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 smaller than the wingspan of a T. Rex, 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.

Mega Man 7 Review

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

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 7

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: SNES

Release Date: May 24, 1995

Haha...what?!

Does Capcom mean to tell us with Mega Man 7 that Mega Man X WASN’T intended to be the changing of the guard into the next generation? Are they really pushing their shitty 1995 Buick Roadmaster up a hilly country road when it’s out of gas after they’ve purchased a strapping new automobile that’s completely fueled up? Is it sentimentalism that keeps Capcom from pulling the plug on the original Mega Man series, a sextet of NES titles that were beaten into a vegetative state of creative burnout due to oversaturation? Did they really think that shifting the series to a console that doubled the visual capacity with a seventh entry would make a difference? Whatever the impetus was, digging up the classic Mega Man series that was presumably dead when Mega Man X hit the scene has me befuddled to Hell and back. Coexisting alongside its evolved descendant like how monkeys still roam the Earth after we humans still reign supreme is a nice gesture, but what exactly can the classic series do to prove that the X series hasn’t condemned it to obsolescence? It doesn’t help that Mega Man 7 is not a particularly well-regarded entry to the classic series, so the case for its continued lifespan isn’t holding up all that well. However, even though it doesn’t hold a candle to the highest points of the X series, I’ve found that Mega Man 7’s ill-repute among its classic series peers can be heavily disputed.

Simply because Mega Man 7 shares a kinship with the primitive classic series doesn’t mean it’s restricted to sharing their 8-bit modesty. Due to existing on the same 16-bit system, Mega Man 7 borrows an abundance of presentational flair from Mega Man X. This is immediately apparent when the game begins with a cutscene sequence that sees Mega Man having a conversation with Roll and a new character named Auto, complete with scrolling text on screen contained in speech bubbles. Once the conversation stops, Mega Man is thrusted into the chaos on the futuristic city streets in a prologue level, an introductory standard stripped from the X sub-series. While the cinematic touches and expositional sequence put it on a relatively equal standing in narrative richness to any of the X games, Mega Man 7 does not choose to channel the sharper, slightly more mature aesthetic of the classic series’ offspring. Mega Man 7 still exists in the same timeline as the unrefined NES games with the same diminutive robot boy seen a century before Dr. Light advanced his darling automaton with that extra X chromosome, so the aesthetic needed to reflect the jejune status of our hero that we likely forgot since the first X game was released. The result of this consideration is a bright and colorful aesthetic akin to the lightheartedness of a Saturday morning cartoon, with the 16-bit graphics of the NES animating the pixel art to a discernible degree. As for Mega Man’s design, the developers found it essential for him to share that look of passionate, heroic determination as his X alter ego. In execution, the boyish baby fat of Mega Man’s face makes his serious visage resemble that of an annoyed Butters from South Park. It makes me want to give Mega Man a noogie, not treat him seriously as the savior of the cyber age.

Other than the animated visual overhaul and the marginal strides to elevate the narrative to be on par with the X games, Mega Man 7 is predictably the same old song and dance as any other Mega Man game. Eight robot masters must be vanquished and their powers will be downloaded into Mega Man’s all-purpose arm cannon, and checking them all off on the blue bomber’s hit list will unlock Wily’s fortress where Mega Man will confront the mustachioed menace. However, one change to the series’ formulaic arc found here is that only half of the robot master roster is available at the start. The opening cutscene explains what seems like an arbitrary, insignificant monkey wrench into a Mega Man tradition, in that only four robot masters beckoned to Dr. Wily’s command to tear up the city brick by brick if he did not make his presence known for six months (on account of being incarcerated). On one hand, only offering half of the lineup initially severely limits the possibilities of the progression trajectory. On the other hand, I suppose that the suppressed selection connotes that finding one of these robot masters’ weaknesses is a one-and-three chance instead of the usual one-and-seven, so the suggested progression course is quicker and easier to start.

Once the player finds the intended trajectory, they’ll find that Mega Man 7’s levels are perfectly cromulent and outstandingly diverse as always. The rubber of Turbo Man’s spare tires will bounce Mega Man into the hazardous spike pits if he collides with their conveyor system, while the refuse of Junk Man’s stage is being collected as a shelter for groups of repugnant little robot cockroaches. Freeze Man is the exhausted, yet effective snow stage, while the Jurassic Park jungle with robotic dinosaurs that Slash Man operates prolongs a pattern of humid environments usually prevalent across every X entry. The buoyancy of the liquid physics in Burst Man’s stage and how to calculate Mega Man’s jump force in relation to how far he will sink is a genuinely clever innovation on the standard water level. The standout level in Mega Man 7 for my money is Shade Man’s, for the bat and zombie-infested Halloween town is the series’ first stab at a horror-themed area. Sue me, I’m a sucker for spookiness. As for their weapons, each of them falls nicely in the middle of the spectrum between the orgasmic bodaciousness of the Metal Blade and the pitiful, horribly conceived Top Spin. Burst Man is an advancement on Bubble Man’s conceptual identity, as his liquid globules are dense enough to ensnare enemies and lift them to the great unknown or trap them to the ceiling. Cloud Man is evidently of the cumulonimbus variation, for Mega Man can condense the power of his lightning into an energy blast the size of the charge shot. Spring Man’s coils can be charged to unleash two simultaneously, and I guess Shade Man’s sonar blast is shrill enough to warp a robot’s circuitry. Slash Man’s weapon is especially notable not only because it compensates for Mega Man’s lack of close-ranged offense, but because it looks like Mega Man is bitch slapping his enemies. Pay your respects, Dr. Wily.

Some of the common negative discourse surrounding Mega Man 7 is that the game is far too facile to uphold the blistering Mega Man standard of difficulty. I criticized Mega Man 5 for loosening the classic difficulty grip on the player, but Mega Man 7 is comparatively a brisk walk in the park. Enemy placements are reasonable, level hazards are manageable, and the stage gimmicks such as the reappearing block platforms aren’t nearly as demanding as they used to be. Truthfully, the quality-of-life enhancements are quite refreshing. The level of accessibility on display feels far more organic than when Mega Man 5 attempted to ease the pain of steep difficulty because of the refinement that comes with the advanced hardware of the SNES. The inherent upgrade in graphics and mechanics aids Mega Man 7 while Mega Man 5 felt like a deliberate digression, especially since it was released after Mega Man 4 which was the quality peak of the NES titles. It’s not to say that the fifth entry in the classic Mega Man series failed miserably on all fronts in smoothing out Mega Man’s difficulty curve, for Mega Man 7 decides to reinstate some of that game’s ideas on hardware that complimented them. Firstly, in the first four robot master stages, letters that spell RUSH are scattered somewhere in the obscured corners of the area. Mega Man veterans should recognize that these four letters form the name of Mega Man’s trusty, robotic red pooch. Mega Man will still summon Rush on occasion to trampoline him on out-of-reach platforms with his trusty coil apparatus, but all of Rush's other applications have to be found on the field like collectibles. The process of uncovering these auxiliary utilities requires the same meticulous exploration as finding any health upgrade or special abilities in an X title, and it encourages a more intimate engagement with the level along with a replayability incentive. The selection of optional gadgets obtained through exploration is also marvelously vast. For one, if the player collects all of the letters, it will unlock a combined version of both the jet and power suits seen in the previous Mega Man game, which is definitely handy during a few platforming sections in Dr Wily’s castle. Depending on how you eradicate a spherical miniboss in Shade Man’s stage that is shaped like a pumpkin, the routes its explosion unveils will lead to two separate gadgets, which will of course encourage the player to revisit the stage to unlock the one they missed on the first go-around. Finding Protoman and defeating him in a friendly duel will even warrant him anteing up his shield, blocking all pesky projectiles from grazing Mega Man. It’s such a nice gesture on his behalf that I feel obliged to send him a fruit basket as a token of my gratitude.

Protoman is so charitable to Mega Man now, figuratively giving him the shirt off his back in the shape of his shield, that one could forget that he was once his rival who formerly antagonized him at inconvenient moments. The developers figured that a new character should fill the rival role’s vacancy in the form of Bass, another humanoid robot who dons black armor instead of blue. He, along with his own canine companion, Treble, (get the reference?) makes his acquaintance with Mega Man during the prologue and states that his order of business is to stop Dr. Wily, and his assessment of Mega Man’s ability to conquer the mad scientist depends on whether or not the player can defeat him at this moment. His motives are vague, but Mega Man recognizes that Bass is fighting for the same cause and treats this mysterious stranger as a worthy ally. However, Mega Man’s naive trust in the good in his fellow robot comes to bite him in the ass when he allows Bass to recuperate from his wounds in Dr. Light’s lab. Bass ransacks the place and steals potent upgrades designed for Mega Man and Rush, and Mega Man storms Dr Wily’s castle to retrieve them. Maybe it’s just because I’m cynical to the core, but I’m not sure how effective Bass is as an antagonist. They prop him up as the classic series’ iteration of Zero, but the red rogue already had a relationship with X before the events of the game’s prologue. Establishing trust immediately without earning it is the first rule in the book of duplicity, and I wish I could express this knowledge to Mega Man before he made a fool of himself letting this jerkoff walk all over him.

