Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Mega Man 9 revisited


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

Monday, July 27, 2009

Mega Man 8


I now know why Metal Gear Solid was considered an Earth-shattering breakthrough in gaming. It wasn’t because of some kind of original “tactical espionage action” gameplay mechanic, or that it had incredibly lengthy cutscenes or enough recorded speech to intimidate presidents. It certainly wasn’t the exclamation marks that appeared on top of the guards’ heads when they spotted something moving within their 5-feet-wide cone of vision. No, Metal Gear Solid was legendary because it was the first major game where the cutscenes were almost entirely done with the in-game engine. As in, the same pixel-faced Solid Snake that you controlled was the same one being monologued to by every commanding officer, analyst, boss, soldier and ninja in the cutscenes.

If the Playstation and Sega Saturn era of the mid-90s have but one defining attribute, it’s the prevalence of MPEG video clips interspersed into games with no sense of coherence. Numerous games had this issue; cutscenes of either live-action film or CG graphics (that we used to think were so advanced in 1995, the fools we were), followed by in-game graphics of choppy, low-resolution 2D character sprites or 3D polygonal models that were as blocky as Ciao the 1990 World Cup mascot. The jarring difference between the cutscenes you were watching and the game you were playing always caused a sense of disconnection between me and the game, and made the resulting product feel…cheap. It often seemed like the only thing connecting an in-game cutscene to the actual gameplay was a lengthy load time.

I feel like Mega Man 8 is a perfect embodiment of this issue. The cutscenes are all designed either by the creators of, or meant to pay homage (i.e. rip off) to Astro Boy. They even nailed the same flat colours and slight film grain of the original cartoon. I was already insecure about the whole prospect of Mega Man being an Astro Replication before, but then I heard Rock talking in the most high-pitched of voices. I know 5-6 year old kids who talk with more testosterone in their voice than this Mega Infant. And its as if Capcom only had the recording studio reserved for 10 minutes and had to rush all the English dub-overs, because I swore I heard Dr Light let out a quick cough after telling Mega Man to stop Wily.


I always felt that the more a Mega Man game tries to tell a story, the more spectacularly it fails, but 8 could be a small exception on sheer camp value. There’s this big robot in space called “Duo” and he’s seen at the start of the game duking it out with some kind of cloud, Dragonball-style. They both crash onto Earth and Dr Light sends Mega Man out to investigate. It turns out that this cloud is known as “EVIL ENERGY”, and it consists entirely of pure concentrated EVIL. Dr Wily has apprehended this EVIL and is using it to fuel his latest creations. Despite Duo being this all-powerful alien Jesus-bot, its up to Mega Man to stop the forces of evil.

It’s hard for me not to laugh when you’ve got Duo trying to explain this whole EVIL ENERGY concept in the most serious tone possible. This being a Mega Man, you’ve got all the old standbys; there’s 8 robot masters to destroy, a Wily Fortress with (few) more stages to beat, and you’ve got Proto Man inserted in the game to do absolutely nothing.

Then you hop out of the cutscenes and into the game, where everything looks ever so different. Mega Man gets shorter, leaner and yet more detailed when you get to control him, and many of the enemies have animations significantly more fluid than anything in the movies. Enemies shatter into wild displays of debris and bolts, and the game as a whole feels a lot more “clean”. It’s a surprisingly easy game to look at, considering its era.

Now that I’ve spent a record 500 words talking about graphics in a review (and for a Mega Man game too!) I should comtemplate discussing the gameplay. And well, it’s a Mega Man game, these things have predetermined rules to follow and will be met be an uprising of angry fanboys should they ever change. You run, jump, shoot yellow circles, charge your gun up to shoot a bigger yellow circle and blink a lot in a series of ever-difficult sidescrolling stages. Like any Mega Man game, it’s very easy to figure out the controls but unless you’ve been following this series for many a year, you’re going to get thrashed by these stages and the pattern-driven bosses that follow. Even some of the mini-bosses will not take kindly to the yellow drops that you’re trickling onto their leggings.

After playing the first seven Mega Mans in succession, I feel like I’ve embraced Mega Man 8 with a renewed sense of appreciation. The enemies in this game are quirkier, the worlds more creative, the robot masters more grandiose and their subsequently-gained superpowers more versatile to use. The very first boss in the entire game is a robotic giant enemy crab, rendering this game a decade ahead of its time.

Mega Man 8 excels at the moments where it’s allowed to be a Mega Man game. That is, throwing the player in elemental-themed stages filled with enemies to shoot and bottomless cliffs to chance leaping over. And dying a lot. I wasn’t too crazy on some of the puzzle-driven levels, where you have to manipulate switches in the name of opening a path to the exit, but much in the same way I can fix a VCR/TV/computer/electronics in general, you’ll eventually solve these by way of fiddling with the buttons for long enough. However, some of the new excursions into other sidescrolling game territory don’t quite fare as well.

For example, some levels put Mega Man on the Rush Jet, transforming the game into a Gradius-style forced-scrolling space shooter. But Rush is not quite on par with a futuristic space ship, and these sequences are sluggish to control. Nothing sucks like realizing you’ve been trapped into a wall and feeling helpless as you slowly pace around the space, realizing you’re about to get crushed by the invisible forced-scrolling wall of God. There are also a few linear snowboarding sequences (yes, snowboarding. In the future. As a strategic offensive maneuver against the forces of Wily) which consist of Mega Man on a board, jumping and sliding when a traffic sign-on-rockets appears to instruct you. There’s a certain rhythm to snowboarding, jumping or sliding just as the signs begin to rocket away and warn the boarder behind you of incoming cliffs, but getting the hang of this rhythm is going to involve many snowboarding accidents on the Black Diamond that is the cliff to Wily’s lair.

Oh, and Mega Man has a soccer ball weapon now. Yes, really. Between this and the snowboarding, ol’ Rock Man was trying really hard to fit in with the cool kids in 1995. And it was only through surfing the internet trying to figure out what happened to the Rush Coil in Mega Man 8 did I discover that this soccer ball is the new Rush Coil. Mega Man has to jump on top of the combustible soccer ball and use the subsequent explosion as a means of jumping higher. Strange, yet in a way more bold than being propelled off a spring. You have to respect Mega Man in a deranged kind of way. As for Rush himself, the Rush abilities here feel kind of useless; there’s some kind of Rush Motorcycle adaptor that sounds badass on paper, until you realize that 2D platformer worlds don’t have much in the way of flat, road-like surfaces. The other abilities consist of Rush flying above the screen either giving you health or giving enemies the gift of bombs. The only time I ever cared to use Rush Ambulance was fighting the damned Wily UFO battle at the end of the game. And yes, this game has a damned Wily UFO battle. Someone is going to tell me that this s some kind of franchise tradition, but I can’t buy that. The UFO fight is always an annoying end-boss. Plus UFO fights started with the fourth Mega Man, and most of the Megafanatics favor the first three anyways, so we can safely drop this final boss concept without breaking a sweat.

Mega Man 8 also introduces a new upgrade system of sorts. For the first time in the history of the Mega Man video game series, Roll makes herself useful! She operates a shop where you can purchase assorted weapons upgrades in exchange for bolts you found in the game world. Why robots view readily-available bolts as valuable currency, I don’t know. Why Roll doesn’t just give me the damned upgrades as a work expense for my occupation of “saving the freaking world”, I don’t know either. There’s both a finite number of bolts to find in what amounts to the game’s optional fetch quest (of which you can just go on the internet to assist you) and a finite number of upgrades to adopt. The idea is interesting on paper, but I couldn’t help but feel like I shouldn’t have to waste precious bolts on key upgrades that Mega Man should be entitled to, like the ability to freely exit a stage you’ve already completed.

Lets revisit this notion of EVIL. Dr Wily has taken his latest creations and fused them with this power of EVIL, presenting Mega Man with his most dire challenge yet. How can the Blue Bomber possibly hope to defeat these four individuals?

Grenade Man: As I preached time and time again, Dr Wily would be greater served by robots designed to use real world weapons rather than, say, bubbles or leaves. Every now and then, he surprises me with a Napalm Man-like WMD. Now we have Grenade Man, a 6 feet tall walking device designed to go kamikaze for the cause. Even the resulting shrapnel would be taller than Mega Man. Grenade Man’s weakness is that he lives in a Call of Duty-driven world, where the grenade indicator will keep a player safe.
Frost Man: Is the twentieth time the charm? It seems like at least every other Mega Man game has an Ice-oriented boss, leading me to think that perhaps that parka-wearing midget from the first game was a pioneer of sorts. However, the power of EVIL has made him the size of an ice truck with the mentality of an ice truck killer. Dexter spent an entire season trying to stop Frost Man’s human equivalent, what chance does a little kid like Mega Man have?
Tengu Man: As if Astro Blatant-ripoff cutscenes alone weren’t enough of an indication, a boss villain inspired by a creature of Japanese folklore should be the indication that Capcom stopped giving a damn about catering to the average American. But he’s tall, employs his beak in a sexy pose, throws a giant wind-blade-thingy and traps Mega Man in whirlwinds of pure EVIL. When you think about it, Mega Man 8 has the most intimidating bosses out of the entire nine-game series.
Clown Man: Nevermind.

Following the Mega Man 7 approach, the game divides its evil robot master stages into 2 groups of four. Before moving on to round two, you’ll get an extra stage, followed by an action-driven cutscene involving a gigantic, scary-looking robot boss that whoops Mega’s ass. I was in shock! With a setup like that, I was itching for payback, the chance to engage in an epic battle with this giant mechanical menace. But no, Duo just wipes the robot out in the movie. What a tease, Capcom. Anyways, new robot masters.

