Gaming off the Beaten Path

Well, we knew we would find our way back here eventually. I'm not sure if I've covered any series as much as I have Mega Man. I can't say I'm surprised. It's one of my favorites, the games aren't that long and they typically offer plenty to talk about.   Heck, they even kind of fit into the whole theme I'm going for. Mega Man is incredibly well known, but it always feels like the series is just a notch below some of the more iconic gaming franchises in terms of recognizability. I guess that's why the blue bomber doesn’t see as many new releases as Mario, or other similar series'. Mega Man 11 was something of a surprise for fans of the series when it was announced. It had been eight years since the previous entry in the franchise, Mega Man 10 in 2010, when MM 11 finally came out in 2018, a long but not excessive time between releases. But what was truly surprising about this new title was the new direction it took the series. Mega Man 9 and 10 were ...

I've probably covered Mega Man more than any other series here on GOTBP. Yet there is still a lot of uncharted territory for the franchise, territory I am going to start exploring this week. For as much time as I have spent on the series, and as important as it is to my history as a gamer, I've never really explored the Game Boy Mega Man titles. As was the style at the time, pretty much any popular NES/SNES/Genesis game got some level of similar handheld release on the Game Boy/Game Gear. Sometimes these were attempts at straight points, others were instances of the same name but a different game, while others had elements of both. For the most part, the Mega Man Game Boy entries fit into the latter category. They were typically released between NES entries, Mega Man II on the Game Boy between 2 and 3 on the NES, and so on. They would contain elements of the two games they appeared between, the aforementioned Mega Man II would contain four bosses from MM 2 on the NES and four f...

  It's been a while since I've done a 10 Round Fight, but this time I'm going to do something a little different. And it's not that these two games aren't RPGs, or that they are part of the same franchise. You see, the first two times I've done this, I've used them to compare either: a) two great games - or - b) two very good, influential new games. But that's not the case here. For the first time, we are going to throw two games in the ring not as a result of their quality, but lack thereof. In plain English, that means we are going to compare two games that suck. Okay, I guess in the scheme of things, neither of these games are actually that bad. I've said this before when I reviewed titles from the series, but a bad Mega Man game is still better than some franchises at their best. But still, these two are among the most maligned titles in the franchise. Mega Man and Bass is widely considered the worst game in the classic series, while Mega Man X6 ...

  I'm not one for overly difficult games, but this one has been on my list for a long, long time. I think I've covered more Mega Man titles than any other series. What can I say, I've always loved these games. Despite being an iconic video game character, the blue bomber fits more into the whole "off the beaten path" theme than you would think. I forget where it was, I ended up looking at the series' sales figures and was shocked to find just how few units it has moved. I guess it makes some level of sense. Mega Man has had quite a few fits of starts and stops, often coming out with two, three, four titles in the span of a few years before going dark. A lot of this is due to spinoffs, I always considered the classic and X series to kind of be one and one A, but there is also Battle network, Legends and a host of other interesting outliers. A lot of folks consider these games to be incredibly difficult. Honestly, I just don't see it. Maybe it's because ...

  I always thought fan games were cool. I especially think it's cool when developers and publishers put their support behind those fan games. And I especially, especially when those fan games mix two of my favorite franchises in a way that makes sense. Anyone that has been following my content for any length of time knows I am a huge fan of both Mega Man and Street Fighter. You know, I didn't even realize how much I like Capcom games in general. When I first tried to start blogging back in my college days, I did a list of my top 100 video games of all time. That list would look much different if I did it today, but I don't think my top games would change too much. Of my top five, four of them were Capcom games and I didn't notice until I looked at it many years later when I started GOTBP. In fact,  both of these series  found their way into my top five. So yeah, a crossover between the two would be right up my alley. Apparently,  I wasn't the only one either, becaus...