A third Sonic/Mega Man crossover

[Big Panda]

What do you think it would’ve been about?

What was the Genesis Nexus and how would it have played a part in the story?

[DabigRG]

It would've basically opened the door to having more crossovers without the need for extra setup and exposition.

[Multikaris]

Probably would have been with Legends, and perhaps served as a way to get Volnutt off the moon. Would have also had tie-in elements to whatever games were coming out at the time.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I didn’t even remember we had a third crossover planned. 

Honestly, all I can say is don’t do 90% of what Unite did. Unite was boring, filled with unfitting art, had a meh story, and made the story like such a depressing as hell thing that it just wasn’t fun, which is a cardinal sin for a crossover like this. And for the love of god, PLEASE just keep it contained to Sonic and Mega Man. Feel free to dive into a few sub series, but nothing beyond that.

An event like this should feel like a love letter to their retrospective series, but Worlds Unite just felt so utterly soulless. Doing things for the sake of feeling bigger without feeling like they served a purpose, trying to be a spectacle instead of having actual substance. There’s cool ideas that sound fine on paper but fall utterly apart on execution.

The guest artists, bar the one for Parts 9-12 are not fitting for this series IMO, and while Parts 1-4 were fairly serviceable, even with strange moments, Parts 5-8 were utterly abysmal. Worlds Collide had a far better idea because they had long time artists handling each act, and even when we had Tracy as the weakest due to his off model Mega Man characters, he improved as things progressed, and was on Sonic for so long that it made sense to have him involved, it felt like they wanted to have guest artists who don’t fit the art styles of Sonic and Mega Man for publicity instead of getting regulars who have experience and should be involved in such a momentous event. 

They threw so much needless crap into the arc, despite such a massive chunk of it feeling like filler. After the awesome as hell Sonic Man and M’Egga Man sections, everything falls apart. Sigma brainwashes the D6 and the Mavericks are just lifeless husks not helped by a terrible set of art that isn’t helping matters, and then for no reason, they feel the need to shoehorn another Sonic VS Mega Man fight despite the fact that we already got it in Collide. 

Even what should be a cool final act is ruined by tons of issues - Boom feels needless and outside of Issue 5, Sticks feels frustrating, while Beaver and Chimp feel like godawful comic relief. The SEGA/Capcom crossovers just feel terrible because not only are they thrown into the last part with literally no room to breathe, they’re also thrown into one of the biggest problems - Sigma.

Sigma is a cool villain, but he is just fucking awful in this crossover IMO, and the issue is plain as day - he is an invincible villain, and it leads to Darkness Apathy, to use a TV Tropes term. In Worlds Collide, despite Eggman and Wily having a fairly large advantage the whole way through, it never felt unbalanced towards them.

Sonic and co found flaws in their plans and dismantled their operations slowly, which effected the doctors, despite their attempts to hide it. It caused their entire dynamic and friendship to fall apart because they were fully expecting the whole thing to go wrong as the heroes pull a last minute save, and they planned to simply settle for backstabbing the other, leaving them trapped with their enemies, and taking the Wily Egg as a smaller victory. 

Even when they’re on the verge of total victory, it never feels totally helpless, between them trying to backstab each other, and Knuckles and Porto Man appearing in a last ditch effort, Eggman and Wily were actually fallible, and made the conflict interesting. It wasn’t about not being able to do damage to them, it was about them taking damage, and trying to adapt to stay on top, and that kept things interesting. Where even at their worst, Sonic and Mega Man were able to turn the tide and win, and even Eggman got a last ditch attempt to mess with Sonic. It felt interesting.

But Sigma is just a total joke. He takes no damage from anything whatsoever, meaning the SEGA/Capcom heroes are basically pointless because they get to do nothing to Sigma. Sigma just gets to continue doing nothing but growing stronger, and stronger, and stronger to a frustrating degree. He’s basically Jiren from Dragon Ball Super. Goku and other characters keep hitting him with strong attacks, but Jiren just shrugs them off for the majority of the time because “he’s strong”.

Then even Super Sonic and Super Mega Man get to do nothing, and because Ian seemingly wrote himself into a corner to make Sigma so unstoppable, we literally had to have a creator pet (Payne) go back in time and just stop the whole story from happening. It was such a utter disappointing cop out of an ending.

All this to say if, and that’s a big if - IF they had to do another Worlds Unite, then just don’t do all this promotional bullshit and try to make it a labour of love like Collide was. Collide had its own problems, but at least it felt like a love letter, while Unite just feels like a shoe horned sequel to cash in on the original success (which tbf, it was, given they were basically holding hostage with the success of Unite, and it had to do well to keep Mega Man and Boom alive, and then killed both when it didn’t work out).

