Your favorite band, after years of solid rock albums, worldwide touring, partying and hotel smashing, decides that they need to evolve or mature their sound. Therefore, they produce some “experimental” albums (probably with some kind of jazz influence) and alienate most of their fanbase. Eventually, the band realizes the error of their ways and produces an album similar to what got them so popular in the first place, one that’ll probably involve Rick Rubin. That comeback album is what Mega Man 9 feels like. Mega Man 9 is what the final product will be when Kanye West realizes that Auto-Tune is a cheap fad and people will soon come to prefer singers who actually sing.
Inti Creations, the masterminds behind Mega Man 9, were also responsible for some of that dreaded experimenting when they created such LPs as “Mega Man Zero” and “Mega Man ZX”. These games boasted patience-shattering difficulty, playful yet dangerous enemies and platforming pratfalls. Thus they excelled at what people liked about Mega Man games in the first place. But where they completely fell to pieces was their attempts to create something more than a Mega Man game. They had dreadful storylines, a Mediterranean Sea’s worth of text, horrendous voice-acting done by a team of children, unlikable characters playable or otherwise, and a broken mess of an overworld that nailed the flaws of the Metroidesque non-linear style without any of the benefits.
Somewhere out there, an unknown man of great wisdom (perhaps The Most Interesting Man In The World from the Dos Equis commercials) went up to each and every staff member at Inti and slapped them for dicking around all these years. “Make the game everyone wants you to make” he proclaimed. And thus the developers abandoned all the lunacy and dialogue of their last few games and strived to create the Mega Manliest game of all time.
Mega Man 9 is a wondrous creation. One could say that it caters to the nostalgic fiddles of old-school gamers everywhere, which it does. They opted to recreate the same visual style (or lack thereof) from the original NES games. Though someone with a keen eye may notice certain visual aspects, like an enemy with one frame of animation too many, that could never be done on the old Nintendo system. Thus, there’s the accusation that the developers were cheating and comparing this to, say, Mega Man 2 would be foolish.
But how pathetic would that person look by saying a game isn’t “low-tech enough”? Mega Man 9 doesn’t just do a phenomenal job of paying homage to NES Mega Mans, but it surpasses them with ease. It’s more self-aware of what exactly a Mega Man game is supposed to be than all of the NES games combined. Just read this plot summary.
Mega Man has just stopped Dr Wily once again and restored peace to the world (for in the year 20XX, Dr Wily is the only known international terrorist.) However, 8 everyday robots suddenly go berserk and cause chaos among the human race. Dr Wily not only pleads innocence but provides video evidence to suggest that it is in fact Dr Light attempting world domination instead of himself. So Mega Man must clear his good doctor’s name the only way he knows how, and that’s to shoot his yellow dot gun of death at a lot of evil machines.
Keeping in mind that all of this storyline is told through still, basic-looking images and slow-scrolling text in a homage not only to old Mega Mans but old NES games in general. The game’s story sequences are so quirky, campy, and yet so innocent that it’s hard to not be crack a smile. And unlike the goddammned Mega Man 7, you can skip all these cutscenes. This game understands what it means to be an 8-bit game; present charming graphics and a story aimed at kids, paired with simple gameplay mechanics…and a homicide-inducing difficulty curve.
Mega Man 9 reverts to basics, as in all the way back to series roots basics. There’s no sexy-pose baseball slide or charged-up Buster attack. Just running, jumping, climbing and shooting. Fortunately, at least Mega Man can still blink. Standing in his way are the trickiest jumps and friskiest robot enemies he’s seen to date. Robot laser-shooting palm trees, giant elephants with a medicine ball-projectile, mini flying saucers and most menacing of all, a little flower that sprouts from platform to platform hurling pedals of doom at you. And check out these robot masters.
Concrete Man: A sophisticated piece of machinery designed to store, mix and fire concrete like projectiles. You may question the logic of Dr Wi…I mean Dr Light reprogramming him for a conquest of world domination, but I don’t. Methinks the mafia would have many uses for a Concrete Man.
