Dr. Thomas Light is a video game character from the Mega Man Classic and the newer Mega Man X series.

He is the creator of Mega Man and several other robots in the series (including the first six Robot Master bosses of the game series). He is also presented as the creator of Mega Man X. Since the official connection between the two series has never been confirmed, it is not completely apparent if the living Dr. Light of the original series and the Dr. Light hologram from the X-series are one and the same.

Dr. Light is depicted as an aged scientist (in his late 50s or early 60s) with a white fluffy beard and hair combed to the back of his head. He has made several appearances in the Mega Man games, often giving Mega Man new equipment to battle his enemies.

In the X-series, the Dr. Light hologram resides in capsules hidden within stages and gives X enhanced armor parts, which affect his abilities and appearance.

Character history

Dr. Light graduated from Robert University's engineering department, where he met colleague Dr. Albert Wily. He currently (as of 20XX) resides in the midwestern United States with his robotic son, Rock, and his robotic daughter, Roll.

Name trivia

In Japan the character is known as "Dr. Right". The spelling "Light" came about because there is no distinction between the L-sound and the R-sound in the Japanese language. This caused some confusion in early translations: originally, in America, the character was renamed "Wright" because Capcom of America thought that the Japanese had tried to imitate American names unsuccessfully (this is also why Wily is often confused as "Wiley"). Dr. Light has been called by his Japanese name only once in the English-version releases, in Mega Man 3 (NES, 1990).

Further complicating matters, in the Mega Man Battle Network alternate universe series, Dr. Light's character counterpart is named "Tadashi Hikari" (光 正 Hikari Tadashi). Hikari (光) means "light", but Tadashii (正しい) means "right" or "correct". Because of this, it seems Capcom's official stance on the matter is that both "Right" and "Light" are correct.

It is common in the American fandom to attribute the middle name "Xavier" to Dr. Light, but this name is not found in any Japanese or American official sources.