Mega Man

"The first entry to the series, and it's not bad at all."

Low and behold, it's Mega Man. The game that started the series. With his blaster gun he's going to be rocking through level after level destroying each generic son of a gun he comes across. Their rock throwing/bomb toting/ice beam having selves just aren't enough to stop him!

But really, Is Mega Man that good? At least, is the original that good? A lot would say the series is great, few would say it died when the "X" series started, some would say it died after X-3... But Mega Man started here, right on the NES. His fame is legendary, and his games are varied.

Still, one would hold dear the beginning. It's like a test run. Sure, the series got stale after a while, but this is where it begins. This is what brought Capcom to release the rest of the games. This is what you want to play when it comes to Mega Man.

Gameplay:

Shoddy game mechanics were a big deal back in the NES days. What, with Belmonts dieing from water contact in Castlevania, weapons that can't reach 2 millimeters out in front of you in a lot of games, stupid text boxes popping up when they aren't needed (Final Fantasy II, Castlevania II), etc. And Mega Man really is no different. A lot of the mechanics in the game could have been done better, but the fact is that it's better than most.

The basics of Mega Man is that it is a side-scrolling shooter. You run around shooting orb balls out of your... cannon hand in order to eliminate enemy robots. You also must jump over various platforms and obstacles in order to get to your next destination.

There are 6 basic levels and then there is one last level that is comprised of 4 mini-levels. At the end of each level you'll fight a boss, whose element or attribute contribute a lot to what type of level you'll be going through. Example: When going up against Iceman, you'll fight in a snowy level. When going against Fireman, you'll be fighting through a fiery level... Heh. In order to get the last level to open up, you must beat each of the 6 basic levels.

Once you've completed a level you'll gain the powers of that boss. Each boss is also weak to something, so it's kind of like a big puzzle. You beat one boss, and that boss's power will allow you to beat the next boss with much more ease. I suppose a problem here is that some of the attributes are kind of... Err... Not direct? I mean, sure you'd expect to have to beat Iceman in order to kill Fireman, but what about stuff like Gutsman? Cutman? It's more like trial and error than anything else. You don't get clues and the attributes are so random that you'll never figure it out through normal thinking.

You'll also find various items throughout the game that can restore your life and your weapon energy. Each of those powers you get from the bosses grant you "weapons" or separate suits you can wear to use those powers. They each have their own energy level and you'll have to recharge them one at a time with the items you find laying around the levels.

So, any problems? Well sure there are. For starters, there is no way to save your game or learn a password. You have to beat this game in one go, or leave your Nintendo on until you can come back to it. This can be hectic at times, but the game's so short that you shouldn't have too much trouble. But that's another thing, this game, much like all the other Mega Man games, is too short. The stages aren't that big, the bosses aren't that plentiful, and the last level is lackluster in terms of length. It is 4 levels long, but those levels are definitely shorter than the regular basic levels.

Also, this game is cheap to the extreme. Enemy forces will completely annihilate you if you don't know what you're doing. Granted, energy has never lowered slower in another Mega Man game to date, it's still easy to be killed. Also, moving isn't solid. You'll slide everywhere you go. As soon as you want to stop running, bam, you slide for a bit and then stop.

That leads me to the next gut-wrenching part of the game. The ice level is absolutely dreadful. It takes, get this, 1.5 seconds to start moving when you're on the snow/ice. It also takes about 1 second to STOP moving when you're on the snow/ice. This is bad because of enemies, pitfalls, etc. It may be... kind of realistic, but it's still bad. We aren't on roller skates here, Capcom, we're in a suit. I'd like to believe, what with the future so far ahead and such, that Mega Man's suit would come complete with friction-ready boots.

The difficulty in this game is pretty high up there. The bosses can be really hard sometimes because of their random movements and designs. Checkpoints may be abundant, but once you die 3 times you have to redo the level over again.

Cosmetics:

The coloration of the game seems kind of bland to me. However, being that it is a NES game, it isn't that bad. In fact, it's pretty high up there. The enemies are neat looking and they all look different from each other. The bosses also vary in appearance and are generally big and detailed.

The only menu you'll see is when you press the start button. It's pretty generic, but still... This is the NES. However, I wish they had made it bigger and filled in some more for the names of the various weapons you get... All you see when you open that menu is "B", "E", "G", etc... While it was easy to remember that "F" stood for the fire weapon and "I" stood for the ice weapon, the rest were kind of hard to remember.

Mega Man changes colors/suits with each weapon you use as well so that's nice. Although, some of the colors were damn ugly. He ends up looking like a marshmallow when you select the "cut" weapon, for example...

The music is actually great in the game. Granted, it is a bunch of bleeps and bloops and bonks... It's still pretty good. The only time the sound annoyed me was when I was trying to cross those stupid moving platforms. They make some unbearable noise that just irritates the crap out of you when you're faced with something that awful to accomplish. Each level has a separate musical track and the bosses also have their own track.

Storyline:

Well... What to say? You are Mega Man and you're fighting something... It isn't really said at all inside the game. The story is supposed to be you fighting to stop a bunch of robots and Dr. Wily from destroying the planet. The only clue you get to this is at the end though. Otherwise, there isn't much story to speak of. While I wish they would have at least stuck some kind of text intro in the game to hint to this, it wasn't that big of a deal.

Overall/Explanation/Recommendation:

While the game lacks any sort of decent story(even for a NES game, it's bad)... It's still a great side-scrolling game to take up a few hours. You'll probably get easily irritated at it a few times, but that's half the fun with the Mega Man games.

So, my recommendation is for you to buy the game. Buy it and play the crap out of it! Just make sure you have a few hours to spare due to the lack of save/password option.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 07/07/06