Mega Man 6

Now this is just getting ridiculous. Doubling the the number of Mega Man games on the NES after overstepping the amount fitting for a nicely succinct trilogy almost makes Mega Mans 4-6 its own trilogy separate from the first three games. What defining name shall we refer to Mega Man 4-6 to codify this selection of the series' latter half on its debut system? “The charge shot trilogy?” “The Dr. Wily bait-and-switch trilogy?” “The semi-useless Eddie trilogy?” There are so many different possibilities. All jokes aside, I’m actually glad that Capcom rounded out their flagship franchise with their blue robot boy with six games. Mega Man 5 would've been a rather tepid note to end Mega Man’s tenure on the NES, for its contributions to the long-running series amounted to nothing of substantial growth to the Mega Man formula. I never expected Mega Man 6 to reinvent the wheel, especially after Mega Man 5 inadvertently proved that Mega Man’s full potential peaked with the fourth entry. My optimism regarding Mega Man 6 stemmed from the fact that Capom now had the opportunity to rectify the mistakes they made in Mega Man 5 in their attempts to give it some fresh discernibility. Mega Man 6 could now cement Mega Man’s legacy on the console that started it with something comparable to the apex point that was Mega Man 4. Alas, Mega Man 6 is yet another entry marked by unnecessary changes, but at least the changes it makes are far more interesting and involved than those from the previous games.

The entourage of robot masters this time around is an especially inspired bunch. Instead of leaving the creative process to a few lucky Japanese kids via a contest, the cohesive theme for these eight robot masters is that they all vaguely represent a different nation in the real world based on both their physical designs and levels. One might hear this idea and facepalm considering that the developers callously drew parallels between a sensitive world event where several innocent people died with Napalm Man’s Vietnam War-theme level in the previous game. However, the pack of international mechanical marvels is constructed with far more tact and respect. Tomahawk Man represents the deep cultural heritage of the native people in America, Blizzard Man is a comment on how absurdly frigid the northern land of Canada can be, and Yamato Man is the robotic samurai that Capcom felt would be emblematic of their own culture. The others are up to speculation because their origins are not detailed in the game’s manual for some reason. If I had to guess, Plant Man is Latin American because of his tropical level and the rose’s affiliation with their dances, Knight Man is a chivalrous artifact of Middle Ages England, Centaur Man is a Greek mythology reference, Wind Man correlates with China’s reputation for wind energy, and Flame Man’s Indian identity can be assumed from his turban and by the fact that food from that country is scorchingly spicy. The nationalities of this array of robots is also relevant because they are the worldly representatives in the newly founded “Global Robot Alliance,” a UN of sorts established after Dr. Wily has attempted to upset the balance between the machines and their human creators numerous times. Speaking of Mega Man’s perennial antagonist, his new ploy to disrupt the order of this organization is to construct a tournament of champions between the eight robot masters for the prize of sole representation as the world’s robotic protector. Yes, the game introduces a villain named “Mr. X” as its diabolical schemer, but I absolutely refuse to humor the notion of another Mega Man antagonist for a THIRD fucking time. Besides, Mr. X’s resemblance to Dr. Wily is uncanny, so even the developers knew that they couldn’t maintain their own charade. While I’ve given up on taking the Mega Man conflict scenarios seriously, at least the themes of the robot masters behind the plot are intriguing. Capcom crafted a slew of cool robot masters with a cultural theme one tasteful degree above Nintendo’s Punch-Out!

Squeezing six games onto one console has an implication that a lot of time has passed since Mega Man’s birth in 1987. By late 1993 when Mega Man 6 was released, the SNES successor to the NES was well into its course as Nintendo’s primary soldier in the console wars. In fact, the SNES had been available on store shelves for so long at this point that those interested in playing Mega Man 6 most likely had to dig through their closets and blow off the dust that their old NES system had freshly collected. Some may ponder why anyone would be interested in regressing to the outdated guard briefly when the future was in full swing and why Capcom didn’t bother to simply develop Mega Man 6 for the current console. From another perspective, Mega Man 6 had the advantageous position of being a practically posthumous period release on the NES because it could comfortably relax in the house that all of the preceding NES titles (including previous Mega Man games) had painstakingly crafted with their blood, sweat, and tears. It’s a smaller house than the SNES that was under construction at the time, but a fully erected living space is far cozier. Due to the lack of mechanical strain, Mega Man 6 looks fantastic from a graphical standpoint. Every 8-bit texture that renders the eight robot master stages and the interior of Dr. Wily’s castle is refined to near-perfect, pixelated perfection. The foliage of the hanging rainforest trees is remarkably green and textured to the point of seeing every individual leaf. The pistons holding together the man-made foundation of Tomahawk Man’s stage are as finely detailed as the natural crags of the rock formations outside. Every star over the background city seen from the entrance point of Wily’s castle shines brighter from that view than the scene of space in Star Man’s stage from the last game. Mega Man 6 proves that 8-bit graphics are a legitimate aesthetic.