However, I wish that the souped-up fusion fight with Bass and Treble was the penultimate fight of Mega Man 7, and it’s not because Dr. Wily’s fight is predictable and boring as always. Dr. Wily is evidently cross at the fact that the X series ousted him from the limelight as the series’ abiding main villain, and a scorned Wily makes for an especially spiteful encounter at the game’s climax. The first stage where Wily is hopping around in a hefty mechanical skull on stilts has a perfectly learnable attack pattern. However, the subsequent section where he’s riding around in a floating capsule fires artillery that seemingly could only be dodged with the slowed-down special effects seen in The Matrix. Wily fires four energy balls with three different kinds of elemental properties, and the suggested tactic during this boss, no joke, is to collide with the electrical ones because they deal less damage to Mega Man. Sure, one can hone their dodging prowess and evade the balls with grace and proficiency with practice, but who has time for that? To make matters worse, the capsule’s weaknesses only shave slivers off of its stocky health bar, so the player is forced to tank an inordinate amount of damage in order to survive this grueling test of endurance. Mega Man 7’s Dr. Wily is not only the definitively hardest iteration of the mad doctor, but he has joined the ranks of bosses that have angered my dentist in how they make me grit my teeth down to the pulp in frustration. It sufficiently made us all respect Wily’s authority once again, that’s for damn sure. It even aggravates Mega Man so much that he decides to forgo his laurels as he shockingly plans to execute Wily once and for all, but this decision is ultimately thwarted. Kill him, Mega Man! Paint the walls of his fortress with his blood!

While it may seem like Wily has bested us all with his zooming energy balls that have the indecipherable pattern of a swarm of flies, there is a hidden method to utilize against Wily’s unforgiving onslaught. Unless the player has the manual on hand, which I don’t, they won’t know that pressing select in the main menu will access Auto’s garage, a one-stop shop for any conceivable item in the Mega Man series. Here, Mega Man can stock up on energy and weapon tanks, and guzzling them like beer at a frat party is the only way the player will withstand Wily. Unfortunately, Mega Man can only have four of each item at a time, and insisting on buying more than the maximum allowed will cause him to be chastised by Auto for “being greedy.” Do you know what I’m up against, you fat green dope? Miserly business practices aside, the shop is a genius point of innovation. The bolt currency is plentiful and the energy tanks on the field are too sparse to rely on, so the player is more than compelled to visit this service to stand a fighting chance. Maybe check to see if the open sign is on so the player will be aware of its existence, Auto?

After several years of trusting that Mega Man 7 “sucks big dinosaur balls,” I’ve come to find that this crude assessment of the game’s quality is totally undeserved. It’s a refined Mega Man experience in all contexts. Thanks to the advancements found on the SNES, the mainline Mega Man series can flourish with colorful pixel art, greater accessibility, and more nuanced level designs that reward the player handsomely by exploring them. By borrowing assets from the X series, Mega Man 7 still doesn’t stack up to the advancements of that series because it's inherently shackled to the exhausted properties of the mainline series. Still, anyone arguing that any Mega Man game from the NES is better than this one is smoking the nostalgia pipe. Hell, I think Mega Man 7 is better than the third X game released the same year. NES enthusiasts are adamant, man.

Mega Man 6 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/17/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 6

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: November 5, 1993

Now this is just getting ridiculous. Doubling the the number of Mega Man games on the NES after overstepping the amount fitting for a nicely succinct trilogy almost makes Mega Mans 4-6 its own trilogy separate from the first three games. What defining name shall we refer to Mega Man 4-6 to codify this selection of the series' latter half on its debut system? “The charge shot trilogy?” “The Dr. Wily bait-and-switch trilogy?” “The semi-useless Eddie trilogy?” There are so many different possibilities. All jokes aside, I’m actually glad that Capcom rounded out their flagship franchise with their blue robot boy with six games. Mega Man 5 would've been a rather tepid note to end Mega Man’s tenure on the NES, for its contributions to the long-running series amounted to nothing of substantial growth to the Mega Man formula. I never expected Mega Man 6 to reinvent the wheel, especially after Mega Man 5 inadvertently proved that Mega Man’s full potential peaked with the fourth entry. My optimism regarding Mega Man 6 stemmed from the fact that Capom now had the opportunity to rectify the mistakes they made in Mega Man 5 in their attempts to give it some fresh discernibility. Mega Man 6 could now cement Mega Man’s legacy on the console that started it with something comparable to the apex point that was Mega Man 4. Alas, Mega Man 6 is yet another entry marked by unnecessary changes, but at least the changes it makes are far more interesting and involved than those from the previous games.

The entourage of robot masters this time around is an especially inspired bunch. Instead of leaving the creative process to a few lucky Japanese kids via a contest, the cohesive theme for these eight robot masters is that they all vaguely represent a different nation in the real world based on both their physical designs and levels. One might hear this idea and facepalm considering that the developers callously drew parallels between a sensitive world event where several innocent people died with Napalm Man’s Vietnam War-theme level in the previous game. However, the pack of international mechanical marvels is constructed with far more tact and respect. Tomahawk Man represents the deep cultural heritage of the native people in America, Blizzard Man is a comment on how absurdly frigid the northern land of Canada can be, and Yamato Man is the robotic samurai that Capcom felt would be emblematic of their own culture. The others are up to speculation because their origins are not detailed in the game’s manual for some reason. If I had to guess, Plant Man is Latin American because of his tropical level and the rose’s affiliation with their dances, Knight Man is a chivalrous artifact of Middle Ages England, Centaur Man is a Greek mythology reference, Wind Man correlates with China’s reputation for wind energy, and Flame Man’s Indian identity can be assumed from his turban and by the fact that food from that country is scorchingly spicy. The nationalities of this array of robots is also relevant because they are the worldly representatives in the newly founded “Global Robot Alliance,” a UN of sorts established after Dr. Wily has attempted to upset the balance between the machines and their human creators numerous times. Speaking of Mega Man’s perennial antagonist, his new ploy to disrupt the order of this organization is to construct a tournament of champions between the eight robot masters for the prize of sole representation as the world’s robotic protector. Yes, the game introduces a villain named “Mr. X” as its diabolical schemer, but I absolutely refuse to humor the notion of another Mega Man antagonist for a THIRD fucking time. Besides, Mr. X’s resemblance to Dr. Wily is uncanny, so even the developers knew that they couldn’t maintain their own charade. While I’ve given up on taking the Mega Man conflict scenarios seriously, at least the themes of the robot masters behind the plot are intriguing. Capcom crafted a slew of cool robot masters with a cultural theme one tasteful degree above Nintendo’s Punch-Out!

Squeezing six games onto one console has an implication that a lot of time has passed since Mega Man’s birth in 1987. By late 1993 when Mega Man 6 was released, the SNES successor to the NES was well into its course as Nintendo’s primary soldier in the console wars. In fact, the SNES had been available on store shelves for so long at this point that those interested in playing Mega Man 6 most likely had to dig through their closets and blow off the dust that their old NES system had freshly collected. Some may ponder why anyone would be interested in regressing to the outdated guard briefly when the future was in full swing and why Capcom didn’t bother to simply develop Mega Man 6 for the current console. From another perspective, Mega Man 6 had the advantageous position of being a practically posthumous period release on the NES because it could comfortably relax in the house that all of the preceding NES titles (including previous Mega Man games) had painstakingly crafted with their blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a smaller house than the SNES that was under construction at the time, but a fully erected living space is far cozier. Due to the lack of mechanical strain, Mega Man 6 looks fantastic from a graphical standpoint. Every 8-bit texture that renders the eight robot master stages and the interior of Dr. Wily’s castle is refined to near-perfect, pixelated perfection. The foliage of the hanging rainforest trees is remarkably green and textured to the point of seeing every individual leaf. The pistons holding together the man-made foundation of Tomahawk Man’s stage are as finely detailed as the natural crags of the rock formations outside. Every star over the background city seen from the entrance point of Wily’s castle shines brighter from that view than the scene of space in Star Man’s stage from the last game. Mega Man 6 proves that 8-bit graphics are a legitimate aesthetic.

