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 [ããã¯ãã³DASH] 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.ã¯ã€ãªãŒã®è¬], 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 [ã¹ãŒããŒããªãªãã©ã¶ãŒãº 2] rather than (to continue the analogy)
Super Mario Bros. 3 [ã¹ãŒããŒããªãªãã©ã¶ãŒãº3], 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 [ããã¯ãã³ãšã°ãŒ] and
Mega Man Star Force [æµæã®ããã¯ãã³] 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 [ããã¯ãã³ãšã°ãŒ ã¢ããã³ã¹ãã³ã¬ã¯ã·ã§ã³] 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åœã®å¯Ÿæ±º!] 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.