Despite first getting into the game in 2012, I didn’t start playing online until a year later—around when Mega Man 8 content was first added to the game in Version 3. I made friends (and rivalries) with the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community of the era and got to partake in the development of a few mods that were being worked on at that time. Nowadays with many more games coming and going and the modding scene for 8BDM changing drastically over time, 8BDM became a game I wouldn't revisit as much in spite of it now being a fully complete game as of 2020. What happened? Why did I fall out of hanging with and playing matches with the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community? Well, there’s no better answer than to pull out the Super Justin: the Blog’s finest tradition: “The List”:
By the time I had first experienced Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch’s online multiplayer, many vanilla game modes were steadily riding out of popularity and saw little play, including the titular Deathmatch mode. It got to a point where for a time, the only way to play Deathmatch regularly was to play in servers running the “Roll’s Chaos Generator” mod, which injects random events and gimmicks into each match.
The idea of creating new weapons for players to pick up through weapon packs, due to needing to create new maps to house them, was being overtaken by the concept of class mods—picking a character and getting a unique moveset based on them without having to scout the map for weapons and ammo. Essentially, the concept of transforming MM8BDM into a hero shooter would have a lasting effect on the modding scene for MM8BDM, leading to many others creating class mods of their own.
In addition to classes, another type of controllable character would gain ground in the early to mid 2010’s: The boss character. One player, as a boss, has to run around and frag all the other players in a server with their bloated health and attack power without dying themselves. If they defeat everyone, they win.
Any attempt to create a big singleplayer/co-op experience structured like the classic Mega Man games ended up abandoned or cancelled before they could get past the first few stages—MMSP was only able to get half of its planned Robot Masters implemented, had an expansion that added an extra four characters, and was the inspiration for an even bigger mod that planned to have a separate campaign for each Mega Man entry until that got canceled as well. In a related scenario, a mod designed to make the main singleplayer campaign a co-op experience only managed to progress through the first seven chapters (completing the main tournament plus the Mega Man 7 chapter) before it was shuttered.
Lastly, there’s “Classes Team Last Man Standing” (or CTLMS for short); taking the class mod starring the entire core cast (CBM, or Class-Based Modification) and rebalancing it through constant updates to create the closest the game has to a high-level competitive mode. Pick a class of your choice and try to cause as much damage as you can before you’re eliminated. It would rise to become the community’s most supported mod and perhaps the most played online server in not just Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, but all of Zandronum itself.
As you can tell by the tone of my words, I have a very mixed feeling on the current state of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch’s netgame servers. Outside of specific events hosted on the game’s current Discord server or the release of some big mod/mod update, the only active server you will generally see is a Classes Team Last Man Standing server or a boss mod server. And to be fair, CTLMS is an enjoyable experience if you can get past its high skill barrier, helped by its community being very friendly whenever I pop into the server to go a few rounds before going back to working on projects. Although matches playing out in a best three-of-five format can cause some maps to overstay their welcome, considering the slower-paced, more defensive gameplay of the mode. As for boss mods, they too have provided moments of hype, especially now that the two most common boss mods, Saxton Hale (an 8BDM take on the Vs. Saxton Hale mode from Team Fortress 2) and Unholy Bosses have taken strides to make gameplay faster, turning the bosses into monstrous killing machines while the other players are equipped with tools to team up and fight back. But what if you don’t want to play CTLMS or a boss mod? What if you want something more traditional? That’s where things get complicated.
The lack of game mode diversity in active servers, as well as my inability to drum up interest in the game’s multiplayer amongst friends killed most of my drive in playing 8-Bit Deathmatch in the 2020’s after the hype for Version 6’s release subsided post-2020. Even the most recent versions of the game, which added quality of life enhancements and automated most of the process for joining net games through the Doomseeker server browser did little to introduce new people to the game that weren’t already there for one of the more common, routinely-hosted mods. In my personal experience, 8BDM seems to be more popular for its expansive singleplayer campaign where you fight against AI-controlled bots and the giant laundry list of bosses that conclude each chapter. Some would talk about the cool story serving as an alternate re-telling of Mega Man 7 through 10 and the side entries Capcom typically doesn’t acknowledge in compilations as well as rave to the original songs composed for the game’s major boss battles. Of those people, very few, if any, would bring up and sing the praises of MM8BDM’s multiplayer, even after years of the game being held as one of the best Mega Man fan games and having one of the most dedicated modding communities still actively creating content for the game. Whenever it be maps, custom skins, or full expansions based on official Mega Man products, ROM hacks, or fan games, there’s pretty much something being worked on at any moment.
For the sake of comparison, 8-bit Deathmatch is not the only game that I occasionally turn on and play rounds of multiplayer where the singleplayer absolutely demolishes the multiplayer in recognition, usually only standing on the grounds of a small but dedicated community. Classic Doom and Doom II, which run on the same engine as Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch, has historically been more well-known for being a singleplayer game due to the setup one would need for multiplayer back in the 90’s with the original DOS releases. Using the aforementioned Doomseeker server browser in the modern day to play multiplayer Doom… sure it’s easier than on DOS but is still a complicated process that involves fetching specific files from your Doom installation and dropping them into your Doomseeker folder. Once you set up everything, you’ll find a similar gravitation towards non-vanilla modes, with no head-to-head modes among them. Most Doom players, at least from my perspective, are perfectly fine with the recent Doom + Doom II remaster that launched last year for their multiplayer fix, even if the net code is something of a mess and the lack of modes means you’ll only be able to play Co-Op and Deathmatch. Outside of Doom-engine games, there are other classic PC games that have survived on modern hardware thanks to their own dedicated fan communities creating new versions or patches of those games, and many of those games only have the backing of those dedicated communities keeping their respective games’ online multiplayer alive.
So what happens next? Well, I’m not quite sure. I don’t consider myself the voice of Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch in any way, but I do have some desire to bring more people to the community and raise awareness for modes and other mods/projects so they can stand alongside the current longstanding trends of Classes TLMS and various boss mods. The goal would be to make 8BDM’s multiplayer component more noticeable and, perhaps most importantly, accessible and beginner friendly. And even the people run the game’s Discord seem to agree, as starting from the month of February, every Friday would become a community game night of sorts known as “Freezer Bowl Fridays” with the goal of hosting modes that aren’t commonly seen online. The first two would be held earlier this month to quite some success, although a crucial game-breaking bug halted plans for the intended “1-Flag CTF Football” session, forcing a different mod to be loaded so the remainder of the session wouldn’t be stuck bug-hunting for the rest of the night. In the end, Freezer Bowl Fridays are still a step in providing more multiplayer variety for the Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch community, variety that I feel it has needed for a good while.
In conclusion, I'd say Mega Man 8-Bit Deathmatch has a very promising future to look forward to, even if I'm not as part of the active community as I was in the early to mid 2010's.
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