Two weeks ago I find myself deep in thought pondering over a question that was posted on our forums – “What is your personal greatest achievement in gaming?” After serious consideration and headaches, I could only come up with a single answer. I have absolutely no idea.
The successive migranes, however, did make me realise a dark little secret of my past as a gamer, specifically a gamer who prides himself on his knowledge of classic gaming and the wealth of experience under his belt.
I had never beaten a Megaman game.
Currently, some of you are in the process of a spit-take thing and screaming “BLASPHEMOUS HEATHEN!” into your monitors, and rest of you are probably thinking that this isn’t such a big deal. Sure you never finished one, but at least you tried, right? Well yeah, I tired, but that leads me to an even darker retro gaming secret. I had never beaten a single Megaman boss.
That’s right, I had never taken down a single Robot Master. I always found it ubelievably difficult to even make a dent in the health of my artificial foes. Since my last attempt at any of these formidable foes, however, I have made some pretty large leaps in my gaming prowess (More specifically, I have become ‘The Guy’ in this time). So why then, was I completelely unable to work my way through a single tiny speck of what some of my best nerd friends consider to be their favourite franchise?
It was time to rectify this sacrelige against my kind. So I set out to both answer this question, and to repair the damage to my past. It was time to embark on a holy crusade, and these past two weeks have been quite an adventure for me. What started out as picking up the first two games in the series just to see what all the fuss was about quickly escalated into something much more audacious. What started as mere curiosity transformed into a fantastic journey across ten years (and one time paradox of a revival) of one of gamings most beloved franchises. I saw the good, the bad, the downright ugly, and the various stages of experimentation the series has undergone to shape Megaman into the character as we love him today.
Upon starting the first game in the saga, I decided to do something that normally – with any other game – I just would not do. I looked at an FAQ, but only for a single purpose – the reason I have never gotten past a single boss in this blasted franchise before – which Robot Master do I go after first? I felt pretty dirty at first, it felt like cheating, but in retrospect I understand that this is perfectly acceptible. It’s no different from recess in elementary school, telling your friends that no matter how hard you try you can’t get past a certain part of a game, and they tell you something as simple as “Oh, you’re supposed to do Bomb Man first, that’s the best way to beat Guts Man!”. This to me is acceptible, it just tells me where I need to start. For the most part since then, I have only used this to figure out where I’m supposed to start, or if I get to a certain boss and I can’t figure out his weakness I’ll go look up his character on the MMKB and just read what his weakness is. If I don’t have that weapon yet, I’ll try another boss. Otherwise, the first game was fairly simple, quaint adventure, easy to see that Capcom were unsure of quite how they should build the game with the difficulty curve being so very erratic. Some of the sections of the game were unnervingly empty and easy, whereas others contained completely ludicrous traps and pitfalls that I am honestly surprised I survived. I did almost end up breaking my teeth on my controller for the first appearance of the Yellow Robot, as it was so unbelivably unfair that I seriously yelled in frustration a few times. I was also a little taken back first when I realised that Megaman did not have the ability to charge up his shots early on (I didn’t realise that ability was gained in Megaman 4).
So with that one down, I figured I’d give Megaman 2 a run since it appears to be the game most fondly remembered and referenced by fans. What a contrast this game was to the original. Stages were a lot more detailed, a lot more colourful, and a lot more enjoyable. The Robot Masters had a lot more personaility this time around, too. I would rate them as my favourites in the series purely based on their character design. The only problem that really stuck out about this game was its difficulty – the game is way too easy, even on the ‘Difficult’ setting. On Normal difficulty the game can be finished in a relatively short amount of time – my second playthrough for the Anniversary Collection recently took me less that two hours.
Megaman 3 was a bastard. Some percieve is as the best in the series, with the introductions of Rush and whatnot being great innovations. I percieve it as pure evil.