Sword Man: Okay, so Sword Man is a small step backwards from Grenade Man in terms of being inspired by weapons and their subsequent obsolescence. His coolest attribute is that he was disemboweled at the abdomen, presumably by Wily in some kind of freak accident failure, but the power of EVIL compels him to fight on anyway with a removable torso.
Aqua Man: If Mega Man 7’s Slash Man was begging for a lawsuit from Marvel Comics, then here’s a boss that’s practically teasing DC’s lawyers, screaming aloud me “sue me! Sue me!” While he’s basically a giant, weaponized eyedropper, Aqua Man does present another fun, creative display in the three-ring circus that is Mega Man 8. And he begins a fight by generating some rain and a rainbow that displays his name. Ladies and gentlemen, the second homosexual robot master in Mega Man history.
Astro Man: Perhaps an attempt at redemption for creating Clown Man, Dr Wily rebounds with a machine boasting mastery over the very cosmos. It’s almost as if Wily combined EVIL with Stephen Hawking. Or perhaps he’s Capcom’s way of subtly mocking anyone who dares accuse Mega Man of resembling a more legendary figure in animation.
Search Man: Imagine you as a child, getting lost in the woods. Who’s going to come rescue you but Search Man, a scary, two-headed forest ranger packing heat. Dr Wily has fused this EMTbot with evil, thus turning him into some kind of Searcher of death. Strange concept…but at least an awesome design.

Once you purify these 8 machines of their EVIL-ness, then you get your shot at Wily’s Skull Fortress Underground Tower… one that begs me to the question the use of an underground tower. However, these late-game stages feel very brief. There’s another Rush Jet level, another Snowboard level, and very little Mega Manning on your way to a select-few bosses (one cool return of a classic boss, and one lame idea boss that requires the use of the soccer ball.) And then there’s the blasted UFO fight, and then the game’s over.

Mega Man 8 is a bit uneven. The game feels light on content towards the end with an anti-climatic final series of levels. (Much like this review, but you’d be having a hard time writing reviews for EIGHT FREAKING MEGA MAN GAMES TOO by this point) But your road to those levels will at least be entertaining enough, thanks to some great bosses and mostly solid gameplay action. The game (or at least the allegedly inferior Playstation 1 port) is part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection of last generation, along with 7 other 3 ½ star+ rated games, so you’d best be investing in that.

3 ½ stars

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Mega Man 7



Do ‘ya wanna know what I hate the most about Mega Man 7? The opening cutscene. Not the one that precedes the title screen. Mind you, that series of flat-coloured still images is very uninspiring, and the revelation of four hidden robots designed in the event of Dr Wily’s capture is about as basic a plot as a Mega Man game can get (and should get…) but that Title Screen cutscene has one very, very, very important advantage that I appreciate ever so much; I can press the Start button at any time and end the toil.

No, it’s the initial cutscene, after you start a new game in Mega Man 7 that mega-irates me. A helmet-less Rock (I guess he needs the helmet to truly become Mega Man), Roll and (introducing) Auto the big green mechanic-bot are having a joy-ride while enjoying a conversation with AGONIZINGLY PAINSTAKINGLY BURDENSOME slow-scrolling text when Wily’s robots begin their brouhaha on the city. The three stooge-bots take a gander in the distance to witness a UFO blast out of a jail, for in this city, the largest and most noteworthy skyscraper is the prison. Wily’s free, and only one big blue bot can deal with it. So Auto gives Mega Man a yellow construction hat, a pause ensues, we’re supposed to laugh, we don’t, so Auto gives him the blue helmet and Mega Man is reborn! After about 3 minutes of liquefied annoyance, we’re finally allowed to play as Mega Man in the Mega Man game we have bought. For about 3 minutes, we do some rudimentary platform jumping, smoke a few basic robots, smash a liberty-spiked cyperpunk steamroller-bot and then…watch another cutscene. So we get even more ARDOUSLY GRUELINGLY WRETCHED text introducing us to yet another ancillary mysterious character, Bass. Now, there’s only room for one ancillary mysterious character in any Japanese franchise and Proto Man is filling that spot comfortably, so we can all safely assume Bass is going to double-cross you.

I don’t know if I should praise Mega Man 7 for having a light storyline or trash it for even having a storyline. On one hand, the story is very basic and pointless, wasting my time with the DISTRESSFULLY EXCRUCIATING DEATH-RIDDEN slow-moving text. People play Mega Man to destroy charismatic bosses, steal their powers and write down elaborate grid-passwords on many, many sheets of paper, not for storyline. (And speaking of, the password system in Mega Man 7 is a hefty beast.) But on the other hand, other Mega Man games, like the Zeros and ZXs that try to create their own universes with fleshed out characters and even more mountains of GOD-AWFUL TOILSOMELY WON’T GO TO HELL FAST ENOUGH text and fail so spectacularly that “Dr Wily escapes from jail” isn’t really that such a crime after all.

On a positive note, time may prove to be Mega Man 7’s best friend. Back in 1995, every other game was a bland side-scroller that needed to wear a silver-lined glove to be worthy of changing the roll of toilet paper Donkey Kong Country used to clean itself. And it seemed odd for Capcom to revisit the original, long-since fossilized Mega Man franchise after having already reimagining it to the more chiq and semi-interesting Mega Man X. But in 2009, where a good 2D platformer is a sparse thing to find and with the context of Mega Man X long gone, the beacon of Mega Man 7 shines more brightly. And unlike most SNES games, there’s no Mode 7-induced wrinkles, just really bad music and DAMNED…well text.

And I used to hate the art style of Mega Man 7 as a youngin. The brighter colours of the SNES made the anime influence shine more thoroughly and, more than any of the low-tech NES games, reminded me that Mega Man is a ripoff of Astro Boy. But in hindsight, the more fruitful design lends the game to its more unique sense of character, the kind of character we rarely see in games today. Mega Man will fight robotic stegosauruses, robotic T-rexes with big yellow jaws, a robot driving a bulldozer, a cuddly-yet-vicious polar bear and other strange machinations that are indefinitely more unorthodox and amusing than fighting evil ugly aliens for the umpteenth time.

And Mega Man 7 is even greater when you play it right after playing the first six Mega Mans. The levels are bigger, longer, more open, have branching paths and filled with more unique obstacles. A stage where the walls and floors are all covered in bouncy springs? Why not? Concepts like the Ice level, the Air level and the Haunted House are old hat in 2D platformers, but seeing unique twists like the robotic zombie make it all worth the while. And even the robot masters, while still pattern-driven, have more elaborate combat routines. Fighting any of them with the regular Mega-Handgun provides a hefty challenge, but on the same token, these guys become one legged robots in an ass-kicking contest when faced with their weakness-weapon.

Along the way, you’ll search the levels and look for hidden powerups. Beat makes a return if you can find him. But Beat can go fly into a skyscraper at night for all I care. Maybe that prison skyscraper. You start the game with the Rush Coil (not the boring “leaping platform” Rush Coil of Mega Man 5, but the Johnny Knoxville-style cannon-like Rush Coil of old) and you can ultimately dig up the Rush Jet and Rush…Search. The Rush Search is a dumb powerup where Rush appears, wastes a minute sniffing around and digs up either a minor power-up or gibberish. Also, in a throwback to Mega Man 6’s one good idea, you can collect the letters “RUSH” early on to unlock the ability to sexually fuse with Rush into jetpacking, fisting-powered Mega Man.

There’s a few other nice little trinkets to dig up. You could try to be all resourceful and seek them out yourself. Or you can just get the answers off the internet. At any point at the “next victim select screen”, you can press Select and access Auto’s shop. Here, you’ll be able to spend bolts and wasted time watching more damned dialogue to purchase a number of powerups. Going back to my “don’t be a sucka, just use the internet” idea, there’s a hidden, really big screw in the game. By giving this to Auto, he will drill this screw into his brain all suicidal-like, only to enter a very Japaneesey pose and become inspired to reduce the prices on all his items from the brain damage.

So who has Wily banked on in the case of Emergency? Why, the same old designs he always sticks to, of course. Lord knows, building a “Minigun Man” or an “Atomic Bomb Man” is well outside his box of thinking.

Burst Man: Dr Wily has some kind of very serious, very twisted Bubble fetish. Burst Man rises from the ashes of Bubble Man to challenge the world with suds of savagery, even going so far as to launch some bubbles from a blower on the top of his skull. He’s both vicious and kind of adorable. At least this time around, Wily had the common sense to outfit his bubbles with mini-bombs, so maybe Burst Man can truly cause some urban destruction with his soap.
Freeze Man: Meet Ice Man’s daddy. Freeze Man is some kind of guru of water solidification, capable of freezing surfaces and generating large ice picks from between his thighs. Freeze Man strikes me as the artiste of the four jailbreakers; he carries with him a certain mystique, an aura of creativity, that perhaps he bares with him a painter’s spirit waiting to be explored. If only Mega Man didn’t destroy him so easily, prompting his exile from all of gaming.
Cloud Man: Dr Wily is so powerful of a mad scientist that he has successfully weaponized the Taj Mahal! In fact, Wily’s programming prowess is such that his Taj Mahalbot is only good enough to be his emergency rescue robot. Cloud Man floats around, has mastery over lightning and rain, and is a bit chunky. I guess obesity is a side of having no legs to hit the treadmill with. Being non-pedal, Mega Man is capable of evading damage by using his trademark baseball slide to dive beneath Cloud Man. Speaking of, the sexy pose Mega Man enters during a slide is steamier than ever, and Rock looks ready to rock as he’s sliding under and checking out Cloud Man’s junk. Speaking of junk…
Junk Man: On second thought, maybe Dr Wily was more of a fringe-kind of programmer. But still, the existence of Junk Man proves that sometimes you can indeed create something from nothing. Junk Man challenges the world’s might by throwing his…crap at the enemy. When you consider how large landfills have been growing, perhaps Junk Man’s power could very well equal that of an Atomic Bomb Man. Don’t litter, kids.