What interests me more pertaining to the levels in Mega Man 6 has less to do with how they are graphically rendered and more with their design. Mega Man 6 unfortunately may only offer a couple of alternate routes to change the trajectory of the destination to a robot master as it is this game’s means of unlocking Beat. Still, at least the game puts a calculated effort into diversifying the straightaway trek for every other level. If one can recall back to the first Mega Man game, they’ll remember that the weapons did more than act as alternatives to the blaster and counter the element for the contrasting robot master. Mega Man 6 continues what was abandoned in Mega Man’s debut by blocking extra lives and energy/weapon tanks behind large, compact cubes of junk. To unearth these impediments to obtain these items, Mega Man needs a gadget that is not granted to him until he defeats a certain number of robot masters. The catch is that there are instances where vital pickups are obscured behind these crude formations across every level, so the player is persuaded to replay the levels to gather all of the goodies. Also, confining a hefty quantity of these types of items to these out-of-reach nooks and crannies means they are in less abundance, so the player cannot suck down a twelve-pack of energy tanks when they are slightly wounded anymore.

Which item allows Mega Man to manipulate the mounds of mechanical dirt? I guess how Mega Man 6 defines its strides of innovation is with the alternate suits that replace Rush. When selecting either the Jet Suit or Power Suit in the menu upon unlocking them, Rush appears as he converges with Mega Man, turning Mega Man’s armor to the crimson sheen of his canine companion. The Power Suit is bulky and is the method of disposing of what stands between Mega Man and his rightful energy tanks. Holding the attack button will launch a deadly blast of energy, but it is constricted to a short range. The Jet Suit, on the other hand, allows Mega Man to soar gracefully like a rocket blasting off into space, but more akin to one of the hobby models that craps out after a few seconds. The only caveat is that the charge shot will be unavailable, but we’ve already ventured through three Mega Man games before the charge shot was even conceived and managed to survive. The primary perk of the suits is that they refill their fuel automatically upon depletion instead of needing to walk over an energy replenisher and invite all players to keep this apparatus on at all times as I did. The alternate suits are the new implementation of the Mega Man formula that sticks out in my mind for their usefulness, but it still raises a few questions. Does Rush meld into Mega Man with the mechanical malleability of a Transformer, or does he shed his modular armor for Mega Man to use as a token of assistance? Is he just a simple dog underneath the suit, running off to Dr. Light’s house to chase squirrels and drag his ass across the carpet whenever Mega Man is borrowing the outer layer of his body?

The alternate suits are also a welcome addition to Mega Man 6 because they compensate for the charge shot’s comparatively limp power capacity. Upon charging the standard blaster, searing energy still flows throughout Mega Man’s being, but the range and impact of the fully charged release feel far less impactful when dealing with enemies. The convenient crutch that I’ve been using for the past two games has been nerfed, probably an intentional effort from the developers to coax me into shuffling through the robot master’s weapons outside of their battles. Overall, the robot master weapons in Mega Man 6 do nothing to impress because a lot of them are recycled from previous games. Plant Man has a shield that performs exactly what one would expect, Flame Man has another fire weapon, Knight Man’s projectile morning star top and the Yamato Spear both have a straightforward trajectory, and Centaur Man’s flash weapon should inspire strong memories of a certain robot master from Mega Man 2. The “blizzard” attack barely amounts to a fucking flurry. While I’m completely underwhelmed by what’s in Mega Man’s arsenal, at least there are no impractical weapons such as Stone Man’s or any effortless screen obliterators like Gravity Man’s, both from Mega Man 5. Because the developers knew that the player would be exhausting more of the ancillary fuel from the weapons, Mega Man 6 introduces an energy balancer that supplies the most depleted weapon with energy from another to fully refill it. Thanks, Capcom. I wish they thought of this when the Metal Blade was still in Mega Man’s grasp.

I’m also underwhelmed by Dr. Wily in Mega Man 6, and it isn’t because Mr. X reveals himself to be Wily with more facial hair because I’m not a brain-dead simpleton. The two castles that lead up to Dr. Wily are perfectly challenging, with some spiky blindspots during some drops that vanquished me more than I’m willing to admit that reminded me fondly of Quick Man. I’m referring to the final duel between Mega Man and the mad doctor that takes place in three stages, as par for the course. Again, the first two stages see Dr. Wily attempt to crush Mega Man under the weight and force of stomping him, and then the third stage involves Dr. Wily disappearing periodically to give Mega Man a fleeting chance to aim a shot while dodging a series of cyclones. Fortunately, the upward angle of the Silver Tomahawk allows Mega Man to end the all-too-familiar fight in seconds. After experiencing deja vu from Wily’s final fight from the previous game, Mega Man mixes up the result considerably and finally puts the scourge of the robotic world under arrest, tying him up with rope as if he’s planning on placing him on the train tracks. I’m almost proud of Mega Man for placing Dr. Wily in custody, but it's taken him too goddamn long to do what is necessary for me to seriously commend him.

I guess Mega Man 6 triumphs over the previous Mega Man game in its commitment to reverse some aspects back to the earlier entries. Mega Man 5 was a facile experience with too heavy of a reliance on the booming charge shot and an inexhaustible amount of energy tanks at the player’s disposal. Hiding the items behind walls and channeling less firepower into the charge shot so as not to eclipse the series staple of robot master weapons started to remind me of the challenge I had come to associate with Mega Man. Still, the lack of inspiration with the weapons despite the solid theming of their users along with Dr. Wily phoning in his final challenge against Mega Man is further indication that Mega Man had run its course on the console it was born onto. While Mega Man 6 is still a more respectable experience than the last entry, the series is still long overdue to wrap things up like the series hero eventually did with his mortal nemesis.

Mega Man 5 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 12/5/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 5

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: December 4, 1992

“Um, excuse me sir, the thing is, there’s not really anything wrong with The Itchy & Scratchy show, it’s as good as ever. But after so many years, the characters can’t have the same impact they once had.”

Thank you, Lisa Simpson. While this quote is obviously about the decline in viewer interest in the fictional cartoon series in the universe of The Simpsons (also a meta parallel on the state of the actual Simpsons show by its eighth season), I could strikethrough Itchy & Scratchy with Mega Man and the quote would still apply to the state of the franchise by its fifth entry. Mega Man 5 is when the gaming public started to turn on the blue bomber, for the long-running series on the NES wasn’t just overstaying its welcome: it was still drinking and hooting in the morning long after the party was over and everyone had gone home. After several entries in a franchise on the same system, whose potential is fairly limited by the primitive NES hardware despite the clear evolution across every subsequent title, Mega Man started failing to captivate gamers because the formula had been exhausted by this point. In Mega Man 5, he still fights eight robot masters with individual levels and climbs through the intimidating fortress of Dr. Wily afterward, all while pew-pewing with his blaster along the way. Mega Man 5 is exactly what one would expect from Capcom’s seminal series, but this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Mega Man 5 still possesses plenty of upstanding qualities that make the game worth playing even if none of them are revolutionary.

However, Mega Man 5’s plot is not one of them. Protoman is the primary villain in Mega Man 5, you say? Yeah right, Capcom; and I’m Roger Ebert. If Protoman isn’t a red herring for Dr. Wily, I’ll eat my own shoe. Nevertheless, we are intended to humor the premise that the rogue, shielded older brother of Mega Man is unmistakenly evil now, kidnapping Dr. Light and mustering up a new slew of robot masters as a defensive blockade for Mega Man to hurdle over. Just unveil Dr. Wily as the culprit for all of this madness. There is no need to insult everyone’s intelligence for the sake of artificial freshness.

How is this new crop of robot masters that Dr. Wily Protoman has whipped up? Well, there are eight of them as usual, and they are all distinctive from one another to balance their weaknesses so Mega Man can exploit them when he absorbs their power upon defeating them. Overall, the level of creativity with this flock of robot masters is up to par with that of the previous game, with only a few of them such as Wave Man and Crystal Man being instances of breaking out the trusty thesaurus to repaint over previous robot masters with similar thematic identities. Gyro Man’s main characteristic is a green propeller normally attached to an aircraft, Stone Man is a rocky golem, and Star Man features the gleaming astronomical object on the front of his body like an uncomfortably large insignia. Charge Man is the most unique robot master that Mega Man 5 offers from a design standpoint, for he aesthetically resembles a steam train and kind of maneuvers around with the straightaway driving force of one as well. Because of this, he’s also the most irritating robot master to fight because he’ll stick to Mega Man on the ground like stink on shit.

