Retro Redux: Mega Man

Howdy folks and welcome to yet another Retro Redux. This week we’re going to take a look back at a game that I only played for the first time a little over a year ago, Mega Man. The first installment in the series. I never played the Mega Man games when they originally came out. I don’t know why they were just never ones that I put into my system. It wasn’t until the release of Mega Man 9 when I really got interested in the Mega Man franchise and decided to try them out on the Virtual Console.

Designed by Keiji Infafune, Mega Man was released back in December of 1987 and set the tone for what the franchise would become. There would be some tweaks to the overall formula, but designs such as having a set number of stages all guarded by a robot master that would give you their power after you defeated them would be kept in every subsequent entry in the series. In this instance there were six robot masters that you needed to best; Ice Man, Fire Man, Elec Man, Guts Man, Bomb Man and Cut Man. There was a pattern to the way they could be defeated and if you found out the correct order each boss would be much easier to defeat. Once you bested the six robot masters you were sent to the Wily Stages where you had even tougher guardians on each level, including a section where you had to beat each of the six robot masters in succession.

Mega Man was not the prettiest game to look at and there were a number of times where the action on the screen would slow to a crawl because there was so much going on at one time. I can remember playing Cut Man’s stage for the first time and seeing that opening section with the teal blue walls and thinking this game did not hold up very well over the years. Much of this was just from the game being a product of the early NES era and it was corrected very quickly with Mega Man 2 which looks vastly superior to the original.

Sound is where Mega Man really shines. The games score was composed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi, who was credited in the game as Yuukichan’s Papa, and Manami Matsumae. The original themes for this game are still remembered by many as some of the best in the series and there aren’t many games from that era that have soundtracks that are remembered as fondly as Mega Man.

If you were looking for a game that challenged your skills as gamer Mega Man is a good place to look. These games are famous for their difficulty and many games today are compared to the “Mega Man hard” level of difficulty. Some of the design elements of the game would be considered cheap by today’s standards and some would consider it bad game design. Things like enemies being placed on a ledge that is just barely big enough for Mega Man to fit on or enemies that could shoot in multiple directions hitting you when you’re over a pit of spikes. If you really wanted frustration, the moving platforms in Guts Man’s stage would drive you crazy. The infamous Yellow Devil, which could be defeated very easily if you wanted to cheat. If not, the pattern of his movement and attacks was really, really difficult to time and it took a lot of trial and error before you were able to beat him. There was even a scoring system that awarded you points, and it’s the only game in the main franchise to ever see a score attached to your progress. It was pretty much useless and was removed in Mega Man 2.

There were some issues when Capcom wanted to bring the game to America. Nintendo of America, at the time, had strict rules against any religious references in their games and this affected a number of games, including Mega Man. When the game was first released in America the Yellow Devil boss had his name changed to Rock Monster to avoid the devil reference. It’s known today by its proper name. Mega Man’s name also went through a change. In Japan the game is known as Rock Man and when you combine that with his sister’s name, Roll, you get a nice play on the term Rock ‘n Roll. There was an amplifier in the states known as Rockman and Nintendo, in order to avoid a lawsuit, told Capcom to change his name and Mega Man was born. Probably the most famous, or infamous depending on how you look at it, aspect of Mega Man’s release was the cover art for the box. The terrible art depicting a middle aged man wearing blue power armor and carrying a pistol did not give you any idea of what you’d expect in the game and is considered, by many, to be the worst box art of all-time.

What’s not considered on anyone’s worst of all-time list is the game itself. Though Mega Man 2 is considered a far superior game in a number of aspects Mega Man still ranks very highly on many peoples top NES games of all-time list. Because of this, the game has seen a number of ports, remake and re-releases throughout the years. The game saw release on Nintendo’s Game Boy handheld, and was ported to the PSP in the form of Mega Man Powered Up. That game was essentially a re-make featured enhanced, cuter graphics and new level design, but also had a mode that retained much of the original level design with the enhanced graphics. It was released on the Wii’s Virtual Console in preparation for 2008’s release of Mega Man 9, a game which would take the blue bomber back to his 8-bit roots.

Mega Man is remembered fondly by many people and after playing it last year I’m sorry to say I missed it all these years, but everyone should experience the game that was Mega Man. It will make you appreciate many of the games we have now and test your skills in ways you didn’t think possible.

Retro Redux: Mega Man 6

Welcome again, folks, to Retro Redux. Last week we got things started off with Chip 'n' Dale's Rescue Rangers. This week we take a look back at a game that many people are split on what they think, Mega Man 6

Released in March of 1994, this was the last Mega Man game to appear on the Nintendo Entertainment System and also the only game of that era not to be published by Capcom in North America. They had moved on to focus on marketing Mega Man X and Nintendo took over publishing duties on the continent. It also featured two bosses not designed by someone from Japan. Capcom held a contest for North American children to design two of the robot masters. Knight Man was designed by Daniel Vallée of Canada, and Wind Man was designed by Michael Leader of the United States. The plot for this game centered around a “Robot Masters Tournament” where designers would send entries to participate to see who was the best robot designer in the world. Dr. Light did not enter the tournament, but sent Mega Man as a sort of “police man” to ensure the safety of participants and spectators. The tournament was hosted by the mysterious Mr. X, who at the end of the tournament announced he had reprogrammed the eight victors to do his bidding. Much like the previous games in the series, Mega Man was then tasked with taking down Mr. X, who had revealed himself to be Dr. Wily, and his new minions.