At first glance, it may come off as a bit odd that there would only be four robots. You have to cut Wily some slack, one can only design so many death machines in secret. It’s fortunate that the cunning mad scientist is a quick builder and the time taken to defeat the above is enough for Wily to construct a more Frightful Four.

Spring Man: And this time around, Dr Wily is looking to children’s fads for his inspiration. Keeping mind that this game was made in 1995-ish, though Capcom may have thought that the Slinky would still be en vogue in 20XX. Battling adversaries with lethal springs and jabs that boast the kind of reach that can win a boxing match two rooms down the hall, Spring Man is a goofy-looking threat not to be taken lightly.
Turbo Man: I’m not going to say “inspired by Formula 1 racing” because Formula 1 race cars are designed to fall apart at the slightest tap. Inspired by Micro Machines, Crash Test Dummies and Transformers, Turbo Man threatens the Mega Man universe merely by being a lawsuit waiting to happen.
Shade Man: Inspired by Count Chocola, Shade Man is an honest to god vampire capable of latching on to Mega Man, biting his neck, drinking his…oil, and regaining health. And he’s pretty damned good at being the stereotypical 90s vampire, too. All you Twilight freaks take note; here’s the visage of a 90s children’s vampire. Or at least the ripoff of a ripoff of one.
Slash Man: Isn’t it obvious?


Okay, this long-haired, big-clawed fiend is perhaps more blatantly imitating a famous comic book hero whom recently starred in a film who’s ATROCIOUS DISPICABLE MINDROT dialogue puts Mega Man 7 to shame. As for Slash Man, he also throws giant red eggs as a projectile, prematurely ending many dinosaurs’ lives just to defeat you. Vegans beware.

The time it takes to defeat these wretched fools is just enough for Dr Wily to construct a brand-spanking new Skull Fortress Mega Fortress, with four new stages of platforming peril. To my surprise, these stages were challenging, kind of fun and…a bit too short. Before you know it, you’re at the gates of hell, challenging Wily to a battle of Heaven versus Hell. The final battle with Wily (in that damned UFO that he has to use in every damned game) is so annoying that you’ll need a full suite of energy tanks to just barely eek out a win. I know someone out there is going to take offense and say “well you just suck at this game, fool” and my response will be a raised middle finger or two. Sorry, but I don’t care to memorize nine different defense patterns for his nine possible projectile attacks. He’s just a great, great pain, and if you screw up once, you’ll have to find yourself revisiting an earlier level to harvest more bolts so you can buy more energy tanks from Crazy Auto’s Crazy Item Emporium.

On the upside, Mega Man himself shares my frustration at having to deal with another UFO battle and decides that arrest is not good enough. He threatens to murder(!!) Dr Wily before Bass’s mutt comes to the rescue. As you can see, I’ve got no issues spoiling this whole danged game.

So I’m a bit torn on where I stand on Mega Man 7. Just like with the Mega Man Zeros and ZXs of the world, the game is great when asked to be just another Mega Man game. Good stages, good bosses, good, challenging fun. But on the other hand, the annoying story sequences bogged the experience down, and the final boss left me feeling a bit angered walking away. I would suggest that certain Mega Man X games and even a few of the NES games provide a more exciting experience, but if you’re playing this on the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (HINT! HINT!) then 7 is a game at least worthy of your time.

3 ½ stars

Friday, July 24, 2009

Mega Man 6


And presenting the sixth and FINAL Mega Man game on the NES, or at least if we’re going with the impression that 9 is the wannabe NES game that walks around with Goomba shirts listening to 80s one-hit wonders on his IPod, wishing he was born in the 80s. Capcom had this wretched mentality with sequels back in the day of “keep making them until the general public sees your little trick and moves on to something kind of fresh. And then keep making sequels anyways.” Mega Man has been made to bend over so often that even Tony Hawk dreads a dystopian future where his likeness is made into six hundred different bizarre Nintendo DS RPGs.

Anyways, Mega Man 6. Here is the storyline to Mega Man 6, quoted Mega-verbatim from the introductory cutscene. Of course, this is an NES game and “cutscene” actually implies “a series of pixilated still images coupled with Cap-locked text.”

IN THE YEAR 20XX AD…THE 1ST ANNUAL ROBOT TOURNAMENT WAS HELD WITH 8 OF THE WORLD’S MOST POWERFUL ROBOTS. BUT…MR. X, THE SPONSOR OF THE TOURNAMENT, TOOK CONTROL OF THE ROBOTS AND BEGAN TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD.
MEGAMAN: MR. X!! WHY!?
MR. X: IT’S TIME TO TELL YOU THE TRUTH. I HAVE BEEN MANIPULATING THAT FOOL, DR. WILY FROM THE BEGINNING. BUT NOW I NO LONGER NEED DR. WILY’S HELP. COME AND FACE MY POWER, MEGAMAN!!
MEGAMAN: WE’LL STOP YOU! FOLLOW ME, RUSH!

Sweet Jesus, there’s an actual timeline to the Mega Man universe! I’ve always thought that the use of the year “200X” was to suggest that the games took place during an unspecified moment in history, but look! At least ten years have progressed between the six Mega Man games. And just like Smash TV presented the world with a violent, ominous vision of 1999, soon too will we be able to say that the Mega Man games tried to portray life from a decade ago.

Released during the initial controversy of the early UFC shows and the rise of no-holds-barred combat, this Mr. X character must’ve concocted a scheme wherein he recruited the top fighters of the world to his army. But conscripting the likes of Royce Gracie and his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu would prove to be a greater challenge than he had hoped, and instead will have to settle for the elite in robot martial artists.

Knight Man: Trained in the gym at Medieval Times Dinner and Tournament, Knight Man brings to the table a strong, mace-based right hook and a shield to assist in deflecting…well nothing really, the shield seems to exist more for spectacle than strategy. However, he takes too long in throwing his trademark mace, leaving him open to an effective counter punch. A Floyd Mayweather-styled fighter could give Knight Man some difficulties.
Tomahawk Man: The pride of the Algonquin tribe. Tomahawk Man throws a vicious uppercut-like spinning tomahawk. He also employs a secret technique of hurling his head open, throwing a series of lethal feathers forward. While doing this, his head is left wide open and a well-timed jab to the chin could leave Tomahawk Man seeing stars. Forget Dr Light, Mega Man should be programmed by Freddie Roach.
Yamato Man: Japanese fighters are known for their legendary fighting spirit and will to win, and Yamato Man is no different. Even when he has a single bar of energy left, he’ll never give up. However, Japanese fighters are also known for stubbornness and unwillingness to adapt new strategies, and Yamato Man has a very primitive tactic of “throw a blade, then run across the room to pick it up.” While doing so, Yamato Man is vulnerable to any number of tactics, like say, a high kick to the face.
Flame Man: Not to be mistaken for Fire Man, this Punjabi fighting sensation prefers to keep the fight at a distance with well-timed flame strikes from the ground. He’s a frequent competitor in the Abu-Dhabi Submission championships and makes his opponents submit with his trademark fiery armbar. Mega Man should study some proper submission defence and hold Flame Man to the ground with superior Greco-Roman wrestling skills, then beat out a victory with point-blank laser shots to the head.
Centaur Man: The first Quad-pedal robot master in Mega Man history. The presence of four legs means grants the potent ability to swat off takedowns like mosquitoes. In addition, Centaur Man’s ability to freeze time opens up possibilities for landing open strikes. However, Centaur Man uses his time-freezing ability to stall and take small energy jabs, as if he seems content for the time limit to expire and earn a Judge’s Decision win. If Mega Man presses the action and hits some leg kicks to the shins, he can potentially take the big horse down and submit him with a Ken Shamrock-like leglock.
Wind Man: Air Man v3. Now the fans are on his shoulders, allowing him to suck opponents towards him, take them down with his superior wrestling and hold them with his sizable girth. He will then ground and pound his adversaries with punches and tornados to the face. It would be of great benefit to Mega Man to keep this fight at a distance, and build his fight around a well-placed jab to keep Wind Man at bay. It’s not the most exciting strategy, but you can’t always give the fans what they want.
Blizzard Man: This massive fighter is an offensive specialist, hurling himself forward in a spinning attack as he looks for the takedown. If Blizzard Man is to mount Mega Man, then beware! For he’ll attempt to pin the former Rock Man down with his ski poles. If Mega Man were to develop a keen sprawl, he can keep the fight standing and deliver a Flame Man shot to the chin for the flash knockout.
Plant Man: Coming out of Wood Man’s training camp up in the mountains of Big Bear, California comes Plant Man. The use of Photosynthesis grants Plant Man great stamina provided the fight takes place in the daytime. He uses his pedals like a shield to protect himself in the clinch and defend himself from incoming strikes. However, the pedal shield leaves him vulnerable in the rear, exposing the possibility of a choke. Presumed homosexual.

Dr Light has set up 8 obstacle training courses leading up to each of the 8 fights, to help Mega Man improve his cardio. Mega Man will improve his strength and conditioning through running, jumping, climbing, firing charged shots, baseball sliding and the most intense blinking regime ever concocted for a fighter.

Part of me feels that half the team of Capcom were excited about this final Mega Man NES project while the other were content to phone in another generic shooter. On one hand, we’ve got another fire, ice, air and forest stage, coupled with the old platforming cliché of “the giant castle.” On the other, Capcom’s Japanese heart beats with pride in other segments, as Mega Man finds himself pitted against the likes of robot shogun warriors, robot pandas and numerous anime clichés. The game will test newcomers but a veteran with a simple grasp of charging Mega-Buster haymakers and the baseball slide will feel no pressure.

