Mega Man 9

Mega Man 9 might make your blood boil more than any other game from 2008, but at least you know it's all your fault when you keep failing. Unlike Ninja Gaiden, there are no series of button combinations spread over six possible inputs -- its back to basics with just a jump and fire button. You won't find yourself falling into the spikes below you because of a slipshod camera, but because your timing is off. You can blame the game for being too damn difficult, but you should blame yourself for not getting better at it. This is the appeal of Mega Man 9: it takes you back to an era when impossible difficulty was something you could inch at making possible with each successive try, rather then be lost in the midst of bad camera, bad controls, and bad design.

Since the Playstation/N64 era the industry has been plagued with half-assed retro game revivals, from Frogger to Pac-Man (both transformed platformers that make a Walmart employee simulator sound more exciting). With the new era of consoles offering online arcades, where many people have bought their old 8-bit favorites, Capcom saw a golden opportunity to give the fans what they've wanted: a trip down memory lane without the damnation of modernizing it. It's hard to get excited about a new Mega Man game since 3 of them come out every year, but Mega Man 9 will not be easily confused for any of the Battle Network games or the ill-fated Mega Man X [ロックマンX] series (which was basically Mega Man + more shit + less fun).

Mega Man 9 is a simple game with a simple promise, to be unrecognizable is quality and style from Mega Man 2 [Rockman 2 Dr.ワイリーの謎]. For those that have less of a nostalgic view of the series, it's pretty easy to consider it the best Mega Man. It strips down the visuals and controls of the games that came after 2, while adding some of the better gameplay elements of the later games (a shop where you can purchase items, using power-ups to access items or pass obstacles). There is little to complain about Mega Man 9 which isn't a part of the package. You can curse at it for being so cruel or complain about its minimalism, but it would be a fraud if it weren't so masochistic and modest.

It might seem silly but Mega Man 9 is a revolution! It's not something we have never seen before, but something we never thought we would see again. We have reached the age where we can appreciate video games of an era for what they were. Maybe you aren't crazy for playing 8-bit tunes on your iPod and maybe I'm not crazy for preferring Dreamcast's rendering to Xbox's. It's more than nostalgia, its an art form defined by its limitations -- would artists in the 15th century only use Photoshop if it were available? How sad would that be? Mega Man 9 shows a brave future that even film and music haven't found yet. A future where a Mega Man fan can go to sleep one day, dream about the classic sequel that was never made in 89', and wake up the next day to find it available for download online.

A slightly controversial Mega Man, as it sought to omit what few features the classic series did bring over the years, such as the slide and the charge shot, in favour of gameplay more akin to Mega Man 2. It's restrictive design in an attempt to mimick the 8bit look does deny progress in favour of trying to cash in on some nostalgic feelings and, as such, it does feel rather forgettable in relation to the rest of the series. However, it's still a great game, albeit a really challenging one.

So, if you're favourite game is Mega Man 2, or you're a new player who really seeks some challenge, this entry might be perfect for you.

Mega Man 9 is a nostalgic throwback to the NES era of the franchise, released at a time when most other subfranchises were dead, and shortly before the third Mega Man Legends [ロックマンDASH] would get taken out back and shot. Mechanically, this feels like a "what-if" scenario, being specifically "what if there was another game after Mega Man 2 [Rockman 2 Dr.ワイリーの謎], before the slide and charge shot were introduced?," which is, I'm sure, something that might have felt tedious back in the day, but which feels nicer today... or at least in 2008, I guess. The thing is, this game is hard as fuck, much more so than the past five-ish games in the mainline series, so it feels like it would have been something like Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels [スーパーマリオブラザーズ 2] rather than (to continue the analogy) Super Mario Bros. 3 [スーパーマリオブラザーズ3], at least had it come out in the late '80s; for 2008, I think the idea is Capcom saw too many fans complain about Mega Man Battle Network [ロックマンエグゼ] and Mega Man Star Force [流星のロックマン] so the company threw these guys a bone with another hardcore run-n'-gun platformer. On my part, I grew up with Battle Network first, and was shocked at how much I sucked at the Classic games in the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, so I didn't even try to get back into the original series until Mega Man Legacy Collection 1 + 2 went on sale on Switch a year or so ago (that is, these compilations go on sale regularly, but I don't think I bought them until I started getting hyped for Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection [ロックマンエグゼ アドバンスドコレクション] after its announcement...). The NES games had a "rewind" function to undo stupid mistakes, which I admit I used way too much. The SNES and PS1 games got rid of this function, in favor of allowing you to save at checkpoints in the levels, so you can at least practice tricky areas still, if you can't brute-force stuff with the rewind. MM9 and 10 follow the checkpoint-saves of 7 and 8, despite being much harder than those two, and even being harder than 4 through 6, in my opinion. But there's no rewind to save my ass, so I have to actually "git gud."