Mega Man 6 did not deviate from the formula set up in all the games before it. You were asked to defeat the eight robot masters before going on to face the final boss levels and ultimately defeat Dr. Wiley. If you knew the correct order to defeat the robot masters, the subsequent boss fights would be much easier to accomplish because of the weaknesses the antagonists possessed. Mega Man also possessed new powers that had not been seen in the franchise up until this point. The Rush Jet Adapter allowed Mega Man to jump up and rocket into the air giving him more height and length to his jumps. The Rush Power Adapter allowed Mega Man to bust through sections of the level to get to previously inaccessible areas. Certain bosses had two entrances to their lair, with one much harder to reach than the other. If you took the harder route you would gain access to a "Beat Part". There were four of these throughout the world and if you collected all four, Beat would do damage to enemies that he came into contact with. Meeting up with Proto Man in Tomahawk Man's stage would also give Mega Man access to the Energy Balancer. This gave Mega Man the ability to power up weapons without having them equipped. The powered up Mega Buster as well as Mega Man's ability to slide were retained in this game and were incorporated into the design of the levels.

As Mega Man 6 came late in the NES's life cycle it also featured beautiful details. The same sprites for enemies that had appeared in previous games were used and Mega Man hadn't changed since the very first game in the installment. New enemies, though, seemed almost out of place as they had more detail to them and a greater range of animations. The worlds themselves were brilliantly colored and full of life. Enemies were able to hide in the background, making them hard to see, and would jump out at Mega Man in a surprise attack. These were the glory days of the NES and developers were beginning to move on -- if they hadn't already -- to the more powerful Super Nintendo. Mega Man would make that jump as well, but not before one last hurrah on the platform that started it all. If featured beautiful levels, tough level design, creative (if odd) bosses, and multiple paths through a number of the levels. It had everything you could want in a Mega Man title.

The Robot Masters, as many gamers would note, were not the most memorable in the franchise and were beginning to border on the weird. You had some of the typical bosses you would expect to see, such as Flame Man, Wind Man, and Blizzard Man, who had appeared in some form or another through many of the games in the franchise. You also had some more bizzare characters, such as Yamato Man, who was named after a country and styled after the Samuari of ancient Japan, or Tomahawk Man who was styled after the American Indians. Centaur Man was, I believe, the first boss to feature four legs. There were very few new ideas in terms of differences from previous bosses. Many of them were seemingly easier than bosses in the previous games in the franchise. Plant Man was more or less a rehash of Wood Man from Mega Man 2. Flame Man was simply another version of Fire Man from the original Mega Man, and Blizzard Man was not much different than Ice Man. The traditional ways to defeat them also applied. You would use Wind Man's power to defeat Flame Man, while Flame Man would bring down Blizzard Man. You just needed to figure out the new guys and then the Robot Masters would be a breeze to get by. You could also use Mega Man's Rush Power Adapter to deal a large amount of damage to opponents. This was not as easy as it took a small amount of time to recharge and if you got hit you had to start again.

The difficulty had also not changed much from the beginning. The levels were still brutally hard throughout the first playthrough, but many players were able to very quickly understand how things worked and the levels became much easier as you learned the enemy placements and behaviors. You could almost guarantee that if you came to a series of chasms between platforms that something was going to jump out of the hole, most likely some form of robot fish. You still had the little guys on the ground that would move faster if you were on the same level as them. The construction robot, Met, was back as well, this time in a dispenser that you had to get rid of before being able to continue on in the level. Every few seconds it would drop a new robot that you had to destroy or be shot by. The difficulty level of Mega Man games has been one that many people who haven't played them before may be turned off by. They were created in an era when games had to be difficult to increase their playtime and justify the expense. If you were really good at the game you could beat it in under an hour, which was typical of the franchise, but the enemy placements and patterns that needed to be learned meant it was more likely to take you three or four hours your first time through.

While the series was not evolving, it was a new Mega Man game, and getting more Mega Man wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Mega Man 6 gets a bad rap for being so generic and unfailingly loyal to the traditions set up before it. If you could get past the same enemies being reused for the sixth time then what you had was another really good Mega Man game. They've always really been more of an expansion on the first game rather than new games in and of themselves and I think that's what really attracts players to the franchise. There are so many different types of Mega Man games out there now that there is almost undoubtedly something out there for everyone. The core games have always been hard at first, but once you understood what you were getting into they became easier and were generally just fun to play. There's always a fine line that developers have to tread when extending a franchise. If you don't innovate and make things new people are going to be upset.

At the same time, if you mess around with something that people are familiar with they're going to say it's not what they wanted. Mega Man 6 simply gave people the ability to play more Mega Man and I don't think that was a bad thing. We would see more of the same in Mega Man 9 fifteen years later and gamers everywhere applauded it for bringing the original formula back. I think the thing that caused many gamers to dislike this game was that it had been done so many times before in a short period of time. If this had been the reboot of the franchise that Mega Man 9 was then it would have been praised more and I think it's a shame that it's not as well liked.

There ya' have it. What did you think of this look back? Is there anything you'd like to see featured in this column? Leave me a comment and let me know, or just let me know your thoughts. I'd love to hear from ya.