Tornado Man: Air Man version…5 I think? This game does feature a lot of element-based bosses, but as you’ll see, they’re the strangest lot of element bosses to date. Originally designed to create special effects for the upcoming movie “2012”, Tornado Man faced obsolescence after the film shoot, until the evil scientist reprogrammed his disaster-movie-powers for evil. Another point of mention about the plot; all of these robots were designed with a predetermined, preprogrammed date where they must cease to function. Dr Light’s got a real god complex.
Magma Man: Magma Man was designed in the event that Hawaii becomes a terrorist hotbed and America needs to activate volcanoes as an emergency solution. But with the extremely high unlikelihood of that happening, Magma Man had little else to do all day but sit in the backyard lighting ants on fire. If I’m having a hard time being funny with these boss bios, it’s because they’re already pronounced caricatures of the typical Mega Man robot master. It’s like making trying to make a joke about the Rick James skit from Chappelle’s Show.
Hornet Man: Based on designs from the early 90s back when “Killer Bees” were presented as a national threat in American news shows, Hornet Man commands mastery over small, stinging insects. Reprogrammed by the evil doctor upon hearing a rumor of Mega Man’s allergies, Hornet Man looks to give the blue bomber one lethal anaphylactic reaction.
Plug Man: He was originally designed to go to your Grade 5 science class to give lectures about currents. But teaming with the forces of evil, he’ll be doling out lessons in how nerve endings send pain signals to the brain. Be warned, true believers. Plug Man is only a two-pronged menace, for he possesses no Ground-prong to protect you from his shock.
Galaxy Man: He’s shaped like a giant UFO, and has the ability to generate mini black holes as easily as a Zippo generates fire. In that regard, he makes space anomalies seem so…trivial. Dr Light originally designed Galaxy Man as a rib, to randomly float around space and freak out stoned stargazers into calling Coast to Coast.
Jewel Man: Dr Light originally created Jewel Man as an accessorizer-bot for the rap industry. His official expiry date is listed as “whenever Lil Jon quits the game.” He also fills that critical role as “the boss that gives you the shield item.” And if you’re looking at him and thinking that he was programmed in a closet, just wait until the end credits. I used to think that the Mega Man universe had at least 2 homosexual robots, but this game may triple that number.
Splash Woman: Yes, a female robot in a Mega Man game. Sure you may think that her job is to provide the obligatory “water stage”, but I think there’s more to it. Splash Woman was designed with the intent of giving the previous 71 Man robot masters someone to reproduce with. Wood Man gets lonely in the forest by himself too. And for all we know, there could be another reason why he earned the name Wood Man.
Many of the obstacles facing Mega Man are both menacing and creative. It’s amazing that after 22 years and a probable 100 games, that not only can the developers conjure up new ideas for stages and enemies, but ones that’ll genuinely stump longtime fanatics. Seriously, I was just playing the previous 8 Mega Man games and even those couldn’t prepare me for the challenges awaiting me here. Especially once you defeat the 8 bosses and enter Wily’s Skull Fortress Opium Den. I’ve complained time and time again in the previous games that the final stages are always brief and anti-climatic, but not here! Those final levels are lengthy, feature elaborate boss battles and will test your mega-might. And in what I consider a great relief, Mega Man 9 is the first game where the final battle against Wily’s UFO isn’t really that annoying. Thank you!
While the game costs 1000 Wii points (about $10?), Capcom does kick every player in the rocks by charging extra for features that should’ve been in the game to begin with. They seem to do this a lot now, with the multiplayer mode in Resident Evil 5 or the alternate outfits in Street Fighter 4. Here exists the potential to pay up to 800 points on two harder difficulties, an “infinite stage” mode and the ability to play as the series’ trademark mysterious figure in the shadows, Proto Man. Playing as Proto Man is by and large the same as controlling Rock Head, except he’s been given his charge attack and supermodel slide back.
But that aside, I love Mega Man 9. Call me biased if you’d like but a game like this isn’t just succeeding on nostalgic merit, but through a mind-boggling sense of imagination and proper sense of challenge that rewards practice. You can call it an imitation of an 8-bit game all you like, but it surpasses nearly all of the games of that era, and can easily earn a nomination as one of the all time great sidescrollers.
4 ½ stars
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