but it manages to infect Mega Man before being destroyed, and Wily's newest compound is demolished with Mega Man inside, who is dying from the Evil Energy. Duo arrives, and seeing the goodness and justice in his heart, cures him of the evil energy, eradicating the last remnants of the Evil Energy on Earth. Proto Man catches up to him; Duo then says that his mission is done, and leaves, but not before asking Proto Man for a favor. Mega Man then wakes up in Dr. Light's Lab and is reunited with Light, Roll and the others who tell him that Duo saved him. He then walks outside and finds Proto Man, who gives him a message from Duo: "Thank You." Development and release Mega Man 8 was developed by Capcom. Tokuro Fujiwara, who had been the producer for previous Mega Man titles, had left Capcom, so Keiji Inafune, who had previously played the role of artist for many titles in the series, became a producer for Mega Man 8. He handed off many of the main responsibilities to Hayato Kaji, an artist he often considered to be his student. Inafune recounted, "This allowed me to take a very different approach to creating a Mega Man game. 'Seeing Mega Man from a distance,' I guess you could say." Illustrators including Hideki Ishikawa and Shinsuke Komaki worked under the two veterans. Inafune recounted that the development team was often overwhelmed during the game's development because it involved some unfamiliar elements such as coordinating releases on two new systems and the use of anime cutscenes. The team enlisted the help of animation studio Xebec to produce the animated cutscenes for the game. Inafune had wanted to include animated cutscenes since the very first game in the series, and stated that he was pleased with the outcome. The character Duo was created specifically for Mega Man 8, but was first made a playable character in the earlier 1996 arcade fighting game Mega Man 2: The Power Fighters. Kaji initially designed Duo as a robot invented by the Mega Man 4 character Dr. Cossack. When it was decided that Duo would instead come from outer space, his appearance changed but still retained remnants of Russian traits, such as his ushanka. Like past games in the series, the Robot Masters were picked from design contests in Japan. Capcom received around 110,000 idea submissions. For the