Collection essentials #78: Mega Man (NES)

Here’s Capcom again, now debuting one of their most well-known franchises. 

Mega Man is a platformer where you control the eponymous robot boy who can swap out either of his hands for a gun arm. He works for his creator, Dr. Light, and in this game his mission is to defeat a series of Dr. Light’s other robot creations who have gone haywire thanks to the devious deeds of his old rival, Dr. Wily, and to then go after Wily himself.

The structure of this game is brilliant and is what really helped this game to stand out. There are six levels to start out with, each represented on the level select menu by which robot master awaits at the end. You can tackle these levels in any order you choose. Upon defeating a robot master, you will acquire a new weapon from them, with each one giving out a distinct one based on their abilities. Not only does this give you the pleasure of slowly gaining more and more moves as you play the game, but each robot master is weak to a specific weapon dropped by one of the OTHER robot masters. Sometimes the weaknesses can be assumed based on what kind of powers the robot masters have; for example, Fire Man is weak to Ice Man’s weapon (shouldn’t that be the other way around though?). Sometimes you just have to learn from trial and error, though. Once the robot master levels are finished, there’s one more series of levels and boss fights to undertake until the final encounter with Wily himself. This is topped off by a very good soundtrack with catchy tunes to listen to as you press onward.

Mega Man 1 has some problems, though, and lacks some of the features and polish seen in the sequels you’re going to be reading about in the following posts. The game’s difficulty is too high, not in a way that feels fair and rewarding, but the kind that just makes you frustrated with many segments that just feel unfair. There’s also an upgrade required to finish the game found in the middle of a level that requires a specific boss weapon to acquire, which you may not have when you see it, requiring you to go back and get it…but the game doesn’t tell you that you need to do that.

I also want to point out this game’s terrible box/cartridge artwork for the US release, which is rather famous among retro game enthusiasts. Apparently an artist was rushed into coming up with and finishing it in just a few hours, and the result is this strange image that doesn’t represent the game very well. That Mega Man is largely the wrong color, appears to be an actual human using a gun rather than a robot, and looks too old. Many years later Capcom made “bad box art Mega Man” an actual playable character in a fighting game called Street Fighter X Tekken.

I never owned a Mega Man game as a child, but I was aware of the series. I’ll recount what may have been my first experience playing one once I get to the one I remember playing specifically. In the early 2000s Capcom released the “Mega Man Anniversary Collection” for then-modern platforms, and that was my first real personal foray into the original Mega Man series, when I was 15. But it actually didn’t go all that well. I was a bit put off by Mega Man 1’s aggravating difficulty, and I never actually finished it. Though there was also a spruced-up remake of the first game on the PSP that I’ll be talking about months down the road.

Capcom wound up churning out many Mega Man titles on the NES, so get ready to read about those in the coming week. It was actually not this game that REALLY put Mega Man on the map, but rather, the one I’ll be writing about next time. Stay tuned!