Mega Man is a series that up until recently has completely passed me by.
That's true for pretty much everything I enter into this blog, of course, as its very raison d'etre demands, but for Mega Man this is especially true. At the very least, I had a passing knowledge of Metroid and Castlevania, and I was aware how their games play before I delved into any of the titles myself.
Mega Man, though, I had no idea. I knew platforming was involved and that's pretty much it. In fairness, I don't think that's necessarily unusual outside of the Blue Bomber's home territory of Japan, where his popularity has historically been considerably higher. At the same time, Mega Man's enduring popularity—nay, legendary status—as a character is well known far outside of Japan, so while I can use my location outside of his home turf as a crutch, it's no valid excuse.
So I changed that, and with first things being first, I started with the start. I know that reads like something from Mary Poppins, and I'm not changing it.
Mega Man
Known as 'Rockman' in Japan, Mega Man's first game arrived in December 1987 to the NES. It was Capcom's first title for a home console, a significant deviation from their until-then sole focus on arcade titles.
Mega Man was the game I chose to tackle after Metroid, and there's good reason for that. I wanted a palate cleanse whilst sticking to a platforming series. I was still in platformer mode, and I wanted to use that momentum while I had it. Beating Metroid had also left me with a hunger for more retro games conquering, and the thought of delving into something I knew even less about was tantalising. I loaded up the ROM and away I went.
Story
The year is 20XX (canonical, that's not just me forgetting specifics) and humanity has robots to aid them in many aspects of society, thanks to renowned roboticist, Dr. Light. Everything's dandy until—what else—the robots turn on us. Spearheading the robot rebellion are six 'robot masters', industrial bots that form the bosses and main antagonists you need to take down throughout the game.
The robot rebellion is the work of Dr. Wily, Dr. Light's evil rival who is also using the designs of the robot masters to make copies. Our hero, Rock, volunteers himself to be converted from Dr. Light's assistant robot to a battle robot, becoming Mega Man (or Rock Man for Japan, which makes sense in the context of his original name). He takes down the robot masters and Dr. Wily, saving the world (until Mega Man 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...)
The plot changed somewhat in the process of Western localisation, but it doesn't really matter much for the overall story and certainly not for the gameplay. Look it up if you like but it's not worth highlighting here.
The story isn't essential at all for a game like this, but it's nice to have in the background at least lending some context to why you're a robot with an arm cannon hunting other robots. It's charmingly Japanese retro, as the Western approach to deadly robots is often more Terminator than Mega Man (bear in mind that the former came out three years before the latter, so it's not like our opinion of robots suddenly matured).
Robots turning on humanity wasn't a new concept even back at the time of this game's genesis, but it's nice that it only forms a thin layer of context rather than a commentary on AI and advancing technology. In fact, without being told Mega Man and his humanoid counterparts were robots, you often wouldn't even realise. Mega Man's job of collecting the robot masters' cores as he defeats them also provides an explanation for how he 'absorbs' the powers of his defeated foes. Again, not at all needed, but just nice to have.
The story is fine. It's token but that's expected for an 80s run and gun platformer, and anything trying to be more serious would have felt jarring.
Sound
All the classic sound effects are here. Bleeps, bloops, bouncy jumping noises, and some satisfying sounds like the reverberating electronic pop when you dust off a robot rival.
The music is sometimes passable at worst, but at its best, it slaps. Yes, okay, Elec Man's stage music is a rip off of Journey's 'Faithfully', but it sounds great in the NES soundfont (and so much classic videogame music is heavily borrowed from whatever was popular at the time). I didn't go into this game expecting to be impressed by the soundtrack, and while I wasn't blown away, it's more than I was counting on. Some of this stuff is certifiable head-bop shit, like Bomb Man's stage music. It's hard not to jam to it in a controlled way that doesn't screw with your concentration, and that surely counts for something.
The sound takes an overall lighthearted approach that mirrors the levity of the story and the pace of the gameplay. Mega Man's 'Mega Buster' comes across more like a NERF gun due to the levity of its firing noise, but the game knows what it is, and a realistic weapon simulator ain't it.
Personally, I think it sounds great for the time. Retro games are infamous for dud tracks but I don't think Mega Man commits any musical sins at all, really. At its worst, it's repetitive and crunchy.
Gameplay
Coming off the back of Metroid, I found Mega Man much more forgiving in some aspects. In others, it's anything but.
