UI Man: The Ultimate Boss of Mega Man 2

 

Hello erstwhile reader of a blog long dormant. I've missed you so. Insofar as I draw comfort from writing in my own corner of the internet with only myself to answer to, I am grateful to you, the 18-20 silent partners of this experiment. (An empty comments section can be viewed as disengagement or tacit approval by way of lack of criticism. I prefer the latter interpretation. Laziness, an abdication of social media responsibility, or narcissism, pick one.)

So what's on my mind these days? I'm glad you asked. With the fun and games of outdoor hootenannies behind us, my leisure thoughts now are firmly resting on video and Bears games. And because it is the subject not currently depressing as all get out, I'll stick to video games and their user interface implications for today.

A game I haven't been playing lately, but is one of my all time favorites, is Mega Man 2. In part, it is because it is one of the few non-RPGs where you build features and capabilities for your character (i.e. acquiring new weapons from defeated bosses). Mega Man 2's soundtrack is also pound for pound the best soundtrack to any NES game and I will go to the mattresses on that point.

But I think the most interesting aspect of Mega Man for me is the "How would it work in movie-life?" question. Meaning, if they were to option a live-action Mega Man script to Sony or something, and they didn't go bizarrely off the rails like with the 1993 Super Mario Bros. movie, what would it look like? How would you justify literally having a cannon for an arm, and assimilating fallen adversaries for a PG-13 audience no less.

Let's start with his primary weapon. Mega Man fires a gun that essentially replaces his arm below the elbow (left or right depending on the direction he's facing on the NES version). The ammunition follows the physics of a bullet for the most part. And as far as the video game player is concerned, this happens whenever the B-button is pressed. 

As far as the in-game reality, this UI is left to the imagination. Maybe Mega Man is pressing a button on his gun/forearm. Maybe he's just thinking "shoot" and the pew-pew goes bang. In the movie though, how does Jake Gyllenhaal or that kid from Dune pointing a gun-for-a-hand at something result in shooting it. Maybe it's like Peter Pan and they just have imagine it like the colorful food fight scene. Take that Dr. Wily, you rude, crude, lewd, bag of pre-chewed food dude.

With a character like Ironman, we might be willing to gloss over the logistical challenges of piloting a device far more complicated than a helicopter with a heads up display and voice commands. There's probably a button for his rocket boots, and stabilizers, and missiles, and flares, and making a sword out of his hand, and shooting that power blast out of his chest. Buttons right? 

With a live-action Mega Man though, the need for a believable user interface for his weapons is too overt. The obvious option is for the gun to be just really big to the point where you stick your hand inside the gun rather than just hold it. But a big hole to that option is error prevention. There's got to be a trigger somewhere in there, and handling a firearm so bulky that it could be used as hockey equipment would probably means that trigger gets squeezed inadvertently all the time. Imagine trying to keep a careful grip on a blow drier when you're taking a boulder in the chest from Guts Man.

I think a much more plausible alternative (if Elon Musk has his way) would be some sort of cybernetic link between the circuits of Mega Man's gun and the neurons in Mega Man's arm. The design challenge: to make an interface that can reinterpret signals from the brain passing through the arm into instructions to make the pew-pew go bang. 

There is certainly medical precedent for this possibility. Say Mega Man were to lose the lower half of his arm in some sort of backstory establishing accident. The neural pathways that connected his somatosensory cortex to his fingers are still operational. This happens in the real world in a very real phenomenon called phantom limb syndrome. Subjects who have undergone a limb amputation can experience pain or itching as though that part of the body were still there.

Throw in an "ain't the future neat" plot device where we could imagine a world where the understanding of these elements of human physiology is exceedingly sophisticated. Perhaps enough to wire the remaining neural pathways for a trigger finger to a hand-cannon. 

It would be much easier to obey UI heuristics like matching between the system and the real world. The brain can imagine the act of pulling a trigger without even needing the physical grip strength to do it. Preventing error is easier in some ways as well because the brain's executive functioning is in on the ground floor. You wouldn't need a safety switch. You would need a prefrontal cortex that knows you're not going after Flash Man at the moment.  

Your design gets to be more minimalistic as well because all you need is an ammo readout, an interface for reloading with those pellets the bad guys drop, and a business end where the boom boom happens. Is all of this what Capcom was hinting at 36 years ago when they released Mega Man? I think we can give that a confident "probably."

However, Mega Man's most important, afore mentioned ability is that he can learn to use new weapons. In the game, whenever Mega Man defeats a boss, he gains that boss's primary weapon ability. Take down Metal Man, now you can fire circular saws at Wood Man. Cut down Wood Man, now you can surround yourself in a shield made of leaves and protect yourself from Bubble Man.

But how does Mega Man assimilate these abilities in a fictionalized real life? Dr. Light, Mega Man's creator, could make himself useful and take charge of reprogramming the arsenals of vanquished bad guys. But apart from the macabre prospect of harvesting defeated bosses for their tech, it also begs the question of where Mega Man is hiding all of that ammunition. It's not as though he's going to be toting around a satchel of blades, leaves, mini-tornadoes and sticky IEDs. 

For a more plausible option, you could take a gear out of Ironman's toolbox and bring nanobots into the picture. Mega Man's primary weapon would have to be a malleable device capable of soaking up new programming like mushrooms in a white-wine marsala sauce. 

This would also allow for the weapon-replenishing capsules that drop randomly to easily apply to the movie reality. Running out of matter to form those buzz saws you're firing off? slap a bag of nanobots on your forearm. The interface is flexible and efficient, and strikingly convenient. The further in the future you set the story, the more leeway you have to say "yeah, they figured that out." 

The UI for cycling between weapons though is problematic. In the game, Mega Man cycles between up to 8 different boss weapons at any given time when the player presses select. In live-action is this a voice command? A console of buttons to press? Maybe. But I think error prevention rears its head once again. 

Say Mega Man is leaping from platform to platform and misjudges a jump. He catches the edge of the platform and yells "crap." Who's to say he doesn't whack his touchscreen on the edge and accidentally stop time? What if the voice recognition hears "crash" instead of "crap" and all of the sudden he's firing off bombs he acquired from beating Crash Man the day before last? Too sloppy.

I think the most viable and awesome option would be to interface those nanobots into Mega Man's synapses. Much like the opening to X-Men 2, it would be possible to show tiny, colored neurotransmitters that indicate Mega Man is thinking his weapons into action. Dr. Light could coach Mega Man on how to do this. "All right now, you're in a breezy place, you feel like your hat might blow off, now just let those tornadoes fly Air Man."

Consistency and ease of use might be hard to navigate here because the weapons in Mega Man 2 are so varied. A live-action Mega Man might have to limit the number of bosses to 2 or 3 for the sake of reining in feature creep. However, With the right balance of minimalism and imagination, I think we could squeeze Jake Gyllenhaal into that light blue onesie yet.

Have your own ideas on how Mega Man 2 could be adapted into a live action move? I'd love to hear them. Shoot me a message on my contact page. Want to steal my ideas and make your own movie? I guess I can't stop you. But then again, if you have the loyalty to follow this blog after such a hiatus and read to the end of my nerd-outs, I doubt you'd be so cold.