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Happy third anniversary to Mega Man 11, the blue bomber’s triumphant return since Mega Man 10, which released eight years prior! I’ve mentioned in a previous ask that Mega Man 11 is not only tied with its predecessor as my favorite Mega Man game, but it’s also a contender in a three-way tie for my favorite video game ever— and for good reason!

Mega Man 11 is noteworthy for a variety of reasons, but for me, I feel like its strongest point is staying true to the classic Mega Man formula while trying enough new things to form its own identity. More or less, it’s like a modernized NES Mega Man, with the addition of a game-changing mechanic, a solid team of voice actors, and perhaps the most expressive robot master line since Mega Man 8!

Speaking of the eleventh line of robot masters, back in March I began making posts that showcased the eight robot masters of Mega Man 11 sprited into an NES-esque style. The posts were certainly way more well-received than I thought they would be, and they were a whole lot of fun to make!

Anyone who’s been keeping track of said posts, however, knows that there’s still two robot masters left to be seen sprited, those robot masters being Blast Man and Impact Man. Really, the biggest reason I haven’t gotten around to making posts for them yet is because of both bosses’ backgrounds (Especially Blast Man’s) have a lot of detail in them, and it’s been really hard trying to get them to look right.

But with the anniversary of Mega Man 11 finally upon us, I didn’t want to keep any of my followers waiting for any longer for the last two bots of the lineup, so I figured what way to show them off…

… than showing the entire line all together!

While I still feel a little bad about not having sprited demakes for the boss rooms of Blast Man and Impact Man yet, the arrival of Mega Man 11’s release date made for the perfect opportunity to get around to showing their respective sprites since I have had both done for quite a while! With that, let’s start with the robot master who was originally going to be next in line to be showed off… Blast Man!

Blast Man is unique in a way that he bears a more simplistic design (In a similar vein to Fuse Man and Block Man) while still having just a touch of the modern design influences that the rest of the lineup has. However, he still has a lot of cool features that aren’t really explored a whole lot, such as his tri-button torso piece and his segmented boots, which I find to be really neat!

To make up for the lack of backgrounds for both Blast and Impact, I’ve made gifs showcasing the process I took in making their sprites as I’ve been doing for my more recent sprite posts! The biggest challenge in spriting Blast Man for me was accounting for the smaller details on his armor, as well as nailing his red headpiece, which I found was detrimental if I wanted his overall sprite to look good.

Another small detail I wanted to account for was Blast Man’s skin tone— there are a lot of Blast Man sprites out there that portray him with the same skin tone as most of the other vaguely humanoid robot masters, which I always found to be off-puttingly inaccurate. I made absolutely certain that this was something I would correct with my 8-Bit interpretation!

And with the ins-and-outs of Blast Man’s sprite design process done and out of the way, now we can move onto the last robot master of the pack, who I regard as being my favorite of the eight…

BEHOOOOOOOLD!!! IMPACT MAN!!!

The overall design of Impact Man is an interesting one; I remember when I first saw him that I thought his yellow/orange color scheme was just how he was shaded, but as it turns out, that’s actually a component of his design. I also didn’t really understand the spike on his head until we got around to seeing his full-body… though now knowing that he’s made up of the Impact Brothers, it’s a really cool design approach!

Impact Man’s hulking size resulted in a particular challenge when I got around to spriting him. A lot of the Impact Man sprites out there fall in under two categories: they’re either accurate to Impact Man’s design, but are much too small, or they keep his size in check, and as a result doesn’t necessarily have that Mega Man feel to it.

Perfectly striking a balance between the two was an astronomical feat, too. The biggest thing I wanted to make sure my sprite of Impact Man had were those classic ‘robot master eyes’, and from there I would sprite the rest of him as accurately sized as I could manage, all while still having him be smaller than Bounce Man.

Color choice was also very important, too! My original Impact Man sprite from 2018 used seven colors, and my version from 2019 had six colors like the present version above, though the color I swapped out for the latest version was a shade of grey so I wouldn’t have to color every dark section of him a solid black.

It feels so wonderful to finally get to show off all eight of my sprite demakes of the robot masters from Mega Man 11, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed them and the processes in making them that I detailed! I do intend on spriting out backgrounds for Blast Man and Impact Man when I get some more practice, but for now, here’s to another year of the Double Gear!