After having such a miserable time with the first Street Fighter game, I decided it was time to go back and revisit another Capcom series first and a game I referenced several times in that review.
It's 25 years old and nearly all of its sequels are better games, but the original Mega Man is still loved and respected by gamers today. Many people go back to this game and go back to it relatively frequently, even if not as frequently as its direct sequels. It may have sold poorly upon release, but it's widely considered one of the more influential games of all time. But what made the original Mega Man so different than the original Street Fighter? I mean, comparing a 2D side scroller to a 1v1 fighting game isn't that simple and it's probably an apples to oranges comparison. But they were both first games in what would become hugely popular series' released in the same year and made by the same company. So why was one front and center on the biggest gaming console of the day while the other was regulated to an obscure 4th generation console? Why has one been played by just about anyone who has ever picked up a controller while the other is a curiosity many gamers weren't even sure existed?
Some of it had to do with the style of game. Side scrollers were popular at the time while 1v1 fighters were not. I can't think of any for the NES besides Karate Champ (maybe I'll play that later). There's also the matter of technological issues. As an arcade game, SF would have had to be scaled way, way far back to run on the NES while Mega Man was designed for it. But from a gameplay perspective, the biggest thing was control. Street Fighter had the control scheme of its predecessors, but it just, like, didn't work. The original MM is a little stiffer than later games in the series, but it's still relatively smooth and easy to pick up and play. The controls in MM1 are as they are, were and seemingly ever will be in the series, though new moves would be added later. A jumps, B shoots, Start pauses, there's no slide, no charge shot, no quick weapon change, that's it. Mega Man doesn't carry momentum when he moves like Mario does, he can stop almost on a dime to avoid pits or enemies. Of course, this is a double edged sword, as it makes some of the platforming challenges way harder. Everything behaves as it's supposed to, the controls are responsive and they rarely caused me to fall into pits or contact enemies.
I guess that's the key here, consistency. For all of its design flaws, Mega Man is very consistent and it rarely breaks its own rules like a lot of games do. Each enemy has a set amount of damage they can take and each of Mega Man's weapons deal a set amount to said enemy. This makes certain weapons more effective in different scenarios and also allows for some element of strategy. Enemies also deal set amounts of damage to you, which you can see clearly through your life bar. As a kid, I never understood why the life bar was made up of dozens of little dashes, but Mega Man has, for lack of a better term, hit points and each enemy attack takes away certain amounts of bars. Once you realize this, it adds to the consistency factor and takes away some of the frustration this game may bring. Getting hit causes you to get knocked back slightly, but also provides about two seconds of invincibility, which prevents enemies from just draining your life bar with ease. Spikes and pits are one hit deaths, you have three lives to complete each level and if you lose them all, it's back to the character select screen. Simple, effective, consistent, just like it should be. It wasn't perfect yet, but it laid a majority of the groundwork for what would become a huge series.
Let's get back to that character select screen for a second. It may seem ridiculous now, but that was borderline revolutionary for a platformer in 1987. Usually, games like this had you move from level to level in succession, maybe with some secrets allowing you to skip some portions. But being able to take on the six robot master levels in any order allowed for a sense of variety that the series became known for. It also allowed for the series' key mechanic, exploiting boss weaknesses. Each defeated robot master gives Mega Man a special weapon, which will deal extra damage to one of the others. It's up to you to figure out which one. While the series would go on to spawn more than 100 robot masters, few are as iconic as the original six. Fire Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Elec Man, Cut Man and Guts Man are all series staples and instantly recognizable to most gamers. They all have strong design, Cut Man is a goofball with giant scissors on his head, Bomb Man's body looks like a bomb, Fire Man is shaped like a giant burner and Ice Man rocks his trademark parka. Each has their own stage, most of which are fitting of their personalities. Ice Man's features a tropical island that he has frozen over, while Guts Man's takes place at a construction site. I guess Cut Man's is probably the weakest, it has a few machines that shoot cutters but is other wise fairly generic.