But thinking of descriptors to design new robot masters around is a relatively simple task compared to rendering their defining properties as weapons that Mega Man can utilize as alternatives to the blaster. The weapons obtained from these bosses are interesting, to say the least. Star Man marks the first instance where defeating him grants Mega Man TWO weapons: a star shield and an arrow. I can’t complain that the shield is yet another attempt at copying Wood Man because at least this sort of device always comes in handy. However, the “super arrow” acts as a less beefy version of the Hard Knuckle, with a much sluggish acceleration if you can believe it. Gyro Man’s projectile propeller could also fit in the long line of unsatisfactory Metal Blade substitutes, restricted to the stringent Y and X-axis directions with the speed of a softball toss. The bulbous Crystal Eye scatters into three ricocheting balls once it hits a surface, but what are the chances that Mega Man will find a wall to bounce this cluster of crystals off of along the straightaway path? Gravity Man’s weapon is the cheap screen clearer weapon that most players will end up abusing, as it quite literally blows enemies off the screen. At least the Metal Blade requires at least a modicum of skill to use. Weaponizing the dash maneuver with the Charge Kick seems novel enough in theory, but a tool that forces direct contact with enemies in a game that emphasizes ranged combat is as impractical as one would assume. The spiraling power stone is so wild and imprecise that I opted to use Mega Man’s charge shot on Charge Man instead of his assigned weakness. In fact, in most instances, I barely ever shuffled through these weapons and instead favored Mega Man’s upgraded standard blaster as I did in the previous game.

By this point, the Mega Man series had reached the apex of graphical potential it was ever going to reach on the 8-bit NES system. However, this relative restriction didn’t limit Capcom’s creativity with level themes. Manipulating Mega Man’s buoyancy, a platforming gimmick usually reserved for underwater sections, has seemed to have transitioned to the opposite spectrum of the outer reaches of space. Gravity Man features Mega Man walking on the ceilings, while Star Man’s stage is an unbounded area of the cosmos where Mega Man can soar almost limitlessly with one leap. Mega Man 5 still innovates with water, however, as Wave Man’s stage suddenly transforms into an auto-scrolling vehicle section with Mega Man riding a jet ski. The crystals that gleam off of Crystal Man’s stage are so decadently textured that they seem impenetrable like Superman’s fortress of solitude. One can argue that Stone Man’s stage is a refurbished version of Gutsman’s stage as Gyro Man’s is for Air Man’s, using similar motifs while refining the jagged aspects of both respective areas for a smoother experience. The robot master stages in Mega Man 5 are as consistently outstanding as those from Mega Man 4. However, I have to make mention of one stage in the game that stands out above the rest for all the wrong reasons, and that’s the domain of Napalm Man. No, I’m not singling out this one stage because it’s the most difficult one (even though it damn well is), but because of its insensitive parallels with a tragic war in another Asian country. I’d shrug off the contextual evidence of a jungle setting for a robot master called Napalm Man as a coincidence, except that Capcom actually confirmed that creating a Vietnam War-themed stage here was intentional. What made them think this was a tasteful idea? Why not have a robot master named Gas Man whose stage is set in 1940s Poland while they’re at it (sorry, I might have crossed some lines here)?

The points of progress with the Mega Man series can only be minuscule little additions at this point, and the evidence to this claim can be affirmed by the few that Mega Man 5 implements. Complimenting the nifty and convenient energy tank that restores Mega Man’s health to its full capacity are the new weapon tanks that refill every single one of his exhaustible beams at once. I remember wishing for an item with this exact function back in Mega Man 2 and now that it’s real, I’m at least somewhat pleased. I’m less ecstatic because the weapon tanks are as rare as finding a four-leaf clover, while Mega Man will stumble upon so many energy tanks that he’ll be practically tripping over them. The more conspicuous addition that the player will readily notice is a large grid of letters that spell out “MEGAMANV” with the fifth Roman numeral attached, and each letter of this grid is found across every level. Why should the player bother with the painstaking effort to gather these collectible letters? Well, the reward for the player’s troubles is another trusty animal companion, overshadowing Rush due to the red, robotic dog having one less function (and a wonky reworking of the rush coil) than usual. Beat is one vicious bluebird bot, eviscerating both enemies and bosses alike by violently pecking at them and depleting their health bars. To prevent Mega Man’s gameplay from becoming like 8-bit falconry, he also comes with a finite energy meter like any of the secondary weapons. Still, with the ease and personality attached to this unlockable ally, the player will abuse Beat’s abilities without shame. Surprisingly, I fully endorse using Beat with impunity because he’s an interesting reward that motivates me to engage with Mega Man 5’s main gimmick.

Even without Beat and a surplus of energy tanks, Mega Man 5 is much easier than every title in the series before it. One could argue this observation during the robot master stages, but this becomes transparently evident during the climactic sections in Wily’s castle and the illusionary one made for Protoman. A select few platforming sections involving some conveyor belts might stir up some spicy anger with some players, but streamlining the NES Mega Man experience is more noticeable with the bosses. Surprise, surprise, the Protoman that has allegedly betrayed the trust of Dr. Light is a shapeshifting alt-series robot called Darkman and the real Protoman is innocent of his charges. Color me shocked. Darkman and his quartet of multicolored, jaundiced bots are the bosses of the section that leads up to Dr. Wily, and every last one of them is predictable and embarrassingly vulnerable. The two roadblock bosses in Dr. Wily’s real castle are satisfyingly challenging and fit the imposing sizes we’ve seen across all of the mad doctor’s tower defenses. Unfortunately, it all culminates in the most pathetic Dr. Wily dual since that time he transformed into an alien. The first section is waiting for Dr. Wily to descend downward with enough space to avoid being crushed by his spacecraft, the second involves shooting a shot or arrow into the gullet of his skull tank and lastly, Dr. Wily zooms about in his saucer, disappearing in a circle of pink energy balls to illuminate himself again at a height that leaves himself exposed. Integrate Beat to simply contact Wily in the air and Mega Man is free to get a lawn chair, lift his feet up and relax. No, I’m not realizing that I’ve taken the Yellow Devil for granted as a worthy opponent. In fact, I’d be praising the fairness of the final fight against Wily here if all three of his forms weren’t limp and lazy versions of phases we’ve already seen in the series.

Mega Man 5 didn’t need to exist. I apologized up and down to Mega Man 4 for exceeding the harmonious arc of a trilogy, for it more than proved that there was still plenty of unpaved ground that when smoothed over with innovation could make for a tighter experience in a series that was still coarse by its third entry. Sure, Mega Man 5 is smooth as silk, but we’ve already knit the swankiest suit from the fine fabric the previous game was composed of and these are just the raw materials left over. Nothing Mega Man 5 adds is all too necessary or poignant in what the previous games were lacking, except for perhaps the weapon tank that would’ve been a lifesaver in earlier entries. Still, Mega Man 5 is fortunate to be one of the most agreeable experiences in the at-times excruciating NES library by default of being a Mega Man game. It’s ultimately an exceptional game, but it does nothing to impress the already initiated.

Mega Man 4 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 6/27/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 4

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom 

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: December 6, 1991

From an artistic standpoint, I am of the belief that a franchise shouldn’t surpass the number of entries fitting for a trilogy. Brevity is not only the soul of wit but also a necessity to retain the magic and integrity of a series of entertainment properties. However, my passionate sentiments would cause serious humiliation at the Capcom offices, as they would laugh like hyenas as I ran out of the room in a crying frenzy like a girl who just bombed her school’s talent show. As thankful as I am for Capcom and all of the other video game conglomerates, their ultimate goal at the end of the day is to turn a profit with their creative properties. Since Capcom now found a winning formula with their Mega Man franchise, they milked that udder dry until it shriveled up and could only produce dust. I suppose Mega Man 4 was the first entry that overstayed Mega Man’s welcome on the NES considering it surpasses the number of titles that make up a solid trilogy of games, so we can attribute this game to commencing Mega Man’s downfall further into the future. However, the strange revelation that I’ve come to is that Mega Man 4 might arguably be the best game in the original series. Come to think of it, Mega Man 3 would’ve been an askew note to leave the series on, what with its unreached ambitions that fell apart in execution. Maybe a proper (and hypothetical) series send-off should signal a true return to form, and that’s certainly what Mega Man 4 offers.

Alert the presses, everyone, for Capcom decided to place another mad scientist on the pedestal of Mega Man bad guys that isn’t Dr. Wily! Approximately a year after the events of the last game, a Russian scientist named Dr. Cossack constructs eight new Robot Masters with the intention of seizing total sovereignty. I’m surprised it took Capcom this long to create a Russian villain at the helm of a megalomaniacal power surge, considering the franchise debuted in the 80s when their association with scum and villainy was at its peak. I suppose Capcom thought it would be wise to wait until the Soviet Union crumbled to feature one of their citizens in an antagonistic role so as to not sour the foreign affairs between them and Japan. Their country is only a submarine ride over from the Pacific coast of Russia, after all. Nevertheless, the fact that Capcom retired their standard bald, mustachioed bad guy here makes me beam with pride. Cossack may be committing a copycat crime here, but the slight deviation his presence represents makes a world of difference. NES franchises have been known to acquiesce to feelings of separation anxiety regarding their main villains, so I realize how hard it was for Capcom to let Wily go.