The lives system of Mega Man somewhat softens difficulty spikes in certain places. For instance, you might actually opt to let yourself die and respawn since you come back with full HP, meaning entering a boss fight with low HP could be written off as a lost cause, because you can afford to spend a life to respawn right before the fight and try again with no handicap. There's also no true 'game over', despite the screen that says such once you've lost all your lives, because you can choose either to simply restart the level or go back to the level select with your progress thus far intact. Both options give you a fresh cache of lives, so it's an honest go again either way.
On the other hand, there are plenty of insta-kill drops that bring the flow of the game to a screeching halt and can range from tough to infuriating thanks to the somewhat shoddy movement physics when it comes to stop-start jumping manoeuvres. It's hard to accurately convey even with a video unless you've played and felt it for yourself, but there's a kind of 'trip' to Mega Man's movement due to the way he runs and lands with momentum, which can make your jumps rather imprecise even with practised timing. This was admittedly alleviated by my use of save states courtesy of the emulator, and just like last time, I feel no guilt for this. I'm here for a good time, not a long time.
Despite not being apparent through the game itself, most of the bosses have a weakness to a particular power, making a clear optimum 'path' through the game. Choosing the stages in the right order will make things much easier for you, as will saving anything other than your default (unlimited) weapon for all but the trickiest situations or the bosses. There are plenty of times you can softlock yourself by using up the energy to a needed weapon (and this isn't exclusive to the first game, as I've discovered by progressing further into the series since). There's not much you can do about this as dying won't respawn you with full energy on these subweapons — only your HP. If you're not using save states, you'll either need to pull it out of the bag with the Mega Buster or allow a game over and start again from the beginning of the level.
You can sometimes find yourself with the option of a Metroid-esque enemy farming situation to eke out some more subweapon energy, but this isn't deliberately done and more often than not you'll be unable to backtrack for pickups.
Thankfully, the levels aren't overly long. Even the most irritating gimmicks are short-lived, sometimes surprisingly so, and the game isn't interested in throwing the same obstacle at you until you master it. No, often you'll only just be getting the hang of one roadblock before it disappears and something new crops up. The game aims to keep you on your toes and it does that very well.
Boss difficulty ranges from decent challenges to your sense of pattern recognition, to just...I don't even know what. Hyperactive spasms of movement that cannot be anticipated or countered by much more than selecting the most effective power and spamming it as much as you can whilst the game grinds to a near-stop as it tries to process all the projectiles. Yeah, that's probably as best I can describe it. Some of the boss attacks are literally impossible to dodge. Even the most skilled players showing off their talents on YouTube will be sponging hits that they can't dodge. I'm a scrub, but my scrubosity isn't always to blame.
In my opinion, the game starts to feel like it's overstaying its welcome once you've defeated all the robot masters and you realise, oh no, oh dear, there are many more bosses. You see, defeating all six robot masters puts you on the path towards Dr. Wily, and to reach him you'll need to fight through four stages comprising his lair. Each of these stages comes with further boss battles, including boss rushes.
Yellow Devil in particular feels like an irritating boss designed purely to be irritating. I would not have finished this game if I had to restart every single time that big one-eyed idiot devoured my lives. Actually, I feel like it would make more sense as an encounter used earlier in the game, either as a difficulty spike to set the tone for more challenging gameplay thereafter, or to beat the player over the head with the importance of learning attack patterns (when there are patterns to learn, anyway). Instead, it comes across feeling like a 'gotcha' that contributes heavily to the feeling of an overstayed welcome in the game's latter half. What could have been a compelling build-up in momentum leading to the final boss fight just ends up being a slog, at least to me.
Other bosses feel extraneous and tacked on for the sake of lengthening the game, and Dr Wily himself is a challenge only in the amount of damage his projectiles achieve, not the actual skill required to face him.
This all sounds very negative, and I don't mean it to say that I didn't ultimately enjoy Mega Man; I guess you could say I was just a little frustrated that by ending the game I felt relief of the 'glad that's finally over' kind, rather than the 'that was a great game' kind.
Final thoughts
Coming in to Mega Man completely new, it had to do a fair amount to win me over. Having now played it, I feel like I can say I get it. I get why the series has been such a mainstay and completing the first one has made me eager to get into the rest.
The game has a lot to dislike but the core is thoroughly enjoyable. Collecting the extra powers and finding the best ways to use them has a simple but undeniable hook to it. Besting the robot masters feels fantastic and each one is a real achievement.
I'm undecided as to whether the Mega Man series will become one of my favourites, but early impressions tell me it very well could.
