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Oh, Mighty No. 9. What went wrong?

You earned more than $4 million in funding via a crowdfunding campaign to create a spiritual successor to Mega Man, one of the most beloved platformer video game series of all time, and your lead producer was Keiji Inafune, Mega Man's lead character designer.

You were one of the most successful Kickstarters of all time. Gamers and gaming press alike sung your praises, hyped for a game that promised to fill the hole that Mega Man left us.

The world was at your feet, ready to embrace the mighty age of Mighty No. 9.

But the game's reviews have started coming in , and if the years of miscommunication, mismanagement and general disrespect of its backers hadn't already awoken you from that dream, perhaps now is the time to wake up.

I'm sure you've seen the headline, but I'll reiterate it anyway just because it feels good to say: Mighty No. 9's release has been a pitiful, shambolic mess from start to finish, and whilst I don't want to go so far as to say those involved should feel ashamed, I am sort of saying that.

Whilst we thought we covered the controversy surrounding Mighty No. 9 fairly well earlier this year, its development team Comcept (or, perhaps more specifically, Inafune himself) have continued to stir the pot with yet more delays, miscommunication, and frankly dumbfounding public statements - even continuing into the game's launch day.

In fact, its launch was entirely marred by controversy - starting with the game's official blog announcing delays for the Xbox 360, Linux and Mac versions of the game by a few days.

As if yet another delay (announced on launch day, no less) wasn't enough of a kick in the teeth for backers, there were also multiple reports that backers on any platform had not received their DLC codes - or, in some cases, that the the codes they had received simply didn't work at all.

In the case of Wii U owners, this was a much larger issue, with reports from backers purporting that the game had outright bricked their console.

These launch day woes were followed up when Keiji Inafune, attributed by his translator, was heard saying 'it's better than nothing' on a livestream in response to criticism.

Whether Inafune intended to say this or his translator was having his own say is irrelevant - officials of Comcept had effectively spat in the face of the very people that funded the game into existence.

But you may well have already known how poorly Mighty No. 9's launch went, thanks to the widely-publicised mocking tweet put out by the official Sonic the Hedgehog account. (I find that a bit rich, given Sonic's own poor history , but there we go.)

Launch day woes and poor reviews are just the icing on the cake for the miserable failure that has been Mighty No. 9's release.

There are too many problems to describe in great detail, so let's just sum them up:

A trailer had a narrator say the line 'make the bad guys cry like an anime fan on prom night', upsetting many backers.

Upset at the game's community manager for general bitterness towards the community.

Comcept initiating a second Kickstarter campaign for another game, Red Ash, as well as a campaign for an animation based on it.

A secondary Kickstarter campaign for Mighty No. 9 to fund extra downloadable content (making for 4 campaigns before a game release).

General poor quality of footage shown throughout development

Multiple delays - despite promises the second time that it wouldn't happen again.

A demo intended to act as an apology for the multiple delays was, hilariously, delayed.

Again, poor management, communication and generally poor PR has played key in the problems surrounding this game during its development.

Admittedly, game development is no easy thing. With any standard game, this would be a laughable, but perhaps forgivable, affair. However, due to the nature of it being funded from the pockets of consumers, Comcept had a higher level of responsibility in communicating effectively and appropriately with its audience.

They utterly failed in doing so, and their attempt to fund other projects from consumer's money before finishing their already-funded projects shows complete disdain for their audience. Apologising now that the game has launched falls on deaf ears.

If you're still even just a little bit interested in Mighty No. 9 but don't want to reward this poor business behaviour, just wait for a pre-owned copy to pop up instead. I promise you, it won't take very long.

Hopefully Inafune and Comcept can learn from their mistakes, because ReCore is looking pretty good and I actually would like a decent Mighty No. 9 sequel - albeit not funded by the public.