Rockman Shadow

R-Shadow is the robot that created the Dimensions and traveled back from the mid-21st century (the year 2052) to attack Symphony City in the hopes of dueling and destroying Rock. Rock has no idea why this is the case, but when he confronts R-Shadow after defeating a few of his Robot Masters, he tells him that he is Rock from the future, "upgraded" by Dr. Wily and sent back on a mission to destroy his arch-enemy, Mega Man. In otherwords, he is Quint, a robot that Rock had faced and defeated five years ago.

Had Quint been embarrassed that he was so easily defeated, returned to his own time, and built up a powerful new army with the technology of his time and returned to crush Rock? This certainly seemed to be the case, but even if it wasn't, Rock knew that he couldn't take any chances with this "challenger from the future."

When he managed to defeat R-Shadow in a "duel to the death," his true nature was revealed...R-Shadow was not, in fact, Quint, but rather he was a prototype robot that Wily designed when experimenting with the technology present in the future. When Wily used the Time Skimmer to travel to the year 2047 and reprogram Rock into Quint, he first experimented with the technology of the time, the first product of which was him, a robot which Wily called R-Shadow. However, Wily decided that in the end he had no use for him and he was discarded. It was for this reason that he had come to the year 2016: he wanted to prove Dr. Wily wrong and show Rock that he was the superior robot, even if he was, in the end, only a "clone."



While the game depicts his "death" after his defeat at the hands of Mega Man and Bass, Dr. Light soon thereafter manages to repair him, and he is shown in a photograph with the team at Light Labs, sans helmet. He was most likely reprogrammed for two reasons: one because his programming was based on Dr. Wily's "evil" logic and because if he continued to desire Rock's destruction and was defeated a possible "time paradox" would exist.