That's true for pretty much everything I enter into this blog, of course, as its very raison d'etre demands, but for Mega Man this is especially true. At the very least, I had a passing knowledge of Metroid and Castlevania, and I was aware how their games play before I delved into any of the titles myself.
Mega Man, though, I had no idea. I knew platforming was involved and that's pretty much it. In fairness, I don't think that's necessarily unusual outside of the Blue Bomber's home territory of Japan, where his popularity has historically been considerably higher. At the same time, Mega Man's enduring popularity—nay, legendary status—as a character is well known far outside of Japan, so while I can use my location outside of his home turf as a crutch, it's no valid excuse.
So I changed that, and with first things being first, I started with the start. I know that reads like something from Mary Poppins, and I'm not changing it.
Mega Man
Known as 'Rockman' in Japan, Mega Man's first game arrived in December 1987 to the NES. It was Capcom's first title for a home console, a significant deviation from their until-then sole focus on arcade titles.
Mega Man was the game I chose to tackle after Metroid, and there's good reason for that. I wanted a palate cleanse whilst sticking to a platforming series. I was still in platformer mode, and I wanted to use that momentum while I had it. Beating Metroid had also left me with a hunger for more retro games conquering, and the thought of delving into something I knew even less about was tantalising. I loaded up the ROM and away I went.
Story
The year is 20XX (canonical, that's not just me forgetting specifics) and humanity has robots to aid them in many aspects of society, thanks to renowned roboticist, Dr. Light. Everything's dandy until—what else—the robots turn on us. Spearheading the robot rebellion are six 'robot masters', industrial bots that form the bosses and main antagonists you need to take down throughout the game.
The robot rebellion is the work of Dr. Wily, Dr. Light's evil rival who is also using the designs of the robot masters to make copies. Our hero, Rock, volunteers himself to be converted from Dr. Light's assistant robot to a battle robot, becoming Mega Man (or Rock Man for Japan, which makes sense in the context of his original name). He takes down the robot masters and Dr. Wily, saving the world (until Mega Man 2, 3, 4, 5, 6...)
The plot changed somewhat in the process of Western localisation, but it doesn't really matter much for the overall story and certainly not for the gameplay. Look it up if you like but it's not worth highlighting here.
The story isn't essential at all for a game like this, but it's nice to have in the background at least lending some context to why you're a robot with an arm cannon hunting other robots. It's charmingly Japanese retro, as the Western approach to deadly robots is often more Terminator than Mega Man (bear in mind that the former came out three years before the latter, so it's not like our opinion of robots suddenly matured).
Robots turning on humanity wasn't a new concept even back at the time of this game's genesis, but it's nice that it only forms a thin layer of context rather than a commentary on AI and advancing technology. In fact, without being told Mega Man and his humanoid counterparts were robots, you often wouldn't even realise. Mega Man's job of collecting the robot masters' cores as he defeats them also provides an explanation for how he 'absorbs' the powers of his defeated foes. Again, not at all needed, but just nice to have.
The story is fine. It's token but that's expected for an 80s run and gun platformer, and anything trying to be more serious would have felt jarring.
Sound
All the classic sound effects are here. Bleeps, bloops, bouncy jumping noises, and some satisfying sounds like the reverberating electronic pop when you dust off a robot rival.
The music is sometimes passable at worst, but at its best, it slaps. Yes, okay, Elec Man's stage music is a rip off of Journey's 'Faithfully', but it sounds great in the NES soundfont (and so much classic videogame music is heavily borrowed from whatever was popular at the time). I didn't go into this game expecting to be impressed by the soundtrack, and while I wasn't blown away, it's more than I was counting on. Some of this stuff is certifiable head-bop shit, like Bomb Man's stage music. It's hard not to jam to it in a controlled way that doesn't screw with your concentration, and that surely counts for something.
The sound takes an overall lighthearted approach that mirrors the levity of the story and the pace of the gameplay. Mega Man's 'Mega Buster' comes across more like a NERF gun due to the levity of its firing noise, but the game knows what it is, and a realistic weapon simulator ain't it.
Personally, I think it sounds great for the time. Retro games are infamous for dud tracks but I don't think Mega Man commits any musical sins at all, really. At its worst, it's repetitive and crunchy.
Gameplay
Coming off the back of Metroid, I found Mega Man much more forgiving in some aspects. In others, it's anything but.
