A Follow-up on Another Piece

𝔑ot too long ago, I had a piece pop out on The Public Medievalist regarding the medievalism of the Knight Man stage and robot from Mega Man VI, an 8-bit NES game. As it happens, Knight Man is not the only Robot Master to borrow from the medieval, nor is Mega Man VI the only one of the Blue Bomber's games to pull from that sourcing, to get some things right and some far less so. Another example of such things that comes to mind is Shade Man from Mega Man VII, a 16-bit SNES game; like the Mega Man VI example, some things are right, some things are not, and the correct and incorrect both matter.

The man himself...
Image from the
MegaMan Knowledge Base, here,
used for commentary.

Like Knight Man from the previous game, Shade Man inhabits a castle that makes much of medievalist imagery. Crumbling stone columns support high-ceilinged rooms hung with chains and sporting stained glass, as if in some strange medieval cathedral. It is replete with suits of armor, too, and hosts enemies who come charging at the heroic character with lances at the ready--and both speak to medieval tropes that pervade both history and literature. Indeed, Mega Man pressing through the castle and defeating a series of knightly foes rings of the kinds of things described in Le Morte d'Arthur and any number of other chivalric romances, so that much is in line with antecedents both in the game series and in the medieval/ist work from which the stage and robot borrow.

Unlike the earlier game, though, Shade Man does not borrow quite so much from the perceived medieval as from the overtly medievalist. Yes, there is something of the demonic in his appearance, but in function he is more the bat-like vampire of Dracula and its borrowers than he is some medieval monster--and his castle, shrouded in gloom under the light of a full moon, seems to borrow more from the Gothic motifs of Castle of Otranto than from more "truly" medieval work. (Indeed, one of the foes faced in the stage is a small robot that falls as a helmet from above, echoing the death of Conrad early in that novel.) And there are other borrowings of medievalist presentations, as well; among the more notable is the invocation (via music) of the medievalist Ghosts 'n  Goblins games in the stage, which games feature the spear-throwing, armor-clad Arthur as he quests against evil. So there's that, as well.

To be fair, the conflation of the medieval and the medievalist is nothing new to the game. After all, the medievalist sources form which it borrows are themselves such conflations, and they are hardly the only examples of such things to be found. (This webspace attests to no few of them, among others.) For better or worse, the ideas are firmly linked in popular conception, and failing to acknowledge so much is a wilful omission that does nobody any good. That said, however, my comments from the end of the Public Medievalist piece remain true:

Popular media presentations like the Mega Man games inform much public understanding of what the medieval was and is. If nothing else, repeating information sets up expectations of what is real or realistic. As such, every iteration of wrong information, every instance of inaccuracy, perpetuates misconceptions and closes off avenues of understanding that much further.

Furthermore, games like Mega Man were openly geared towards children. When people are taught early on that things are a certain way, it is all the harder for those who will teach them later in life to ensure that, as they grow up, they proceed from a sound and solid understanding of what was as they work toward what they will be. Even such idle pastimes as video games can have a deep and lasting effect on their players.

The shallow and clumsy use of the Middle Ages in Mega Man isn’t an obvious problem. But, like the issues within Game of Thrones, it forms a foundation for more troubling portrayals and abuses of the medieval world. Perhaps by addressing the formative misunderstandings presented by Mega Man and other games, we can go some way to countering such bigger issues.

There is clearly still no small amount of work to do.