Here's the full story without EGM/Nintendo Power stuff:
In their younger days when Dr. Albert W. Wily and the mild-manner scientist Dr. Thomas Light were close associates, Wily was an enormously proud individual. So proud, that when Light achieved head of the class at the Robot Institute of Technology they attended together, he was extremely vexed. This trend continued to the present day with Dr. Light always being the one to get all the attention and accolades; aside from becoming class president winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, the LIT Manual Design Contest for four consecutive years, and so on. Dr. Wily instead always was but a nominee or a runner up. And so, it was sometime after Light becoming class president that Wily seemingly decided he would create the strongest robots to prove that he was the best in the world... though once classmates, Wily became Light's rival in professional life. It is this motivation and rivalry that would lead to him eventually being exiled from the scientific community due to the nature of his experiments, and lead him to the path of world domination and revenge. A very sorrowful state of affairs, Dr. Light believes.
After their youth, Dr. Light conceived the construction of fully-operational human-like experimental robots to perform specific everyday duties. To fulfill his dream, Dr. Light created Proto Man (Blues), his first attempt at making a humanoid robot; his first creation that moves of his own free will. As the very first humanoid robot prototype developed by him, Proto Man was one of Dr. Light's biggest achievements, one that greatly exceeded his expectations on several levels.
However, though a great achievement, Proto Man was not a success. Dr. Light found there to be a critical problem with Proto Man's power reactor. He made plans to modify and repair the robot, but Proto Man absconded before Dr. Light had a chance to. His human-like mind convinced itself that the remodeling could cause him to essentially become like a different person, so he fled to protect his sense of identity.
Unable to find Proto Man, and believing him to have died from his power defect, Dr. Light moved on to other projects. Hoping to rectify the mistakes he made with Proto Man, he created a pair of household robot; Rock and Roll, his first true success created in that order. He made them as siblings so that they would never be lonely. Rock and Roll were quickly adopted as part of the family. This motivated Dr. Light to design six more industrial robots. He hired an ambitious robot designer, Dr. Wily, to assist him in the enormous task of construction. Together, Dr. Light and his assistant Dr. Wily, encouraged by Rock's success, proceeded to develop six additional Humanoids, all programmed to perform prescribed rituals.
After completing the additional Humanoids, Dr. Light's former assistant Wily turned disloyal and was eventually exiled from the scientific community; suddenly disappearing, Dr. Wily vowed revenge against Dr. Light and his creations.
It was then, some time after Proto Man's disappearance, that his power reactor began to fail and he lay collapsed and dying. He was found and saved by Dr. Wily, who modified him by changing out his power reactor on top of equipping him with a buster and combat abilities. It was from this opportunity to remodel Blues that Dr. Wily gained the ability to manufacture robots at the same level as Dr. Light. Unaware of Wily's true intentions, Proto Man had become indebted to him.
One day, the industrial robots all over the world went on a rampage and the world fell into chaos. Robots began to take control of the city. At that time, Dr. Light intercepted a transmission from the evil Dr.Wily. The transmission exposed Dr. Wily's plans for world domination; Dr. Wily told the world that he would kidnap and reprogram Dr. Light's humanoids as part of his world domination scheme. Rock, however, had walked in on Dr. Light intercepting the transmission and with his strong sense of justice, desired to fight against Dr. Wily's evil. Rock convinced the good Dr. Light to let him chase down and eliminate the threat of his nemesis. The robot Rock volunteered to convert himself into a combat robot and so became MEGA MAN, the one robot who resisted Dr. Wily's nefarious tinkering; his days as a gofer in the lab were over.
Having become Mega Man, Rock fought against Dr. Wily, who had created "Monsteropolis", a strange multi-layered and multi-faceted land of robot-like Humanoids. These robot like humanoids were created by Dr. Wily's wrongly performed experiments with human beings; they are misrepresentations of humans. Fighting through the seven empires of Monsteropolis and defeating the Empire Leaders, Mega Man would ultimately make Dr. Wily's evil designs end in failure regardless of what the evil doctor had learned about robot development from working on Proto Man.
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And here's the Japanese-only story:
In their younger days when Dr. Albert W. Wily and the mild-manner scientist Dr. Thomas Light were close associates, Wily was an enormously proud individual. So proud, that when Light achieved head of the class at the Robot Institute of Technology they attended together, he was extremely vexed. This trend continued to the present day with Dr. Light always being the one to get all the attention and accolades; aside from becoming class president winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, the LIT Manual Design Contest for four consecutive years, and so on. Dr. Wily instead always was but a nominee or a runner up. And so, it was sometime after Light becoming class president that Wily seemingly decided he would create the strongest robots to prove that he was the best in the world... though once classmates, Wily became Light's rival in professional life. It is this motivation and rivalry that would lead to him eventually being exiled from the scientific community due to the nature of his experiments, and lead him to the path of world domination and revenge. A very sorrowful state of affairs, Dr. Light believes.
To fulfill his dream, Dr. Light created Proto Man (Blues), his first attempt at making a humanoid robot; his first creation that moves of his own free will. As the very first humanoid robot prototype developed by him, Proto Man was one of Dr. Light's biggest achievements, one that greatly exceeded his expectations on several levels.
However, though a great achievement, Proto Man was not a success. Dr. Light found there to be a critical problem with Proto Man's power reactor. He made plans to modify and repair the robot, but Proto Man absconded before Dr. Light had a chance to. His human-like mind convinced itself that the remodeling could cause him to essentially become like a different person, so he fled to protect his sense of identity.
Unable to find Proto Man, and believing him to have died from his power defect, Dr. Light moved on to other projects. Hoping to rectify the mistakes he made with Proto Man, he created a pair of household robot; Rock and Roll, his first true success created in that order. He made them as siblings so that they would never be lonely. Rock and Roll were quickly adopted as part of the family. This motivated Dr. Light to design six more industrial robots.
It was then, some time after Proto Man's disappearance, that his power reactor began to fail and he lay collapsed and dying. He was found and saved by Dr. Wily, who modified him by changing out his power reactor on top of equipping him with a buster and combat abilities. It was from this opportunity to remodel Blues that Dr. Wily gained the ability to manufacture robots at the same level as Dr. Light. Unaware of Wily's true intentions, Proto Man had become indebted to him.
One day, the industrial robots all over the world went on a rampage and the world fell into chaos. Robots began to take control of the city. At that time, Dr. Light intercepted a transmission from the evil Dr.Wily. The transmission exposed Dr. Wily's plans for world domination; Dr. Wily told the world that he would kidnap and reprogram Dr. Light's humanoids as part of his world domination scheme. Rock, however, had walked in on Dr. Light intercepting the transmission and with his strong sense of justice, desired to fight against Dr. Wily's evil. Rock convinced the good Dr. Light to let him chase down and eliminate the threat of his nemesis. The robot Rock volunteered to convert himself into a combat robot and so became MEGA MAN; his days as a gofer in the lab were over. Mega Man would ultimately make Dr. Wily's evil designs end in failure regardless of what the evil doctor had learned from working on Proto Man.
I was also planning on providing a "US-only" story, but looking over it, everything that's Japanese-exclusive is already heavily implicated in US-released classic games such as Power Fighters, MegaMan8, MegaMan and Bass and MegaMan Powered Up, albeit not with the same level of detail.