Megaman Basics

This part will cover the basics. Megaman, or Rockman in Japan, is a series I remember fondly. I owned Megaman 2,3,4 on my Nintendo and played them quite frequently. With reviews of the kickstarter project Mighty No. 9 just now coming out, I figured it was high-time to do a Megaman Marathon. I was going to write out a full summary of how each game fared between each other until I realized someone already beat me to it. In fact, a lot of people help explain the games in great detail. The WIkia has a lot of information too. So instead of listing every detail, I'm going to list my general impressions of the games and their difficulty.

What to Expect? Megaman came out with a ton of games. The Anniversary Edition covered the first 6 games on the Nintendo. Then there were some released on the SNES. Megaman X series touched on Sony's Playstation (multiple generations). There were even some multiple bags of Megaman on the Game Boy. Things get a little confusing with all the spin-offs and multiple reboots to the series. For simplicity, I decided to only cover what I consider to be part of the classic series. This includes the original 6 (on NES), 7 (on SNES), Megaman and Bass, and 9 & 10 (on Wii). Although I would have liked to play Megaman 8 (on Playstation), it was very hard for me to obtain a copy.

Megaman and Bass: I feel it necessary to explain this game a little further. This game does not have a numerical value, but I'd call it Megaman 8.5 in the list. The original game had some complications when being ported to North America. They decided to squeeze it into the Game Boy by cropping part of the screen and reducing the quality. The controls were finicky and reducing the game to two buttons made it a horrible comparison. Once I managed to get a hold of the Japansese SNES and use an English translation patch, the game was much more enjoyable. This game was by far the hardest of them all.

What Makes Up Megaman? Every game includes the character Megaman with the ability to jump and fire. He spends his time venturing through a stage to fight a robot master. After each stage, Megaman obtains that robot's ability. That ability then can be used to exploit the weaknesses of other robots. Items can also be found. Certain weapons and items are used to transverse specific level gates. After defeating every robot master, Megaman must fight through a fortress consisting of multiple levels. He will have rematches with the robot masters one last time before having the final confrontation. Megaman can fire three bullets at a time and can have up to 9 lives. Depending on a user's playstyle, each game can be completed under 2 hours. There are records of people completing the games in roughly 30 minutes each. Lots of enemies, artwork, and platforming is recycled throughout the series.

6-20-2016