Many believe Mega Man to be one of the great classic video game franchises of the 1990s. However, as time goes by, fans have begun to notice gaps in the franchise's lore. While Mega Man Battle Network and Mega Man Star Force explicitly take place in alternate realities, the rest of the series is presented as a single contiguous timeline. This makes the clash in tone between the cheerful cyberpunk world of the classic Mega Man games and the grim post-apocalyptic earth of its sequel series Mega Man X stand out.