Mega Man 8 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 9/1/2025)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 8

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: PS1

Release Date: December 17, 1996

Goddammit, Capcom. Is there no end to your shamelessness? Isn’t there some sort of industry regulation preventing Capcom from milking Mega Man until its nipples are as crusty and depleted as an old sow’s? What am I saying, of course there isn’t! As history tells it, after the blue bomber had tardily leaped into the 16-bit generation with Mega Man X, and with its sequels that bore the same “X” signifier, it gave gamers the impression that the original iteration of Capcom’s de facto mascot was confined to the franchise’s early titles on the NES. However, with the release of the seventh mainline Mega Man game on the SNES, it seemed like Capcom’s goal was to maximize the series’ profit margin by releasing either two games per year. Or, at least churn out one representative to fill the gaps that might occur with elongated development periods. Twice the serving of Mega Man’s yearly output may sound either exciting or excessive, depending on the perspective of the fanbase. Personally, I’ve adopted the negative attitude of the latter because I barely see any merit in continuing the mainline Mega Man series besides Capcom putting more money in their pockets. Mega Man 7 proved to be a worthy entry compared to the last two released on the NES, with its smoother difficulty curve and addition of an item shop in the main menu, but it hardly compares to the level of narrative and gameplay depth that the X series achieves with essentially the same formula. Well, now that we’ve established that Capcom feels no artistic reservations about plodding along with Mega Man’s stagnant, beta form, certainly Mega Man 8 was an inevitability. Unlike Mega Man 4, 5, and 6 that extended the NES’ lifespan far past its prime, the SNES wouldn’t let the series take advantage of the same squatter's rights policy and kicked its ass forward to the next generation. Because Nintendo was awfully stuffy on preserving the relevance of pixels at the time, Mega Man’s new home was the original PlayStation. Despite its initiative to showcase 3D graphics, Sony’s debut console would prove to let sequels of the pixelated variety flourish, if Symphony of the Night is any indication. Is Mega Man 8 just as exemplary in the category of old guard sequels that maintained their glory despite the industry backlash? No, not especially.

No one can fault me for constantly drawing comparisons between the mainline Mega Man series and its upgraded X counterpart. Ever since the first X game introduced its conflict premise with an impressive interactive prologue, every Mega Man game had to imitate it, even the less involved initial series. After a domestic scuffle above some city streets with Mega Man’s returning rival, Bass, Mega Man is tasked by Dr. Light to retrieve a fallen meteor that radiates an unexplainably powerful energy. While stomping through the beachy shore en route to Mega Man’s mission objective, the worst-case scenario of Dr. Wily obtaining the glowing space rock occurs, and we all know that he’s bound to conduct evil experiments with it. However, what Mega Man does successfully uncover at this moment is the wounded body of another robot from the same outer reaches of the cosmos as the meteor. Mega Man carries this aching automaton back to the lab so Dr. Light can nurse it back on its feet, while the titular tin can journeys forward to halt the grey, mustachioed menace once again. While I tend to harp on the transparency behind the slight derivativeness of this prologue, I realize that perhaps the series couldn’t regress back to an automated, expositional sequence once Mega Man X paved this more involved possibility. Offering an interactive introductory level is a wonderful way of getting the player acclimated to the controls and the beginning narrative beats.

