Most Mega Man fans will be familiar with the Ruby-Spears Mega Man cartoon, which was the first ever animated adaptation of the blue bomber’s adventures. However, it wasn’t actually the first one to be planned – and some newly unearthed documents now give us our first look at what could have been!

Thanks to the folks at Rockman Corner, several development cels from a cancelled 1992 Mega Man anime project by Ashi Productions were recently discovered and catalogued. The legitimacy of these cels was confirmed by animation director and character designer Nobuyoshi Habara – who personally drew some of them.

Here are the cels below (click to enlarge):

As you can see, the character art is more Japanese-styled overall. It’s pretty intriguing stuff, and it certainly makes us wonder what we could have received if this had released instead of the Ruby-Spears cartoon!

What do you think? Feel free to share with us below!