Mega Man

[Electroshock Therapy]

Mega Man 9 and 10 had a lot of new stuff in them. There were shops where you could buy new kinds of power-ups, you could unlock new playable characters, the bosses were obviously all new and some of the weapons were pretty unique (a gun that shoots bees!)

More generally: Restrictions can breed creativity. What ways can you make a new Mega Man game? You could start with the idea of the old NES Mega Man games, and then make the very best game of that kind that you can. All Mega Man can do in Mega Man 9 is run, jump, shoot and pick up power-ups. And yet he has a bee gun that can fetch items for him from across the screen. He has a concrete gun that can build temporary steps. He has a tornado gun that can raise platforms that he's standing on. He has a black hole gun that sucks up all nearby enemies.

There are enemies that pick you up and rush you across the screen and slam you into spikes. There's an underwater level where you have to float up the screen on bubbles, and the small ones pop faster than the big ones. There are platforms where your feet stick to them and they rotate, so half the time you're upside-down underneath them. Look how much room for creativity there still is within the framework of the original game!

Hmm. I either forgot or never knew about some of the features 9 and 10 had to offer. They do seem different and fun for the series. For someone who doesn't like judging a game by its graphics, I seem to have done just that with 9 and 10. I took the NES look at face value and thought it was nothing new but a re-hash of an old style.

But... I still love the rush-shooting and snowboarding sections among other new things Mega Man 8 brought in. It felt familiar yet gave me something new, which I do think is nice when you're 8 games into a series. And I'll be honest. I also like the bad anime cut scenes. Sometimes I like some cheese in my games and the classic series is the perfect one to have them in. So I'm an 8 fan. I just think it's charming in it's own weird way.

Now, I still think classic Mega Man shouldn't be completely restricted to NES style graphics and bare bones basic shoot-em-up gameplay and I still find it weird most fans want just that. In most other game series people would be complaining that it's growing stale. Yet classic Mega Man seems to be in its own world of fandom.

All that being said, you did convince me that 9 and 10 have some great new features and is not a step backward as I thought. And as I'm typing I'm remember some more details I saw in videos. In a span of a minute, I'm tempted to buy them right now.
So, thanks!

Let's say you let Mega Man do wall-kick jumps like Samus in 2D Metroid can do. Suddenly all the platforming becomes way easier. You don't need Rush Coil to get to high platforms. You don't need ladders so much. You don't have to think quite so much about how to access hard-to-reach places. Maybe it's way easier to avoid enemies, and so the enemies have to be faster or more difficult to kill now. Maybe you have to reorient a bunch of levels to be more vertical than horizontal. The whole game is different. Is it a better or worse game? Who knows, but it's not the same game.

Well, you basically described the X series but with wall climb rather than kick. Yet Capcom still made platforming challenging by making you use precise wall climbing and dashing in dangerous bottomless pit or spiked areas. But that's an X series thing and I agree that basic platforming is the classic Mega Man style.

I don't mind trying new things. They took Mario from 2D to 3D, and it turns out the 3D ones are super fun. But they also made New Super Mario Bros. for DS, because the classic 2D Mario style of game has strengths of its own and is fun in its own right, and that game was insanely popular. I don't mind trying new experimental Mega Man ideas, but I also want 2D classic Mega Man, because it's a fun kind of game in its own right.

I understand this as well. I'm also a massive fan of Legend of Zelda and there is still a reason Nintendo continues to make top-down games after it was introduced in 3D. It works, and they always tweak something. Same can be said for Mega Man all the way up to 10. I think my perspective was just wonky or something.