While ironing out the introduction with an interactive sequence proves to be engaging, it’s the presentation of Mega Man 8 that might inspire some emphatic groaning from fans. In fact, Mega Man 8’s presentation is bar none the most excruciating aspect of the game, and I don’t even know where to begin with listing its fatal flaws. Let’s start with the game’s overall graphical aesthetic, I suppose. Like a broken record, I have to compare Mega Man 8 to the X games because I detect a clear correlation between how the look of those titles influences the aesthetic of future mainline ones. Actually, I noticed this dynamic being introduced in Mega Man 7, but the eighth game continuing this specific contrast affirms my suspicions. Given the lighter, warmer, and more cartoonish graphical style that permeates through the mainline games after X sharpened the sheen to a point of stark seriousness, I think the developers are attempting to convey that the mainline games are now the more kid-friendly counterpart to Mega Man’s advanced subseries. Admittedly, Mega Man has always been designed for a demographic that might still believe in Santa Claus, but it’s not as if the X games are adult enough to be pitched to the executives at HBO for a potential TV pilot. The “younger” equivalent of a subseries that is already youth-appropriate renders the mainline games to look sickeningly sophomoric. Mega Man 8 looks like a kindergartner’s first foray into the gaming medium, and it’s far too saccharine to swallow. While I’m on the subject of the mainline games now acting as the junior versions of the “mature” X titles, did they have to turn Mega Man into a screeching castrato to signify his boyish physicality? Actually, this probably wasn’t the intention and was just a casualty of whatever farting around occurred in the recording booth. Ladies and gentlemen, out of all of the horrendous voicework of the PS1 era that I’ve dug through, I think I’ve finally struck the septic tank. I can confidently make a guarantee to all of you that all of the Jill sandwiches can’t hold a candle to the awkward, quarter-assed, mumbling, speech-impediment-ridden dialogue “performed” by the voice cast of Mega Man 8. When the robotics genius Dr. Light sounds like a bad impression of Buckwheat, who stutters and misreads his lines at that, you make the argument that video games should be mute like Helen Keller. The animation where these awful line reads occur is pretty neat, however, or at least the novelty of seeing them rendered competently on a primitive 3D console is amusing.

But Mega Man was never intended to be an extravagant display of gaming’s technical evolution. Beneath all of the game’s newfangled atrocities lies the same Mega Man we’re all accustomed to, for better or for worse. While I no longer expect much from the mainline Mega Man series, I can detect that some creative juices were still stewing in the Capcom studios. As per usual, the stage selection is an eclectic mix of environments due to the varied elemental gimmicks of the robot masters at their dead ends. At first, hopping and skipping across a series of mid-air platforms in Tengu Man’s stage will remind all Mega Man veterans of Air Man’s cloudy domain from the second game. However, the blue fan android’s level didn’t feature a vertical segment where Mega Man has to direct himself away from spike balls scattered about while floating upward in a plastic bubble. Clown Man’s castle is definitely the most childish-looking stage in the game, but I enjoy the teleportation doors the stage uses as one of its circus-oriented hijinks. Sword Man and Astro Man’s stages are probably the most ambitious levels in terms of how they fracture the linearity of the typical Mega Man level. I prefer the four obstacles that lock further passage into Sword Man’s temple rather than Astro Man’s door maze that reminds me too much of the headache-inducing Great Cave Offensive for comfort. Some stages feature automated scrolling sections where Mega Man flies on Rush’s backside, and Beat, Eddie, and Auto can join the aerial firefight to clog the screen with bullets like DoDonPachi. I also prefer the team effort here to the other scrolling section I’ve yet to mention, for that one has given me a new outlet to disturb my neighbors and raise my blood pressure. The first section of Frost Man’s level sees Mega Man riding a jetboard on the snow stage’s icy terrain, and the track tends to be quite turbulent and precarious. One miscalculation of a jump or slide, and it’s curtains for the blue bomber. The margin of error involved with this scrolling section is broader than the wingspan of an NBA player, and the penalty for a single mistake that can happen in a flash is strict and absolute. Sure, the game gives the player visual cues so they can anticipate when to either jump or slide, but each of these signs has no rhythmic sensibility to speak of and can hardly be processed when Mega Man is zooming around like an F1 racer with its brakes cut. What is this, the fucking Turbo Tunnel? Except for this unhinged horse shit, most of Mega Man 8’s level gimmicks serve as serviceable variations on recycled level themes.