 

[Multikaris]

54 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

I didn’t even remember we had a third crossover planned. 

Honestly, all I can say is don’t do 90% of what Unite did. Unite was boring, filled with unfitting art, had a meh story, and made the story like such a depressing as hell thing that it just wasn’t fun, which is a cardinal sin for a crossover like this. And for the love of god, PLEASE just keep it contained to Sonic and Mega Man. Feel free to dive into a few sub series, but nothing beyond that.

An event like this should feel like a love letter to their retrospective series, but Worlds Unite just felt so utterly soulless. Doing things for the sake of feeling bigger without feeling like they served a purpose, trying to be a spectacle instead of having actual substance. There’s cool ideas that sound fine on paper but fall utterly apart on execution.

The guest artists, bar the one for Parts 9-12 are not fitting for this series IMO, and while Parts 1-4 were fairly serviceable, even with strange moments, Parts 5-8 were utterly abysmal. Worlds Collide had a far better idea because they had long time artists handling each act, and even when we had Tracy as the weakest due to his off model Mega Man characters, he improved as things progressed, and was on Sonic for so long that it made sense to have him involved, it felt like they wanted to have guest artists who don’t fit the art styles of Sonic and Mega Man for publicity instead of getting regulars who have experience and should be involved in such a momentous event. 

They threw so much needless crap into the arc, despite such a massive chunk of it feeling like filler. After the awesome as hell Sonic Man and M’Egga Man sections, everything falls apart. Sigma brainwashes the D6 and the Mavericks are just lifeless husks not helped by a terrible set of art that isn’t helping matters, and then for no reason, they feel the need to shoehorn another Sonic VS Mega Man fight despite the fact that we already got it in Collide. 

Even what should be a cool final act is ruined by tons of issues - Boom feels needless and outside of Issue 5, Sticks feels frustrating, while Beaver and Chimp feel like godawful comic relief. The SEGA/Capcom crossovers just feel terrible because not only are they thrown into the last part with literally no room to breathe, they’re also thrown into one of the biggest problems - Sigma.

Sigma is a cool villain, but he is just fucking awful in this crossover IMO, and the issue is plain as day - he is an invincible villain, and it leads to Darkness Apathy, to use a TV Tropes term. In Worlds Collide, despite Eggman and Wily having a fairly large advantage the whole way through, it never felt unbalanced towards them.

Sonic and co found flaws in their plans and dismantled their operations slowly, which effected the doctors, despite their attempts to hide it. It caused their entire dynamic and friendship to fall apart because they were fully expecting the whole thing to go wrong as the heroes pull a last minute save, and they planned to simply settle for backstabbing the other, leaving them trapped with their enemies, and taking the Wily Egg as a smaller victory. 

Even when they’re on the verge of total victory, it never feels totally helpless, between them trying to backstab each other, and Knuckles and Porto Man appearing in a last ditch effort, Eggman and Wily were actually fallible, and made the conflict interesting. It wasn’t about not being able to do damage to them, it was about them taking damage, and trying to adapt to stay on top, and that kept things interesting. Where even at their worst, Sonic and Mega Man were able to turn the tide and win, and even Eggman got a last ditch attempt to mess with Sonic. It felt interesting.

But Sigma is just a total joke. He takes no damage from anything whatsoever, meaning the SEGA/Capcom heroes are basically pointless because they get to do nothing to Sigma. Sigma just gets to continue doing nothing but growing stronger, and stronger, and stronger to a frustrating degree. He’s basically Jiren from Dragon Ball Super. Goku and other characters keep hitting him with strong attacks, but Jiren just shrugs them off for the majority of the time because “he’s strong”.

Then even Super Sonic and Super Mega Man get to do nothing, and because Ian seemingly wrote himself into a corner to make Sigma so unstoppable, we literally had to have a creator pet (Payne) go back in time and just stop the whole story from happening. It was such a utter disappointing cop out of an ending.

All this to say if, and that’s a big if - IF they had to do another Worlds Unite, then just don’t do all this promotional bullshit and try to make it a labour of love like Collide was. Collide had its own problems, but at least it felt like a love letter, while Unite just feels like a shoe horned sequel to cash in on the original success (which tbf, it was, given they were basically holding hostage with the success of Unite, and it had to do well to keep Mega Man and Boom alive, and then killed both when it didn’t work out).

