Part of Series
Capcom's Keiji Inafune followed the unexpected success of Mega Man 2 with a "kitchen sink" sequel that included eight new robot masters, a canine companion, a mysterious new frenemy, and a melancholy tone that runs through the game from its soft opening notes. Mega Man 3 was the biggest, messiest, and most ambitious Mega Man game yet. But why do we hunger for twitchy, difficult platformers like Mega Man 3 decades later when the developers, the franchise, and the Blue Bomber himself have all moved on? Investigating the development of the Mega Man series alongside the rise of video game emulation, the YouTube retrogaming scene, and the soaring price of NES carts, novelist Salvatore Pane takes a close and compelling look at the lost power-ups of our youth that we collect in our attempts to become complete again.
Author
Salvatore Pane was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He is the author of two novels, Last Call in the City of Bridges and The Theory of Almost Everything, in addition to a nonfiction book about video games, Mega Man 3, published by Boss Fight Books. He is currently co-writing a textbook about writing video games for Bloomsbury with Julialicia Case and Eric Freeze. He was awarded the 2022 Autumn House Fiction Prize, and his winning short story collection, The Neorealist in Winter: Stories, is forthcoming in October 2023. He is the writer/narrative designer of RetroMania Wrestling on Steam, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox and has written and designed many other video games. He served as a Freelance Localization Editor for NIS America on Trails to Azure and is currently an Associate Professor at the University of St. Thomas where he teaches creative writing, video games, and Italian film. He lives with his wife and Martin Scorsese the Cat in St. Paul and can be reached via Twitter. His short fiction has been nominated or shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Web, Best of the Net, and Wigleaf’s Top 50 [Very] Short Fictions. He won the Turow-Kinder Award in Fiction judged by Stewart O’ Nan, and his work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Indiana Review, Story Magazine, American Short Fiction, Paste, Kotaku, BOMB, The Rumpus, The American Book Review, and many other venues. He is the co-creator of the graphic novel, The Black List, and co-hosts The Jabsteps, a podcast about the NBA. His video games have been exhibited at WordPlay and BAR SK, and he has presented his work in Italy, Iceland, and elsewhere internationally. Visit his LinkedIn or get in touch at salpane@gmail.com. His work is represented by Andrianna deLone at CAA.
