Manifesto: Mega Man Retrospective (Part 2)

by Mark Medeiros

Posted: 10-08-2009

Homosexual innuendos aside, we all expected, nay, wanted our Mega Mans to be a little weird. Check out just how weird in the Mega Man Retrospective conclusion.

Last week, I completely burned out my frontal lobe by reviewing all nine canon-Mega Man games. The approximate 30 pages of text (which is probably more than I’ve ever written for all of my college assignments combined) was so overwhelming that I couldn’t bring myself to write a fresh editorial feature on top of that. So when the time for a new Manifesto came, I copped out and wrote a retrospective of the first batch of Mega Mans.

Ah, so that’s why he’s called “Wily”

This week I have plenty of great ideas for possible editorials, including “How to apply your knowledge of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons version 3.0 rules to get laid.” But I’m the kind of person that must achieve a consistent state of Zen balance, and if I don’t write up a part two then a voice in my head will nag and nag and nag until all I see in my eyes are the red dots resembling a Mega Man password.

So here’s part two of the retrospective, focusing on providing more links to my bl… uhhh, I mean covering Mega Mans 5 through 9. This is the full extent of Mega Man retrospection that I can handle doing; don’t expect a series on Mega Man X, ZX, Zero, Legends, Power Battles, Battle Network EXE, Geo Stellar, Dragonforce, Soccer, Racing or Dr. Wily Dick Sucking. This is it. But if you yearn for more Mega Man, check out some of the hilarity that is the cartoon. Be wary, the theme song will not get out of your head.

Reviews: Mega Man 5 – 9

Mega Man 5: So Mega Man 5 attempts to swerve the player by introducing a robot assault lead by the enigmatic Proto Man.

A quick note about Proto Man: he’s the ever-important “mysterious figure” that every Japanimation cartoon needs, the one that spends most of his camera time in the shadows as but a mere spectator, rarely revealing his intentions and only intervening with the action at the most conveniently dramatic moment. (I kind of liked him more in the cartoon, as Dr. Wily’s grunt.) Apparently, he was Dr. Light’s first robot, hence the name. But players fighting him in his Mega Man 3 debut quickly learned why this prototype was scraped, for he featured one buggy-ass AI program.

Back to Mega Man 5, Proto Man seems to be the main villain at the onset. But as followers of the series will quickly figure out, a Mega Man game promising a new villain is like being asked pull someone’s finger over and over, promising an outcome other than flatulence. You know you’re getting a Dr Wily Skull Fortress in the end and an annoying UFO battle finale. Mega Man 5 feels like an easier game than its predecessors, as the charged shot and supermodel pose slide are more than effective enough to overcome any obstacle and big-eyed enemy.

Many of the bosses and locales in this game feel tired; you get another ice stage, another water stage, another air stage, and so forth. Not to mention some of the bosses feel uninspired in nature (especially the robot drones in “Proto Man’s castle”) leaving this game with a dim aura of lethargy. If you haven’t grown sick of the redundancy from playing the first four Mega Mans, you will by the time you reach 5. Finally, there’s a mini scavenger hunt that encourages the player to collect one hard-to-reach letter in every stage, spelling “MEGAMANV.” One initially hopes that going out of your way for this task will unlock a new, powerful weapon or hidden character or amusing Easter Egg. But no, you spell it and you get Beat, the little robot bird that flies around and struggles to attack other enemies. He’s like the robotic version of the title character from Finding Nemo in so many ways.

Mega Man 6: The final NES game has what appears to be an interesting new concept: a tournament featuring the toughest of fighting robots. You know, like those shows on Discovery Channel where people make their remote controlled “robot” cars with buzz saws and hammers on top and pit them against other remote controlled robot cars in their digital cockfighting contests. In 20XX, these robots have evolved into personalities like the mace-wielding Knight Man, the spear-wielding Yamato Man and the ski pole-wielding Blizzard Man. Borrowing the old anime cliché of “the evil power that manipulates lesser evil powers from behind the scenes,” Dr. X makes his presence known as the man who’s been controlling Dr. Wily all this time, and begins his quest for world domination.