Which brings us to one of the game's biggest flaws, the stage design. They got a lot right the first time around, but Mega Man was far from perfect and I think this was the biggest issue. Many of the levels just feel slapped together and are filled with assets that just seem thrown in random places. Cutman's stage is the worst in this regard, there are non-sensical blocks strewn about the first half of the stage that force Mega Man to take protracted routes for no real reason. I guess there was some purpose to these, as they can be lifted with Guts Man's Super Arm weapon. But this is the one of the only places in the game where they are used liberally. Even that makes some sense, as it would indicate to an experienced player that the Super Arm is Cut Man's weakness, but most people were just confused. There are tons of screens throughout all the levels that are just empty, or force you to climb up long ladders with minimal interaction. They also throw some very strange jumps at players early in levels, particularly in Elec Man's stage where a new gamer can and will have trouble even getting past the first screen. Gut's Man's stage is basically one obnoxious jumping puzzle, and a short walk, and don't even get me started on the footholders in Ice Man's stage. You will die here, largely because the way the game is programmed will make you think you are safe on a platform only to have you fall to your death. That may be the single worst section of any Mega Man game ever, though it can be skipped if you have the right equipment.
The weapons as a whole could use some work. You could tell that the foundation for how the series' weapons would work was there, but the execution still hadn't been perfected yet. The Super Arm, as mentioned above, can only work when the appropriate blocks are present, making it useless through about 80 percent of the game. Bomb Man's Hyper Bomb sits on the screen for three seconds before it detonates, which makes it effectively useless unless an enemy is standing still, which rarely happens. Ice Man's Ice Slasher freezes enemies in place, which is of limited use in this game, though the other three are at least decent. It's not a bad attempt for the first time, but you could very much tell they were still trying to figure out what worked and what didn't in special weapons. Honestly, this took them a few more games to get down, I don't think they had a group of weapons without at least one stinker until Mega Man IV.
So, I don't know where else to complain about the box art, but by now I think everyone knows it's among the worst of all time. Just look at it:
What...is that? I guess it's what's inside that counts, but this was unacceptably bad, even for 1987. Not much else to say about it, its reputation as one of the worst box arts of all time is completely justified.
The last issue I will address is the difficulty. It's no secret that Mega Man is a difficult game, many include it among the NES's 10 most challenging. Eh, I don't know. It's not easy by any means, but I think it's challenge has come to be exaggerated over time. Truthfully, the biggest issue is the lack of a password system, that wouldn't show up until the next game. I don't think the robot master stages are all that difficult and the Wiley's Fortress stages aren't too bad either. It's not easy, not even close. But I'm not sure it's one of the hardest games of all time, or even in the top 10 on the NES. Maybe the top 20, I can pretty quickly come up with 10 that are harder but I don't know about 20. Anyway, the perceived difficulty comes largely for the potential for quick, gimmicky deaths and from two sections: the aforementioned footholders and the Yellow Devil. The former can be skipped with the beam upgrade found in Elec Man's stage, but doing it conventionally is a nightmare. As for the latter? This boss fight is miserable, it definitely is as bad as advertised. Full disclosure, I used the pause glitch on him for this playthrough, because I wasn't dealing with that. For those who don't know, if you shoot him with Elec Man's weapon and keep pausing and unpausing the game, it will register as a hit each time, draining his health in short order. But if you want to beat him straight up, prepare to die a lot and make sure your reflexes are sharp. Overall, Mega Man is still tough, but it's not to the level of some of the NES's true difficulty beasts like Battletoads, Ninja Gaiden or Rygar.
But notice how those flaws are small to moderate, non-gamebreaking flaws? That, in a nutshell, is why the first Mega Man is so much more fondly remembered than the first Street Fighter, at least from a gameplay perspective. Sure it's rough around the edges and it isn't as polished as any of its sequels, but Mega Man is still completely possible to go back to and enjoy today. I might even recommend you start with it if you want to get into the series, as it allows gamers to see just how far the Blue Bomber has come. Even with all of it's issues, Mega Man is still worth a playthrough 25 years later and is a challenging, if somewhat frustrating, experience for gamers new and old.
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