Mega Man 9 came out last week for download on all 3 current gen platforms.  After more than 20 years of Mega Man games, the franchise is familiar to almost everyone.  You know this guy, right?

Of course you do.  What gamer, at some point or another, hasn’t strapped on a blue robot suit complete with canon arm, and busted up a few master robots?  Mega Man is a legend.  Mega Man Legends, however, was a crappy game, and best forgotten about.  Let’s remember instead the Zero series for GBA, and the Classic games for NES.  I never played the X series games, but for some reason I always had this feeling they were bad.  Feel free to correct me.  In a polite way.

Hats off to Capcom for really staying true to the original games.  Somewhere, someone must have been tempted to tweak the formula just a little.  Why not spiff up the backgrounds?  Add a more detailed menu?  Use more than 256 colours?  But no, Megaman 9 is indistinguishable from its classic Nintendo ancestors.  I didn’t own an NES as a child (I was a TG-16 kid), so I didn’t play the classic Mega Man games until I was an adult.  Sadly for me, that robbed Mega Man 9 of some (but not all) of its nostalgic value.

We downloaded the demo first, but before we even played 3 seconds of it, we unlocked the full version.  Why not?  I don’t like to kid myself, and I knew I’d want to own this game.  I called first play, and away I went.  Dr Wily’s up to something.  Surprise!  I can only fix it by fighting robots.  Surprise again!  Anyways, my turn didn’t last long.  While I like to think I love video games more than the average person, that love almost never translates directly into gameplay skills.  I am very, very bad at platformers.  They run a close race with FPSs for genre I suck the most at.  Also, I have this endearing personality “quirk” that causes me to get extremely angry when I am not good at something the first time I try it.  Add to that the fact that Chris was laughing at me and using the word “fail” in new and creative ways every five minutes, and my turn was over pretty fast.  Chris was up next.

If you don’t know (and you should), Mega Man games generally go like this: You are Mega Man, you wear a robot suit (or you are a robot? I’m not sure), and you fight other evil robots.  Each robot boss has his own platforming level, and by defeating him at the end of it you gain his power.  The interesting twist is that you can choose in what order you play the stages.  Some levels/bosses are easier once you’ve obtained the ability from a previous boss.  So you start with Bubble Man, then use his bubble power to beat Quick Man, etc, etc, etc.  In true 8-bit spirit, we decided to trial and error this out, instead of just looking up the optimal order on futuristic internets.  First try:  Splash Woman.  The first ever female Megaman boss.  Suffragists rejoice!  This was the level that I attempted, and as mentioned, I was less than stellar.  Chris fared better, and got to the boss, but couldn’t beat her.  We followed that up with futile attempts on the lives of Cement Man, Magma Man, Jewel Man, and Galaxy Man.  I was pretty sure Magma Man was a bad choice, since for me lava always equals endgame, but it was Chris’s turn to choose.

To be honest, I’m not even quite sure how to review this game.  If you’ve never played a Mega Man game before, this one won’t blow you away anymore than the first eight would.  If you’ve played them all, you’ll probably play this one and enjoy it as much as you enjoyed the rest.  What’s so great about this game for me is the potential for other classic comebacks.  Digital downloads have opened the door for the regular, non-rom loving public to play games like Super Mario 3 and the original Punch Out.  If people are enjoying these games, 25 years or so after they were originally released, why not release more like them?  Imagine the cost of making Mega Man 9 when compared to the cost of making, say, Halo.  These games can be produced faster, at a far lower cost, and distributed digitally, saving even more money.  Because I never played Mega Man when I was young, the only nostalgic twinges I got while playing the new one were from the basic graphics, midi music, and 2D platformer gameplay.  That level of perfect timing and level memorization were reminiscent of games that I played and loved as a kid.  What if they make sequels to some of my favourite Turbo Grafx games?  Dungeon Explorer 2?  Legendary Axe 3?  Bonk 4?  I would pay at least $20 for each of those titles.  Keith Courage?!  I just freaked out a little bit.  I hope someone somewhere is getting as much enjoyment out of Mega Man 9 as I would out of new installments in my favourite childhood series, but even if you’re not a Mega Man freak, I bet you’d like it anyway.

Julie’s right.  This one tugs at the nostalgia stings from the moment you fire it up.  While resurrecting old franchises has been a tried and true money maker for many companies, rarely will you see this level of authenticity put into a sequel.  This is, with the exception of the machine it is running on, an NES game.  The spirtes, the sounds…it’s all great.

I am a little more cautious than to throw the ‘Let’s Make Everything 8-bit Again!’  wad of gum into the pony tail of the games industry.  Just because it sticks, it doesn’t necessarily make it a good idea.  There are only a handful of games other than Mega Man, that I can think of, that have a formula as adaptable to new design without completely revamping the game.  I like my nostalgia bubble and there are some games that should remain with that shiny glow of retro and if I were to play them today, would be tarnished by the grubby hands of time.