you can see, we refuse to get beat by the heat! In fact, the game is coming along swimmingly. At this rate might even be able to give some news about the beta testing sooner than we thought. Get hype for that!

Next, have you ever wondered what info we use to design the enemies for Mighty No. 9? This time around we’ll show you just what it takes. Have a look!

■Location, Location, Location.

This enemy appears in a mine stage.
 

■Basic Specs
 

・This enemy is not mobile; it stays in one location, above ground, and cannot move.

・As soon as Beck is close enough, the enemy prepares to attack.

・Once preparations are complete, this enemy fires successive earthen cannonballs at Beck.

・After firing a round, the enemy adjusts its trajectory to match Beck’s movements within a specified area of effect.

・The figure above illustrates the area of effect for enemy projectiles.
 

・You can also attack the projectiles to destroy them!

■Size
 

The enemy is about 256cm×256cm in size.

※Beck himself is about 150cm.

Full disclosure: this is one of the unused briefs we made for the “Help Design an Enemy” reward tier from the days of our Kickstarter. We’d prepared 5 different ones for the rewards, but only 2 were claimed during the Kickstarter, so we have 3 left collecting dust! We’ve been mulling over what exactly to do with these documents… I bet you can guess what we came up with!

A Midsummer’s Enemy Design Dream… in 3 phases!!

Imaeda: Including the brief I just showed you, we’re looking to do not one, not two, but THREE enemy design contests! This first one I’ve just introduced starts TODAY, so head on over to Mighty Labs and start flexing those design muscles! This summer is really hot, but with your Mighty submissions we’ll burn the roof off of this place!!

IMAEDA'S PHOTO CORNER

Whenever we do our Inafune checks of the latest ROM in our Tokyo office, I’m usually hovering in the background somewhere preserving every moment for posterity! That’s why sometimes you’ll see something like this...
 

photo_omake

Hey now, don’t think I was sitting down on the job! I was just trying to get that perfect angle for the shot!

Dina: Well there’s a director for you! A professional through and through. Thanks for the rundown, Mr. Imaeda!

So who’s excited about designing enemies for the game!? Huh, nobody’s here… guess you’re all in the thread already.

Well then.

If you ever return and finish reading this, do remember to give us your impressions and thoughts on ongoing development and our enemy design contests! The usual spots are ready to go: here in comments, back on the forums, on twitter, or our official Facebook page!

I’ll leave you to sharpening your pencils now, Mighties! It’s design time! (｀_´)ゞ

-Dina (Mighty No. 1046), Koji Imaeda (Mighty No. 610), and the Mighty No. 9 Team

PS: The Mighty Horoscope community activity has concluded its submission phase, and it’s now time to vote for your favorite artist/writer! Go here and show your fellow Beckers some love! Their fate is in your hands… ;)