 

There were also a large number of Mavericks not included; around half if we go into all of them. And some of those exclusions seem rather hypocritical given some of the others there (which also happened, to a lesser extent, in Worlds Collide), and are also wasted potential thinking back at Worlds Collide's helpful RMs. Imagine a huge square-off between Sigma's army and say, the Four Guardians, Repliforce, Promethus and Pandora, and a few others. And Sonic characters being Roboticized into Mavericks would have been neat to see. Also, a few more IP from each, like Darkstalkers, Puyo Puyo, Captain Commando, and Space Channel 5, would have been nice to see.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Just now, Miragnarok said:

There were also a large number of Mavericks not included; around half if we go into all of them. And some of those exclusions seem rather hypocritical given some of the others there (which also happened, to a lesser extent, in Worlds Collide), and are also wasted potential thinking back at Worlds Collide's helpful RMs. Imagine a huge square-off between Sigma's army and say, the Four Guardians, Repliforce, Promethus and Pandora, and a few others. And Sonic characters being Roboticized into Mavericks would have been neat to see. Also, a few more IP from each, like Darkstalkers, Puyo Puyo, Captain Commando, and Space Channel 5, would have been nice to see.

I honestly disagree with all of this, and it's for the sole fact that already one of the biggest issues with this arc is it's just got too much for the sake of it. Either make a Sonic/Mega Man crossover, while maybe expanding it to Boom, and X, or make a general crossover. But don't just throw every single thing at the wall and hope it sticks. This crossover tried all of that without having a purpose, or reason for it, and it's one of the big reasons why this crossover stinks. It is legitimately one of the few crossovers that somehow manages to have so little story and reason that it resorts to blatant pointless and boring filler, while somehow still cramming in far too much to the point that nothing feels like it has time to breathe, or have a point.

[SBR2]

I wouldn't call the artists that did Worlds Unite "Guest Artists" honestly. Dan Schoening had already done Short Circuits after Curse of Ra Moon. Edwin Huang is a little more accurate sonce he only did the covers for the issues before the crossover. Tyson Heese of course is absolutely not a guest artist having already done 2 issues of both Sonic and Mega Man before this. Sorry I know that wasn't the point but calling them guest artists always kinda bugs me.

Anywho. I'd assume they'd try to top Worlds Unite in scope possibly making the Genesis Nexus extend and become a threat to both universes. Don't really know how it would be stretched out to 12 issues but I'm sure there'd be some padding. Honestly considering this was apparently going to be a regular thing I'm kinda glad the Mega Man and Sonic books got canned. Being forced to do crossovers instead of wanting to do them would keep making them feel more and more hollow and honestly the regularity would make them less special. 

[Asin Korber]

Wait, we were gonna have a third crossover?

[MetalSkulkBane]

Oh yeah, there was a tiny teaser about "Nexus"...thing. Planet? Dimension? Place where bunch of dimensional energy went.

I don't care, I didn't like Unite nor Collide, meh.

But if I was writer told to write 3rd crossover in same spirit as first two I would try to make crossover between many Mega Men and Sonics. Classic, X, Legeneds, EXE etc meets Classic, Modern,  Boom, X, Archie, Preboot, Fleetway. That's the only logical growth of the concept.

But to avoid army of Megas and Sonics running around, it would be more of a character mix. Like Boom Knuckles and Sally teams up with Zero and Megaman.EXE as Team A, and there are 2-3 more gangs like that. Bonus points, cause that way I can use Pre-reboot Archie without Penders characters.

That or fuse characters into "Mega Hedgehog", "Proto Knux", "Metal Bass", but that's as stupid as when Batman/TMNT did it.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Honestly, Unite’s two core problems were that it stopped being a Sonic/Megaman crossover and turned into a Sega/Capcom crossover with little room to spare for any of it, and that it did so in the middle of an ongoing arc without moving said arc’s plot in any way, shape, or form. It basically pulls a Sonic 06.

Had it stayed strictly as a Sonic and Megaman crossover like Collide, it would have been much better due to not having a clusterfuck of characters from other franchises that contributed very little to it overall narrative. Having characters from Boom was fine; having characters from the X series was fine; they were still under the same umbrella of the franchises they represented and had it stayed that way, it would have fixed a lot of the problems that were glaring a mile away before the first issue of the arc was released. It may have still ended the same way, which would’ve been lame, but that would be alleviated by at least being more structured over the franchises it was titled to advertise for.

That said, if they wanted to go through with a massive multi-franchise crossover anyway, they should’ve allotted the room for it and planned it at a much better time. A massive cast like that benefits from not just better planning, but more space, which 12 issues is not enough for. And it also benefits from not interrupting an already ongoing story for mere fan service, allow people to better see and know these characters more than just who they are in the surface. The concept is awesome—characters like Ken and Amaterasu in the setting as NiGHTS and Billy Hatcher, with Sonic And Megaman leading the fights would be an interesting sell with ease, and would be better if they had room to show their strengths a lot more. But the execution is just as important, if not more so considering what the outcome of it turned out to be when it gets screwed up.

