Mega Man the OG!
Hello, all. I’m going to give a short history of my experience with the Mega Man Games up to and including X8, while I would like to talk about Mega Man Zero and Mega Man ZX I have yet to play them. I’ll try and keep my thoughts for each game short as there’s a lot to go through with there being 19 games between the Mega Man and X series.
When I was younger I had very little experience with Mega Man, I played what I think may be the first one briefly and that was about it. Skip a few years, well, a lot of years and I decided after I had been streaming to Twitch that I would play through the Mega Man series after watching several other streamers speedrun a few of the Mega Man and Mega Man X games. I knew they had a reputation for being tough and that the way the games play out for people speed running them is not how it would for me.
I started with Mega Man the original game on the Nintendo Entertainment System, though I played it via Nintendo’s Wii U Virtual Console. It was a very tough, but fun game, I struggled with parts of it, like Ice Man’s stage and the Yellow Devil, but overall it was a nice entry point as it should I was expecting to get my arse whipped over and over while making progress. I think one thing that helped was that I could save on the Wii U VC, I didn’t use saves to save every few minutes like you can a save state, but I did use it to save before heading off to bed and ending my streams, I think my worst mistake in the game was accidentally loading a save before Ice Man’s stage so I had to redo it all over again.
I left it a small while and moved on to Mega Man 2. This game really got its claws into me and I’d say it’s my favourite of the classic Mega Man series, not very original but I loved everything about it, the difficulty was more balanced, the music was amazing and added usable items like E tank, overall I just found the whole experience even more fun and enjoyable than Mega Man. I played this in the same way as Mega Man on the Wii U’s VC and saved it before heading to bed so I could continue on the next stream from where I left off.
When I went into Mega Man 3 I expected to have another enjoyable game, but not one comparable to Mega Man II, I was right in a way, the game actually improves on things from II in some respects, the game has more intricate levels and it also had 6 more stages after defeating the Robot Masters and before taking on the Wily stages, not just that they added the slide which itself added an extra level of manoeuvrability for avoiding enemy attacks. It’s a very good game and the music again is awesome, the big issue for me is the slowdown, which made the experience lesser than that of Mega Man II as the slowdown was such a regular occurrence. It’s a shame as I’d have put it on par with II or maybe a little higher, and while I can play the game without the slowdown via the Mega Man Collection, I didn’t do that so I could get it as close to playing the original NES version as I could and while I did play mega Man III on the Wii U VC like the previous two games I used a password from my progress of the game on the Wii U to play it on Mega Man Legacy Collection on the PC.
With three Mega Man games down I played through Mega Man 4 pretty much straight after 3, and while I didn’t find this as enjoyable as the previous two games I did get a lot of enjoyment out of this. The added charge shot made the power buster a more viable option for taking on enemies and robot masters though it still wasn’t as effective as using the correct shot type against an enemy’s weakness. I don’t really know why I didn’t enjoy this as much as the previous games, I wasn’t fatigued as I carried on with more of the series afterwards, but it just didn’t have the same pull as the previous two games even though it’s still a very good game.
Mega Man 5 is my least liked of the NES titles though I still enjoyed the game, it just again didn’t get the same enjoyment out of me as the previous titles. I’ll be completely honest and say while I remember enjoying the game, I can’t remember what about it I liked or disliked. It’s funny as I should remember things about it, but all I can think about it is, that it was good, but it’s clear, for me, a forgettable experience.
Like its predecessor I remember little about Mega Man 6, I remember it being very very easy compared to all the previous and even the later Mega Man games due to the way in which Rush, Mega Man’s robotic dog companion, can be used to progress through the levels.
You can use Rush to make are more powerful armour that increases his shot power and also have armour that gives him the ability to fly for short distances. I remember enjoying this more than Mega Man V, but it’s still not a patch on 2 or 3 and is again pretty unremarkable.
New Generations for the Blue Bomber
Mega Man 7 was the first and only numbered title Mega Man game on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and this game I didn’t really enjoy very much, it doesn’t do anything really bad, but the big issue for me, and likely only me is the character moves weirdly as if his run animation is to fast for his actual speed, I don’t know if the sprites are too big or something, but it just throws me and makes me feel the game is too sluggish. Don’t get me wrong the game generally looks really nice, but I just didn’t get into it like I did the previous Meg Man titles on the NES.
With Mega Man on the SNES moving to the Mega Man X Series the SNES didn’t get another Mega Man game on it outside of Japan, and Mega Man 8 came out on the Sony PlayStation. Continuing my journey through the Mega Man series I carried on playing the games on the Mega Man Legacy Collection. Funnily enough, I think Mega Man 8 may be the least liked game in the Mega Man series because of the levels that involve auto-scrolling like the flying levels or the better-remembered snowboarding meme levels due to Jump Jump Slide Slide. I digress, I actually enjoyed the game much more than 7, the sprites seemed to be smaller, and move at a pace that actually reflected the speed of everything moving, don’t get me wrong the auto-scrollers do suck, but I found the game overall rather enjoyable with good levels and great(bad) voice acting.
Mega Man 9 came out years later though the gap in playing 8 to 9 was minimal for me. It was released on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 and while the consoles were powerful bits of kit at the time, the game came out and looked like the NES titles, it played like them too. Mega Man 9 went back to the basics and stripped back a lot of what Mega Man could do including the removal of his slide and charged shot making the game feel more like Mega Man 2. It was a great return for the series and I loved it, it’s one of the more difficult titles, but it felt fair and while death was inevitable I was happy to learn the levels, enemy patterns and boss weaknesses. The game also had downloadable content where you can play as Protoman (he was introduced as a villain in Mega Man 3) who does have Mega Man’s Missing abilities but takes more damage when hit. One last thing to add about Mega Man 9 is it had the very first female Robot Master, Splash Woman.
Mega Man 10 came out less than 2 years after 9 in 2010 and stuck with the stylings of Mega Man 9 and the NES-styled visuals. This was an easier game than Mega Man 9 and not quite as enjoyable, but still a very good game. I remember playing through it fairly quickly and I have always planned to go back to the game and play through it as Protoman and Bass. Bass is a villain from Mega Man 7 and was playable in the Japan-only SNES title Mega Man and Bass (which later come out worldwide on the Game Boy Advance and was called Rockman and Forte in Japan) The reason I wanted to go through 10 as the other two characters are because they play differently to Mega Man, Protoman plays as he does in Mega Man 8 and I believe Bass has the ability to shoot in 7 directions like in Mega Man and Bass.
The last Mega Man game to get released was Mega Man 11, it came out in 2018, around 8 years after Mega Man 10. The game dropped the NES stylings and instead went the whole hog of modernising Mega Man for a new generation. This was great to have, it plays well, runs smoothly, it sounds amazing with a cracking soundtrack.
The game adds a new mechanic called the Double Gear System, which is a device that has two gears one which makes Mega Man do more damage and the other speeds up Mega Man but to show the speed increase the world around Mega Man slows down. You can also use the Double Gear System to trigger both gears when at low health which will slow down time and give him the powerful abilities but has the drawback of the gears taking longer to recharge than when used on a single gear and overheats Mega Man to the point where he is unable to used charged shot and he fires only one shot. I’m really glad that Mega Man got a name game 4 years ago and am hopeful for Mega Man 12 as the series as a whole is terrific, while I liked some less than others I wouldn’t say there’s a bad game in there, just great, good and not as good games.
I’ve also played through the Mega Man X series. My Mega Man Journey – Mega Man X
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