What interests me more pertaining to the levels in Mega Man 6 has less to do with how they are graphically rendered and more with their design. Mega Man 6 unfortunately may only offer a couple of alternate routes to change the trajectory of the destination to a robot master as it is this game’s means of unlocking Beat. Still, at least the game puts a calculated effort into diversifying the straightaway trek for every other level. If one can recall back to the first Mega Man game, they’ll remember that the weapons did more than act as alternatives to the blaster and counter the element for the contrasting robot master. Mega Man 6 continues what was abandoned in Mega Man’s debut by blocking extra lives and energy/weapon tanks behind large, compact cubes of junk. To unearth these impediments to obtain these items, Mega Man needs a gadget that is not granted to him until he defeats a certain number of robot masters. The catch is that there are instances where vital pickups are obscured behind these crude formations across every level, so the player is persuaded to replay the levels to gather all of the goodies. Also, confining a hefty quantity of these types of items to these out-of-reach nooks and crannies means they are in less abundance, so the player cannot suck down a twelve-pack of energy tanks when they are slightly wounded anymore.

Which item allows Mega Man to manipulate the mounds of mechanical dirt? I guess how Mega Man 6 defines its strides of innovation is with the alternate suits that replace Rush. When selecting either the Jet Suit or Power Suit in the menu upon unlocking them, Rush appears as he converges with Mega Man, turning Mega Man’s armor to the crimson sheen of his canine companion. The Power Suit is bulky and is the method of disposing of what stands between Mega Man and his rightful energy tanks. Holding the attack button will launch a deadly blast of energy, but it is constricted to a short range. The Jet Suit, on the other hand, allows Mega Man to soar gracefully like a rocket blasting off into space, but more akin to one of the hobby models that craps out after a few seconds. The only caveat is that the charge shot will be unavailable, but we’ve already ventured through three Mega Man games before the charge shot was even conceived and managed to survive. The primary perk of the suits is that they refill their fuel automatically upon depletion instead of needing to walk over an energy replenisher and invite all players to keep this apparatus on at all times as I did. The alternate suits are the new implementation of the Mega Man formula that sticks out in my mind for their usefulness, but it still raises a few questions. Does Rush meld into Mega Man with the mechanical malleability of a Transformer, or does he shed his modular armor for Mega Man to use as a token of assistance? Is he just a simple dog underneath the suit, running off to Dr. Light’s house to chase squirrels and drag his ass across the carpet whenever Mega Man is borrowing the outer layer of his body?

The alternate suits are also a welcome addition to Mega Man 6 because they compensate for the charge shot’s comparatively limp power capacity. Upon charging the standard blaster, searing energy still flows throughout Mega Man’s being, but the range and impact of the fully charged release feel far less impactful when dealing with enemies. The convenient crutch that I’ve been using for the past two games has been nerfed, probably an intentional effort from the developers to coax me into shuffling through the robot master’s weapons outside of their battles. Overall, the robot master weapons in Mega Man 6 do nothing to impress because a lot of them are recycled from previous games. Plant Man has a shield that performs exactly what one would expect, Flame Man has another fire weapon, Knight Man’s projectile morning star top and the Yamato Spear both have a straightforward trajectory, and Centaur Man’s flash weapon should inspire strong memories of a certain robot master from Mega Man 2. The “blizzard” attack barely amounts to a fucking flurry. While I’m completely underwhelmed by what’s in Mega Man’s arsenal, at least there are no impractical weapons such as Stone Man’s or any effortless screen obliterators like Gravity Man’s, both from Mega Man 5. Because the developers knew that the player would be exhausting more of the ancillary fuel from the weapons, Mega Man 6 introduces an energy balancer that supplies the most depleted weapon with energy from another to fully refill it. Thanks, Capcom. I wish they thought of this when the Metal Blade was still in Mega Man’s grasp.

