End of Mighty Month, onto Mighty Year Two!

Mighty friends, Beckers, supporters of the Mighty No. 9 project, 

Today Mighty Month comes to a close, capping off a year of hard work, development hurdles and victories both great and small! 

You, our Mighty Beckers, have been with us for every step, every development milestone of Mighty No. 9. Even for our veteran Japanese dev team, this has and continues to be a new experience, and sometimes a real challenge. 

In general, video game developers tend to keep things close to the chest; even so, we’re happy to say it’s been a rewarding experience in every way! The feedback, evaluation and interaction we get with the community has definitely broadened our horizons, and have helped us see game design and development in a new light. 

Speaking of which, we’ve got a great example ready to go from Director Koji Imaeda himself! Some of you have been waiting for this, so without further ado... 

ENEMY DESIGN CONTEST RESULTS ARE IN!

Imaeda: Hi again, everyone, and sorry for the wait! Last month we took three weeks to hold our Midsummer’s Enemy Design Dream contest, and we’ve finally got the results to show you! Each contest was only a week long, but we were floored by all of the amazing designs you guys came up with for each one, and in such a short time! Now then, let’s take a look at all of the winning designs and see how they’ll appear in Mighty No. 9.

Phase 1: The Catapult Robot

 First we’ve got a robot from the mine stage that attacks with earthen cannonballs. We received all kinds of ideas that’d fit in the mine stage: robots like the illustration above, androids digging holes with a shovel, even rail car enemies! From all of these, the one that ending up catching our eye was…

 THIS design by Mighty No. 988 AWD!! 

With a miner motif, shovels parts on both sides and a conveyor belt to launch rocks, we thought all of the parts fit together quite nicely! From here, Inti Creates put their own special spin on the design and… VOILA!

The original design had more humanoid elements, and we altered it into a specialized heavy equipment excavator design. We also made the rock launcher part cylindrical to make it easier to see the arc of the projectiles.

We also considered the designs from Mighty No. 12038 Nenets and Mighty No. 18206 EN, but the design from AWD was selected for the way it stood out as an enemy character.

There were so many inventive and original ideas among the designs submitted for all three parts of the contest that picking a single design was no small feat (it honestly felt like a waste!). With that in mind, let’s see how part two went.

Phase 2: The Bouncy Bomber

Next up is the design for the self-detonating robot appearing out of blocks in the same mine level. We got animals motifs, a skull-and-crossbones theme… no matter the design, we had a blast with the sheer variety of robots we received. And the one that took the golden ring was…

THIS design by Mighty No. 48461 megakazi! 

With spindly arms for movement, a drill to burrow into blocks and an explosive charge for mine blasting, this sleek and simple design really takes the cake! Still, this design is just a bit too futuristic for the world of Mighty No. 9, so…

We brushed it up into a design that looks more like an explosive, akin to the designs submitted by Mighty No. 9141 takobot and Mighty No. 38910 huey.

This design is actually a mix of 3 different designs from the Inti Creates team. In truth, we really wanted to maintain the simplicity of the original design, so we went with C. We also modified the upper part of the design to accentuate the enemy’s explosive nature.

Here’s what we ended up with! This robot takes the best parts of megakazi’s design and brings them together in a way suitable for the world of Mighty No. 9. This is what we love about our forums: the ability to not just pare it down to a single design, but take the best elements of several submitted ideas and make something great!

Phase 3: The Burner Robot

 For our final phase, we had you create a robot for the oil refinery level that shoots out pillars of flame in four directions. The conditions of this phase were way more specific, and honestly I was a bit worried that the designs wouldn’t have that much diversity. Boy was I wrong! Instead I was shocked by the imagination of our backers. The final design we ended up choosing was…

THIS design by Mighty No. 40224 Arron L. Tucker! 

For this design, even Inafune-san had to say “this one’s pretty much perfect!” It matched both the specifications we gave and the game world we’ve created, to the point where we could almost use it as-is.

Even so, we really liked the idea shown in the designs by Mighty No. 30565 Lienn and Mighty No. 55941 MOGY64, with the enemy constructing pipes from Xel and shooting flames out of them. This idea made it easy to imagine this robot’s original purpose (something like pumping up and transporting oil?), so we decided to add it to our design.

With that, here’s the design we whipped up for its in-game appearance!

Pipes extend out in all directions, spewing flames everywhere they go. Thanks to the pipes, even its attack range is easier to understand, don’t you think? This is very important for the gameplay we’ve laid out in our title.

Well there you have it, all of the winning designs for our Midsummer’s Enemy Design Dream contest! We hope you all look forward to seeing these robots in action!

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU FROM ALL OF US AT COMCEPT

To cap off our Mighty Month, we wanted to thank you, Mighties, for your support and constant consideration. For keeping us humble, focused and on track. For the fanart and the fan mail, the beta feedback and the robots, and the unwavering community spirit both inside the forums and out.

Thanks to the internet and the power of crowdfunding, we’ve found each other and formed a worldwide family. Am I getting too cheesy? Fine, the point is: we made you a little something, and we hope you like it: 

Here’s to another year with you all!

What’d you think of the new enemy designs? What are your favorite moments of the past year? Share your thoughts and your best memories with us and all the other Mighties here in the comments, back on the forums, on Twitter, or our official Facebook page!

It’s a pleasure and a privilege as always, Mighties!(｀_´)ゞ

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