Mega Man

"The journey begins!"

In the peaceful year of 1987, the NES was still expanding and enjoyed happy days. It had already got a fair share of games of all kinds, and action games, preferably platform shooters, were a highly respected genre. However, yet we hadn't seen that ultimate series. You know, the series that steals all the fans of other similar games. The series that becomes the standard by which all others are measured. Mostly just like the Mario games did with the platform genre. In 1987, we didn't have to wait anymore. A game arrived at the scene and blasted away all others with ease. It was the start of a new series that would dominate the platform shooters genre and stay in our minds still today, regardless if you liked the games or not. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to introduce: Mega Man!

The very first game of Mega Man was the start for a huge franchise that would grow bigger and bigger, a tactic that Capcom would lean back to whenever their creative output engine would slow down. Nowadays, we are all a bit tired of the endless stream of remakes and sequels from Capcom, but back then we didn't know about it, so we played Mega Man with an open mind, and boy, did it leave an eternal footprint on us!

Compared to most other games at that time, Mega Man is simply stunning in most aspects. Every little part of the game seems to have been thought out carefully and polished until perfection. The graphics, more clear, crispy and colourful than anything we had ever seen. The music, with its super catchy songs that every gamer still remembers with love in their hearts. The controls, flawless and smooth through every little passage in the game. The creative characters, more charismatic and fascinating than any other friend or foe ever witnessed before...and so on...

So what is Mega Man then? In a nutshell, it goes like this: The story takes place in a far distant future, titled simple as 20XX. The world is a futuristic utopia, and the human race are living a happy relaxed life with robots doing most of the manual labour. From here we'll follow two special doctors who are hired by a big robot making company: Dr. Light and Dr. Wiley. Dr. Light is a good-hearted professor who tries his best to create robots that make life easier for the humans. Dr. Wiley is his quiet and hardworking assistant. The two doctors have recently created seven different robot master prototypes. The robots are the following: Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, Elec Man and Mega Man. All with their own special skills and specific area of work. Cut Man is for example a woodcutter robot who works in the lumber industry, while Elec Man is an electronics expert and power plant manager. Everything is well until one day when Dr. Wiley suddenly turns against his former master and reprograms six of the seven robot masters into becoming evil killer machines. He takes them with him to his newly built fortress and starts to unleash his deadly foes upon the world. Dr. Light has no other choice than to reprogram Mega Man, the last remaining robot master, into a war machine and send him out in the world to stop Dr. Wiley and the renegade robot masters.

The story is of course quite basic, and is only told in the manual, not in the actual game. But at that time, it was a quite detailed and advanced plot. However, the actual plot of the game is actually felt when you play the game, as the barren landscapes, eerie songs and robot masters unique powers follow the storyline of the manual precisely. The game also introduces another type of function that is standard at this time, but was super original and extremely cool at that time: namely the ability to pick in what order you want fight the evil robot masters. Each time you defeat a robot master, you gain his special weapon and can use it in the next fight against another robot master. This is extremely cool and prompts you to plan your route well so you can use the advantage of one robot master's weapon against another one without having to backtrack. Some orders are obvious, like that Ice Man's weapon work well against Fire Man, but how about Bomb Man or Elec Man? What works well against them? It is up to you to find out. The weapons are a nice collection of projectiles and tools, with different abilities and powers. We have the classical boomerang, delivered from Cut Man, and made up from a big cutting jaw that goes in a boomerang motion. We have the brutal fire napalm cannon from Fire Man, which comes equipped with a fire shield for protection. We have the tri-way electricity beam from our favourite electronics expert Elec Man. But the coolest one of all (though not so useful really) is Guts Man's power glove that gives you the ability to lift heavy rocks scattered around the stages. This can be used to either find new secret paths or to toss the heavy stone bricks in the heads of your enemies. Amusing. You can also get a special tool called the Magnetic Beam, which creates a temporary platform magnetic field you can walk on. It is good for crossing huge gaps in the floor, but beware! After a few seconds, it will vanish out of thin air!

Mega Man plays just like most platform shooters, except that it is about ten times better than most of them. The construction of the levels, the tricky jumps and the countless enemy battles all make up to create some of the best platform levels ever seen, only challenged by the giant series such as Mario and Castlevania. When you have defeated the six robot masters, you are not finished, because then you take on Dr. Wiley in his fortress, with several additional stages which are even harder.

Mega Man probably wouldn't have been so classic today if it hadn't had the excellent graphics and music. The stages all have their own unique identity, elements and colour setting. Cut Man's futuristic city level, Bomb Man's plain white marble landscapes and Ice Man's frosty ice world are all well-detailed and fresh. The songs are also glittering gems of a treasure chest. Who can forget Elec Man's classic techno ambient tune, or Bomb Man's slow-paced peaceful symphony, or the horror soundtrack of Dr. Wiley's final stage? Check on all the rock bands of today that play covers of old game songs, and I bet that all of them has a few songs from Mega Man in their repertoire.

So is this the true 10/10 review? Weeeell...not really! In fact, I saved the big flaw for last. Mega Man is revolutionary, the starting point of a million dollar franchise spanning over more than twenty years, and a great game, but there is one thing down there...one bad aspect that the game still shares with most of the older games...it has no password feature! Daaamn! Not only is the game difficult, it also has no password feature at all! This means that if you shut off your system, you are forced to start all over again. Aargh! Why did you do that, Capcom? You had the top score in your hands!

Well...time to relax again. As a final word, Mega Man is a great game. No doubt about it. It is fun, it is creative and it is well-made. Any gamer willing to play a great action game will love this one. Still, the lack of a password feature is extremely annoying, and stops this game from reaching the seventh heaven. But still, this game is a classic and one of the best for the NES. As we all know, this game would get several sequels, and in game number two, and most of all, game number three, Capcom fixed the flaws they had and made the series sky rocket into the heaven. But that is another story (and another review!). For now, let's enjoy this sweet game.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/31/06