Mega Man
Nintendo Entertainment System
Despite the fact that I have never owned a single game in the series and haven't played a Mega Man title past number three, I still think it is awesome. I love the graphics, I love the music. I love all the bosses and how you have to fight them in a certain order to make the game more manageable to complete. And believe it or not I like the difficulty too. True, this game is very difficult. If you are not an accomplished gamer, don't expect to pick this up and have any kind of success whatsoever with this title. Mega Man is notorious for its brutal difficulty, but that is also part of what makes it so memorable.
About 8 or 9 years ago, I picked up the Mega Man Anniversary Collection disc for the Nintendo Gamecube. I think it is 8 something Mega Man titles all on one disc. Having never owned a Mega Man game growing up, I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to catch up on all the fun I never had the chance to have as a kid.
I played through the first two titles pretty quickly. They were difficult, but manageable. Especially in the internet age where I could just look up what order to play the levels in, what weapons are the best to take down each boss, things of this nature. But for whatever reason I stalled out and never got around to playing Mega Man 3. This was, like I said, about 7 or 8 years ago. Inexcusable!
Now I am out to remedy that mistake. In the next year or so I plan to play through every Mega Man title on the disc, starting with the original Mega Man. And what a game the original is.
Firing this up, I was immediately transported back to the 80's. I became that little snot nosed video game obsessed kid again who could only play Mega Man at his friend's house. Except I am a lot better of a player now, and was able to tackle this game with relative ease. I will admit that I did cheat and look up the order in which to play the levels. I did look up boss strategies. Sue me. I could have opted to go in blind (since it has been so long since I have played this) but I have sooo many other games to play - it could have taken me days to master this on my own. People had Nintendo Power back in the day to help them out, so whatever. I don't feel guilty about it.
This game still holds up remarkably well. There is a reason they have recently made Mega Man 9 and 10 in the mold of the NES classics. Because they are fucking classics. The game has a very simple look, but it never seems too primitive or old fashioned.
Mega Man looks nice. The enemies are all varied and well designed. The levels each have their own unique looks and feels. And the controls are just as responsive as ever. You can never blame the controls when you die in a Mega Man game (and you will die many many times). Mega Man moves exactly in tune with the controller. If you die, it is because of your mistake and your mistake alone.
The real challenge of the game - to me anyway - isn't in the fighting. Sure there are some tough stage enemies but they can mostly be dispatched pretty easily. Same with the bosses as well. They all have patterns that they follow and can be very easy to predict. The real challenge comes from the platforming. You have to be spot on with your jumping game, or you have no chance.
So much of the game is jumping from platform to platform, from ledge to ledge, ladder to ladder. Yeah the enemies can (and will) kill you on occasion, but most of my deaths came from falling to my oblivion. There were many points in the game where I thought - no way can I do this. Only to completely master the section a handful of lives later. The first fucking stage there is this platform that flips up when you are riding on it, and you have to jump a gap in the tracks and land back on it when it flips down. That is hard enough - a little while later there is a whole series of gaps in the track. I was like "omfgas;aks;1wop12i1[wq,pl[kl2kew" when I first tried to complete this section. I thought there was no way I could do it. But just stick in there, and you will soon see that anything that the game puts in front of you is possible to master.
You can play each stage (except for the final one) in any order you please. You must defeat the boss of every stage, gaining their powers as you go on. Depending on the order you play the levels in, certain boss fights are made easier depending on which other boss's power you have. For example the powers of Ice Man will help you defeat Fire Man. So if you attempt to defeat Fire Man first, you may have a harder time beating him then you would if you had tackled Ice Man previously.
When you are finally done with each one, you head to the final stage (which is really 4 stages in one) where you must once again defeat each boss, and then face off against Dr Wily at the end of the game. This battle took me several attempts before I finally beat him, and then I learned that the fire weapon makes his HP shoot down to nothing in like 5 seconds if you use it properly. So he is really not that hard if you know how to beat him. Which really goes for this entire game. It really isn't that hard if you know what to do. And having a wicked gaming skill set doesn't hurt either.
I don't know if this is a Mega Man Collection only thing or not, but the game often saved at various points as I played. There was also an unlimited number of continues at my disposal. I know the original Mega Man didn't save, but I wonder if there were unlimited continues in that game too, or if you had to start from the beginning after you ran out of lives. That would make the game REALLY difficult. It would diminish my accomplishment of beating the game in about an hour or two if I found out that you did not actually have unlimited continues in the original game. But hey, ignorance is bliss. And right now I am running with it. I totally owned this game, yo!
But Mega Man, yes. A classic. I am so glad I have this series in my life now. And I can not wait to play more.
Overall:
A
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