Mega Man

"Its been 15 years....."

Ahhhhh......Nostalgia...its a good feeling...as I write this review,I can feel a lot of it. Heh, I remember when I first saw this game. My older brother had just traded in megaman X for this. I was angry. I didnt want to play a game that was older than me,but I got used to it, and now its one of my most treasured games.

Let me tell you the story of the little blue man...the man that single handedly turned CAPCOM into a leading video game company.

In 1987 Keiji Inafune,thought of a run of the mill action/platformer. A side scroller. Nothing special. Instead he said, lets make a game where you pick the stages you go to,rather than go to a pre set order of stages. He called the game RockMan, for the Famicom.

Then It was ported over to the American NES. They gave us a bad cover (he looks like a friggin old man) and called it MegaMan. They thought the american audiences would not like the cover they had over there in the land of Japan. Little did they know they would get one of the biggest cashcows in the History of any videogame company. With over 18 games and 3 spinoffs of the original series its a game thats hard to top in terms of Originality. The first spinoff is Megaman X series. That is 100 years into the future after the original series. That is where Dr. Light is dead and Megaman X takes his place. I'll have a review for that. The second is Rockman Dash or megaman legends. It happens in an alternate universe which has megaman volnutt, and we have Megaman Zero. 100 years after Megaman X series. Its a spinoff of a spinoff. It has Zero in it as the main character. Now Back to the original Rockman.

This game revolutionized gaming being the first (or one of the first) games to be able to pick the order of stages. Even though Megaman has become a shadow of his former self, (the games are getting a little stale) he still makes capcom big bucks. Even with the Devil May cry series it cant come close to any megaman series. Neither can Resident Evil. Nothing beats the Blue Bomber!

NOW TO THE STATISTICS!! YAY!
I will be comparing it to 87 and today in 2003

Graphics
Today-7 out of 10.Back in the day-9 out of 10

When this game came out it was one of the most colorful games. It had good looking sprites, and back in the day these graphics were unseen. They were unheard of! THEY WERE....ahhh.....*hits myself* I almost went on a tangent. heh,this is what I call a first generaiton game. It came out shortly after the legend of Zelda, which had bland graphics. Amazing how far technology went in a year, No?
Fast forward today in 2003. The graphics are still good. Not beautiful, but still good. All megaman games for the NES use the same graphics so its nothing we havent seen before. The Backgrounds are bland. Just a Blue screen. and something to set it apart. Nothing special.

Sound and music
today-8 out of 10. back in the day-8 out of 10

This game doesnt push the NES' PCM chip to the limit but tries. The game has very good tunes. I am humming the ending right now as I type this. Once again, Nothing special. (as you can see I love to use that phrase) It has A good mix of Bass (NOT THE FISH!!) in the fireman stage and A good mix of treble(NOT THE DOG!) in the Iceman stage. The games music is really good and this game's music evolves into the beautiful megaman music we get today. Now the Games music is still good. If I can still remember it it has to be good right? The Ending theme even becomes the Megaman Theme song which you see in almost all of the original series games.

Difficulty
today-10 out of 10 back in the day-7 out of 10

Back in the day games werent easy like they are now. They are used to hard games dont have a problem beating games. (unless a select few....can someone say Gradius?) Now games are made so little kids could beat them. I had such a hard time with this game. I overcame the hardness and I used the POWAH! to beat this. Actually my brother told me I would never ever beat A megaman game. I dont have to explain today because I already said that games are easy now so kids wont be used to the hardness of this game.

Control

back in the day and today-9 out of 10

Only 2 buttons. Press the start button and the menu comes up. Press select and you pause the game. A to jump and B to fire your arm cannon. Not hard to remember right?

Rent/buy

Ya cant rent it so you have to buy it. Its expensive. ( I think $24 but this game is worth it....ITS A PIECE OF HISTORY!!)

Nothing can beat the Blue bomber!...........its actually been 15 years....

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 10/27/03