Hot on the heels of its recent unconfirmed released date leak, Capcom is here to let its fans now once and for all that Mega Man 11 is coming in 2018. Along with that confirmation, we’ve also been given a plethora of exciting details about the upcoming game, including a thorough reveal of what the mysterious “Double Gear” system mentioned in the leaked description entails, as well as full profiles of three of the new game’s bosses and weaponry.

The Mega Man series is one of Capcom’s most celebrated franchises, along with other fan-favorite series such as Resident Evil and Street Fighter. A new main numbered entry is always welcome news, and Capcom’s standard of excellence has extended up and through Mega Man 10, which released in 2010 to critical acclaim.

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One of the most notable new developments in Capcom’s reveal here is that Mega Man 11 looks to be the first game in the main series to get a complete, first-release upgrade of its graphics. Instead of the 8-bit Mega Man we’ve come to love, the game now has an entirely new visual style, keeping the 2-D platforming intact but presenting the scrolling levels in three dimensions. Additionally, the Double Gear system is a fresh new upgrade for the character who, aside from a slide move and his chargeable Mega Buster cannon, has retained a fairly static set of basic abilities through all ten previous games.

Double Gear looks to give players a risk-reward mechanic, where they’ll be able to alternately slow down the world with the Speed Gear for precision moves, or overcharge their arm cannon with the Power Gear, letting Mega Man fire two charged shots instead of one. Use either power for too long without allowing their energy reserves to cool down will overheat Mega Man, hampering his ability to use them again until recharging.

In concept, the ability sounds like an amazing upgrade to the pared down combat vocabulary familiar to the character, as well as a nice option for newcomers to the series, which has been noted in the past for its exceptional challenge. Time will tell whether Double Gear will be entirely accepted by Mega Man’s hardcore fans, but it sounds like a brilliant wrinkle to the gameplay, a smart new set of tools that might also inspire some new approaches by dedicated speed-runners.

And that’s not all! In addition to designs revealed for two Mega Man 11 bosses — Block Man and Fuse Man, both of whom have their own powered-up variations — it looks like the character will also obtain two bits of gear from their defeat, for his head and his arm. Whether that means that there will be mixing and matching of boss powers this time isn’t made clear, but it’s an interesting detail to glean from Capcom’s images.

All in all it’s a fantastic pre-E3 reveal of what’s to come from Capcom, and with pre-orders already available for the US release date of October 2 (with the aforementioned October 3 release date still on-schedule for Singapore) players can secure their Mega Man 11 copies right now.

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Source: Capcom-Unity