I’m also underwhelmed by Dr. Wily in Mega Man 6, and it isn’t because Mr. X reveals himself to be Wily with more facial hair because I’m not a brain-dead simpleton. The two castles that lead up to Dr. Wily are perfectly challenging, with some spiky blindspots during some drops that vanquished me more than I’m willing to admit that reminded me fondly of Quick Man. I’m referring to the final duel between Mega Man and the mad doctor that takes place in three stages, as par for the course. Again, the first two stages see Dr. Wily attempt to crush Mega Man under the weight and force of stomping him, and then the third stage involves Dr. Wily disappearing periodically to give Mega Man a fleeting chance to aim a shot while dodging a series of cyclones. Fortunately, the upward angle of the Silver Tomahawk allows Mega Man to end the all-too-familiar fight in seconds. After experiencing deja vu from Wily’s final fight from the previous game, Mega Man mixes up the result considerably and finally puts the scourge of the robotic world under arrest, tying him up with rope as if he’s planning on placing him on the train tracks. I’m almost proud of Mega Man for placing Dr. Wily in custody, but it's taken him too goddamn long to do what is necessary for me to seriously commend him.

I guess Mega Man 6 triumphs over the previous Mega Man game in its commitment to reverse some aspects back to the earlier entries. Mega Man 5 was a facile experience with too heavy of a reliance on the booming charge shot and an inexhaustible amount of energy tanks at the player’s disposal. Hiding the items behind walls and channeling less firepower into the charge shot so as not to eclipse the series staple of robot master weapons started to remind me of the challenge I had come to associate with Mega Man. Still, the lack of inspiration with the weapons despite the solid theming of their users along with Dr. Wily phoning in his final challenge against Mega Man is further indication that Mega Man had run its course on the console it was born onto. While Mega Man 6 is still a more respectable experience than the last entry, the series is still long overdue to wrap things up like the series hero eventually did with his mortal nemesis.

The average take on Mega Man 6 seems to be "lukewarm," but in burning through the Legacy Collection I've found it to be pretty damn fun. It helps that my first experience with this game was as late as 2007, playing Mega Man Anniversary Collection, being too shitty at these games to make it terribly far in any game other than 6, but I guess it's also true the set of Robot Masters this time around appealed to me for Mega Man Battle Network [ロックマンエグゼ] reasons, having struggled against FlameMan.EXE, having shat all over PlantMan.EXE from getting a Heat-type Style shortly before his battle, having DoubleSoul-ed with Wind, Knight, and Tomahawk Men, with YamatoMan.EXE holding some relevance for being part of the first time I entered a post-game zone in a MMBN game, and... I don't really have strong memories of BlizzardMan.EXE one way or another, but I like the game he's in. Curiously, Centaur Man ended up being my favorite of the RMs here, despite not having a NetNavi incarnation....

Mega Man 4 [Rockman 4 新たなる野望!!] changed the series formula a bit by adding an additional fortress area before the main Wily Fortress (or, really, establishing a proxy villain to get in Mega's way before Wily reveals himself as mastermind). In 6, the plot is that the evil Mr. X declares himself the man behind Wily's previous bids for world domination... though it's plain to see he's just Wily wearing sunglasses. So you make it through Mr. X's lair before defeating his capsule-type machine, which breaks his glasses and shows his true identity, from which point we get a "classic" skull-based fortress, including Robot Master teleporter rematches, and official sixth Wily Machine and new Capsule (which I want to say is the fourth?).

The most interesting thing about the plot is that it involved a robot tournament at some point, though unfortunately we don't see any of it. I must have been dumb to have speed-read the opening titles as a kid, because I somehow thought the idea was that Mega Man is fighting in the tournament and each of the other contestants have hidden behind long "stages" as is the usual in these games, but I've paid actual attention this time and saw the game mentions Mr. X hijacking the eight combatants, making them evil, and letting them loose on the world, where presumably they each decided to build their own realms filled with lesser robots to block out intruders (ie, you, aka Mega Man). Which I guess means Mega wasn't part of the tournament. Anyway, at the time I first played this game, I had something of an in-joke with my brother, making fun of the prevalence of "tournament arcs" in shounen manga, and we might come up with mocking ideas of e.g. a Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy tournament, or something, forcing the plotline in places it shouldn't belong. So, somewhat ironically, I appreciated Mega Man Battle Network 4 [ロックマンエグゼ4] for focusing on a tournament, and I felt similarly about MM6. Today, the setting is fun to me because I'm in the process of re-reading Dragon Ball, having gone through the first tournament only a couple days before playing this game, which would have come out after at least three Dragon Ball tournaments, and possibly the Cell Game as well, and maybe even the tournament that begins the Boo Arc, while Yu Yu Hakusho may have had two tournaments by this point as well, and I'm pretty sure there were some in Saint Seiya, &c. &c.

