Mega Man Legends 2 celebrates its 25th anniversary today, October 25, 2025. Below, we take a look at how his unresolved cliffhanger still shadows his memory.
Mega Man Legends 2 is an unfulfilled promise. The anime-inspired adventure series Blue Bomber was beloved by fans for its innovative, Zelda-like spin on the classic formula. It was full of beloved characters who endured a long time in the series, such as Tron Bone, Servobots, and the hero, Mega Man Valant. But like the serialized cartoon series, the second game in the series ended with a single cliffhanger—and never returned to it. For the past 25 years, Legacy of Legends fans have been waiting for a resolution that never came.
Follow the spoilers for the Mega Man Legends series
For those unfamiliar with the Mega Man Legends series, it is unusually story-rich for a Mega Man game. In the distant future, on a world almost completely covered by water, Mega Man Walnut and his adoptive family, Barrel and Roll Casket, dig for treasure in the ruins manned by ancient technology called Riverbots. All the while, they are alternately pursued and occasionally aided by Sky Pirates called Bones: Tassel, Tron, and Big Baby Bon Bon. Each of the main characters in the world of color are fully voiced, helping to bring the week’s hit cartoons to life.
The first game finds Mega Man investigating the ruins to prevent a prophesied catastrophe, but inadvertently awakens him in the process. Another entity, known as Mega Man Juno, reveals to Valant that his real name is Mega Man Trigger. Trigger was designed as a “purifier unit” intended to eliminate the carbons—the artificial humans that inhabit this world. Needless to say, he does the right thing and protects humanity instead.
The second game treads familiar ground but expands on it with several new characters and a larger scope. This time a unit named Sierra tasks Mega Man with finding the four keys that will unlock the Mother Lode, a rich source of energy that will usher in Utopia and end the constant scraping for resources. But Sierra’s counterpart, Yuna, later informs Mega Man that the keys will not save humanity, but save it from doom, by eradicating the carbons and replacing them with primitive, unremarkable humans. In the end, the trio come to an understanding and prevent the Master Program from initiating the wipeout, but in the process, the trio are separated from their home on the planet Terra and stranded on the moon of Elysium. To make matters worse, Yuna explains that shutting down the Master System will activate a Philosopher, reactivating an even older Elder System, activating the machines in the ruins of Terra. Mega Man Legends 2 ends with Roll trying to build a rocket to save his trapped sibling, but we never see if he succeeds.
This is the traditional, historical ending of the Mega Man series. Several individual Mega Man series, from classic 8-bit platformers, through Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero, and Mega Man Z X, and finally Mega Man Legends. Legends is the last, which means its unresolved ending is the last thing we see happen in a story that’s been changing and evolving since the 1980s. Mega Man is trapped in the last in a long line of heroes, with the clock ticking toward the destruction of all of society. That’s unsatisfying enough on its own, but even more so as a statement for an entire franchise that spans dozens of games.
Making matters worse is the unfulfilled promise of Mega Man Legends 3. Capcom teased the anticipated sequel in 2010, which closely coincided with the departure of series co-creator Keiji Infone. Capcom’s plans for Legends 3 included an ambitious idea to invite fans into the development process, soliciting community feedback. The company announced that it would release a “prototype version” on the 3DS ESHOP, to serve as a tease. This was remarkable for the time, as early access was not yet an industry standard.
But as the months went by and no prototype version was released, fans began to suspect that the project had been cancelled. Capcom confirmed in July 2011, announcing that there would be no Mega Man Legends 3 or even a prototype version released, despite later reports that the demo was almost complete. And in a PR misstep that will live in infamy for Mega Man fans, Capcom’s UK Twitter account blamed the cancellation on a lack of fan involvement. A later tweet clarified that this was meant to refer to the lack of interaction in the online “development rooms” that Capcom had created, not fan support more broadly. Inafune, for his part, expressed interest in making the game in late 2014, as an outside contractor with his studio.
Meanwhile, Mega Man Legends now has most of the memory. Capcom has happily capitalized on their history of Mega Man games with compilations of each series. Legacy collections now include the classic, Mega Man X, Mega Man Zero and Mega Man Z X series, and the Mega Man Battle Network series, with a Mega Man Star Force collection coming in 2026. Once released, every Mega Man series will be easily accessible on modern platforms. Those games, which were previously released on the PlayStation, are stuck in this generation, with the exception of the PSP port.
And so Mega Man Legends has become a symbol of untapped potential. The series blazed a new trail for the classic character, nominating it as an anime-styled adventure with deep lore and a wide cast of lovable, memorable characters. But for all its promise, it’s also the Mega Man series that’s gotten the least amount of games: two in the main series and the quirky minigame spin-off Tron Bone to end the corruptions. This has become a sore spot for Mega Man fans, even as the series has received new entries like the well-received Mega Man 11. For Mega Man Legends fans, we’ve all been there with Walnut, Yuna, and Sierra: waiting for a rescue, and a resolution, that never comes.
