I want to publicly thank @mattleone.bsky.social for his time nurturing features at Polygon. Everyone knows the incredible oral histories, but in late 2012 I had a scoop and he gave me the confidence to report it out (and got me paid when, coincidentally, their news team got wind of the same story)!

As someone who knew about that game back when they were still making it but didn't have sources I could use to actually report on it, it was very exciting to see someone finally talk about it.

The reaction to the early art and idea of a Mega Man FPS got a lot of "ew glad it was canceled" from people, but I was like... these guys made fuckin Metroid Prime, surely there's a chance the game would've been sick!