By this point in the early 90s, developers had honed the rudimentary 8-bit aesthetic into an art form. After the humble, fuzzy entry point in the first Mega Man title, Mega Man 2 made strides in elevating the visual capabilities of the NES console, just to have Mega Man 3 vomit on its contributions. One vital aspect of Mega Man 4’s return to form is the pixelated splendor displayed throughout, starting from the opening sequence. Somehow, Capcom felt that an introduction detailing the genesis point of Mega Man’s creation needed to surpass all other 8-bit cutscenes on the system by illustrating an origin story for Mega Man. A tranquil cityscape is shown from the cycle of day to dusk, with chaotic blasts of malevolent fire disrupting the peaceful atmosphere and calling Mega Man to action out of a valiant sense of justice. We also learn that his Japanese moniker “Rock” is merely the robot’s birth name and that Mega Man is his crime-fighting pseudonym. We also learn from this introduction that Mega Man’s hair was intended to be blue, thus making the initial reveal under his helmet in Mega Man 2 to be a graphical blip. As one could probably infer from the outstanding presentation here, all of the erroneous smudges in the pixels have been wiped out. The cityscape scene is gorgeous, and the following sequence where Mega Man is riding on top of a moving vehicle is spellbinding to watch.

Of course, the effort of high graphical fidelity extends to what is present during the gameplay. A pleasing color pallet was needed in the Mega Man series after Mega Man 3’s muted, flat textures that made the game look depleted. Mega Man 4’s return to form also saw the revival of the visual vibrancy seen in Mega Man 2, and thank the Lords for this. Every level in Mega Man 4 looks uniquely dazzling, meeting the standard established in Mega Man 2. Ring Man’s stage has candy neon evaporating platforms juxtaposed with some crystalline chrome architecture. Pharoah Man’s tomb is built with a tan-colored brick that looks appropriately weathered enough for an ancient construction, and the flow of the sinking sand is borderline hypnotizing. The showering rain effect in Toad Man’s stage is only distracting on a mechanical level, and Dive Man’s teal foreground compliments the water splendidly. The lavender color of Skull Man’s stage probably doesn’t make sense from a thematic standpoint, but I can’t deny that its contrast with the bleached skeletal platforms is striking.

I suppose what is more important about the new crop of levels is their level design. Mega Man 4 doesn’t do too much to deviate from the series' tried and true 2D platforming from point A to B where the Robot Master’s domain lies except for one true stride in ingenuity. Just because Mega Man’s trajectory is fairly straightforward doesn’t mean that each level should offer nothing but a straight line with enemies to halt progression. For the first time in series history, the levels will offer alternate paths for the player to take, usually signified by both ascending and descending ladders. Once Mega Man climbs one of these ladders in either direction on the Y-axis, surviving enemy fire and the various pratfalls will eventually lead Mega Man to the same result as the standard pathway. Sometimes, these alternate passages lead Mega Man to dead ends and the extra challenges before he hits a brick wall often lead to goodies like E-Tanks and health upgrades, rewarding the players for their troubles. God only knows we can’t rely on Dr. Light’s new, little support bot Eddie to supply Mega Man with what he needs because the little guy seems to have difficulties discerning whether or not Mega Man’s health or energy is low. He’s too adorably pathetic to chastise, really. Speaking of difficulties, Mega Man 4 still retains that classic NES challenge that was absent in Mega Man 2 compared to the two games that border it in the main series timeline. The game presents a smattering of dangerous sections like riding on robot enemies over pits of spikes like the bouncy grasshoppers in Bright Man’s stage and the floating platforms in Pharaoh Man’s stage. It’s best to shoot first between a chasm because a cap enemy will fly upward and knock Mega Man out of his airborne velocity to his untimely demise. The midway miniboss robots resembling animals often proved to be formidable obstacles to my goal, such as the hulking whales in Dive Man’s stage and the hippos in Ring Man’s stage that spit missiles comfortably from their high perches. Because of all of these impediments prove to cause a small amount of grief to the player, Mega Man 2’s one big criticism of being too easy cannot be applied here.

Good luck trying to find the correct order to defeat Mega Man 4’s Robot Masters, for this lineup is when the lineup started becoming abstract. Like Mega Man 3, all of these Robot Masters were submitted by Japanese children via a contest and the best of the bunch were granted life by the developers. I don’t know how some kid living in Japan in the early 90s knew what a Pharaoh was, but maybe that's how advanced their education system is. Drill Man is an inspired ground-type Robot Master in the same vein as Gutsman and Hard Man, and his drill bomb weapon is like a more manageable version of the Crash Bomb. Skull Man is the coolest one here from a design standpoint, but I’m not enthused by his weapon being a recycled version of Wood Man’s leaf shield. What makes the weapon worse is that it’s Dive Man’s weakness, and his apt dive maneuver makes sure that plenty of contact damage will occur while fighting him. Bright Man copies Flash Man’s time freeze move, and Dust Man’s mound of vacuumed trash is an effective cluster bomb. God bless Toad Man, for the developers inadvertently made him into a spongy whelp of a Robot Master AND his acid rain weapon clears the screen. Guess which Robot Master I recommend tackling first? Overall, I can’t find too much fault with Cossack’s coalition of Robot Masters. They all have interesting designs and none of their weapons fall under the category of useless junk (points directly at Top Man from Mega Man 3).

Fortunately, if the player isn’t content with using any of these weapons, maybe because they feel the Robot Master weapons peaked with the Metal Blade as I do, Mega Man 4 provides a suitable alternative. This game’s innovative stride in updating Mega Man’s battle prowess is the new addition of the charge shot. By holding down the shoot button on the controller, the collective energy needed for a regular shot of Mega Man’s base beam builds up inside his being and radiates all over him. Releasing Mega Man’s edged shot will unleash a single burst of energy much bigger and much more lethal than the piddly lemon drops it normally sputters out. I probably use the standard blaster more often than most people who have played a Mega Man game, so this addition is a godsend. I’ve always appreciated the variety in store with Mega Man sucking up his enemy's abilities, but I have to admit that pausing the game to cycle through the options can be a tad irksome. Revving up the blaster to blow through enemies that have stronger defenses is incredibly convenient and satisfying, and is just as crucial to Mega Man’s evolution as the slide move (which also returns from Mega Man 3). If it could shoot in the same number of directions as the Metal Blade, I’d never use any of the alternate weapons.

Whether or not using the enhanced blaster or figuring out a Robot Masters's specific weakness works for you, it still culminates in climbing the castle of a wicked scientific genius. This time, it’s the blonde, bearded Cossack instead of Wily’s wild eyebrows. When storming through Cossack’s castle, each level seems deceptively easier than the last. The castle offers some substantial sections involving Rush’s mechanical aid, and we can all breathe a sigh of relief that the Yellow Devil doesn’t make his return to pummel me to oblivion. Still, roaming through the fortress of a madman as the climax of a video game on the NES. My suspicions unraveled with the appalling revelation that Cossack is a red-herring and that Dr. Wily has been using him as a scapegoat the entire time. Naturally, it’s when Wily reveals himself that the apropos difficulty curve reveals itself too, as Wily’s final fight in Mega Man 4 is the most irritating one so far. The weak spot on Wily’s new death machine is high enough that Mega Man must strain himself trying to reach it, and finding Wily in complete darkness while being confined to using Pharaoh Man’s weapon conjures up unpleasant memories of having to use Crash Man’s weapon in the conclusive fight in Mega Man 2, showing that the developers didn’t learn from their mistake.

God dammit. So much for subversion. The old saying that old dogs never learn new tricks is just as applicable to video game franchises, which is why they tend to struggle with innovation past the third entry. Yet, Mega Man 4 seemed like it could’ve at least gone against the grain with the opportunity to do the bare minimum of putting another antagonist in the front seat. Alas, it seems like Dr. Wily will always be the nagging force of oppression like his NES contemporaries Bowser and Ganondorf. Up until this point, I was enjoying Mega Man 4 vastly more than Mega Man 3. Mega Man 4’s back to basics after Mega Man 3 shot to the moon and missed by a mile making for the most balanced of Mega Man titles so far. It’s as smooth as Mega Man 2 was without the few discrepancies that sullied its near-perfect status. If reusing the same villain in a bait-and-switch routine is the only sniggle the game has in a series filled with unfair, broken bullshit, Capcom has more than legitimized Mega Man 4’s existence. Quit while you're ahead, guys.