Allow me to give you, the reader, the keen advice of “beat Flame Man and Plant Man first”, for they give you the game’s two new Rush abilities. No longer does the wonder dog fly in and act as a living magic carpet. No, now he merges with Mega Man to form new super robots! Seriously. “Jet Mega Man” sacrifices the baseball slide and shot charging in favor of a jet pack that lets Mega Man float for a limited time, allowing him to access hard to reach areas or navigate tricky platform sequences. “Power Mega Man” is Butterbean-like in his approach. He’s too fat and slow to slide too, and his short, stubby arms gives him limited reach. But he throws energy punches with great force, and can charge up a knockout punch that can break any Metool’s chin, along with some hidden walls.

The game’s levels are largely designed to let this aspiring karate kid access hidden powerups and branching paths through use of the above fighting styles. The catch is that to change costumes, the game goes to a different screen to display a cutscene of Mega Man and Rush becoming one. You can skip the sexual part of this sequence, but that there’s a 2-3 second wait before I get back to the action is a bit inconvenient, considering you’ll change outfits with great frequency. A non-gamer reading this will be completely and utterly shocked, but us gamers don’t quite have the patience to wait 2-3 seconds every freaking time we want to change Mega Undies.

Going back to the branching paths idea, some levels have two paths. And if you take the hidden path, you’ll defeat the “real” version of a boss (that’s how it’s been described to me. I guess some bosses have cheap imitations that can fight exactly like their past forms. I don’t quite understand it myself.) If you defeat all four of these “real bosses”, you’ll get…Beat! Again! I’ve complained in the Mega Man 5 review that the little Tweety-bot is a lame reward for investing in the game’s major side-quest, and here we go again! Beat’s even more useless in this game considering the available power-ups and how some of the bosses are even easier this time around.

So you’ve beaten the 8 robot contenders and won the World Mechanical Heavyweight Championship. Now it’s time to visit your sponsor. You’ll go to Dr X’s castle, because everyone in the Mega Man universe needs a freaking castle. You’ll go through stages designed to make you change costumes so often that Mega Man and Rush will get closer to each other than ever before. You’ll fight some lame robot bosses before your final confrontation with Dr X. And after you defeat the man who’s been pulling the strings of Dr Wily all along, you’ll discover that Dr X is really…Dr Wily! But at this point, could you really expect anything else? Like say, an original idea?

So you go to Wily’s Skull Castle Fortress Dojo (it’s got a bit of an oriental design to it), play through more of the same kind of stages, defend your title against the previous 8 robots, have the easiest battle with Dr Wily yet (including another confrontation in the damned UFO) and beat the game. After six games, this is the game where we finally get to put Wily behind bars. I guess there’s a small sense in accomplishment for that. I guess.

Mega Man 6 is slightly different from past games because of the Rush outfits, which I feel has to be commended a bit. It’s at least a more bolder game than Mega Man 5. But the game still feels so aged. The only people playing 6 are diehards and they won’t feel adequately tested here. If you’ve been following the series up to now (and probably because you’ve been playing them on Mega Man Anniversary Collection) than you may as well play Mega Man 6 for the sake of completion. But it’s not one of the games in the franchise that truly commands your attention.


3 ½ stars

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Mega Man 5


Remember the movie Wild Things? It featured Denise Richards and Neve Campbell back when they were young, chic and interesting enough to be considered sex symbols, playing the role of two crazy whores who swim in pools and sleep with guys, themselves and other objects a lot. While I’m sure that’s not what the movie was about, it’s what people remember the most and therefore the film was something of a success at the box office. What you may not know is that there exists sequels to Wild Things. You wouldn’t know they existed unless you saw them on the shelf of your local Blockbuster, for they were straight-to-video releases! Now obviously, most sane people wouldn’t bother renting these due to the reputation of straight-to-video releases (i.e. THEY SUCK) but let me be the first to say…I have not seen these sequels either.

This, I feel, is a semi-accurate portrayal of the plight of the Mega Man games. Oh, the first three games were definite hits amongst the gamers of the day, but most people didn’t realize, or care, that Capcom kept making new ones on the NES. Gamers had since moved on to the Genesis and Super Nintendo and were more enamored by the technological pixilated glory of Mode-7 and whatever the hell Blast Processing was than they were of playing the latest low color-paletted NES release . And by the time Mega Man 5 had rolled around, I was too preoccupied with my new SNES and the likes of Super Mario World, Super Mario Kart, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, Super Adventure Island, Super Bomberman, and Super Castlevania. I wanted my games to be Super! Merely being Mega wasn’t good enough anymore.

Replaying Mega Man 5 in retrospect, even I can suspect that this was the point in which Capcom stopped putting their heart into these games.

Mega Man 5 is guilty of reusing one gimmick too many from past games. We’ve got another ice level, another water level, another air level and even yet another construction level. The game also gets into the habit of stealing gimmicks from other, less-mega platformers. The forced-scrolling stage (the “pushy” stage, as we used to call it) is here. There’s a single sequence where Mega Man has to ride a waterski in a scrolling vehicle scene reminiscent of Battletoads or a million other platformers. Here, you’ll shoot enemy robots, fight a giant squid and, much like the Mega Man games at this point, jump over sharks.

Not that the levels aren’t complete wastes of time. They’re just sometimes lame. The Crystal Man stage, for example, has you hopping from one small cliff to another, studying the rhythmic pattern of several crystal dispensers (I guess that’s what they are), waiting for the moment when ‘tis safest to jump. That you’ve got ten consecutive crystal dumpers in a row is something is a bit redundant. Assembly lines seem to be the bane of Mega Man. On the other hand, there’s one particularly memorable level where gravity makes some unexpected shifts in direction, requiring a Mario Galaxy-like level of thinking in wrapping your mind the reverse physics of climbing down ladders and jumping over bottomless sky pits.

The game makes little in the way of changes in the Mega Man formula, but then again, it feels like the more Capcom experiments with this franchise, the more hideous the result (just look at the DS games.) The Mega Buster shots cover a larger area, which Wikipedia cites as an upgrade from Mega Man 4’s Dr Cossack (who makes NO appearance or even a mention in this game) and the Rush Coil now transforms Rush into a giant pogo stick-platform. This leaping ledge approach, while safer than the old-fashioned form of “Rush’s ass launches a spring that upchucks Mega Man in the air”, I’m a bit more partial to the Super Dave-like original coil. And then there’s the letters; in each of the 8 original stages exists a letter needed to spell “MEGAMANV”. Except for one, all of the letters are in plain sight but demand some mega footwork to access. I went well out of my way to try and collect these assorted letters with the hope of earning some kind of hidden weapon or ability to unleash megahell on my enemies with.

And I got Beat. Beat. Beat is this little bird robot that appears and attacks other enemies on the screen, or at least that’s what he was programmed to do. His little bird brain takes a bit of time to recognize the presence of other threatening life forms in the room. While Beat comes in handy in some tight spots and even works as an unlikely remedy in curing the final boss of his plagued health, having a diminutive bird as the reward for such a major scavenger hunt feels a bit of a rip off. Especially since later Mega Man games concoct much more exciting hidden power ups.

Remember Tuxedo Mask? I barely do. Proto Man is kind of like him only without the part where he makes out with the protagonist. He’s sort of the ancillary “mysterious” character that so many animes seem to need. Some of those characters have elaborate, dark backstorys, and some are merely mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. The latter describes Proto Man. In Mega Man 5, he kidnaps Dr Light and leads a rebellion of 8 (of course 8!) new robot masters.

Joining Proto Man in his insurgency are…

Gyro Man: Oh look, it’s Air Man! Except the fan is on his back instead of in his pancreas! And he wears a green leotard! And every time he squats, the fan spins. That’s got to make going to the bathroom a real task and a half. Gyro Man attacks the human race from the sky with vicious Greek pitas of pain, horrifying hummus and terrifying tatziki.
Napalm Man: I’ve joked in the past that if Dr Wily was serious about tactical world domination with his robots, than he’d stop with the Bubble Mans and Toad Mans of the world and create villains like Gun Man and 747 Man. Well hot dawg, here’s the closest we’ve gotten to a real WMD Man! However, Napalm Man doesn’t quite throw Napalm so much as he throws…explosive pills. Still, at least Proto Man has the right idea in how to make evil robot masters right.
Star Man: Nope, no wait, nevermind. Star Man challenges his adversaries with elaborate glitter patterns and one of the most flamboyant costumes in Mega Man history. Proto Man is definitely showing a side of himself we’ve never seen by designing this strange fellow.
Stoned Man: This Great Canadian robot was designed to be Proto Man’s recreational drug use machine. From the caves near Vancouver, British Columbia, Stoned Man lights up his adversaries with a crushing smoke attack. When teamed with Wave Man, they fight Mega Man with deadly bong water powers.
Wave Man: Meet Bubble Man’s crazy cousin. Wave Man is the deranged member of the water boss family, last seen flirting with Dive Man’s fiancée Splash Woman. Recruited to the cause just so he doesn’t ruin the wedding, Wave Man brings little to the rebellion. His special ability of making pipes leak doesn’t quite bear much of a competitive benefit.
Charge Man: A giant bipedal train creature. In his youth, he was one of the red trains that picked on Thomas the Tank Engine. Now fully grown, he turns to a life of crime by hijacking civilian locomotives. A very strategic move on Proto Man’s part if I say so myself, as the human race has not quite moved beyond railroads as the primary source of transportation in the year 200X.
Crystal Man: Inspired by Proto Man’s crystal meth addiction, Crystal Man leaps onto the scene throwing giant pills like projectiles in an attempt to overdose Mega Man. Just like how Mega Man 3 was all about the phallic-shaped villains, Mega Man 5 brings on the drug addicts.
Gravity Man: Finally, there’s Gravity Man, whom for all intents and purposes, should be the most powerful of the bunch. After all, gravity is a pretty significant force to control. But he looks an awful lot like a scale, and perhaps Proto Man merely modified the one he uses to measure “product” into his weapon of mass destruction.

