I've been working on playing <i>Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde</i> per request, but it's... an interesting beast. I'm struggling to get through it, so I decided to go ahead and knock out @joalheal 's request of <i>Mega Man</i>, since I know I can get through it in under an hour.
Now, this is a game I've played a lot of. And I mean a lot. I have hundreds of hours in the Legacy Collections, I used to <a href="https://www.twitch.tv/videos/486005769">speedrun</a> the game, made a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GS2B2Ou6HEY">no-damage video</a> of the game, and even did a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz0O18Odfn0">YouTube Let's Play</a> of it over 10 years ago. And, of course, I played again for the sake of writing this post. I've been playing this game as long as I can remember, and I can't get enough of it.
Being said, I could write a whole book about this game, surely, so it will be hard to condense all my thoughts down into a single post. But I'll try to just cover the main points of the game.
<i>Mega Man</i> was an earlier NES game, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. Released in 1987 and developed by Capcom, it's a run-and-gun platformer where you play as the young robot boy Rock, turned into super-hero Mega Man after the evil Dr. Wily kidnapped his brother robots and turned them evil. Your goal is to retrieve your brothers and face Dr. Wily himself to put a stop to his evil rampage. There's actually quite a bit more lore than this, but that's the gist of it.
Amazingly, Mega Man presented an idea that was completely revolutionary in the platforming world at the time -- instead of playing a linear path of stages like <i>Super Mario Bros.</i> and other games before it, you actually get to choose the order you play the stages yourself!
At the end of each of the six stages is one of Rock's brothers whom you fight as a boss. Defeating these bosses will reward you with the robot's Integrated Circuit, the disc containing all of their crucial data. You could say that this disc is sort of the android's essence or soul, which allows them to be rebuilt with the same personality and functions as before.
But what is particularly interesting about this game is that retrieving an I.C. from a robot boss also allows Mega Man to copy some of their programming, obtaining their weapon for himself! These weapons can then be used throughout stages and even against other bosses, making each playthrough unique as the order of the stages you choose will determine which weapons are available to you at which times.
Each boss has a weakness to a particular weapon, too, allowing the player to figure out a chain of weaknesses to make the game easier. Personally, though, I like to collect the weapons in an order that makes them fun to use during the stages, fighting the bosses on my own accord with Mega Man's classic and default Mega Buster weapon.
Each power changes Mega Man's color scheme and allows him to do all sorts of interesting things, from picking up blocks around the stage and throwing them, shooting fireballs while encasing himself with a shield of fire, to flinging an ice beam that freezes enemies in their tracks (even in the air!)
Instead of being a gauntlet of increasing difficulty using the same traps and enemies throughout, each stage features unique challenges, such as the infamous disappearing-and-reappearing yoku blocks that you must memorize and climb, or air lifts that have breaks in their path where you must jump or fall to your doom.
Each stage also is different in color and theme, making all six stages feel truly unique and interesting. What's nice is that each one presents a unique challenge that requires you to learn patterns and react properly -- unlike a lot of games of the day, it's a <i>fair</i> challenge, albeit quite a difficult one!
After clearing each of the six stages, a final area appears where you go to take on Dr. Wily. This is a series of stages where not only do you have to re-fight Mega Man's six brothers mixed into the stages as enemies, but you also fight more unique bosses such as the Yellow Devil, whose body turns into parts and flies across the screen, causing you to carefully dodge them. You even fight a clone of Mega Man himself!
The game ends with a final showdown with Dr. Wily, in which he famously falls to his knees and begs Mega Man for forgiveness. We're treated with a credits roll while Mega Man runs home through the sunset.
<i>Mega Man</i> is a phenomenal game, and even today I have a ton of fun with it. For an early NES game, it was certainly groundbreaking, and really stands out from its competition. There's very little you can compare to <i>Mega Man</i> that came out around the time, and I don't even hesitate to claim it's more well-developed than even the <i>Super Mario</i> games that came before it.
If you're a collector, <i>Mega Man</i> is a must-have on your shelves. And if you've never played this classic that spawned dozens upon dozens of sequels and spinoffs, I'd recommend getting to it as soon as possible. It's one of my favorite games of all time, and could easily become one of yours, too!
hiveblocks