The lives system of Mega Man somewhat softens difficulty spikes in certain places. For instance, you might actually opt to let yourself die and respawn since you come back with full HP, meaning entering a boss fight with low HP could be written off as a lost cause, because you can afford to spend a life to respawn right before the fight and try again with no handicap. There's also no true 'game over', despite the screen that says such once you've lost all your lives, because you can choose either to simply restart the level or go back to the level select with your progress thus far intact. Both options give you a fresh cache of lives, so it's an honest go again either way.
On the other hand, there are plenty of insta-kill drops that bring the flow of the game to a screeching halt and can range from tough to infuriating thanks to the somewhat shoddy movement physics when it comes to stop-start jumping manoeuvres. It's hard to accurately convey even with a video unless you've played and felt it for yourself, but there's a kind of 'trip' to Mega Man's movement due to the way he runs and lands with momentum, which can make your jumps rather imprecise even with practised timing. This was admittedly alleviated by my use of save states courtesy of the emulator, and just like last time, I feel no guilt for this. I'm here for a good time, not a long time.
Despite not being apparent through the game itself, most of the bosses have a weakness to a particular power, making a clear optimum 'path' through the game. Choosing the stages in the right order will make things much easier for you, as will saving anything other than your default (unlimited) weapon for all but the trickiest situations or the bosses. There are plenty of times you can softlock yourself by using up the energy to a needed weapon (and this isn't exclusive to the first game, as I've discovered by progressing further into the series since). There's not much you can do about this as dying won't respawn you with full energy on these subweapons — only your HP. If you're not using save states, you'll either need to pull it out of the bag with the Mega Buster or allow a game over and start again from the beginning of the level.
You can sometimes find yourself with the option of a Metroid-esque enemy farming situation to eke out some more subweapon energy, but this isn't deliberately done and more often than not you'll be unable to backtrack for pickups.
Thankfully, the levels aren't overly long. Even the most irritating gimmicks are short-lived, sometimes surprisingly so, and the game isn't interested in throwing the same obstacle at you until you master it. No, often you'll only just be getting the hang of one roadblock before it disappears and something new crops up. The game aims to keep you on your toes and it does that very well.
Boss difficulty ranges from decent challenges to your sense of pattern recognition, to just...I don't even know what. Hyperactive spasms of movement that cannot be anticipated or countered by much more than selecting the most effective power and spamming it as much as you can whilst the game grinds to a near-stop as it tries to process all the projectiles. Yeah, that's probably as best I can describe it. Some of the boss attacks are literally impossible to dodge. Even the most skilled players showing off their talents on YouTube will be sponging hits that they can't dodge. I'm a scrub, but my scrubosity isn't always to blame.
In my opinion, the game starts to feel like it's overstaying its welcome once you've defeated all the robot masters and you realise, oh no, oh dear, there are many more bosses. You see, defeating all six robot masters puts you on the path towards Dr. Wily, and to reach him you'll need to fight through four stages comprising his lair. Each of these stages comes with further boss battles, including boss rushes.
Yellow Devil in particular feels like an irritating boss designed purely to be irritating. I would not have finished this game if I had to restart every single time that big one-eyed idiot devoured my lives. Actually, I feel like it would make more sense as an encounter used earlier in the game, either as a difficulty spike to set the tone for more challenging gameplay thereafter, or to beat the player over the head with the importance of learning attack patterns (when there are patterns to learn, anyway). Instead, it comes across feeling like a 'gotcha' that contributes heavily to the feeling of an overstayed welcome in the game's latter half. What could have been a compelling build-up in momentum leading to the final boss fight just ends up being a slog, at least to me.
Other bosses feel extraneous and tacked on for the sake of lengthening the game, and Dr Wily himself is a challenge only in the amount of damage his projectiles achieve, not the actual skill required to face him.
This all sounds very negative, and I don't mean it to say that I didn't ultimately enjoy Mega Man; I guess you could say I was just a little frustrated that by ending the game I felt relief of the 'glad that's finally over' kind, rather than the 'that was a great game' kind.
Final thoughts
Coming in to Mega Man completely new, it had to do a fair amount to win me over. Having now played it, I feel like I can say I get it. I get why the series has been such a mainstay and completing the first one has made me eager to get into the rest.
The game has a lot to dislike but the core is thoroughly enjoyable. Collecting the extra powers and finding the best ways to use them has a simple but undeniable hook to it. Besting the robot masters feels fantastic and each one is a real achievement.
I'm undecided as to whether the Mega Man series will become one of my favourites, but early impressions tell me it very well could.
