Mega Man Creator's Mighty No. 9 Release Date Revealed

Saints Row and Dead Island publisher Deep Silver on Tuesday announced a partnership with Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune and his studio comcept for his current project, the Kickstarter success story Mighty No. 9. Deep Silver will help publish the side-scrolling game at retail stores and digitally for its release this year.

We also learned today that Mighty No. 9 will arrive on September 15 in North America and September 18 worldwide. You'll be able to buy it as a download or on a disc for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Wii U, as well as older consoles like the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Mighty No. 9 is also coming to PC, Linux, and Mac on that date, while PlayStation Vita and Nintendo 3DS versions will be released "at a later date" and only digitally.

Deep Silver said in a press release that its partnership with Inafune and comcept extends beyond just the publishing arrangement. The publisher is providing "additional resources" to comcept to allow the team to create additional DLC and more for Mighty No. 9.

This includes the "Ray" DLC, which is a new stage that features an "epic battle" with the bad guy Ray. After you beat him, Ray will be added to your game as a playable character for the main campaign. The Ray expansion is included with all retail versions of Mighty No. 9 and is free for anyone who backed the game during its initial Kickstarter run. Everyone else will need to buy it.

Deep Silver's partnership with comcept also means Mighty No. 9 will now include Japanese and French voiceovers (alongside the standard English voiceover), as well as localized versions of the game--with subtitles--for Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese.

As part of the Deep Silver-comcept deal, comcept will retain ownership of the overall Mighty No. 9 brand. Deep Silver went on to say that it will lead the charge for sales and marketing campaigns for the game.

"This is a great opportunity for comcept: The partnership enables us to deliver Mighty No. 9 to a wider audience while adding some great extra value to the game," Inafune said in a statement. "We are confident that the extra content will be worth the wait."

The Kickstarter campaign for Mighty No. 9, launched during PAX Prime in 2013, was a resounding success. It asked for $900,000, but ended up raising more than $3.8 million.

Mighty No. 9 casts players as Beck, a hero character that bears something of a resemblance to Mega Man. The game has 12 stages, a New Game Plus mode that unlocks extra difficulty levels, and other modes like Boss Rush and two-player online challenges and races. Mighty No. 9 even lets you switch between 8-bit music and its standard soundtrack with the press of a button.