Mega Man 8 is a platform game developed and released by Capcom in 1996. It was directed by Hayato Kaji and produced by Keiji Inafune, both of whom had previously worked on the series as artists. It is the eighth installment in the original Mega Man series, and was initially released in Japan on the PlayStation in 1996. The following year, Mega Man 8 saw a release on the Sega Saturn and was localized for both consoles in North America and the PlayStation alone in PAL regions. Mega Man 8 is the first game in the series made available on 32-bit consoles. The plot follows series protagonist Mega Man as he is called to investigate an energy reading coming from a recent meteor crash on an island. Mega Man discovers that his nemesis Dr. Wily has run off with the energy source, and sets off to stop Wily's evil plans to use the energy, and to discover the purpose of a mysterious alien robot found at the crash site.

A platformer is a sub-genre of action video games in which the core objective is to move the player character between points in an environment. Platform games are characterized by levels with uneven terrain and suspended platforms of varying height that require jumping and climbing to traverse. Other acrobatic maneuvers may factor into the gameplay, such as swinging from vines or grappling hooks, jumping off walls, gliding through the air, or bouncing from springboards or trampolines.