The story of Mighty No. 9 is a sad one. Originally touted as the Mega Man game that Capcom refused to make, Mighty No. 9 quickly became the poster child of how to do a video game Kickstarter campaign properly.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for everything to start falling apart: a second crowdfunding campaign was announced, despite the fact that the first had far exceeded its goals. The game's 2015 release date came and went, and multiple delays had fans worrying about the quality of the game. Unsurprisingly, when Mighty No. 9 finally launched on June 21, it was met by some seriously lackluster reviews.
According to most players, the game simply isn't very good. It's playable, but the gameplay, characters and presentation don't have much in the way of personality. It certainly doesn't help that the game, which took four years to make, can be completed in just 3 hours.
At first, that doesn't sound so bad - the game is built with speed in mind, and most indie games don't take all that long to complete. The thing is, Mighty No. 9 was announced back in 2012, and the fact that the game's credits last longer than the game itself only adds insult to injury.
Watch if you dare: the above video clocks in at roughly 4 hours.
To be fair, it's nice that Comcept gave every single one of its Kickstarter backers a decent amount of time on screen ... but there's a limit. Four hours is longer than most movies, and there's nothing to watch but names scrolling by. Then again, adding more columns wouldn't have necessarily helped - at 67,000 backers, there are too many names to go through.
Look, Mighty No. 9 isn't the worst game in the world, nor is it any worse for featuring some ridiculously long credits - but it is a perfect example of how bloated some Kickstarter games can become. Many have claimed that Mighty No. 9 fell apart simply because the developers didn't know what to do with all of the money they raised ... and while there's no real way of knowing if that's what happened, given how many names are in the credits, it's definitely a possibility.
The most confusing thing about all this is, if so many of the donations were anonymous, why bother including them in the list?
For anyone who still wants to play the game, Mighty No. 9 is available on just about every gaming platform released in the past 10 years.
