We filled you in on the background and details of the bosses (Robot Masters, if you prefer) of Mega Man 9 last month, with a few screenshots to boot. Now some artwork has arrived, depicting the three bosses currently being shown to the public (always leave a little mystique, I suppose) and the powers our robot hero can obtain from them.

So, first up is Concrete Man:

And here is the weapon in action (the Concrete Shot):

Second we have Magma Man:

And the weapon (Magma Bazooka):

Thirdly is Tornado Man:

And Tornado Blow:

As noted before, the characters all pretty strongly resemble bosses, characters and/or enemies from previous Mega Man titles. For instance, Concrete Man is reminiscent of Guts Man from the original Mega Man, Magma Man takes his powers blatantly from Heat Man, but also looks like Fire Man, as well as this enemy, and Tornado Man, while he looks very different, his power is 100% ripped from Air Man.

Now, self-plagarism isn't exactly new in the Mega Man series, but nevertheless, this got me thinking: after all these years, and especially with forums like WiiWare, PSN, and XBL available between gamers and developers, isn't it about time the fans help create the bosses in a Mega Man title? What I mean is, maybe they should make a Mega Man 10 (presumably if this one does well), and have fans submit ideas for bosses during a period of say, one month. Take all the ideas and have the team whittle them down into about 20 different choices, post them online, and have everyone vote. I'm willing to bet we could get some really cool looking characters this way, because no offense to the creators, but Tornado Man isn't the coolest looking dude; it seems like they've all but run out of cool, fresh characters.

Update: Evidently, and with the tip of one of our dear reader's below, this has been done before. It seems to be unclear for how many games this was done for however, so I'm still calling for a return to this approach.

What do you think, and what would be some of your ideas for bosses and weapons?