Mega Man 3 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 4/1/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 3

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: September 28, 1990

If I didn’t have the future hindsight of knowing how long the Mega Man series would be prolonged to proportions that make Final Fantasy seem neatly bundled, here’s the entry where I would express how the third classic Mega Man game couldn’t have perfected the series peak of Mega Man 2 and it was time for Capcom to tie a bow on the series and bury it with the dying NES console. Alas, the series extended far beyond the days of Nintendo’s first home console, adapting to the times for years with several off-shoots and a couple of classic era renaissance titles. Eventually, Capcom themselves decided to freeze all of their Mega Man assets and leave the blue bomber behind to fester in the barges of their back catalog, resurrecting him only on occasion since. Because Capcom extended Mega Man’s lifespan past his glory days on the NES, it’s difficult to discern Mega Man 3’s place in the series, unlike Super Mario and Castlevania which had a select three games on the NES. Still, Mega Man 3 isn’t entirely an outlier from the third entry of other franchises simply due to Capcom lengthening the number of examples to use as a frame of reference when evaluating Mega Man’s evolution. Mega Man 3 is still a fading ring after the mighty crescendo of Mega Man 2, even if its predecessor did admittedly have some glaring flaws that needed to be addressed. However, the developers had established enough of an integral gameplay identity over the three titles so as not to repeat the same mistakes from the first game. Even with adding plenty of attributes like a standard sequel would, Mega Man 3 is still surprisingly rougher than Mega Man 2.

Let me preface Mega Man 3’s new plot premise with this statement: Dr Light. is an idiot. I understand that Capcom needed to make an effort to keep Dr. Wily as the central antagonist of the series by writing more roundabout ways to ignite his devious schemes other than on an evil whim. Still, the old man can’t be this naive to let Dr. Wily collaborate on a project involving a giant mech, along with the upkeep of eight conveniently numbered robots to assist in the labor. Batman may leave the Joker groveling at his defeat out of mercy instead of exterminating the pest, but he’d certainly never invite him into the Batcave to play with all the various doodads. We have to wonder if Mega Man keeps Wily alive after thwarting so many of his attempts of world domination to elongate his role as a heroic adventurer. It beats cleaning Dr. Light’s toilets like his sister, that’s for damn sure. Anyways, to no one's surprise except for the possibly senile Dr. Light, Wily takes the blueprints for their Gamma project and corrupts all eight Robot Masters. Once again, Mega Man has to venture off to defeat all eight of the Robot Masters and stop Wily from becoming the ruler of the future, even if I’d argue that he’s partially to blame for nonchalantly standing aside and letting it happen.

The changes Mega Man 3 makes to the blue bomber’s gameplay are relatively minor. However, the few advancements it does make persisted indefinitely as requisite staples relating to the blue bombers' identity. By pressing the jump button while holding down on the D-pad, Mega Man will execute a slide move. Mega Man will make the same pixelated gaping expression as he does while jumping, and the motion of the slide move is smooth and responsive. A part of me wishes that Mega Man could accelerate through levels by sliding instead of being halted back to his normal momentum after one move, but I suppose throwing caution to the wind in Mega Man’s stages would be libel to kill him. Mega Man’s slide maneuver is impressively utilized many times across each level of the game. He’ll mostly slide beneath narrow crevices, sometimes timing his movements to avoid a chain of hazards like the industrial needles in Needle Man’s stage. Those bulky hopping robots from the first game return, but not as damage sponges to stall Mega Man before he enters a Robot Master’s chamber. In Mega Man 3, one leap off the ground from these mechanical moon shoes is enough to mitigate their encounter with the slide. Mega Man has been given a platforming mechanic that is both unique and practical, a true stride in innovation for the character.

The other change is more at face value but is still significant nonetheless. Capcom decided to spruce up the three platforming gadgets by reimagining them as the loveable, slobbering Rush. Everyone says that dogs are a man’s best friend, so Capcom thought the same adage should extend to robot men as well. As I previously stated, Rush as a concept is simply to give a repeated Mega Man mechanic some personality, whether or not they were in desperate need of some in the first place. In saying this, Mega Man’s canine companion is equipped with some functions unseen in the previous game. Rush’s default ability is the Rush Coil, in which hopping on the buoyant screw on his back will give Mega Man a single jump boost. Rush Jet is a hoverboard extension of the second item from the previous game/the magnet beam, and the Rush Marine is an underwater vessel that carries Mega Man through the drink. As functional as Rush is with each of these, some are greatly underutilized. Rush Jet can of course be used to gloss over the tedium of some platforming sections, and Rush Coil will be frequently equipped for reaching the heights of planted E-Tanks and extra lives. The Rush Marine, however, is only useful for one section of Gemini Man’s stage, and it’s arguable if it makes the calamitous pit of water easier to traverse through. Regardless of Rush’s sporadic utility, how can I be harsh to this metallic pooch? He’s still a good boy.

Across all of Mega Man 3’s stages, one might notice the exponential increase in visual detail. In three games on the NES, it is now evident that the Mega Man series has hit a graphical stride, showing how far the series has come since the blank backgrounds and the colored blocks that composed the first game, and we’re still using the hardware of the NES to display it. Funny enough, all it took for the developers to achieve a more immersive look is to implement finer detail in the colored blocks. The descent down Shadow Man’s sewer shows the dim, dankness of the underground construction among the radiant flow of lava. Snake Man’s graphical blocks in its foreground visually represent the intricate scales of the green serpent its Robot Master is themed after. Hard Man’s (reserve all of your immature snickerings for the end of this review) stage exhibits the rocky crevices of a cavern, and Needle Man’s metropolis rooftops exude a sense of a futuristic adventure with a visible cityscape in the background. Gemini Man’s stage is a surreal spectacle, using the strobe light effect from Flash Man’s stage to illuminate this strange, embryonic cave. Top Man’s stage is the most peculiar because its greenhouse stage shares the least commonality with its Robot Master. Would a Hanukkah-themed level be considered too racy? I’d prefer something like that because while the stages in Mega Man 3 look astounding, the range of level diversity is a bit lacking. The theme of Spark Man, Needle Man, and Magnet Man ultimately boils down to traversing through a factory with a different aesthetic and enemies.

Who can we blame for Mega Man 3’s seemingly formulaic level theming? Apparently, it's the fans. Capcom enlisted the creative efforts of Mega Man’s fans to craft the game’s core bosses, and the chosen few out of several hundred submissions came to fruition. Evidently, at this point, the elemental powers that shaped the Robot Masters of the first two Mega Man games became stale, and breaking out a thesaurus to find similar words to “fire” and “bubble” would’ve been lazy. The selection Capcom filtered through is more eclectic than those they previously came up with, but it does admittedly make the ordered trajectory of defeating them more difficult to process. Another factor of this that isn’t the fault of the fans is how shoddily executed many of the Robot Master’s weapons are. Of course, we can’t expect something as holy and divine as the Metal Blade for each iteration of Mega Man. Shadow Man’s blade serves as a fine surrogate, but it can only be thrown in five directions instead of eight. Unfortunately, a poor man’s Metal Blade is probably the best weapon featured here. The Spark Shock paralyzes enemies like the Ice Slasher, but Mega Man can’t change his weapon to even his standard blaster until the shock effect wears off. The Gemini Laser suffers from the same awkward utilization, as Mega Man must also wait until the beam stops ricocheting off the walls to fire another ray or switch weapons. The Hard Knuckle is too girthy (oh lord) to use on most enemies, and the Needle Cannon is basically the blaster that depletes the energy meter. I feel sorry for whoever submitted Top Man because his Top Spin is a laughably useless joke that does more damage to Mega Man than the enemy. I used the Metal Blade most of the time in Mega Man 2 because I wanted to, but here, I use the Shadow Blade and the blaster due to a lack of substantial alternatives.

Not only will the player find more difficulties in figuring out the weapon-related weaknesses of Mega Man 3’s Robot Masters, but they’ll also have to wrack their brains in translating this game’s weapons to the bosses of Mega Man 2. Before Wily’s Castle, Mega Man must trek through four additional stages comprising geographical locales of the main stages. In each of these four stages are two different bosses from the previous game, whose spirit floats down into a generic Robot Master avatar. Not only did I fail to see the point in reoffering Mega Man 2’s bosses in this slog of a section, but I disagree with the way these stages progress. One familiar Mega Man 2 boss encounter happens at a halfway point and if Mega Man dies, the defeat of the first Robot Master will not initiate a checkpoint. It seems rather harsh to force the player on a test of endurance after defeating a boss, considering this was always a penultimate achievement that ended the level up until this point. That, and they also have to flip through their arsenal to find a weak point and wish for the best, considering that the logic behind defeating the Robot Masters made for these weapons is shaky as it is. As for Wily’s Castle, the real climax of any Mega Man game, it's comparatively more underwhelming. The only shock here that hit me over the head like a whizzing dodgeball was the return of my old nemesis, The Yellow Devil, in a fight that mirrored the same one from the first game that made my first playthrough of the first game come to a screeching halt. Fortunately, even without the saving grace of the pause glitch, gulping down a six-pack of energy tanks was an option I took that wasn’t available in the first game.

