Mighty No. 9 is still a work in progress.
Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune raised nearly $4M on Kickstarter for his side-scrolling action game way back in 2013. Since then, the project has experienced multiple delays. Now, the game will miss its scheduled February release date across multiple platforms, with an anticipated release now coming in “Spring 2016.”
[aditude-amp id="flyingcarpet" targeting='{"env":"staging","page_type":"article","post_id":1866805,"post_type":"story","post_chan":"none","tags":null,"ai":false,"category":"none","all_categories":"games,","session":"D"}']We have an important announcement regarding the Mighty No. 9 release date.https://t.co/9pwlVgzx1P
— Mighty No. 9 (@MightyNo9) January 25, 2016
In a statement this morning, Inafune said the main issue is with matchmaking in the game’s multiplayer modes. It’ll come as a big disappointment to fans who’ve been waiting patiently for the project to come to life — especially those who dropped money on the Kickstarter well over two years ago.
“Unfortunately, we have an announcement that will be very disappointing to all of you,” said Inafune, before going into some detail about the technical issues that the team have been trying to overcome.
“The reason for the delay is rooted in bugs inside the network modes,” said Inafune, “and specifically problems with matchmaking. There are two large reasons for this problem, one of them being the large number of platforms supported — the solution for each platform is slightly different — and the other stems from the fact that the engine we are using is no longer being updated which means adjustments for matchmaking and online code are being made manually — actually reprogramming parts of the engine by the dev team themselves.
“Unfortunately, this is all a result of miscalculations on the part of us, the development staff. As a result, our fans who have been looking forward to Mighty No. 9 have been forced to wait for over half a year longer than expected, and for that we are sincerely sorry. I want to take this chance to apologize personally and on the behalf of the development staff.”
Inafune recognized the negative effect of multiple delays on his fans, and he says the team has “no excuses” for the disappointment caused, especially to Kickstarter backers. He didn’t give a new release date for the title, instead saying it will “realistically” be with us in Spring 2016.
“We are all working hard to make sure that we can finish and release the game to all of our fans as quickly as possible,” said Inafune, “and ask once more for your support of this project that we have created together over these last few years.”