Once you beat this troupe of pushers, you make an attempt to invade Proto Man’s castle. Yes, Proto Man has his own castle. And it’s shaped like a giant Proto Man helmet. How self-serving. The stages in these later levels are challenging, but they all end in rather disappointing battles with small, boring robot tank bosses. And then there’s the confrontation with Proto Man.

Now, anyone that knows anything about Mega Man knows that all this attempted “storytelling” is a waste of precious seconds out of my life and that Dr Wily was merely FRAMING Proto Man. The real Proto Man sets things right, revealing that his imposter is really “Dark Man”, another generic robot tank boss. Thus begins a new challenge, at Dr Wily’s newest Skull Castle Amsterdam Hostel. Mega Man re-thrashes the 8 robot masters, he fights Wily’s giant skull ship, then he fights Wily’s UFO, blah blah blah, we’ve done this all way too many times before.

Mega Man 5 isn’t a terrible game. The jumping, shooting, baseball sliding, blinking action still holds up favorably against other NES platformers. It’s just that far too much of the platforming, jumping, shooting, and so forth happens in a very uninspired setting, and I feel that I couldn’t let this game get away with crimes the same way I wouldn’t let big budget space marine shooters escape my wrath. Unless you’ve somehow dug up an original copy, you’re playing this off of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection anyways. With that being the case, give yourself a Mega rest after finishing the first four games before tackling this fifth game. It’s a solid game, but it’s a Mega Man game that you can function just fine in life without.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Mega Man 4


When you’ve got a story that’s in need of an evil villain, its good (and a bit racist) to know that you can always turn to the Russians. Whether it’s evil athletes, evil soldiers, evil terrorists or just evil women in leather, it seems like the former Soviet Union is the epicenter for all that is antagonistic. Or at least as long as the film was not made in Russia. Forget about Ronald Reagan, it was Rocky Balboa that won the Cold War for America when he fended off the threat of the mountainous Ivan Drago. While the Soviet Union may have collapsed in 1991, Capcom foresaw that tensions between the US and the USSR would continue to mount all the way to the year 200X with Mega Man 4.

While Dr Wily may have been defeated, Mega Man must now defend America from a new, Red threat in this Japanese-developed title. The vile Dr Cossack has arisen from the rubble of the Iron Curtain with 8 new robots (obviously) to challenge to mettle of the former Rock Man. Of course, anyone that knows anything about Mega Man knows that this can only be a ruse. After thwarting the evil Communist robots, Mega Man invades the Kremlin-like fortress of Dr Cossack to stop his evil plans. But just as Rock(y) Man has Cossack down for the count, that trivial ancillary character Protoman appears, bearing Cossack’s daughter Kalinka (what a name!) It turns out that Dr Wily had kidnapped the little munchkin and forced Cossack into doing his bidding. Well gosh darnnit it, Mega Man will just have to make things right and take a trip to Wily’s Skull Fortress Brothel and slap all of Wily’s robotic escorts before pimpsmacking the mack daddy scientist himself.

Mega Man 4 is certainly the continuation of one of my greatest pet peeves in the series; the revelation that Dr Wily was the mastermind behind all the chaos. Having “traditions” in a game series is fine, but the Mega Man games have so many traditions that separating one game from another becomes a matter of which pair of robot masters has the most interesting tights. The final battle in too many of these games is often some variation of Wily’s giant skull spaceship and/or his annoying teleporting UFO. Both of which have gotten as tired as the Password system (if you’ve been playing these games on the NES anyways.)

That said, Mega Man 4 does have many redeeming qualities. One can tell that by this point, the developers at Capcom have really grasped the mechanics of the 2D platformer and have made these last couple games tighter than Roll. Many of the jumps require expert timing and bravery to clear. The enemies continue to get stranger and stranger, such as the motorcycle wheels with eyes, the evil caterpillars, the evil jellybean dispensers, giant slugs that hurl their eyes at you (the same eyes that are also their weakness) and giant hippos that sleep on a massive, gold platforms which vomiting missiles in your direction. It’s like Dr Cossack was trying to design the most harmless war machines humanly possible.

There are a few small tweaks. There’s the introduction of Eddie, a midget-bot who runs in one direction, dispenses a random power-up that may or may not be useless, and runs away. The Rush Jet has been reprogrammed without air brakes; yes, the filthy mutt has gotten more dim-witted over the one year since Mega Man 3 and will only fly in one direction. At the least, it means that the Jet is no longer a be-all solution to every tricky platforming sequence.

But most notably of all, Mega Man 4 replaces Mega Man’s Urinary Tract Attack laser beam with the “Mega Buster”. Now players can hold the attack button to arouse Mega Man, and release to ejaculate a mighty blast of energy. This whole Mega Buster business won’t be for everyone; I know one person too many that struggles with the concept of holding one button to run and another to jump in Super Mario Bros. If your brain can’t handle the concept of holding one button while pressing another button, then stop reading and get back to Wii Sports.

Mastery of the Mega Buster is key to your enjoyment of Mega Man 4. You’ll quickly learn to always hold a charged shot ready for the next enemy who dares spawn in your path. Many of the enemies and mini bosses only make their weak spots vulnerable for short lengths of time and thus timing your charged shots are crucial. Even against the 8 robot masters, some quick reflexes and charged shot skill will allow you to defeat those charismatic spandex machines with even your standard buster.

And how about those 8 robot masters! Dr Cossack has developed some of the finest machines designed with the sole intent of ensuring the rise of Mother Russia.

Dive Man: Dive Man is a combination of the tactical bathtime assault of Bubble Man and the phallic form of Hard Man. This human submarine aids the Russian naval force and is more than capable of stopping any blockade that stands in his way. Cuban Missile Crisis? More like Cuban Missile Cleared. That his weapon of choice is actual torpedoes makes him the Mega Man series’ first ever tactical military robot.
Drill Man: Wikipedia tells me that Russia is one of the world’s leaders in the mining industry. As you know, to make proper guns involves metals to forge them, and that’s where Drill Man comes in. Best of all is that in spite of his incredible efficiency (he’s got drill hands), he’ll work for the same wages as any slackjaw miner. That’s devotion to the sickle and hammer.
Dust Man: The “cleaner” of the Soviet Union, if you will. He doesn’t just remove dirt from the Kremlin, he cleans out filthy Democrat spies with a vacuum that sucks away both democrats and their free will. He challenges Mega Man by reversing the vacuum’s pull to hurl chunks of the Iron Curtain as projectiles.
Skull Man: One thing that I noticed about Cossack’s designs is that he aims to intimidate. A robot whose name is DUST MAN and whom fights enemies by throwing DUST looks like a heavily armoured musclebound SWAT team member in comparison to twigs like Ice Man. Case in point is Skull Man, whom I’m sure most people playing Mega Man 4 for the first time will challenge first for the sheer novelty and shock factor of an enemy named “Skull Man”. While one of the cooler-designed Mega Man bosses in history, Skull Man doesn’t quite live up to his image, as his weapon is but a mere shield. I guess it’s cooler to have a shield made of skulls than leaves.
Bright Man: If you’re thinking to yourself “okay, Capcom is running out of ideas” then my response is “when have the robot masters been anything but bizarre? If Wily was ever trying to create military-ready machines, we wouldn’t see Bubble Man or Wood Man. We’d see Tank Man, AK-47 Man, or Anthrax Man.” Anyway, Bright Man has a light bulb and as Flash Man proved in the past, Mega Man has a vampiric-like weakness to bright lights, as they seem to freeze his programming. Bright Man also illuminates the Motherland in their darkest winters or when the oppression of Reagan dims their spirits.
Pharaoh Man: As you can see, this game was released at a time when people were starting to think that Egyptian history was cool. Fixated with this new trend, Cossack studied ancient Egyptian magic and programmed a robot capable of unleashing mystical curses on his adversaries. For you see, his “Pharaoh Beam” is a beam of concentrated Angel of Death Energy and Mega Man is kind of like Dr Light’s firstborn child. You figure out the rest.
Toad Man: Toad Man presents the gravest threat to the Earth yet. Returning to the topic of fads, Toad Man comes to us at a time when Acid Rain was a popular buzz term amongst environmentalists. He is capable of sending a weather balloon filled with concentrated pollution into the air, unleashing a torrential downpour of death. What you don’t see is his ability to rapidly multiply like a toad and offset any region’s ecosystem.
Ring Man: Finally, we have the obligatory “Ninja character” of any Mega Man game. But don’t let the hokey gimmick fool you, Ring Man’s circular gold projectiles present quite the threat. Perhaps Ring Man is meant to be symbolism, as he represents the dangers of the newfound peace treaty, or “marriage” between America and the fallen Soviet Union.

The stages themselves are definitely colourful and unique, representing the wonderful strangeness that embodies the NES era. Skull Man’s stage has paths made of giant femors held together with screws. Ring Man’s stage has platforms made of what I presume to be rings that vanish horizontally when stepped on. Pharaoh Man’s stage is set in an Egyptian tomb…laced with wiring for some reason. Then you get to the Castle stages and the game is throwing at you some bosses that are definitely more unique than, say, a room filled with orbs that shoot lasers at you. Giant evil butterfly, giant evil elephant, giant evil…teleporting room, that kind of menace.