Most people claim that all of Mega Man 3’s cumbrous elements as listed above are due to the game suffering from a rushed development time. However, I am puzzled by this revelation because the Mega Man 2 boss rush seems like an augmentation that took valuable development time to implement rather than something that wasn’t finished. The one point of consideration in contextualizing Mega Man 3’s feeling of being misshapen can be traced to one new element. At certain points in a select few Robot Master stages, Mega Man will stop in his tracks at the sounds of a western-esque whistle. This catchy sound is the theme of a red robot of Mega Man’s relative stature who dons a shield, a sharp scarf, and a pair of shades. He’ll proceed to duel Mega Man with little intimidation because his jumping pattern and bullet spread are highly predictable. Once Mega Man reaches the end and defeats a corrupted Gamma controlled by Dr. Wily, the mysterious vagabond that interrupted Mega Man’s pacing in the Robot Master’s levels rescues Mega Man after a cube of garbage falls on him. After Mega Man regains consciousness in Dr. Light’s lab, he explains to Mega Man that the being that has been pursuing him is “Protoman,” the prototype of Mega Man created first by Dr. Light. Protoman made a valiant sacrifice in rescuing his younger brother, but all I saw was the escort after Mega Man had been hit. In fact, most of the exposition involving Protoman is told in the game’s manual. If I had to guess, the mystery element in the game’s narrative was the factor that stressed the development period. If it had been fully composed, perhaps it would piece together all of the other attributes of Mega Man 3 that don’t make sense.

The classic Mega Man series on the NES is clearly one that is defined by its repeated idiosyncrasies. Mega Man 3 adds plenty to Mega Man’s foundation and while it’s nice that Mega Man can slide and he has a trusty animal sidekick at his aid, it doesn’t do all too much to elevate the series. Choosing between eight levels with themes based around their bosses and then trekking up to Dr. Wily in his towering domain is what defines Mega Man. Mega Man 3 is the entry in which Capcom realized that Mega Man had a tried and true formula, but they couldn’t let the series lose its luster so quickly. Even if their attempts at invigorating the same plot with a mystery character succeeded, I’m not sure the NES could support that kind of narrative. All the same, it’s nice to see that Mega Man 3 still marks a time when Capcom was willing to change up the familiarities of the blue bomber, and that effort translates well regardless of its faults.

...

Hehe. Hard Man. Hehe.

Mega Man 2 Review

 (Originally published to Glitchwave on 2/27/2023)

[Image from glitchwave.com]

Mega Man 2

Developer: Capcom

Publisher: Capcom

Genre(s): 2D Platformer

Platforms: NES

Release Date: December 24, 1988

I failed to mention this in my review of the first Mega Man but when I first played the blue bomber’s debut title, I didn’t like it. I am a child of the 2000s, which means I grew up accustomed to the frills that came with 3D gaming such as save features and reasonable difficulty curves. My earliest gaming experiences were the cumulative product of burgeoning change that made gaming smoother and more accessible for everyone, and this rate of progress has only become even more apparent since then. It’s not a cardinal rule that the parameters of one’s gaming repertoire should start at the base of when they started gaming to the current day, so why does playing games before one’s debut generation not come recommended by many? I’ve fervently argued that art and entertainment of yesteryears should be at least considered or at least respected by those whose existence came after the piece’s release date, for it can still retain its essentials that stand the test of time. However, my experience with the first Mega Man as a child tested my laurels and made me skeptical about the overall quality of “retro games.” That allurement of Mega Man’s that I alluded to struck me while reading about his classic titles in an issue of Nintendo Power sometime in the 2000s. The NES Mega Man titles still grabbed me with their promise of high-octane shooting action and tight platforming despite their primitiveness. What I didn’t anticipate was the game throttling me around like a rag doll, leaving me bruised and battered. Each of the Robot Master’s stages was uniquely punishing, and finally learning a comfortable sequential order to defeat them didn’t matter when I faced the sun-colored brick wall known as The Yellow Devil. Instead of throwing in a tear-soaked towel, something curious caught my eye about its sequel, Mega Man 2. Ironically, the optimal title in the classic Mega Man series for optimistic beginners is not the first title, as Mega Man 2 is considered by most to be the grand champion of the series. In just one following entry, the rudimentary snags that made the first Mega Man so excruciating were remedied to an exceptional degree.

On the surface, Mega Man 2 doesn’t improve on its rough template too much with considerable deviation. Our charismatic robot boy sees himself on another valiant quest to defeat the deranged Dr. Wily and his league of themed Robot Masters and save his futuristic world from total chaos. The key difference this time in relation to the first game is that Dr. Wily has cooked up this new batch of Robot Masters himself and there are eight of them instead of six. Once again, the player has the choice of routing Mega Man on a course of destroying the robotic menaces, while briskly being directed towards a sensible trajectory depending on the elemental powers Mega Man absorbs from them. Mega Man 2 is not a reboot disguised as a sequel like the Evil Deads of the world, but it is an indication that Mega Man has solidified a formula that will persist with each entry. The problem with the first Mega Man was obviously not a case of an ill-conceived idea falling apart at the seams. Mega Man needed some significant sanding down and refurbishing in order to bloom as the exemplary 2D platformer series on the NES. The effort to polish Mega Man was not a painstaking overhaul, but the slight improvements made a world of difference.

Unlike the three Super Mario games on the NES, the Mega Man series did not receive a new coat of pixelated paint with each new title. At first glance, Mega Man 2 is a carbon copy of the first game from an aesthetic standpoint. However, one can discern a substantial amount of detail by squinting at the graphical intricacies in the fine mineral textures in the pixels. This level of refinement is displayed as early as the game’s pre-menu introduction which sees a sprawling, futuristic metropolis in evening shade, with the deep color palette perfectly capturing the tone of the scene. Scrolling up the skyscraper sees Mega Man standing on its roof sans his helmet, and the wind of the high altitudes ruffles his black hair. It’s the most indelible image of the game and quite possibly the whole series, and it sets a precedent for how the game has improved upon Mega Man’s visuals. For one, Mega Man himself has been treated to a subtle hint of refinement that many might not catch. Mega Man’s pixelated outline is no longer as pronounced as an unplucked eyebrow, as it has been shaved down with an 8-bit thin razor. Along with the blue bomber, the foregrounds, and backgrounds of each stage look like they’ve been on the operating table in the year between Mega Man 1 and 2. They’ve been transformed to more appropriately fit the theme set around the specific Robot Master. Metal Man’s stage has a crop of rotating gears to set the scene of an industrial factory. Wood Man’s stage is an auburn color with a wavy, timbered texture to simulate venturing through the insides of an immensely-sized tree in the forest. The background of Flash Man’s stage is bright and glitzy, aptly enough for the Robot Master who resides in it, and the sweltering atmosphere of Heat Man’s stage radiates strongly off the red brick walls enough to make Mega Man sweat, (if he had those glands, anyways) as opposed to the stage of the warmth-themed Robot Master from the previous game. Stages in Mega Man 2 feel much more immersive thanks to the great strides in detail compared to the empty blue and black backgrounds and globular foregrounds of the stages in the foreground in the first game. Mega Man looking less like he has a thick layer of filth around him is also a bonus perk.

The overall level design in Mega Man 2 is as intricate as the visuals. In the first game, most of the levels were focused on precision platforming, whether they be trying to keep Mega Man’s footing over a pit of perilous spikes or falling into the abyss. While that’s still a prevalent aspect of Mega Man’s level structure here, the focal point of each stage in Mega Man 2 is also better centered around the theme of each Robot Master. Accompanying the clockwise rotation of the gears in Metal Man’s stage are conveyor belt platforms, a reasonable trope of factory settings that either accelerate or slacken Mega Man’s movement in the undesired direction. The urgency of Quick Man’s stage is highlighted by an infamous section involving a series of energy beams that jet out of every corner of the screen, disintegrating Mega Man on impact if they catch him. Many abhor this section because of the unpredictability of where the beams will appear and how rapidly they zoom out to blast Mega Man in the face from potentially anywhere. While I can understand their grievances, the tense reaction time needed to avoid the beams evokes the thrill of being chased. Once Mega Man plunges into the lake below the gorgeously roaring waterfall of Bubble Man’s stage, we learn that Dr. Light was insightful enough to equip Mega Man with a resistance to water. Even though his robotic pride and joy can withstand being submerged in the drink, Mega Man’s buoyancy is tested by the physics of his standard jump being manipulated. Acclimating to the rate of movement underwater and adjusting it to avoid the stinging, deadly-as-spikes sea urchins takes some time to master. Keeping afloat in Air Man’s stage is reminiscent of platforming challenges where Mega Man falls to oblivion in Mega Man 1, but the course of the cloud platforms and the drill barriers of the strange tiki heads is consistent and easier to learn. Reappearing block sections make their return in Heat Man’s stage, and their patterns are much less unhinged and demanding compared to the asymmetrical, almost avant-garde patterns seen in Ice Man’s stage. Inhibitors while climbing ladders in Crash Man’s stage don’t knock Mega Man down to the previous screen, and enemy placements can be detected far in advance before they pounce. Returning attributes to Mega Man’s stages have been made much more manageable, and the variety of the new attributes offer a fair challenge without seeming like irritating gimmicks.