Of course, all of that exposition becomes hilarious in retrospect when you realize that Dr. X is really Dr. Wily. Besides some new and wacky concepts for bosses and stages (like the Wild West! and Feudal Japan!) Mega Man 6 shakes up the old Mega formula with another anime cliché: the robots that sexually combine into bigger robots. Mega Man and Rush can heterosexually fuse to form either the rocket-toting Jet Mega Man or the pugilistic Power Mega Man, both of which have slightly different abilities and thus allow for some branching paths within the game world. If Capcom’s been beating a dead horse up to now with their NES Mega Mans, then Mega Man 6 is at least a modest attempt to bring some new life to the horse’s corpse. Even if that presence of new life is just the maggots.

Mega Man 7: The real Mega Man’s SNES debut, which I think people wound up ignoring because Capcom had long since introduced players to the then-more relevant Mega Man X games. So releasing Mega Man 7 in 1995 was a lot like Poison releasing a new album in 1995. The visuals are cleaner, more cartoonish and more gloriously bizarre, introducing players to giant robotic T-Rexes and giant robotic pumpkins. Levels were larger, had hidden pathways and the game had more unlockable power-ups, including the return of the Mega Man/Rush Fusion Super Mega Power Armor. Plus the game had awesome bosses like Turbo Man (aka the robot that Optimus popped point-blank at the beginning of Revenge of the Fallen) or the amalgamation of stolen copyrights in Slash Man.

But my biggest issue is that the game is very poorly bookended; the opening sequence features an influx of slow-scrolling, unskippable, annoying dialogue that just goes on and on and on, like Mega Man’s voice box has its own Energizer battery. At the end of the game awaits the single most annoying Wily UFO boss battle to date, followed by a rather abrupt ending. So the game is akin to an Oreo with the cookies replaced by Rush dung, as it can be hard to appreciate the creamy center. On the positive side, you do get to see Mega Man threaten to “MURDER” someone.

Mega Man 8: I’ve got mixed feelings about Mega Man 8. One on hand, the game makes some terrible attempts to vary up the levels, adding a handful of redundant snowboarding levels and Gradius-like gimmick stages. Both of which are painfully unwelcome. There’s also the Bolt system, where these rare bolts you collect in a stage can be used to unlock power-ups, but the range of power-ups varies from useless (the ability to climb ladders faster?) to options that should’ve been given to the player from the start (like the ability to exit a previously-completed stage at any time.)

At the same time, the game has, arguably, the best robot master bosses in the series, with fantastical cartoon nutjobs like the warrior Sword Man and the nemesis of Yogi Bear in Search Man. This being the first CD-based game; there are also some forced cutscenes that are either paying homage to or blatantly ripping off Astro Boy. But the bad voice-acting and hilarious concepts, like the notion of an alien energy comprising of pure evil, will crack a smile on your face, even if they shouldn’t. Mega Man 8’s a game with a bit of suck and a bit of rock.

Mega Man 9: And finally we have last year’s wonderful new-old Mega Man game. Inti Creations took a good, long look at what people liked about older Mega Man games, especially the parts about those games that Capcom didn’t want people to like, and created the most Mega-Manliest of Mega Man games. The story is hokey (Dr. Light gets framed, comedy ensues), the bosses are hokey (Concrete Man? Jewel Man?) and the enemies are hokey (like the evil missile-firing flower pot). To parlay the strangeness, they abandoned the baseball slide and Mega Buster, and instead created a series of unique challenges designed to surprise even the most seasoned veterans. This game is very hard to finish, make no mistake about it. I’d say that Mega Man 9 is a wonderful homage to those NES Mega Man games, but I don’t think homages are supposed to surpass their inspiration.

Finally, if you’re looking to play most of these games, try your hardest to procure a copy of Mega Man Anniversary Collection for any of the last-generation systems. It features Mega Mans 1-8 and is so much cheaper than buying these games ala carte.

Next week… a real editorial! Promise!

Mark Medeiros would like to quickly remind Mr. Ariza that Wii game sales are indeed that bad. In case the numerous links weren’t enough, you can access his entire review archive at http://canuckehbasic.blogspot.com.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.