Generally speaking, Mega Man 4’s greatest adversary is lethargy. While some visual aspects stick out as creative or wonderfully strange, others, like the final battle with Wily, are nothing short of groan-inducing. Is there some reason why we can’t establish a new, original villain? The Mega Man X games have this exact same problem with the blasted Sigma.

If you’ve been playing previous games, than this game’s lack of change will be somewhat off-putting. After all, it’s that same damned Mega Man sprite we’ve been playing as for what may as well be twenty years now. But placed in a bubble, Mega Man 4 is great. Even if it’s not the most difficult game of the series, it feels the least annoying. Your progress will depend entirely on your skill level and not how many Crash bombs or Rush Jet fuel you have in reserve. So if you’ve just finished Mega Man 2 or 3, give yourself a few days rest and approach Mega Man 4 with an open heart.

Sadly, there have yet to be any recent, noteworthy re-releases of Mega Man 4 yet. You’re either digging for a copy of the NES original or, if you’re smart, you’re buying Mega Man Anniversary Collection. I’m feeling like a broken record here.

4 stars

Mega Man 3


A diving slide is when a human being, running with full force, lowers his upper body to the floor and allows the built-up momentum to drag his or her form across the floor, feet first. For decades, great people have been risking high wedgies and ounces of detergent, sliding across pants-ruining terrain in the name of survival and scoring runs. The slide is a viable technique for stealing bases in baseball, narrowly diving under the giant closing trap door in the cursed Mayan temple you may be exploring, and…well that’s just about it actually. So it should come to no surprise that Dr Light would go to baseball all-time base stealer Ricky Henderson when looking for the necessary means to upgrade his Rock Man project. After long hours of studying the baseball legend’s sliding and egotistical behavior, Dr Light has developed the knowledge necessary to defeat the forces of evil.

Rock, Dr Light’s completely heterosexual manservant-turned-defender of justice can now add “baseball slide” to a list of abilities that includes “run, jump, climb, blink, shoot”. By pressing down on the d-pad (whatever d-pad you may be using) and the jump button, the boy wonder can enter a sexy pose as he dashes forward. Mega Man even surpasses Ricky’s best abilities with the power to do a baseball slide without the running start! If Rock Man were to make a career in baseball (as opposed to, well…soccer) then many a bases would be stolen and many infielders would have their abdomens shot off. This dashing attack, ideal for crawling under narrow passages and evading danger, made its official debut in Mega Man 3.

Currently available on mobile phones, the Wii shop and the Mega Man Anniversary Collection (the version you should get if you want to save money) Mega Man 3 feels considerably more refined than its two predecessors. Levels are more visually appeasing, enemies are illogical yet are ideal challenges/canon fodder, Dr Light makes his first visual appearance IN a Mega Man game, and you’ve got the debut of Rush. Cashing in on the Lassie fad and those replacing assist-thingys “1”, “2” and “3” from Mega Man 2, Mega Man can summon a charming canine companion to assist his journey. You start with Rush Coil, wherein the dog appears and Mega Man can spring off his back in a non perverse manner. Rush Jet is a versatile jet that flies anywhere on the screen and can make any tricky platforming sequence a laughing joke. Finally, Rush Marine lets Mega Man insert himself into Rush (oh my) as a mini-submarine for the game’s entire three underwater sequences.

The game also marks the debut of Protoman, who spends most of the game disguised as “Break Man”. The whole “disguise” gimmick must be some kind of excuse made by Capcom to cover an initial translation failure because really, who the hell is Break Man? That’s like the Joker disguising himself as the Evil Clown. Protoman is, within the Mega Man canon, the first robot creation of Dr Light, and in this game makes sporatic appearances to “test Mega Man in combat”. Like all of the information in this paragraph and the next, this is all information discovered from Wikipedia, because I never could figure out why this enigmatic person would randomly appear and fight. In fact, I don’t even know if “fight” is the right word. He has a very primitive AI program, as he just hops from left to right, firing his gun in the air aimlessly, rendering this test of might the most pathetic boss in the game. No wonder he never passed the prototype stage.

In fact the whole storyline is a bit suspect. As a child, I assumed the plot here was the same as any other Mega Man game; Wily has 8 evil robots, Mega Man gives them a golden shower from his yellow laser gun, he goes to Wily’s Skull Fortress Summer Home, trounces the evil giant robot at the end, Mega Man saves the day. But Wikipedia reveals that there’s a bit more to it. Apparantly, Dr Light and what he thought was a reformed Dr Wily were working together on that evil giant robot, a sizeable fellow named “Gamma”. The Free Encyclopedia claimed that this giant machine with spiked knuckles, gun turrets heads and an oversized jaw was a “peace-keeping robot”, perhaps some kind of deterrent. That was the same justification for the Manhattan Project. Notwithstanding Dr Light’s sheer stupidity in being conned into making a Godzilla-like machine by his arch-nemesis, eight new robot masters who were also designed as peace-keepers go berserk and steal the eight power crystals needed to power this machine. So Mega Man has to clean up this mess. I never quite grasped this whole “power crystal” concept since you never actually see any of these “power crystals”, you just destroy one robot, nick his power and move on. It’s fortunate that Mega Man 3 is an NES game and whatever story sequences are actually present will only waste mere seconds of your life before you get back to waging war with the peace-keepers.

And my, what peace-keeper robots Mega Man will have to piece apart. If you’ve been following the Mega Man series up to now, then you should know this series stopped trying to be logical with robot threats around the time Bubble Man threatened the world with his savage soap attacks. Or when Ice Man armoured himself with a parka. With that in mind, here are the eight robots designed to prevent conflict in the Middle East.

Magnet Man: If there’s one robot from this game that I’d want with me in the frontlines, here’s the guy. Besides sporting the unique look of a ninja with a Looney Tunes horseshoe magnet on his forehead, this robot possesses the literal power of Magnetism. Decades of Marvel comics have taught us the strength of such power. He also fires missiles that home in on their targets, making him a powerful adversary in times of war…even if the missiles look like horseshoe magnets that you’d only see on Bill Nye.
Shadow Man: The other ninja robot. Except Shadow Man is more of a ninja robot (in the stereotypical sense) being that he sports a shuriken on his forehead. Presumed a keeper of justice on the streets in the same way that The Shadow fights evil from, well, the shadows, Shadow Man presents a dire threat to Mega Man in that he too has mastered the all-important technique of the tactical baseball slide.
Hard Man: Judging by his stage, Hard Man is the keeper of peace on the local construction site, protecting citizens from unionization. Standing erect at the end of a stone-filled stage, Hard Man is a tall, firm adversary that battles Mega Man by leaping into the air and thrusting himself head-first into the ground, causing the earth to climax with throbbing pressure. His rocket-hands are also weapons, which he uses in an attempt to fist Mega Man.
Snake Man: The protector of zoos and reptile farms everywhere. Snake Man is long, oily and continues the string of Freudian robot masters (and we still have Needle Man.) This was indeed a sexually frustrating time in Dr Wily’s life. Or perhaps Snake Man is Capcom’s attempt to create a robot from the year 200X, as Snake Man is the perfect tie-in boss for Bruno’s theatrical release. In any event, Snake Man’s flaw is that he has the same buggy AI chip as Protoman, and is content to jump around, randomly firing his gun. What would happen if, say, Snake Man and Proto Man were to have a boxing match?
Needle Man: And then we have the short, thin Needle Man. Despite his size, Needle Man can thrust his needle-head forward with incredibly pleasing power, proving that size doesn’t always matter. Presumably the peace-keeper of the local rehab clinic, Needle Man is an imposing figure that encourages kids to say no to drugs. I think.
Top Man: The peace-keeper during Chanukah. Top Man is Dr Wily’s inside joke towards Dr Light’s Jewish background. Had Dr Light not chosen the path of science and created so many robots that ultimately turned traitor and terrorized mankind, he would’ve made a fine rabbi. As for Top Man, he challenges entire armies with tops of terror and a spinning assault that would punk out Lebron James on the court. I love this boss.
Spark Man: Continuing from his previous work with Elec Man, Spark Man is an upgrade of the perpetual energy source theory that Dr Light invented. Hell, if Dr Light just settled on his laurels and rode with the perpetual energy source instead of trying to create other machines (such as a perpetual source of tops,) then he would be something of a multi-billionaire. Spark Man is the peacekeeper of…don’t know, lets just say Turkey for now, but Spark Man battles enemies with mighty electrical power stemming from the two dicks on his hands.
Gemini Man: Finally, we have the peace-keeper of the constellations, Gemini Man. Because lord knows we need someone to keep Perseus at bay from the wrath of Ursa Major. Gemini Man earns his name from his ability to split into two forms, both of which share the same AI programming (as in “they’re both really stupid”) More noteworthy is the Gemini Man stage; some kind of dark cavern containing large quantities of eggs that, when shot, reveal a floating robot sperm cell. Perhaps this stage takes place in a giant robot womb.

In fact, the stages are littered with some very strange but not very threatening adversaries. Robots that pole-vault off plungers, evil shot-put robots, giant floating magnets with beady eyes, giant evil cute wind-up penguins, even a giant, evil Cheshire Cat. The initial 8 stages of Mega Man 3, while a bit longer, feel also a tad more easier than some of the more ruthless stages from Mega Man 2. Part of that stems from the frequent prevalence of Energy Tanks (especially in Wily’s fortress…and yes, in case you didn’t figure it out yourself, Wily does betray Dr Light and steal the giant robot), and part thanks to how versatile the Rush Jet is as a universal means to get anywhere safely. Likewise, none of the robot master weapons are as effective as the Metal Man blades or Wood Man shield thingy from the last game. I almost always stuck with the old fashioned Mega Man yellow gun, you know the one. The one that after, 3 years Mega Man still can’t aim anywhere gawddammit. But even then, I found other weapons like the Shadow Man ninja stars (they’re like the pansy version of the Metal Man blades) to be fairly useful in the right situation.