If one couldn’t tell from their names or descriptions of their levels, the eight new Robot Masters are another ragtag crew with an eclectic range of physical differences. While these differences are apparent, the player must once again surmise a logical matching of their powers to inflict on one another like a more puzzling game of rock, paper, and scissors. The reasonable path in the first Mega Man game was based on elemental tropes like earth, wind, fire, and ice, but the characteristics of the Robot Masters in Mega Man 2 are less conspicuous. No, the rhyme scheme between Flash Man and Crash Man does not correlate with their weaknesses. The path to Dr. Wily that defeating all eight Robot Masters leads to involves more clever consideration. Examples include using Air Man’s multiple cyclones on Crash Man because turbulence can cause a crash, clogging up Air Man with Wood Man’s leaves like a jet turbine, and Flash Man stopping time to halt Quick Man’s speedy maneuvers. Or, you can do what everyone does and seek out Metal Man first, for his Metal Blade weapon is a force to be reckoned with. The projectile saw blade can be tossed in eight different directions, deals twice the damage of the standard blaster, and barely expends any amount of energy. Imposing it on most of the Robot Masters also tends to make the health bars plummet like the 1929 stock market. You know the old adage not to bring a knife to a gunfight? I have a new saying: do not bring any weapon against the Metal Blade, for you will be smote by its power. For those who do not revel in the almighty awesomeness of the Metal Blade, they tend to argue that the pervasive use of this item compromises on the utility of each weapon, but I was feeling too righteous and badass while using it to care. Besides, the other weapons have their own uses as well, whether it’s a matter of the game forcing it on the player or not.

Mega Man 2’s considerable leap in quality may boil down to the developers making the experience easier, which may draw some contempt from NES purists who might contest the game’s legacy and mock players like myself who couldn’t handle the consistent onslaught of torment the first game bestowed. Considering how abundant the amount of energy/health items and extra lives are on the field of Mega Man 2, their arguments aren’t baseless. However, I don’t think Mega Man 2 is a breezy cakewalk to Dr. Wily’s domain. I’ve already expressed that the challenges leading up to him in the Robot Master’s levels involve considerable skill to surpass. The developers have made a substantial effort to balance Mega Man’s difficulty by aiding the player through the rudimentary regulations of the NES era. A password system is instated instead of expecting the player to finish the game in one sitting, the most primitive form of saving progress that did not persist past the pixelated eras. Password systems at least put one’s progress into consideration, but writing down a jumble of codes on paper is not my idea of being accommodating. Because losing one’s progress is still a harsh reality in Mega Man 2, the developers offer a smattering of aid trinkets to keep the player in the fray. Among the excess of automatic replenishing items, Mega Man 2 sees the birth of the series staple Energy Tank, with no relation to the item of the same name from Metroid. Mega Man pops these cerulean cans as Popeye does to spinach, and they revitalize his health to its maximum capacity. Mega Man can carry up to a total of four at a time, and the precarious placements these tanks are placed in offer a risk-reward incentive. The awkward implementation of the “optional” Magnet Beam from the first game has been reconfigured into three support weapons, and each of them serves to mitigate the hazardous and or tedious sections of the game far more comfortably than their prototype. Dr. Light also rewards Mega Man with one of these support weapons after a certain number of slain Robot Masters, cementing their importance and assuring that Mega Man won’t be hopelessly stuck *ahem.* Mega Man’s developers aren’t rewriting the NES rulebook, but I appreciate that they’re willing to bend it a bit to express concern for the player’s well-being.

Unfortunately, good intentions ultimately fall flat when those performing those noble deeds don’t think things through. Once again, a Mega Man game eventually accelerates headfirst into an impervious wall. Actually, in this context, Mega Man 2’s impenetrable force is more like falling down a one-hundred-foot well. Also, this impediment occurs at Dr. Wily’s Castle, but at least it isn’t as early as the first section while crossing the fortress’s lawn. Up until the fourth section, Dr. Wily’s castle seems to have reduced its security measures. The first section greatly utilizes the three support items, and the dark arena with the sparse, airborne grounding in which Mega Man fights the dragon is tense enough that one slip will signal Mega Man’s doom. When the arena itself is the boss of the second section, it makes the player use the Metal Blade more shrewdly, and the third section allows the player to practice more underwater jumping. Then, the fourth section comes along to ruin everything. The boss that awaits Mega Man in the final stretch of the fourth section is not another cybernetic behemoth, but a series of five electrical domes situated along the walls parallel to the arena. These domes are impervious to everything in Mega Man’s arsenal except for the Crash Bomber, and nothing before this would’ve warranted using this weapon. Even if Mega Man’s Crash Bomber meter is full, his attempt to blow out all of these domes will most likely result in failure. The Crash Bomber can only be fired seven times, and four of the five domes are protected by Crash Bomber walls. Eight shots exceed the total energy capacity of the Crash Bomber, so the player must consider a more analytical strategy when destroying the domes, almost like a puzzle. However, it’s unlikely that the player will anticipate something this cerebral in an action-intensive 2D platformer, and considering an approach to this bizarre boss fight while the domes are also firing energy balls at Mega Man is disorienting. After the player is unprepared for this demanding duel, depleting all of the Crash Bomber’s energy gauge will result in a stalemate. Leaving Mega Man without any further recourse will ultimately force the player to restart the entire game, making all the progress up to this point all for naught. Regarding the fiddly circumstance surrounding the Magnet Beam, at least the player can die and come back fully prepared. Here, the player is left crestfallen in a void of defeat that takes drastic measures to escape. I don’t think the developers deliberately designed this boss to hornswoggle the player, for I can use the dozens of aids they implemented that were intended to help the player survive as evidence of their altruism. All this boss needed was some serious beta testing, and the fact that this remained overlooked is egregiously inexcusable.

The Dome boss dilemma could’ve been solved via the Energy Tanks replenishing both health and energy. In fact, this would’ve been a convenience at other points in the game, namely in the section that follows if the player managed to surpass the seemingly unsurpassable. Similarly to the first game, Mega Man will have to face a gauntlet of the eight Robot Masters, only the player somewhat has a choice of the order to tackle them in. The Crash Bomber isn’t necessary during this battle royale, as the designated Robot master Quick Man is the most vulnerable to the traditional blaster out of the eight. Even if the Dome boss taught the player a lesson in conservation, the Wily Boss that follows will make that a moot point. The energy of every weapon doesn’t replenish after completing a level, and guess which of Mega Man’s weapons Wily’s floating ship is weak to? The fucking Crash Bomber. Even though other weapons will deal damage to Dr. Wily’s aircraft, the barrage of undodgeable orbs from the airship's cannons make this a match of conflicting damage output that should ideally end sooner than later with the Crash Bomber. The final fight against Wily’s alien form which turns out to be an Oz routine is made into a facile joke with Bubble Man’s weapon, but what if the player expunged all of the weapon’s juice while fighting Heat Man? Not every weapon has the sustainability of the Metal Blade, you know. If the game isn’t going to grant the player a refuel item for the energy meter, then it should at least fully restock every weapon after the level is completed. Sounds reasonable, right?

It hurts how close Mega Man is to 2D platforming perfection. Forget for a second about the incredible strides the game makes to dwarf its predecessor in every conceivable fashion. Mega Man 2 is almost the golden standard of the NES library, ascending over its contemporaries by crafting a smoother, more accessible product that still provided a steep challenge that wouldn’t alienate the masochistic NES audience that took pride in playing games equivalent to eating a bowl of nails. To everyone’s dismay, that damned NES-era abrasiveness made another unceremonious appearance in Wily’s Castle, and a betrayal hasn’t cut as deep since Fredo fucked over Michael . Even the most seasoned NES enthusiasts find that particular section to be harsh. While Mega Man 2, unfortunately, exudes undesirable qualities that show the series needs more time baking in the kiln, I can still forgive the notorious point of no return that was inflicted upon me. You see, everything leading up to that point finally met my expectations for Mega Man that were almost dashed by the consistent punishment that the first game dealt. Mega Man 2’s well-ordered execution of the prevalent 2D platformer genre erased all narrow preconceptions I had for games released before my time. For that, I am eternally grateful.