>>14086772
Mega Man Classic has better lore than the later entries. It doesn't hit you over the head with melodrama like X does, but it's still there. Just nobody pays enough attention to notice the coolest parts, like what happens at the end of the era, but before X is created.
In the future, but before X is created, Wily has legitimately reformed and everything worked out fine. But then present, still evil Wily, travels to the future, impersonates his good future self, and tricks Rock so he can reprogram him for evil and send him back in time to kill his own past self. This of course just results in present Mega Man having to defeat his own future self. But you wouldn't know any of this if you weren't from Japan, because (((localizers))) completely removed the story from this game.
Later, in an even more obscure game that was only released for an obscure Japanese only handheld, we learn that Future Rock managed to survive, but Wily abandoned him as a failure. He gets back to the future but can't overcome his evil programming despite still having a good personality and thus feeling guilt over it. He takes over the world, hoping all the while somebody will defeat him for it, but nobody can, so he goes back in time and challenges both his past self and Bass so that they will end up both fighting him and can finally put him down for good before he can do even more damage. And they do. And you see his ghost and everything. And that's it. The death of Mega Man. The end. And for extra closure, Bass got to fulfill his programming and actually kill Mega Man. And this all happens in the very last Mega Man Classic game, at least until 9 and 10 happened years later. It all works very well as an ending, though.
I know that shaky translations and a convoluted story involving him making up multiple fake backstories for himself make people say that Rockman Shadow isn't actually Future Rock, but he's clearly supposed to be if you actually play it. The whole point is that he gets stronger when you get stronger because he's future you. But even if you don't count Challenger From the Future since it's licensed out to Bandai or whatever, Mega Man still killed himself in Rockman World II.
Either way, this all then also provides motivation for Dr. Light to create X, a robot with true free will, who thus can't be reprogrammed for evil.
The previous Classic game before Challenger From the Future was Super Adventure Rockman, which also features the for real deaths of some of the classic Robot Masters, giving an ending for some of the secondary characters before we are given the ending for more main characters. Of course this is also only released in Japan, and it's an FMV "game" so the gameplay is shit anyway. But it's cool for the story.