Sorry to derail the zombie discussion, but I'm going to write as though this were still a nostalgia thread.
Classic fanon is great stuff. I remember Pixelboy's site, and how amazed I was at the time that he could rip the sprite textures out of the game like that and arrange them on display. Or was it Megaboy I'm thinking of? He had a website too, I think I might be getting them mixed up, but IIRC Megaboy was more fanfic geared. And Maelgrim's Rockman World, I think it was called, with its oodles of Rockman MIDIs. Slash(Man?)'s Mega Maniacs had that really cool world map design, where each section of the site was somebody's headquarters, like Skull Castle or Big Eddie's or Maverick Hunter base. And Generation Mega Man X, the webmaster was called Illumina I think, which I think was the first place I'd ever seen scans of Rockman (primarily X) mangas. I was really impressed by all the unique extensively inclusive character art and profiles of M Sipher's Megalopolis back then too.
And then of course there was the MMHP... So much great fanon. Break Man being a welder bot suffering a teleporter accident. Bioroids. So many things like that which wound up almost subconsciously being taken for granted.
What else... I remember a rumor that Return X of Mega Mission was going to be appearing in X4, based on some early screenshots with "R" logos on it. I think it was the Meganest bee-hive enemy from Web Spider's stage, some people thought it was RX's Limited cocoon or something. Mega Mission was taken pretty seriously back then, even though it didn't seem that anybody in the English-speaking net really understood the story, so that RX would return seemed like a natural conclusion.
That mangas were the official story of the game was a big assumption back then, too. They told the story of what "really happened" in a way the games, being games, could not. Although again, nobody really seemed to know exactly what was going on in them, everybody tended to give up an argument when somebody says "according to the manga, this happened." Some stuff was more infamous though, like Centaurman actually being a woman, or X having a mermaid/pirate girlfriend, and a persistent rumor about the games taking place "Tokio" Texas because somebody managed to translate part of a sign in the R6 manga. But then there were some things just generally way off, like Cain's reported death in the X4 manga, or Teal/Till/Tyr as Zero's love interest instead of Eagleed's. Or so-and-so being overtly homosexual, although besides X and Zero I don't remember who else was said... maybe Snakeman or Starman... Oh, and some Japanese fanfic site that gave full names to some characters like Iris Rose or Zero Omega (heh) that were taken as official.
And I remember there was some Japanese (fan, presumably) artwork of X in a crystal armor and Zero in a flame armor that looked so good that many thought it was real artwork for a future X game. And that pic of a cloaked Zero with the X6 logo superimposed that was taken as official as well, I think the artist eventually took credit for that one some years later.
And the insistance that the Guns and Roses names in X5 were fake up until the game was released, I remember. That Zero would stay dead after X5, too.
"zero is totally roll!! since megaman is in the 22nd century as MMX it makes sence dr. light would upgrade roll too, and you see that they're both blonde, wear red and if you say zero's name real slow it becomes SEE-ROLL!"
Remember that too! Something that always stuck with me was when someone suggested Zero was an acronym for Zeta Roll, which seemed fairly clever. And to think all that was before Roll acquired her swing attacks...
Legends took place in an alternate universe, similar to how the Classic & EXE series differed.
IIRC, gaming mags in the US did present the game that way. Calling it was a brand new world with new human characters (another big misconception, but could probably be considered a spoiler to say otherwise) and such. Actually, the Rockman 10 Years History Book written by Ariga makes the same claims about the DASH series, that its setting has nothing to do with the rest or the Rockman series and uses entirely different characters who are humans instead of robots, as a completely new adventure anime-styled take on the Rockman franchise. There's a chance he had written that before the game had came out or when it was out only a short time, though Ariga generally seemed disinterested in the DASH series around that time anyway. Still kinda shows that that idea was present in many medias on either hemisphere. I wonder if it wasn't a "Beast Wars planet is Earth" kind of scenario, where they tried to leave it open to decide later whether they wanted DASH to be in the same world or not. Or just leave you guessing. But because of the reference in L1's library about how MegaMan was a historic name, I was a fan of the theory they were distantly connected worlds far before it became officially announced.
Serges = Wily
Back then, there would have been no convincing me of that. The US script drops nearly everything that would lead one to connect the two. I don't think I even put together that Zero was Wily's creation until I read about Power Fighters on the internet. From X2, I just thought last of the doctor's creations meant Dr. Cain, and that Sigma thought Zero would follow in his footsteps since Cain built Sigma as well. Which is why Cain would have a backup of Zero's control chip. And that the X-Hunters simply fixed up the parts left broken in Sigma's last fortress, which wasn't that amazing because besides being state of the art nobody ever said that Zero was nigh unanalyzable to us. I thought the X3 manual was talking about his re-creation as being mysterious rather than his initial one, because of the nefarious nature of his revival. And the reason Zero would have to be destroyed per X3's US ending was because they had put something inside him during that time that could still turn him evil again someday, or possibly even help keep Sigma alive. All of which would have made fine sense, with the standard level of understanding back then...
Times have changed, of course. The connection between Sagesse and Wily now seems quite obvious and very intentional, though I'd hardly believe they had all the details ironed out back then, or even that they do currently. Wily coming back in a metal body to revive his greatest work and providing his support to the new main evil character is a cool idea. That they had some strict outline of how Wily's data got into Sagesse and where he'd been during the first X game and even before that, or the transition of how from there he became Sigma's shadowy partner or investigator scientist Isoc, I rather doubt. Leaving mysteries for us to talk about that don't necessarily have a true answer is one thing Cappy loves to do, greatly vexing for those searching for facts, but great for creating controversy and drumming up interest. Well, until they drag it out for too long while making things more and more convoluted to the point where some alienated longtime fans lose their interest and give up on them ever writing satisfying conclusions to what once really seemed like it was going somewhere. Over a decade after X3 came out, R20 still didn't want to come out with a straightforward answer to the Sagesse/Wily question. Certainly enough to cast doubt on whether it will ever be thoroughly and officially explained beyond our theories. That said, I'm still hanging in there, have found interest in the later X series and still have hope for more answers in the future, though I can certainly see and at times have felt that certain plot elements played out to be sloppy and disappointing. Of course, nostalgia is a big driving factor for me with this as well, which made perusing this thread all the more fun.