I'm a little ashamed to have used the checkpoints as such a crutch. I beat the game with full 1-Ups because I would always reload checkpoints on death so as not to waste Weapon Energy, and as a result it looks like I never actually died. It's also true I found the Wily Machine's first form to be a bit of a "wall," as I kept eating eggs by jumping too haphazardly, so I let Wily kill me (which took a long time, what with all my stockpiled lives...!) so I could grind Screws in Plug Man's level to buy more E-Tanks (and the item that makes you take half damage, which I turned on for the fourth Wily stage...). Passively grinding by setting my Switch down while the Jewel Satellite killed all the enemies falling toward me, I ended up kinda-sorta wasting a lot of time, going from a playtime of about eighty minutes to one of one-hundred-thirty-something, which is kind of silly (never mind the fact that I didn't even use all my stockpiled Tanks...!). I think I have what it takes to get better at the game, but Hero and Superhero Modes will be far off for me.

Every Mega Man game needs to have something annoying as fuck, and for me it's the last pendulum in Jewel Man's level. I bought the spike-guard item to cheese it, but had to put my Proto Man run on hold indefinitely because he can't buy items, so now I have to learn how to do it....

Most of the Robot Masters are pretty fun to fight. Concrete Man is especially one of my favorites, I guess because I like jumping his dashes and shooting his back when he lands. Magma Man gave me some trouble until I finally opened my goddamn eyes and noticed his flames get weaker when you use Tornado Man's item, so you can hit him with it once, switch to Buster to save ammo, and use the tornadoes again when he flares back up (I still walk into his jumps all the time, though...). I respect Galaxy Man's battle, as his gimmick is to hold you in place with Black Hole Bomb so he can just stand there and suck you into contact damage, rather than attack you directly. Jewel Man's okay, but I don't really like shield weapons in these games, so I end up not liking their users much at all. I'm not sure Plug Man counts as a fight, since he dies so fast to Jewel Satellite. Tornado Man is interesting, mostly because Plug Ball falls straight down, so it's trickier to hit him with his weakness, making things a little more fun. Hornet Man is another non-fight, since you can kill all his hornets with one Magma Bazooka if you aim properly, and you can just span the gun against his body without needing to charge at all. Splash Woman is cool for being the first (and only...) female Robot Master, but I feel it's actually unfair to use Hornet Man's weapon against her because of how fucking fast she dies. The spike-ball guys in Wily 1 are tedious. The robot shark in Wily 2 is cool. The Twin Devils in Wily 3 were probably the fastest "Devil"-class boss for me to learn the pattern, but it still feels like it takes forever to kill, unless I just suck at aiming the Black Hole Bomb. Wily Machine 9A is annoying, but kind of fun in its gimmick. Wily Machine 9B is okay, but a little easy. Wily Capsule 9 is like a baby version of Capsule 7, so if you can beat Mega Man 7 [Rockman 7 宿命の対決!] you should have zero problem.

I said before that Mega Man can't slide or charge his Buster here, but you can unlock Proto Man later who has both abilities. I think he takes double damage, but his shield kind of works somehow (I've only accidentally blocked stuff). Maybe he deals extra damage, too, in the sense that some enemies felt like they died faster than I remembered from my Mega Man run, but I pretty much always used charge shots against bigger enemies like minibosses and Robot Masters, so I'm uncertain. Oh, there's also an item for Mega Man that removes his helmet, making him take double damage, for added challenge; I don't think Proto Man has anything like it, though maybe he does in MM10.

This is the perfection of the classic Mega Man formula. The Mega Buster is gone so no charge shots but that means that variable weapons have more use. The weapons were pretty good, but I would have preferred something that could be shot upwards, like the Metal Blades from MM2 or Shadow Blade from MM3.

Is this game hard? Yeah, but it’s so infectious to keep grinding away at levels and slowly master their layouts. The feeling of progress is ever persistent especially since you keep all your screws and E-tanks upon game over. There’s a lot of safety nets, especially with the shop where you can buy all sorts of items. There’s no easy way to grind for screws, though.

The levels are robust and definitive. The game follows the standard Mega Man route of having 8 Robot Master stages and then the Wily level, of which they are four in total. While you can access the shop between Robot Master stages, once you are in the Wily line of levels, you cannot return to the Stage Select screen to access the shop like in Mega Man 7. I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I like the idea of having to go through the gantlet of the entirety of Wily’s Fortress consecutively, but I wish they warned the player before going down Wily Stages because I assumed that it was a Mega Man 7 scenario where you can access the shop between Wily Levels.

The music was really good (just short of being as good as 2, 3 and 6) and the game just feel great to play. That’s what makes it so infectious, it feels good to play and encourages you to put up with its stalwart challenge.