Of course, I can’t discuss the levels of a Mega Man game thoroughly without mentioning the robot masters at each of their cores. Besides their half-hearted attempts to sound menacing in their compressed vocal utterances, the octet of hostile machines is really just as adequate as always. Grenade Man blasts the floor of the arena after his health bar collapses to a certain level, revealing another stage with elevated ridges like Quick Man’s encounter. Frost Man must suffer from a pituitary problem, because the ice boss is so ginormous that his character model doesn’t fit his introduction screen in the menu. Hearing his mentally-deficient line delivery also might almost make the player feel remorseful for destroying the big lug (almost). Clown Man seems to have the widest array of attacks at his disposal, Tengu Man is incredibly difficult to reach on account of being airborne, Sword Man has a habit of separating himself as if he can slice his torso at will, and Search Man marks the debut of a double robot master in the vein of conjoined twins. Really, my favorite robot master here is Aqua Man for all of the wrong reasons. His shared moniker with that of a famous DC superhero amusingly begs the question if “Bat Man” and “Spider Man” could be upcoming robot masters in the future, and I guffawed at his greeting, where he presents a rainbow banner that brandishes his name. At least he’s loud and proud about it? As for their respective weapons that all serve as their specific weaknesses, alas, I have to stop hoping for another Metal Blade to grace my presence. In the meantime, the “Flame Sword” dished out impressive damage at a short range, the “Homing Sniper” erased every tiny enemy from the equation with little effort, and I found myself using Aqua Man’s “Water Balloon” as a substitute for the regular blaster almost as much as the Metal Blade (with diminished results, naturally). I also tended to use the other boss weapons like the “Thunder Claw” and “Tornado Hold,” but only because the game kept obliging me to do so with platforming sections that required their usage; an admirable innovation that persuades the player to use their deck to its fullest. Still, while using these weapons for their traditional purposes, exploiting a robot master’s weakness with them this time around has shifted from helpful to straight-up, sadistically annihilating them. Any exposure to their respective kryptonites will have them convulse as you’ve just fried a fish with a taser, and their extended window of vulnerability turns every duel into an absolute cakewalk.

Fighting against the robot masters will expose the fact that Mega Man 8 has a very inconsistent difficulty curve. Like with the previous game, escaping the backwards practices of the NES titles made for a much easier Mega Man experience. Mega Man 8’s contribution to the accessibility initiative is providing solid checkpoints between the two halves of these elongated levels, even when the player exhausts each of their lives. Mega Man 8 also forgoes series staples like E-tanks for upgrades purchased in Roll’s shop that enhance Mega Man’s platforming and offensive capabilities. While these alterations are bound to disgust seasoned players, the strange thing is that they’re hardly relevant factors to the real meat of Mega Man 8’s harder moments. As we’ve discussed, the harsh and chaotic jet board section in Frost Man’s stage stands head and shoulders above all others in terms of a steep challenge. I fail to see how augmenting Mega Man’s blaster or any other perk they’ve implemented really serves the player in any impactful manner with this scenario. During the Dr. Wily climax, which is intended to be consistently more demanding than all eight previous levels combined, all the difficulty of the upward trek is allotted to the starting line. Another treacherous jetboard segment rockets this journey off that makes the previous one seem like a Sunday afternoon stroll by comparison, followed by a series of swinging on hooks with the “Thunder Claw” that requires practically perfect precision, and then caps off with a boss where the only means of harming it involves angling the game’s clumsy default soccer ball weapon with the proficiency of Pele. Hope you weren’t just bouncing off this thing for a bigger platforming boost! Did I mention that the player must accomplish all of this without getting a game over? And to think that this would be the ultimate instance where the checkpoint system would come in handy! After the player manages to persevere through this gauntlet of torment, nothing that follows will compare to its austerity. The next boss can be defeated just by holding down the shoot button. Bass is a predictable little bitch, and I would gladly face off against Flubber Demon over his lemon-colored cousin any day of the week. How does the mad doctor dish out punishment as the series’ penultimate foe, especially since he was an absolute nightmare in his last appearance? Half-heartedly at best. Every one of his attacks is perfectly avoidable, and Rush’s new ability to airdrop goodies refuelled Mega Man for his equally unstimulating second phase. Don’t think I’ll be recounting this one in therapy.

Yep, I’m still subscribed to the thought that “mainline Mega Man” is a redundancy when the X series exists. In an alternate timeline where the NES showed some discipline and released only three or four Mega Man games, and the X series never saw the light of day, perhaps Mega Man 8 would have made a more substantial impact on the series. As it is, the presentational pacing, the upgrades, and finding ways to fracture a level’s linearity would only be impressive if we didn’t know that Mega Man 8 was copying these innovations from the X series. Still, Mega Man 7 was just as guilty of monkey see, monkey do, but its smoothness made all of its attempts to catch up at least agreeable. Mega Man 8, on the other hand, is a mess of decisions that are admirable at best and excruciating at worst. And no, they certainly aren’t limited to the abysmal voice “acting,” if you can call it that. When Mega Man 8 was wearing on my patience, I wished that I was being bored by Mega Man 5 and 6 again. Lord, lay this series to rest and just let the X subseries officially take its mantle.