Then the game unexpectedly throws a vile curveball the likes of which would humble Ricky Henderson. Four new stages appear after you defeat the insidious eight. These new stages are destroyed, lengthier, more challenging gauntlet versions of previous stages. And within each is two boss battles with robot masters from Mega Man 2…sort of. They’re the souls of robot masters of Mega Man 2, but they inhabit the body of what I can only describe as “Mentally Handicapped Man”. But even with newfound weaknesses to your new weapons and Mega Man’s mighty baseball slide superpower, they’ll still provide as much of a challenge as ever. If I’m making Mega Man 3 out to be some kind of gentle walk in comparison to other Mega Man games, just try beating all of the bosses with only your standard yellow drip gun. That’ll provide a fairly adequate challenge.

Oh, and yellow devil returns from Mega Man 1 with a singular pose and a renewed vengeance.

The final stages in Wily’s Skull Castle are fairly tough but not the most challenging in the series, thanks again in part to the common appearance of power-ups. In fact, the sparse sequences in the castle that require the use of mounting Rush are made more forgiving by the frequent appearances of blue pills. These allow Mega Man to last longer (in the castle of course) with the Rush Jet, as opposed to Mega Man 2’s select few sequences where one slip-up too many would require the player to either mine respawning enemies for more medicine or commit suicide.

I figure that most hardcore fans will commit to Mega Man 2 as their favorite in the series, in part to its steeper difficulty and funkier music. Well if you’re into that kind of music anyways, I was listening to Abbey Road during this playthrough of Mega Man 3. So perhaps this higher score is due to Paul McCartney’s soothing vocals, but I feel that Mega Man 3 is the more user-friendly of the two games and thus comes with a higher recommendation. In my mind anyways, it’s the strongest of the NES Mega Man games (working with the assumption that 9 is a poser pretending to be an NES game.) But you may as well get both games and decide for yourself. As for the next 6 Mega Mans, well, I’ll get to those soon enough…

4 ½ stars

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Blazblue: Calamity Trigger (Special Edition too!)


Guilty Gear X was a wonderful anomaly. It’s an unlikely combination of hundreds of 80s metal references that went over the heads of 95% of its audience with an oversexed anime style that would make Goku feel uncomfortable. The scantily-clad, blue haired, exposed abdomen male model with a pool cue as a weapon would zip across the screen like a gnat, throwing pool balls of death to the scythe-sporting, cross-dressed Marilyn Manson character as he retaliated with blood explosion attacks. All the while, a thrash-metal guitar riff played in the background and a Satanic announcer deemed every match to be a battle of “Heaven or Hell”. It was such an inexplicable experience that I disposed of my copy of Guilty Gear X like it was the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis and I was Bruce Campbell defeating the forces of evil with a mighty chin held high. Fortunately, the more polished and more bizarre Guilty Gear X2 helped me understand the “80s sex-metal meets 90s androgynous anime“ concept, and the promise of existing as one of the most balanced fighting games helped turn me from a conservative protestor to a tie-dyed hippie rebel experimenting with new a new chemical cocktail.

What followed was numerous Street Fighter 2-like refinement updates with increasingly stranger names (Guilty Gear X2 #reload Accent Core Plus?) and experimental genre-hybrid failures like Overture that left me feeling like Sonny Bono had latched on to a key programmer at Ark System Works. If the Guilty Gear franchise is the Beatles, then the band has since broken up and we now have Paul McCarthy’s Wings project; a game called “BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger.”

Blazblue maintains Ark System Works’ journey to further weird out Americans. The game starts up with an anime intro of the characters doing random acts of action to a J-pop song. Already going from glorious electric guitar to this strange track feels like something of a jarring shift to a metalhead like me. Couple that with organ-driven menu music and a church-inspired menu screen and you have a game that’s making even the Guilty Gear fan in me feeling a bit confused. The announcer is a Japanese woman who pours her heart out trying to pronounce these hard English words that the writer has handed over. Included in this bizarre script is the new fight introduction, “The Wheel of Fate is Turning.” Oh, and the sequences of battle are no longer referred to as “rounds”, they’re “rebels”. Is intentionally poor translation trendy in Japan? Should rounds end with one fighter declaring Victoly? Maybe this is what the kids of today find trendy, and I’m the Led Zeppelin fan accusing Nirvana of being too raucous.

The game has a wealth of backstory worth ignoring. Reading the manual reveals information of past wars over magic, evil demons, legendary heroes, evil librarian empires and a lot of nonsense that screams out loud “there will be sequels with new characters!” But the Coles’ Notes are as follows; there’s a really angry dude that the announcer affectionately calls RAGNA—THE-BLOODEDGE~! and a lot of people want to kill him and sell his pelt for money. If you would like to know more about the Blazblue universe, a Story Mode akin to Guilty Gear X2 #whatever version appears. A wall of dialogue of varying quality between characters will greet each player, a wall that usually polishes off at “hey you! Lets fight!” followed by “yeah sure! Lets fight!” Some storylines have branching paths and if you’re a completionist nutcase, you’re going to have to go on the internet to find out how to unlock some of the hidden storylines. It’s not a great single player mode, but at least it’s the presence of a single player mode in a fighting game that feels courteous.

On the surface, the fighting mechanics of Blazblue appear identical to that of Guilty Gear. But buried underneath, you’ll find that Blazblue is really….identical to Guilty Gear. You dash around the screen a lot, you have blocks and super-blocks that take no chip-damage, you’ve got your super-cancels that my simpleton brain can’t handle implementing in real combat, there’s even the return of the one-hit-kill attacks. But the circumstances for using a one-hit-kill (or an Astral Finish, as the game wants you to stylishly call it while you hang out in front of the Bubble Tea store) are so strict that the player will only want to use one in the name of being a complete show-off in the face of a petty noob (like me!). These one-hit-kills look cool enough to be considered the next evolution of the Mortal Kombat fatality, butin a rather selfish jerk-move, you have to play Arcade mode with most of the characters to unlock their Earth-destroying attacks.

The differences between Guilty Gear and BlazBlue begin to manifest themselves when you look at each character individually. At first glance, one will assume that RAGNA—THE-BLOODEDGE~! is meant to fill the shoes of another famous red-wearing, spiky-haired Guilty Gearhead. While that assumption is right on the money, RAGNA—THE-BLOODEDGE~! carves a bit of an identity with his sword into your skin. He brings to the smashed table (a smashed hotel room table with an unconscious hooker on top of it, of course) powerful attacks that will sap away some of the enemy’s health for his own use. In fact, each character will have the “D button” designated to some kind of unique gimmick attack. Iron Tager, the Blazy version of Potemkim, can magnetize opponents and draw them towards his powerful throws. Jin, the game’s angrier, more homosexual Ky Kiske, can freeze opponents like Sub Zero… if Sub Zero could spam combos like they were junk mail. And if Sub Zero had dirty thoughts about Scorpion’s harpoon.

Setting up combos and controlling space seem to be the crucial strategies amongst characters. If Blazblue is to be praised for anything, it’s for not having any Ryu/Ken/Guile like character simple archetypes. Even if a character appears to be channeling the drug-induced spirit of a Guilty Gear personality, they’ll also have some new gimmicks that help rework the player’s fighting style. But on the same token, without those familiar archetypes, the game lacks any kind of “good for beginners” character for a casual fighting game fan to jump in with and just play. As a result, uninitiated players will be experiencing a Calamity Trigger in their brain trying to wrap their mind around the game’s more complex characters as braggadocios elitists thrash them around in the arcade while flicking back their long, dyed-blonde hair and sipping Bubble Tea. (I’ve been a tad racist here, eh?)

Blazblue’s biggest flaw, in my mind, is the lack of in-game tutorials. Each character is such a unique and beautiful snowflake that without proper explanations, I can’t but help but develop a Tyler Durden mentality on the evils of “human individuality”. Trying to successfully wrap your mind around one in the name of not being one of the many, many players online using RAGNA—THE-BLOODEDGE~! is going to take a lot of practice, pain and passion. If you got the Collector’s Edition (which seems to be as readily available as the regular edition, which is to say “it’s damn hard to find”) then a bonus disc will assist with videos explaining character-specific strategies. But Collector’s Editions of games are normally bought by the hardcore fans, and it’s the curious newcomer that worries more about saving ten dollars that need this included guidance more. And the Bonus disc was done by IGN…seriously?

Now, once you’ve overcome the steep-as-Hakuman’s-overcompensating-sword learning curve, then Blazblue shines as a competitive fighter. Then you can go online and really get your tight buns whooped by what I presume is international competition sporting a year’s worth of practice. The online options are among the genre’s beefiest; you can either arrange quick Ranked matches or alternate battles in a room with four friends (assuming you know four friends that are into this stuff). Each player has a profile card highlighting statistics from past defeats, plus you can save the replay of any past ass-whooping.

BlazBlue is a mighty fighting game. Too mighty even. In fact, its biggest flaws may stem from its mightiness. Here’s another example of such; the game considers Standard Definition television screens beneath it, and as a result, bits of text are cut off from the screen in each character’s Arcade mode introduction; this would be a major flaw if this game had a story worth following. The game is staggeringly deep but equally rewarding, and if anything, is just enough of a breath of fresh air in a genre riddled with sequels, spin-offs and clones. If you’ve got a passion for 2D fighters, you should try your hardest to find a copy, but those foreign to the 2D fighting genre should look to Street Fighter 4 as a gateway drug first.