The biggest gameplay gimmick here is the Rush Adaptor, which has Rush transform into armor for Mega to wear, being a new Rush Jet form with a jetpack rather than a hoverboard, and the Rush Power form which gives Mega a super-punch charge move. Both items are given for free upon defeat of certain Robot Masters (I think Flame drops Power, for example) and are mostly used to access "secret" rooms in the various stages, though these are pretty much always telegraphed with big ass blocks with cracks in them to show you should use Power to break them, or otherwise ladders whose bases are impossibly high up, requiring you to fly with Jet. There are a few spots in the X or Wily stages that require Jet to reach a ladder, but off the top of my head I can't recall if you need Power to make progress (I seem to remember a room with two or three blocks hindering you?). There's a very tricky room in (I think) a Wily stage where you need to use Jet along walls of spikes to land on a small platform to switch to Power, break a block, and enter an alternate path filled with goodies; the "key" I found to pulling this off is to face left in Jet and hit the jump button while moving right, which somehow lets you reach the spot better than keeping right the whole time. There's also a tricky spot earlier (in the X fortress, I think) requiring a small hop as Power, unable to jump too high lest you split your head open on spikes. Anyway, I like the Rush Adaptor because it reminds me of the "Battlizers" in Power Rangers, which I'm pretty sure I always thought were kind of silly....

At the end of the day, I think I just like this game mostly because it's easier than, say, Mega Man 3 [Rockman 3 Dr.ワイリーの最期!?]. I have not yet run into anything in the NES games to make me consider any of them to be less-than-good, so I think my idea right now is mostly that the "easier" games (in my opinion, the even-numbered ones) could be replayed until I really get the hang of them, at which point I could try again at the "harder" ones (the odd-numbered titles)... while I wait for Mega Man Legacy Collection 2 to go on sale again, which I should have just bought when I got the first collection, but I half-expected the difficulty of the NES games to make me dislike them a bit (thank goodness for the rewind feature!).

In terms of late-era NES Mega Man games, this one might be the best. It has the problem of reusing the same structure as 4 and 5 but otherwise, this is a game with a lot of effort put into it. The weapons are varied and interesting. The levels are strong with great design gimmicks and the inclusion of alternate paths gives them more depth. Did Mega Man X have alternate paths? I don’t think it did. This is something started in 6 and would be continued in X2 and 7.

Unlocking Beat by using your super armours to access the “B-side” boss rooms is a method of unlocking a powerup that feels more in line with Mega Man and I like the Energy Equalizer although I wish getting it wasn’t so obscure. Later Mega Mans would just have the Energy Equalizer’s ability active by default. The super armors, I wish the animation didn’t have to play each time one was equipped and I think I prefer having Rush out there as a companion to utilize instead of him just turning into your outfit. They were fun to use but I prefer the pooch.

This episode of Mega Man remembered to include weapon energy pickups in the final stages, which was an issue Mega Man 5. It makes the journey a lot more enjoyable especially when some of those pickups are in those hard-to-get detours. The final levels were a lot better than 5.

But what’s really good is the music. I don’t have the nostalgia that I do for 6 the way I do for 3 but I could consider this soundtrack to be the best soundtrack of the NES Mega Man games. It’s up there with 2 and 3. In fact, this game itself is up there with 2 and 3. Maybe it’s easily ignored but I think it’s pretty solid.

The Mega Man series had been getting kind of stale at this point. I mean, this came out on the NES in 1993; the Super Nintendo had been around for two years (three in America) by this point, yet here Capcom were, continuing to release one of their flagship series on a dead console. I think they were cognizant of this, which would explain why the graphics in this one are really good to compensate. Well, other really late NES games like Kirby's Adventure also looked fantastic as by this point all the "power" had been squeezed out of the hardware.

Nonetheless, this looks and sounds great, but it's a classic Mega Man game, so of course it does. The interesting thing is how they try to keep the Mega Man formula fresh, which manifests with Mega Man's two alternate forms. One allows him to charge up punches to break big blocks, but the far bigger deal (for me at least) is the Jet Adapter. That's right; Mega Man gets a full-on jetpack! Switching to the punchy form was a cool idea, and I love flying around in levels and discovering alternate routes. Taking enough alternate routes to the bosses will allow you to unlock Beat, the helpful birdie from Mega Man 5. You may think this is no different from switching weapons, a feature that's been in the series since its inauguration. But you'd be wrong, because unlike the Robot Masters' weapons, these powers don't eat up ammo, instead quickly recharging. I just wish they served as passive upgrades to Mega Man, as for some reason the game likes to make it take a second to switch forms, and you can't charge shots with the jetpack or do the slide move with either form. Ah well.

Other than that, it's a typical Mega Man game in every way, but a competently executed one. The difficulty is noticeably lower than usual, but we're talking Mega Man here, so all this means is that we've gone from challenging-to-infuriating to merely upper-average difficulty. This may upset many hardcore Mega Man fans, but I'm totally fine with it. This is a great entry in the series, but it really should've came out on Super Nintendo instead.