Over the years, gamers have been soured on video game art books. They’re often half-hearted and cheaply made to add value to Collector’s Editions of popular games. Worst of all, a lot of the games that have art books don’t have an interesting enough art style to warrant the book (Call of Duty? Seriously?).
Capcom has done a very good job of remedying those issues by releasing several art books spanning many game series ranging from Street Fighter to Phoenix Wright.
I happened to order a copy of Mega Man Official Complete Works off of Amazon after months and months of delay.
With Mega Man 9 coming out last year and Mega Man 10 coming out next year, Mega Man Official Complete Works is a great way to celebrate the original Mega Man series. The art book was released in Japan a while ago, but now it’s available in English.
The book itself has around 200 pages, which is more than you can say about most art books. The cover and pages are made from nice paper, though I couldn’t exactly tell you what kind of paper is used.
The Mega Man games are so artistically interesting that the book didn’t have to be padded with useless filler material. Mega Man Official Complete Works was originally released before Mega Man 9, so it mainly covers Mega Man 1-8 as well as Mega Man & Bass.
Here are just some of the things that the book covers:
1. Images of all the boxarts
2. Pictures of all the bosses sorted by game
3. Pictures of all the forms of Mega Man
4. Pictures of all the enemies
5. Character profiles
6. Original sketches
7. Pictures of the original comics
And to top it all off, most of the individual pictures have a quote from series creator Keiji Inafune related to the particular picture.
Overall, Mega Man Official Complete Works is an excellent gift for any Mega Man fan. It truly is the definitive art book of our beloved series. Now, if only they did a definitive music compilation of the Mega Man series…
The Complete Works brand also extends to the Mega Man X and Mega Man Zero series. I’m not a big fan of Mega Man Zero, but I’ll definitely pick up the Mega Man X Official Complete Works art book in the future.
Happy New Year!
