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In 1987, a platform shooter entitled Mega Man was released for the NES. The rest, as
they say, is history. Over 20 years later, the Mega Man series has emerged as one of
the iconic franchises in the video game industry, spawning eight bonafide sequels, and handful
of spin-off games, and even a couple of cartoons. But as successful as Mega Man is today, the
very first game demonstrates that the celebrated Blue Bomber had a rather humble beginning.
The plotline of the game is rather simple, as you pilot Mega Man through a variety of
stages to do battle with six different robot masters, once programmed to serve humanity,
but are now causing all sorts of chaos. Once you've defeated the six robots, it's on to
a showdown against Dr. Wily, the evil scientist who reprogrammed the 'bots with plans of world
domination. Sound familiar? It should - it's pretty much the plotline to every Mega Man
game that's come out since.
The first half of the game involves fighting the six robot masters, which you can do in
any order you choose. This is important, because each boss you defeat earns you the use of
its weapon, and you'll quickly discover that certain weapons do large amounts of damage
to certain monsters. In many cases, the right weapon can kill a robot master in just two
or three hits.
Much of the game looks as if the programmers had the right idea, but just lacked the refinement
they'd get from later installments of the series. For example, the presentation looks
all right, but doesn't feature a whole lot in the way of animation, and the backgrounds
look a bit plain. Mega Man is drawn with a lot of detail, though, and the enemies have
a nice cartoonish look that they managed to maintain throughout the series. The soundtrack
is also decent, but the tracks aren't as catchy as they'd be in later games.
The level design also shows some room for improvement, as there's a lot of screens that
get repeated in the first six stages. One platforming sequence stands out as being especially
annoying, in the first Wily stage where you have to cross this corridor of spikes using
these moving platforms. Unless they're in the right position when you enter the room,
you have to wait...
and wait...
and wait...
and wait...
and wait for them to finally come back down - and if you take a hit when they're in range,
you end up doing this.
Like many games that came out early in the NES dynasty, Mega Man makes up for its brevity
by being extremely hard. Without the energy tanks or password systems introduced in later
installments of the series, the margin of error becomes a lot smaller. The final level
is especially brutal, as four of the original six bosses return - only you have to beat
them all in sequence, without any life refills that you'd get in later games. Even with plenty
of lives to spare, you'll find yourself at the mercy of your weapon energy if you don't
beat them all in two or three tries.
Overall, Mega Man has a few rough patches, but it's still a solid game, and showed a
lot of potential which came to fruition in the other games of the series. It's worth
a download on the Virtual Console - as long as you can overcome the high level of difficulty,
you'll have just as much fun with the first Mega Man as you would with all the others.