Wow. I’ll have to admit that until I read the press release and downloaded the screens, I thought this was going to be a full-on visually flashy full price AAA retail product with bonus DLC in the vein of Capcom’s recent Street Fighter X Tekken or Marvel vs Capcom games. But nope – it’s a VERY cool new game that looks like it was cooked up circa 1990 for the NES. Often, fan made games using licensed characters are shot down by publishers who want to protect their IP (and a few other good to not so good reasons), but Capcom has taken a nice step by not only helping fund this soon to be released retro fighter, they’re releasing it for FREE as a PC-only download.

The press release says that the game was created by a huge Capcom fan, Singapore native Seow Zong Hui (aka “Sonic”) with an original soundtrack created by another fan, Luke Esquivel (aka “A_Rival”) with Capcom providding support and direction for the project. SF X MM will feature “eight original Street Fighter-themed levels and bosses inspired by the legendary fighting game series. Each boss character will utilize their individual strategies and special moves against Mega Man, as players attempt to mega blast their way through each uniquely charming 8-bit world.” As you can see from the video above, the game manages to capture that classic look of the old games perfectly, so I’ll guess that the difficulty will be about the same as well.

While this is indeed spectacular news, I’ll need to wag my finger at Capcom a TINY bit. Not being able to play this on a 3DS or Vita is kind of lame for folks who would probably pay ten bucks a pop for a download and take this on the road just to blow the minds of commuters everywhere. Still, I’m betting real money (OK, ten whole cents) that no one is complaining about the free aspect of this one bit. The game will be made available to fans worldwide on December 17, 2012 (just over a week!) on the Capcom Unity site, and I’m betting that it will be a rather hugely popular download. As in server jamming crazy on day one.