Mega Man 8 Anniversary Edition

"Don't use your coolest stuff up in the first five minutes."

This would seem to be the culmination of the Mega Man series, the crowning achievement of one of the longest-lived video game franchises around. Unfortunately, the Mega Man series had been downhill for a while and Mega Man 8 was only slightly improved on the NES games set before it.

And what does the headline of the review mean, you ask? The game opens with an awesome animated intro sequence that shows Mega Man battling a bunch of Dr. Wily's robots while a cool syntho-rock song plays in the background. It shows what a Mega Man anime might have been like, and it's a treat to see. The problem is that the rest of the game doesn't quite live up to it.

Dr. Wily has obtained some kind of alien power source to make robots that are more powerful than ever, and while trying to stop them Mega Man meets an interesting new character named Duo who doesn't get nearly enough attention. Fault #1 of the game. And being able to play him in Power Fighters doesn't really make up for it, sorry (plus that game can't seem to decide if it happens before or after this one!).

Mega Man 8 isn't all bad. The robot masters are a lot more interesting than in the string of NES games, and Rush has a few cute new forms, like a motorcycle.

Also, during parts of the game there are further anime-like cut scenes which are nicely animated, if not voice acted. Dr. Light especially. He sounds like he's related to Elmer Fudd!

I also enjoyed some of the shooting portions of the game, where Mega Man rides Rush through the air, and can collect power ups to call his other robot buddies to lend a hand by bombing or smashing into his enemies. Very nice touch. There's just something cool about seeing Auto, Flip-Top and Beat all zipping around helping you to blow Dr. Wily's guys to smithereens.

Also, you can find bolts lying around levels to trade in for various power-ups at the lab, like one that lets you start a new session with more lives, warps you out of a level you've already cleared, or makes it so you aren't knocked backward and possibly into a pit when you get hit.

Unfortunately, those can't carry the game all on their own. And I have a lot of the same complaints that I do about any Mega Man game. For instance it's cool to get new powers when you beat enemies, as always, but also, as always, it's almost completely unintuitive which other enemy each new weapon will work best against. And if you're a long time Mega Man player I don't have to tell you how taking on a robot master without the weapon that's his one weakness makes it like twenty times harder to beat him.

And while everything certainly looks and sounds better thanks to the move to a CD-based console, neither Mega Man nor his new powers behave significantly differently from his previous games. Weapons like the Flash Bomb and Ice Wave aren't much different from the stuff you could get in games as early as Mega Man 1 or 2. And the well of creativity for robot master design seems to have run dry long ago, because hey, we have another ice guy and another water guy! Another tornado guy like Air Man or Wind Man! Another bomb guy in Grenade Made! You could make the argument that Sword Man is even another fire guy. Despite how far the series had come, a lot was still the same.

Mega Man 8's not really a bad game. I'll take it over the last three NES prequels any day. Compared to them it's a masterpiece. But really, it was just another Mega Man game with prettier graphics and a few dashes of innovation like more vehicle levels and cinema sequences. A game really should be kind of ground-breaking to justify being the seventh sequel in a series.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/24/04, Updated 03/30/04