Mighty No. 9 was a big deal when it kicked off on Kickstarter in 2013. A Mega Man-like sidescroller headed up by original Mega Man veteran Keifi Inafune—can’t miss, right? But it did miss, and rather badly. Multiple delays led up to a game that wasn’t great, late-arriving physical editions were also disappointing, and by that time we all sort of collectively decided we’d had enough and put the whole thing out of our minds.
But I’m bringing it back for one more adventure—not because anything’s happening with Mighty No. 9 (there are literally zero people playing it on Steam right now) but because it’s time to pour one out for Comcept, the studio Inafune founded in 2010 to make it: Japanese gaming site Gamebiz (via Gematsu) says the company has been formally dissolved.
Comcept’s been rattling around aimlessly for a good while since Mighty No. 9 tanked. A Kickstarter campaign for a Mega Man Legends-inspired game called Red Ash failed to meet its target in 2015, although it did manage to annoy some Mighty No. 9 backers who wanted to know why the studio was starting work on a new project when there was still no sign of the game they paid for; Comcept eventually made a deal with Chinese company Fuze Entertainment to move ahead with development, but it never came out (and presumably never will). Comcept also contributed to the 2016 game ReCore, another big letdown.
That didn’t stop Japanese gaming company Level-5 from establishing a subsidiary in partnership with Inafune called Level-5 Comcept in 2017; Inafune left in 2024, a couple years after releasing a Mega Man-inspired NFT collection, after which Level-5 Comcept was absorbed by a new Level-5 Osaka office. The original Comcept, Gematsu honcho Sal Romano wrote on Resetera, has continued to exist as a business entity until now.
Some twists and turns, then, but the bottom line is that Comcept has been effectively dead for a while, and this is really more of a burial—a final farewell to a studio that was once at the head of one of the biggest, most successful videogame crowdfunding campaigns of all time.
Pity that everything that came afterwards sucked, but that’s the excitement of Kickstarter: You pay your dime, you take your chances, and every now and then you get screwed. (Speaking of which, if you ponied up extra for the 3DS or PS Vita version of Mighty No. 9, yeah, it’s probably time to throw that receipt out. Sorry.)