4 stars

Mega Man 2


So there’s a long-standing debate amongst fanboys that care too much (like me) over which of Mega Man game stands at the top of the class of identical Mega Man games. The two forerunners include 1989’s Mega Man 2 and 1990’s Mega Man 3; two games from two entirely different decades; one representing the Reagan era, one representing Bush Sr’s tyranny. Now, there’s not much of a point in glorifying this battle of games that reuse the same danged Mega Man sprite (9’s the best one anyways) so lets take a look at Mega Man 2; the series’ equivalent to The Godfather Part 2 if spandex-wearing robots can be considered Oscar-worthy.

Mega Man 2 is a textbook example of why I enjoy storylines in 8-bit games. The plot briefly appears, shuts up, goes away and lets you play the damn game. Here is, quoted verbatim from the game’s introduction, the entire storyline for Mega Man 2.

“IN THE YEAR 200X, A SUPER ROBOT NAMED MEGAMAN WAS CREATED. DR LIGHT CREATED MEGAMAN TO STOP THE EVIL DESIRES OF DR WILY. HOWEVER, AFTER HIS DEFEAT, DR WILY CREATED EIGHT OF HIS OWN ROBOTS TO COUNTER MEGAMAN.”

And you never hear another word of dialogue again. The player is allowed to jump headfirst into the fray (and subsequently jump out of the fray after getting a laser beam up the ass courtesy of the Quick Man stage) with no lengthy tutorials or exposition. Therefore, Mega Man 2 trumps Grand Theft Auto 4 in every story-related aspect, except for Grand Theft Auto 4’s ability to use lower-case lettering.

Mega Man’s innate abilities include run, jump, blink, climb ladders and release yellow drip-like projectiles from his erect Mega Man-Cannon. On his arm. Dr Light, a scrawny little nerd in high school, never had much of a knowledge of human muscles and was thus unable to develop mechanical deltoids necessary for Mega Man to raise his gun in any direction besides parallel. But Dr Light will ultimately prove to be the scientist than his…ehhh…wily foe. By defeating one of the robots designed to counter Mega Man, the former Rock Man can obtain their gimmick attack and use it to counter another unassuming robot.

And in another historical footnote, Mega Man 2 was the first game in the series to feature a password system. You know the system; the one with a grid of squares that the player filled with circles like they were playing a failed remix of tic-tac-toe. The ones that we’d waste napkin upon napkin writing down numerous updated passwords with the upmost sloppiness, not remembering which password grid was actually our latest. To the benefit of serviettes everywhere, most of the re-releases of Mega Man 2 have some inserted form of save feature or another.

But before Mega Man can turn from hunted to hunter and assault the robots designed to “counter Mega Man”, he must first overcome their gimmick-laced obstacle course stage. Mega Man 2 shines if you play it directly after playing Mega Man 1 in that the stages feel bigger, mightier and more dangerous. At least in contrast to the primitive ice block puzzles and construction site elevators of doom from the first game. Giant floating heads with drills sticking on top, evil robot monkeys and ostriches, bipedal mechs with powerful bigger yellow-drip man cannons, giant orange laser beams capable of destroying Alderaan and evil robotic SHRIMP will stand in Mega Man’s way. Why Dr Wily bothered with anything other than the death rays for his assault on humanity, I don’t know. Maybe he likes taking animals and household items, mechanizing them and adding a cute set of eyes. But like any Mega Man game, the ability to choose stage order is critical. If one stage is giving you problems (probably Quick Man’s), you can simply try your luck at an different, hopefully easier level (probably Metal Man’s.) The enemies may consist of unlikely threats to say, a trained human combatant, but the stages are all difficult and require practice, skill and a bit of resourceful use of the robot master gimmick weapons for Mega Man to succeed.

It quickly becomes apparent that Dr Wily has put his greatest efforts into designing eight robot masters designed to counter Mega Man with the effectiveness of a counter-kick to the groin. Dr Wily is the Bas Rutten of mad scientists.

Metal Man: Cut Man was deemed too inefficient as a deforesting machine, what with his single boomerang-like safety scissors. So here comes Version 2.0, Metal Man. With an infinite supply of buzz saws, Metal Man is poised to lawnmower rainforests and scare the crap out of Captain Planet. The fatal flaw in Dr Wily’s plan for Mega Man hindrance is that Metal Man is kind of an intellectual flop (he just jumps on the spot and throws his razors.) Mega Man can gain his razorblade weapon which can be aimed in 8 directions (thus overcoming Mega Man’s mechanical shortcomings), has a large ammo cache and defeats MANY enemies.
Crash Man: Designed in tribute by Wily to David Cronenburg’s “Crash”, a movie about auto-accident survivors who develop a fetish for crash-induced injuries. Dr Wily has upgraded the Bomb Man model from “big, dumb, ugly and throws enlarged cherry bombs at the enemy” to “nimble, armoured, throws lethal time bombs with great accuracy.” Crash Man strikes me as the only Mega Man 2 villain designed for combat purposes and would hold his own against actual armed forces. On the other hand….
Wood Man: …is begging to be blown to splinters. Forget Mega Man, this boss fears the lumberjack. The first truly obese evil robot master of the Mega Man universe, Wood Man is a giant tree…thingy who beats his chest like a botanical King Kong. Perhaps a throwback to Wily’s hippie days where he’d stick flowers in the gun barrels of riot police, Wood Man attacks his adversaries with a barrage of lethal leaves. Or perhaps designed by Wily to discipline his children with a machine that would take the kids to the woodshed for a country whoppin’.
Quick Man: Designed to be an inside joke about Dr Light’s sexual prowess. Quick Man is also the only robot master I can buy as a means of countering Mega Man. For you see, he jumps in less predictable patterns than his thick Metal counterpart, thus taking advantage of Mega Man’s inability to lift his arm in a 45 degree angle. Quick Man could only be used to counter Mega Man and no one else, for pitting him and his Boomerangs against, say, bullets, is not a wise idea.
Air Man: Designed with the intent of destroying America’s trailer parks, Air Man has the lethal ability to summon tornadoes at will. But these aren’t the kinds of Twisters worthy of cinematic films about 2012 but rather diminutive tornadoes that would feel inadequate at your child’s science fair. Like your lawnmower, the blades swirling in Air Man’s chest are vulnerable to clogging up from the leaves of the Wood Man shield, but the punk is so damned hard to hit with these leaves that he may be the only robot design to have been field-tested.
Flash Man: Presumably a piece of photography equipment transformed by Wily into a force by which humans and gods cannot hope to contain. Flash Man can legitimately freeze time with his digital camera flash and 32 megapixels of death. Now if only Wily gave him an AI chip capable of taking advantage of this power to say…kill Mega Man, instead of bumping off the walls aimlessly.
Heat Man: As a child, I never made the connection of “Heat Man” and “a lighter”, and thus never assumed he was a giant, walking Zippo. Rather, I assumed that he was a giant, walking AC control box, the kind with knobs that regulate the temperature in your home. And I kind of like my idea more anyways. I can believe that Dr Wily ripped the box out of his wall and weaponized it into an instrument of terror. Heat Man looks both cute and capable of murdering your loved ones.
Bubble Man: And last and certainly least is Bubble Man. He looks like a robot designed to help kids have fun at bathtime. I’m withholding an obvious Michael Jackson joke. Wily’s pool cleaning robot-turned-weapon of mass destruction, Bubble Man assaults our hero with slaughterous suds and lethal lathering power. If Bubble Man’s attacks can damage the Rock Man, then Dr Light needs to hit the drawing board.

The special gimmick weapons that you gain for defeating these mechanical machinations can be quite useful, to tell the truth. I found myself regretting the gobs of Wood Man jokes I made over the years when I discovered how handy the “Leaf Shield” can be when Mega Man is exposed to attacks from all directions whilst sitting on a moving platform or ladder. Likewise, you’ll eventually pick up Assist weapons that may remind you of a robot dog, but are most certainly NOT canine in any way, shape or form. “1” creates a floating platform, “2” is a horizontal jet rocket, “3” is a moving platform that can scale walls. I like having these assist-thingys to help make challenging sequences more forgiving or to collect hidden power-ups.

But where I feel Mega Man 2 falls apart is in the later stages, where Mega Man begins his trek through Dr Wily’s Skull Castle. Certain sequences require the use, sometimes too-frequent use, of the Assist power-ups. But each of these power-ups have their own limited ammo supply for Dr Light can only care to store so many floating spider platforms in his lab before his claustrophobia kicks in. Should you run into a challenging sequence and run out of energy, then you need to either backtrack to a spot where enemies respawn indefinitely to collect those blue orbs that work as the game’s munitions, or commit suicide and start the level over.

And here’s a sequence so annoying, it’s worth docking at least half a star off the game’s final score. One “boss” is a collection of orbs scattered around the room. A bit anti-climatic visually, but we’ll run with it. Assuming you have a full supply of Crash Man Death Bombs, you have exactly enough bombs to defeat the boss, provided you use the Assist platforms to avoid unnecessarily wasting bombs on destructible walls. If you die or accidentally slip and waste even a single bomb, the battle is lost and you’re better off visiting the Game Over screen and starting the level over. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap. Cheap.

While the game has its annoying and even broken segments during the end, the initial eight stages and subsequent robot masters are all at least interesting enough to render Mega Man 2 as one of the better 8-bit platformers. It’s currently available on the Wii Shop for 500 points, so for 10 dollars, you’ll have enough points for that and Mighty Bomb Jack, and still have plenty of time to scorn yourself. There are also cell phone and IPhone ports, but I can’t wrap my mind around playing a game with the intricate platform sequences of Mega Man on anything but a red-blooded American controller. Your best bet is to look for Mega Man Anniversary Collection, a set of the first eight Mega Man games, available on all the last-generation consoles. Sure the Playstation 2, Gamecube and green Xbox are all dated pieces of equipment, but for Pete’s sake, what does that make this game?

4 stars