Megaman 4 was probably one of my favourites mainly due to the perfect balance of difficulty the game presents. It is never too hard or too easy, Capcom appeared to have learned from the mistakes they made in Megaman 3 (in particular one section where you are forced to use Rush Jet in 3 is beyond difficult, and if you fail once you may as well waste the rest of your lives because you have no way of gaining the ammo to try a second time) and they had taken a lot of player feedback for how the game should feel and play out. It may not have been the best game in terms of features or originality, but it was definitely a game I had a lot of fun playing.
Megaman 5 was almost a complete joke due to the fact it was so ridiculously easy for the most part… except the fortress bosses were a little bit of a pain for me due to forgoetting to pick up the ‘G’ fo get Megaman’s Beat weapon (the robot bird). All in all though, it took me the smaller part of a night to finish this game. It was a little boring by comparison.
The sixth game in the series is somewhat of a paradox. The difficulty was almost non-existant once I found the jetpack powerup in the game, as pitfalls and spike no longer posed a threat, but I really did love everything about the game. It appears that Capcom really tried hard in creating fresh, new ideas for the series and the evidence is clear in this game. The Rush transformations this time around are replaced with suit upgrades for Megaman – namely a jetpack and a suit that greatly increases the power of the Buster but reduces its range along with a punch that can destroy walls – and it really makes a difference in how the game feels and plays. Sure it didn’t take very long to finish, but I oved every second of this game.
Part 7 was a chance for Capcom to push the series in an entirely new visual direction, replacing the tiny blocky style of Megaman with bright, large and colourful 16-bit graphics backed by the Super Nintendo. Unfortunately, the game was far overshadowed by the X series by this point, so it ended up being lost sitting in the shadow of its more mature-themed brother. The game was fairly easy, and it followed the classic formula of the older games perfectly. It was said to see the series sputter out at this point however, Capcom were trying to build even further on the idea of the Rush Suit upgrades, even if the suit transformation made the game an absolute cakewalk this time around. I will say however, the final form of Wily in this game was probably the one I had most trouble with in the entire series.
Megaman 8 was not really an enjoyable experience for me. Sure it looked great, attempted a lot of new and interesting features and had a decent plot behind it, but something about it just did not feel right. It didn’t feel like a part of the series it was in. Sure it had the basic concept of ‘go blow up these robots, take their powers, then go beat up more robots’, but it ust didn’t feel like classic Megaman.
I never got a chance to play Megaman and Bass due to not being able to find it in town here, but that is a project for a later date anyway, right before I start the Zero series.And there we have it, ten years’ worth of a classic series in the bag. I started out my adventure to Bomb Man’s house on Friday the 22nd of January, and put Wily’s eigth scheme of terror to rest on the evening of the 31st. During this time, I did also pick up Megaman 9 on Xbox Live Arcade, which I should have finished sometime this week, and so far I am very impressed with how true to the classics they have made the game, although the difficulty is right up there with Megaman 1 and 3 in the sense that the game hates you and everything that you stand for. However, for now I have decided to dig in to the X Collection, of which I finished the ball-smashingly hard-by-comparison-to-the-end-of-the-original-series Megaman X last night.
The entire series has very quickly become a firm favourite for me. I feel absolutely ashamed that I have never dug into the Megaman franchise before now. I have absolutely loved everything I’ve seen so far, and I am already starting to tear through the future timelines Capcom have presented to us. My hat goes off to Capcom for creating one of the most loved and most wonderful franchises I have had the good fortune to experience. Here’s to 20 more years of the Blue Bomber!
So here’s my answer, whoever asked that question on the forums (I have just spent the betterpart of half an hour trying to find that post, so whoever knows who it was, please let me know so I can credit them here). This is my single most proud moment in gaming. I played through the entire classic Megaman series in less than two weeks after never having played through any of them before! And I leave you with this, the single greatest Megaman related media on the entirity of the internets… (Warning: Naughty words rife throughout.)
Post title image credit to M Sipher of DeviantArt.
