Mega Man Creator's Red Ash Kickstarter Fails to Meet Funding Goal

The Kickstarter funding campaign for Keiji Inafune's Red Ash: The Indelible Legend, has ended with $519,000 of its $800,000 goal pledged. Nevertheless, the spiritual successor to Mega Man Legends will still be made.

The first chapter of Red Ash--titled the KalKanon Incident--will be developed thanks to a publishing deal between Inafune's Comcept studio and Chinese company Fuze Entertainment.

"Thanks to the investment from Fuze Entertainment, we have now secured the budget to create our original vision for this prologue game, which means we will be able to create KalKanon in its entirety," a message on the project's page reads.

"This means that backers will now be able to explore and uncover the mysteries of KalKanon that are hidden in each area and episode that we originally planned for this campaign."

The partnership with Fuze allowed the game to be developed for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Although Comcept said additional funds generated by the Kickstarter campaign would be put towards stretch goals such as a new playable character and a challenge mode, donations dropped off significantly following the announcement of the publishing deal.

The Kickstarter campaign for the game's tie-in anime series Red Ash -Magicicada-, meanwhile, was successfully funded, with a total of $162,000 donated.

Several members from the original Mega Man Legends team have been hired to work on Red Ash. Inafune previously said "Red Ash is a very different project from a retro action game like Mighty No. 9, in terms of both scale and concept."

"The primary goal with Red Ash is to tell a story on a grand scale; all of the primary concepts are clearly visualized in the minds of the creative team, from the overall plot to historical background. Even the final ending scene is planned out."

Inafune and his studio are also working on Mighty No. 9, another Kickstarter funded spiritual successor to Mega Man. The Might No. 9 release date has been confirmed as September 19. It will be available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Vita, Wii U, 3DS, and PC.

At E3 2015, Microsoft announced Inafune and Armature Studio, a team formed of former Retro Studio developers, are working on an Xbox One exclusive called ReCore.