Mega Man

The Good
Most people play Mega Man 1 only after playing one of the sequels. Luckily, I was able to play this one first. I was looking for NES games to rent and picked this one up. The art on the box was bad which drew my attention to it. Usually the first games for the NES had awful art so I was curious enough to take it home.

The gameplay is Megaman being able to run, jump, and shoot his gun (though never being able to shoot up). He can take damage but recharges himself with energy capsules that enemies often leave behind. At the end of each stage, Mega Man fights a boss (a similiar robot to Mega Man). Once all the 6 robots are defeated, you go through the final stages of Dr. Wily's Castle.

If this was all there was, Mega Man 1 would have been the last Mega Man. There were two gimmicks that made this game insanely addictive.

-Level Select-

There is no beginning level! First thing when you put up the game is you have a level selection screen of six levels. If you have trouble in one area, you go to another. This concept was novel at the time and greatly appealed to me (and others) since I HATED getting stuck at a single level. If I got stuck in a level, I could play another level. In effect, I had much more access to game content than a linear level design.

-Weapon Upgrades-

When you defeated a boss at the end of the level, you obtained that boss's power. So if you defeated Fire Man, you got his fire attack. Ice Man would give you an ice attack. Electric Man gave you an electic attack, etc. Cutman had a boomerang type cutter. Gutsman would give you the ability to lift giant blocks. Bombman, of course, gave you bombs.

With a new weapon, it freshened up the remaining game content. The fire weapon made Iceman's stage much easier and the ice weapon made Fireman's stage easy as well. The weapons also would trigger weaknesses in certain bosses. Bombman's bombs were very effective on gutsman. Gutsman's block lifting ability came in handy against Cutsman. This gave the game massive replayability.

The final stages were interesting too, even though they fit the standard linear level mode. The bosses were very creative, especially the big yellow one who would move across the room in small little pieces (you would have to dodge pieces of himself as he did this). The final stages featured a puzzle element as you had to know when to use the correct weapon in the right spot (and for the right bosses). You also didn't have your weapons recharge so you couldn't waste them. Right before the end, you get to fight all the robot masters again, this time you have all the weapons so wiping them out is easier this time. Then you fight Dr. Wily and its end of game.

The game's graphics were interesting for its time. They were very cartoony and looked very nice. The levels all matched the bosses. Iceman's stage was full of ice (you would slide around). Fireman's stage full of fire. Electric Man's stage full of robots and electrical shocks. Each level was unique and had its own distinct feel.

What made Mega Man a classic was, as I've said, the use of the stage select and upgrading weapons once completing those stages. Nothing like that had been done before!

The Bad
Gutsman stage was HARD!! The beginning of the level was full of moving platforms that would turn vertical (hence, dropping you to your doom) at spots on their ride. It is very difficult to get through that. The game also had annoying jumping puzzles such as with the appearing blocks. (This MegaMan game is probably one of the hardest in the series.)

The control for this game is so-so compared to the sequels. This is ok, since this was the first game. This game only had 6 robotmasters and stages compared to the standard 8 that would appear. Again, this is no issue since this was the first Megaman.

The lack of a password means you must complete this game in one sitting. However, if you completely run out of lives, you just go back to the stage select screen (with levels you have already completed stay completed). There are midpoints in the levels so if you die, you don't have to start each level at the beginning. Only if you lose all your lives does that occur.

There is a unique 'item' in Electric Man's stage that you must have in order to complete the first level in Dr. Wily's Castle. I didn't know this at the time and had to go back to Electric Man's level. Annoying.

The Bottom Line
A game designed with stage select from the very beginning, with cartoonish fun robots, environment obedient levels, with the capability for your character to steal weapons from the bosses for his own personal use? Sweet!

This game sold very poorly in the US due to bad distribution. This was not the game that launched the franchise, though. Megaman 1 did have some issues that held it from being 'blockbuster' so it was reduced to being a 'cult classic'. The design concepts were what gave this game it's well deserved sequel... it was the sequel that launched the Mega Man franchise.

The Good
Originality. This was the beginning of a series that has went off in all sorts of directions, even to the point of making Megaman Soccer, and a Megaman RPG! Anyway, back to this game. Again, very original in most ways, good music, good graphics (for the NES, anyway) and as always, in every Megaman game, Dr. Wily's eyebrows are just hilarious.

The Bad
Difficulty, and control. This was the only Megaman game on the NES not to feature the password system, which makes each game considerably less difficult. As for control, Megaman slid around too much. The Cover art sucked, too.

The Bottom Line
Classic. A true retrogaming experience.

