[This piece reprinted from "An Interview with MegaMan", Nintendo Power Magazine, June 2002]

It wasn't easy tracking down Mega Man. His publicist said he would be unreachable until the release of the forthcoming "Mega Man Thugz" in 2003. So we went vigilante. After asking around Mega's usual haunts-- Gutsman's, Bombman's, etc-- with little luck, we finally ran into him outside of Dr Light's facility in Hollis, Queens, sitting on the stoop with a brown paper-sheathed bottle of Old English Steel Reserve in his hand-apparatus, boombox blasting. That's our Mega Man.

MEGAMAN: Yeeeeah boy, what you got?

NINTENDO POWER: Yo, Meg, Nintendo Power here. Just wondering if we could have a few minutes to catch up with you on your life, get the scoop on any projects you might be involved in, y'know?

MM: Nothin' but love for Nintendo Power, 's all I'm sayin. Word is bond.

NP: Thanks much. Now, a lot of people are pointing you out today as the first video game character to incorporate a "hip-hop aesthetic", if you will, into your image, predating even Parappa the Rapper. You were the first to use "sampling" technology, borrowing attacks from the enemies you defeated...

MM: Yeah, I got shit from Cut Man, Heat Man, Wood Man, Beenie Man, Afro Man, Redman, Method Man...

NP: Indeed you did. But that was all quite a while back. What are you into now? For example, what's this you're listening to?

MM: You ain't heard K-Rad yet? These kids gonna score my next game, yo. It's a different role for me. I play this robot pimp from the year 20XX who gets sent back to the 80s.

NP: Yeah, this does sound like an instrumental homage to that period-- or, as such, a throwback to the mid-90s: the simple beats, the flute samples, the quaint vocal snippets...

MM: Forget that. It's all right, but check out this next shit. They did this with some old Amiga software. 16 bits, motherfucker.

NP: Ah, yes, well, the sounds are very mechanical, and the style is certainly very harsh, a little closer to hardcore techno now than hip-hop. But the overall effect isn't quite the bland steel-on-silicon grind that sort of thing usually turns out to be, maybe because the structure keeps changing, or maybe because of all those submerged vocal samples...

MM: Aww, just listen to this shit! This one's called "Vous"; reminds me of the time I got together with that Metroid chick...

NP: Certainly more of a relaxed funk bent on this one, which is unexpected... oh, and I like the way it just dissolves without warning into this gentle outro. But, wait, are you saying this makes you nostalgic? It sounds like they're attempting a decidedly futuristic sound to me.

MM: There's no kind of nostalgia like nostalgia for the future. You sure you played Nintendo back in the day, man?

NP: Well, I'm mainly wondering whether all of this futurism isn't a little misleading. I mean, there's nothing here that will really advance electronic music, this isn't anything that µ-Ziq hasn't done before.

MM: But it ain't predictable, neither. Listen to how that synth leaps like Big Baby Jesus over a rehab center wall. These kids compose a whole new show every time they play, and they ain't even started to repeat themselves yet.

NP: All right, so it's moderately intelligent dance music.

MM: 'Cept you can actually dance to it. Sometimes, I just wanna dance.

So do we all, Mega Man. So do we all.

-Brendan Reid, October 9th, 2002