So that in itself is a learning lesson.

I’ve heard Ian said that if he had another shot, he remove characters like the Freedom Fighters from that arc, but quite frankly, they weren’t even the problem when they were actually part of the franchise being advertised as opposed to the likes of Street Fighter, Okami, or Billy Hatcher who’s titles were never even part of either Megaman or Sonic the Hedgehog.

There was already a wealth of things to do with just those two franchises alone to capitalize on what the first crossover didn’t do that doing that would be a fun start in itself. 

[SBR2]

I didn't really have a problem with it being a "Sega/Capcom" crossover honestly I just wish it had set up that angle in the second act instead of the first quarter of the third. If the second act was about them gathering the united army and they moved the fight with the Deadly Six/Robot Masters and Reploids controlled by the Deadly Six to act 3 it would have played better IMHO.

[Big Panda]

Because of the multiversal aspect, the crossover wouldn’t necessarily have to be between the Archie versions of Sonic and Mega Man either.

The IDW version of Sonic, and the theoretical IDW version of Mega Man, could essentially finish what their Archie counterparts started.

It could even work if it was Archie Mega Man and IDW Sonic. Mega Man and Wily both came out of WU with little to no memory of what had happened (aside from lingering memories of Sonic and Eggman, which could easily have faded), and they never had any memory of WC either. Ergo, Archie Mega Man could meet IDW Sonic for the first time and there’d be no discrepancy.

[Sonario]

You know what I would really like though? Game Sonic and Game Megaman. It works wonderfully with Mario who Sonic's had a long history with, so I think it would at least work pretty well with Megaman since they have some history too. Plus putting mutliple famous video game mascots generally leads to good things unless it's totally botched. I could see a non-traditional spinoff crossover game between the two, possibly having gameplay similar to the storybook games or something.

[SBR2]

5 hours ago, Panda Claus said:

Because of the multiversal aspect, the crossover wouldn’t necessarily have to be between the Archie versions of Sonic and Mega Man either.

The IDW version of Sonic, and the theoretical IDW version of Mega Man, could essentially finish what their Archie counterparts started.

It could even work if it was Archie Mega Man and IDW Sonic. Mega Man and Wily both came out of WU with little to no memory of what had happened (aside from lingering memories of Sonic and Eggman, which could easily have faded), and they never had any memory of WC either. Ergo, Archie Mega Man could meet IDW Sonic for the first time and there’d be no discrepancy.

Honestly it'd never happen but I'd love to see them revive the Archie Mega Man comic at IDW and do a 12 issue weekly miniseries to end the Worlds trilogy by having Archie continuity Mega Man and Sonic but also have IDW Sonic and like Fully Charged Mega Man as a part of the plot.

To differentiate the Sonics have Archie Sonic hand inked.

[MetalSkulkBane]

22 hours ago, lulzers said:

Could it be a remake of Worlds Collide?

Don't even put that though in their heads!

There are several problems with that, both legal and logical, but Collide is barely 6 years old. It doesn't need updating and frankly won't need it for another 50 or so years.

[Betz]

15 hours ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

Don't even put that though in their heads!

There are several problems with that, both legal and logical, but Collide is barely 6 years old. It does need updating and frankly won't need it for another 50 or so years.

See you say that, but the unfortunate fact is that if somewhere down the line there was another crossover, it'd almost have to be a retelling of Collide. You can't just throw Sonic and Mega Man in a story and say "here, have an adventure". You'd have to explain to new readers why they're meeting, and being that IDW is a new take on Sonic they're going to focus on making things understandable for people reading the comic for the first time. Now I'm not saying that if they did a "retelling" of Collide it'd be a 1:1 recreation, but at least the first act would have to be the same or similar to establish it for new readers, then they could go and do whatever.

I may have the unpopular opinion here but I really wish Nexus had gotten made. I liked Unite (although reading it again a few days ago it seems like the whole story was one big "hey see this thing, well we can top THAT" sort of deal) even though it it had its problems. One of the whole reasons I got into Sonic comics was because of Collide so that'll always have a special place for me. Having a crossover every two years would have been annoying, but if they decided to do a third and ended it after that, I wouldn't have minded. I hope that whenever Lost Hedgehog Tales comes back that it'll go more in depth to Nexus because I'm curious as to what the overall plot outside of explaining why they can just hop into a crossover was.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

Honestly, I don't even want a Collide retelling. They did it very nicely the first time around, and an attempt to simply just recapture the feeling of combining literally everything Sonic/Mega Man related in a joint universe would be meaningless. If they do it, I'd rather they go whole hog with it and do something completely fresh with the two crossing over.