The Good
Devoted readers of my reviews (hi, Mom!) know that I do not have a great deal of respect for Capcom games in general. Capcom has an annoying habit of taking hit games (Mega Man, Final Fight, Street Fighter) and running the franchise into the ground with numerous sequels. Those games that aren’t hits (Bionic Commando, Strider) become inexplicably acclaimed cult classics, despite the fact they aren’t really anything that special.

So I had every intention of revisiting the original Mega Man title and writing a harsh review of it. But a funny thing happened along the way: I actually found myself enjoying the game! I still have reservations about it, which I will detail below. First, though, I need to eat some crow and say what’s good about this game.

The graphics are quite nice for an early NES title. Some game companies, including Capcom, tried to do too much too early in this department (I submit Commando as Exhibit A), but I think they hit the sweet spot here. There may be a little too much red and blue in the color palette, but otherwise the graphics are very well done, with little flicker or slowdown. The same praise goes for the music and sound effects. NES music/sound is generally annoying, but here it’s rather atmospheric and catchy.

As for the gameplay, it takes a little getting used to, but once you get a feel for what the designers were going for with Mega Man—puzzle-oriented platforming, alternating with cool boss battles—it’s hard to resist coming back for more. Even when you die from a cheap hit or an unexpected enemy appearing on screen, it makes you mad, but it also makes you feel good, since you’ve explored a little more of the game and now you’ll have the knowledge to help you do better in the future. Mega Man definitely dishes out its carrots and sticks at the same time.

Some of the jumping puzzles are truly devious in design. While many are straight-up mazes, some add timing elements, where blocks appear and disappear at fixed intervals in a given sequence. The player has to observe this sequence and then figure out what blocks to jump on, and in what order, to get to the other side of the screen. It’s a pretty simple mechanic, but these puzzles work really well. They are frustrating, but certainly not impossible, and quite rewarding once you’ve figured them out. The controls are more than adequate to the task, too. Modern console gamers will probably say the controls are unresponsive, but the control is actually very tight…it’s just that the jumps themselves are often challenging.

The boss battles are clearly the highlight of the game, though. Every time Mega Man defeats a boss, he gets that enemy robot’s special power. The six different robot boss characters can be taken down in any order, but there is also a really neat “rock-paper-scissors” dynamic at work here, so it may pay to go in a particular sequence. For example, Fireman might be vulnerable to Iceman’s attacks, in which case you would want to beat Iceman before taking on Fireman. Some experimentation may be necessary to find the right combinations, but that’s part of the fun of it. It’s actually a pretty nice way of adding replay value to the game without just throwing more levels at you.

The Bad
The most damning thing about Mega Man, and the reason why I originally intended to write a negative review of it, is that it seems crushingly, unfairly difficult at times. This is partly the fault of the game’s designers for not including some kind of password or save game feature. It was still relatively new for this kind of arcade game to have a clear “finale” to it, and they clearly weren’t sure how to handle it yet. Even a really good platform gamer would need 4-5 hours minimum to get through this game—but who in this busy modern world has the time (or patience) to plug away for 5 or more hours in one sitting?

I think the first lesson of Mega Man is this: you can make a good platforming game into a great game if you have a save feature, some difficulty settings, and an endgame that is humanly possible to beat. Mega Man doesn’t have those things, but Mega Man 2 does. Even Capcom can learn from its mistakes!

The second lesson is that a good game can seem really bad when you compare it to the wrong kind of game. I always compared the Mega Man games to Super Mario Bros. 1,2 and 3. In retrospect, that comparison really biased me against the MM series. Mega Man isn’t Mario; he jumps around platforms, but he doesn’t blast through them with speed or by busting up bricks and stomping on his enemies. No, Mega Man has to get through the levels with patience, puzzle-solving, and some clever shooting. It’s an entirely different kind of experience, even if the two games look very similar. In fact, I’d say Mega Man is closer to classic PC action games (Lode Runner, Jumpman, Prince of Persia) than it is to Super Mario.

Aside from the fact that the trial-and-error gameplay can turn into a grind, my only other complaint is that Mega Man is a pretty bland protagonist. He’s totally upstaged by the boss enemies, which seems a little odd for a superhero. Maybe it had to be this way, but it still bothers me.

The Bottom Line
I hated Mega Man at first, but now that I’ve played it more, I have to admit that I like it. It’s clever and charming—just enough so to offset its unreasonable difficulty level and occasional bouts of tedium. Fans of 2D platformers should definitely play Mega Man, but remember: he ain’t no Mario.