To conclude the first (and hopefully not last) month of Mayga Man I’ll go down the list of almost all of the classic Mega Man games and list them all from the ones I’d rather not play again to my personal favorites. I’m not saying that the worst one on this list is terrible I mean all of classic Mega Man is sound and has a fantastically simple yet effective foundation but it’s just the one that I felt didn’t do much more then that at the end of the day. Though before I start with anything; no, Mega Man and Bass is not on the list. Mostly due to me not playing it, I mean I have the GBA version but with everything else wrong with Mega Man and Bass on top of that screen crunch, no thank you. So we'll start with my least favorite to my personal favorite.
Well you know what they say, worst is first and for me that’s Mega Man 5. Now I've been marathoning the classic games and I guess that my have affected my ratings I fully admit that, but yeah there's other reasons why I'm not the biggest Mega Man 5 fan. Namely some of the weapons suck, looking at you Power Stone, Charge Kick and Star Arrow (yes I know it's not a weapon technically but it's the weakness of one of Wily's forms so it counts.) Though this entry did introduce Beat and the Mega Tank, literal lifesavers during the Wily Castle stages. But yeah I may give Mega Man 5 another shot in my spare time but for right now, it's at the bottom of my list.
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| The one time anyone was afraid of Dr Wily. |
Now I would have put the original Mega Man at the bottom of the list just for the American box art alone. But it’s the first of the series so of course it wouldn't hold up compared to the later games. Hell, this would most likely be just a one hit wonder if not for Mega Man 2 but I’ll still cut the first game some slack since it was the first untested game in the series so some missteps are expected. Nevertheless this game is classic Nintendo hard and if you can beat it without the rewind feature or exploiting the Elec beam trick then you deserve all the credit out there. But of course if you use the rewind feature I certainly won't blame you, especially with Guts Mans stage, ugh.
After Mega Man 1 is the end of the retro revisits, Mega Man 10. Sure it still has the store and selectable difficulty that could help less experienced players and it does let you play as Bass without having to suffer Mega Man and Bass, but it doesn't get much higher on my list. The special weapons are a major step down from Mega Man 9 in my opinion, some of the robot masters are borderline impossible to beat without their weakness or just have very annoying patterns "cough Commando Man cough". Though this again could be because of me being burnt out on the series due to my marathon play though of the classic series for this month. But if I still put it so high on my list despite said burn out it does speak to its quality so make it what you will.
After 10’s annoyances next on the list is the proper end of the original NES era, Mega Man 6. After playing though 5 NES games a little annoyance does tend to creep in when it feels like you're playing the same game six times in a row. Though this game did introduce the power and jet adaptors, while we did lose Rush due to this the trade off was not only becoming one of the most powerful iterations of Mega Man and making the robot master weapons almost useless. Unless you were using them against the castle bosses I mostly just stuck to the adaptors for the majority of my play through. So while the adaptors make this game the most fun I had with the NES era it came at the cost of what made the series special to begin with so I have to knock some points off there resulting in a rather meh entry overall.
Now here’s where we start to get to the good ones. After the meh of 6 we get the revisit to the classic design that was the pinnacle of the NES aesthetics but with modern sensibilities, Mega Man 9. It seems that after 10 years of hibernation, the classic series got the revamp it needed thanks to Inti creates' take on the blue bomber. Not only creating a challenging game but giving us some of the absolute best Robot Master weapons in the game. Though the trade off was removing the charge shot and slide but it seems fair with weapons this good and level design this solid to complement them.
Here we have what is considered to be the best game in the series, Mega Man 2. Now I have to admit that Mega Man 2 does hold up far more than the original game. The weapons are very versatile, the introduction of E tanks was a god send and the difficulty of the level design was just right. However there is the problem of the seizures that this game can cause you around the Wily stages. So I have to knock off points for a game that while overall very solid and genre defining can still seriously hurt people.
Now we have the only Super Nintendo entry of the classic series, Mega Man 7. After the 6 NES games in a row, this with the new graphics, music and challenging game play was just what the doctor ordered. They even brought back the adaptors by finding all of the letters to spell out RUSH hidden in the first four stages. Yes the 8 robot masters are split up into two categories for story purposes that, while it does hurt replayability quite a bit doesn't hurt the sheer fun that this entry can provide. But its not perfect, like I said the story decision to cut the stage selection in half hurts replay, some of the bosses suffer from Spark Mandril syndrome and that Wily Capsule final boss fight, like Caddicarus said can suck on cold meat!
Coming in at #3 we have my personal favorite entry of the NES era, Mega Man 4. After the very shaky implementation of the extra castle stages that felt like padding in Mega Man 3 and after this game Mega Man 4 somehow seems to perfect the concept. Also the Robot Masters while many can be challenging (especially Skull Man) can be much easier to handle with the newly introduced charge shot for the Mega Buster. The special weapons are also very effective for more than just Robot weaknesses, not a terrible one in the bunch. This combined with the introduction of easy E-tank dispenser Eddie makes this is the most balanced and refined NES era Mega Man game as of this list.
#2 has the the slot filled by the only PS1 entry, Mega Man 8. A key factor for me in judging these games seems to be how useful and fun the robot master weapons are to use and does that ever show with Mega Man 8. Not only do they help with normal enemies as well as not being instant win buttons against the Robot master they're strong against but they can also help you with environmental puzzles and cover the 40 bolts hidden throughout the 8 stages. The upgrades while limited due to the limits placed on them via the 40 bolts can make Mega Man into an unstoppable force if you have the right combination of upgrades. This combined with the MST3K quality English dub makes Mega Man 8 a personal favorite of mine and it saddens me that we'll most likely never return to the 32 bit aesthetic of this game again, but c'est la vie progress marches on and what not.
We end this long, long list with what I consider to be the best of the classic series so far, Mega Man 11. Now it’s not because it’s the newest game, I honestly feel like this is the most refined, enjoyable and overall fun classic game so far. The weapons are fun to use, the stages are not too long, have a good difficulty balance and the inclusion of the double gear system allowed the developers to really change the challenge of Mega Man. Though that’s mostly with the speed gear, the power gear does the impossible job of making these great weapons even better (even potentially alluding to how Dr Light got the idea to let Mega Man X charge his special weapons with the arm parts.) Also we finally get some proper backstory as to how Dr Light and Willy’s relationship started to sour back when they were students at the Robot University.
On top of the main game and its multiple difficulty options it comes with a plethora of optional challenges while, superfluous can still give you a few hours of challenges for those looking for it. But whoever came up with the Dr Light trials is as nuts as Dr Wily. I'll platinum this one someday but not today. Also the extra bolt item is only available if you play on a Saturday, what, why? But those trials combined with the outright awesome music makes this, for the time being my personal favorite classic Mega Man game.
So that's it for me and Mega Man for a little while. Though I'll still post my lets play of Mega Man 5 at the end of the week I won't be touching classic Mega Man until they come out with Mega Man 12. Next year I'll get to gushing about my favorite series, Mega Man X in pretty much the say way as the classic series. But for now it's high time I got back to covering Homura's Revenge. At least as long as nothing else unexpected pops up of course.
Special thanks to my Patreon backer Jesse for his support.
Megaman is owned by Capcom.
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