The Mega Man Zero series, known as Rockman Zero (ロックマンゼロ, Rokkuman Zero^?) in Japan, is the series succeeding the Mega Man X story-line, and the fifth series in Capcom's Mega Man video game franchise, co-produced by Keiji Inafune, and directed by Mega Man Legends series director Yoshinori Kawano. Consisting of four games developed for the Game Boy Advance by Inti Creates, the series began with the release of Mega Man Zero in 2002. The story follows Zero who is awakened from hibernation by Ciel to face X who has began genocide on the reploids.

Like the Mega Man X series, the Mega Man Zero series is a two-dimensional platform game with run and gun elements that places a heavy emphasis on memorising boss patterns and selecting the correct weapons to use against enemies. Unlike previous series, the stages of Mega Man Zero are connected, with the player being assigned missions. However, Mega Man Zero 2 and later entries returned to the standard format that allowed the player to select a mission from a stage select screen. Zero is also able to level up his weapons and gain new skills by defeating enemies, though the levelling up of weapons was eventually discontinued from Mega Man Zero 3 onwards.

Keiji Inafune (稲船 敬二, Inafune Keiji^?, born 8 May 1965) is a video game producer and illustrator. He was the former head of Research & Development and Online Business and Global Head of Production at Capcom, best known as the illustrator and co-designer of the character Mega Man, as well as the producer of the Onimusha and Dead Rising video game series. In most game credits, he uses the name "INAFKING".

He was born in Kishiwada, Osaka.

In 1987, 22-year-old Keiji joined the corporation of Capcom not long after graduating in search of a job as an illustrator. His first assignment as graphic designer was Street Fighter (1987), which became a very popular fighting game series after the release of Street Fighter II in 1991. At the time, Capcom focused on the expansion of the home video gaming market; particularly the Famicom from Nintendo. Previously, most games released to the system were ports (release of a game to a different system). Now wanting to capitalize on the fledgling Nintendo system, Keiji's superiors directed him to create a new video game character called "Rockman." Capcom's artist and developer teams were still diminutive at that period in time, and so Keiji was directed to be one of the leading artists to the new project.