PAX Prime 2015 – Keiji Inafune: A Mighty Chat

Two years ago, I missed what I think was one of the best panels of all time at PAX: the panel in which Keiji Inafune announced Mighty No. 9, his answer to Capcom’s faffing about with Megaman. With Mighty No. 9’s release just around the corner, I didn’t want to leave anything to chance and made sure to hit the Mighty Chat panel this year.

Inafune was frank and apologetic about No. 9’s release delay; he declined to offer excuses though he did point out that with the Kickstarter’s wild success there were many new features and support given to the game that weren’t originally planned for. Considering the frankly insane number of platforms Mighty No. 9 will be offered on as well as full voice acting, a multiplayer mode and a great deal of language support, the delay is, I think, reasonable.

Plus we got one of the best pieces of swag!

As a Kickstarter backer, I received an awesome announcement email while I was actually standing in line for the panel – an announcement that was officially talked about during the panel itself. To demonstrate that the single player mode is basically complete and to thank backers for their support, a Trial Version of Mighty No. 9 will be released on September 15th via Steam for Kickstarer “beckers.”

The Trial Version will include 4 full stages of the complete game which will include voice-acting, cut scenes, and the first 6 stages of the game’s Challenge Mode. Backers will also receive another free version of Mighty Gunvolt – this time for Steam! 

He also briefly touched on the DLC for the character of Ray, who was confirmed to be female (hurray!). The DLC will apparently involve going to her stage to defeat her, but then later being able to play as her. She, similarly to Beck, absorbs the powers of enemies but in a way that is different enough that it was described as ‘almost playing another game within just the DLC.’ The DLC was be

Listening to Inafune talk about how important it is to not only have a complete, polished game in the hands of supporters and to fairly release the game on all platforms without day 1 DLC, I really buy into the idea this delay is to make sure his vision for this game is fulfilled. And I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather wait a little bit longer for a game I’ve been highly anticipating instead of rushed, piecemeal version.