20th year anniversary of Mega Man!

[Don]

I think it's pretty sad that 20 years from the the first Megaman game, all we have now is some kind of Pokemon clone in Battle Network/Star Force while the standard Megaman game is trying to find enough capital to warrant having 3rd ZX game. Instead of talking about where Megaman went wrong, I think I'll talk about where it did things right.

Megaman 1

I was never part of the "MM2 is awesome" camp. I think MM1 is the best out of the original series. The difficulty, while borderlining on insane, is one of the few Megaman game that actually gets it right in the pacing. Because this is the only Megaman game where you can't just get 2 or 4 or 25 lifebars back with energy capsules, all the bosses and encounters, while difficult, are set up to be beatable in one lifebar. Even though Elec Man and Ice Man can take 1/3rd of your life bar in one shot, you can do the same to them. The pace of the battles is fast and furious, and it has to be because otherwise you'd not have a chance of winning. Pretty much every game after MM1 has it wrong when you have your special weapons doing 1 or 2 pixel of health to a boss with a lifebar that goes across the screen, but that's okay because you got about 10 lifebars behind you too.

Also, the story of MM1 is great. You say there is not one word of dialogue about the plot in the game? Yeah, that automatically puts it at about top 5 out of all Megaman games because Capcom really sucks at telling a story. The less they have to say, the better. Megaman 1's ending is one of the few in the MM series that has any sense of closure at all. You can see that the battle is won, the hero goes home, and some girl and some old guy is waiting for him to return, and everything is going to be alright, even if you have no idea who the heck these guys are. This is a much better ending than any game from about X1 where it's like "Something else will happen in the next game, please buy it!".

Megaman X1

Obviously, the gameplay of the X series represents a refinement of the tried and true platforming method. The quasi-RPG powerup system is pretty good too. Since this is the first game in the X series, Dr. Light's 2 zillion contingency plans for the future actually make sense the first time around.

Megaman X2

The battle against Zero is about the only highlight in this game, though it is a good one. This is the first time in the series where you have a battle against a character who is significant to the story, that plays somewhat similar to the player. I suppose you can say Bass and Proto Man falls under this category, but they never strike me as actually important to the current story compared to Zero.

Megaman X4

Zero as a playable character is obviously a huge factor. This is also the first and the last Megaman game that had anime cutscenes with voice acting. Now I am the last person in the world to be impressed by cheesy anime cutscenes, but it's like Capcom didn't even want to try after X4. The guys you're fighting actually has personality as opposed to just a face. Each of the factions have their own flavor. The Repliforce are not the same as the guys working for Sigma.

Although all the X games ending suffers from the 'buy the next game' syndrone, I feel this one has more closure than the others. In either Zero or X's pace you got the feeling they actually learned something from the mess. The battle of destiny that's been hinted since X3 actually seems like it might go somewhere, which brings us to...

Megaman X5

The game that's supposed to resolve the battle of destiny. Of course it didn't actually resolve anything, but I give points to Capcom for at least trying.

Megaman Zero 1

Until the last stage of the game, you're led to believe that you're actually going to go blow up X and cash in on the promise back in X4 in X's ending. Of course it turned out that Ciel was responsible for global warming and everything else that can possibly be wrong in the world of Mega Man. The major characters of this game are all quite well done, even if half of the Guardians are utter morons (the designer said they're supposed to be). The theme of the ending must be something like "Endless Battle", which fits pretty well. It certainly is better the usual theme of "Buy the next game please".

Megaman Zero 2

The filler game that is actually quite good. If you look at the amount of content that Zero 3 has to cover, it'd have to have about 25 stages and take 20 hours to complete. So even though this is strictly a 'buy the next game' game, its purpose is actually quite justified.

Megaman Zero 3

The game that should have been the last Megaman game, but is not. There really isn't much you can say that is bad about the game other than that perhaps Omega Zero is a bit too easy for a guy that's supposed to be the strongest entity to ever exist in the Megaman universe. I'm not suggesting a battle like Sera in MM Legends 2 that takes you 30 minutes to win, but his AI could use some work.

So in looking back, there's a lot of things Megaman series did right, but this is also over the span of 20 years. If only there's a way they could put everything good together, they wouldn't have to be wondering if they can sell enough copies of ZX Advent to make yet another sequel.

[Eric]

Those new Network/Starbattle games are terribad too

[SineSwiper]

Please, MegaMan, just die.

[Don]

Please, MegaMan, just die.

I'm hearing if ZX Advent didn't sell more than 100K they'd have to axe the series.

[Zeus]

Please, MegaMan, just die.

The Zero series was awesome and if Inafune ever gets to finish his PSP remakes I'd be in heaven, those were fucking amazing. But other than that, I agree, the rest of the stuff ain't so hot. Haven't tried ZX or it's sequel yet though. Unlike Don, I'm a fan of the gameplay not the story, that's very, very secondary to me.

BTW, Mega Man 2 is that damned good and made the series big. Yeah it's a little easy now but only because I've beaten it 10,000 times. Without it there would be no Mega Man. MM1 was pretty solid but ain't nearly as good and it's very easy nowadays. MM3 was hard as fuck (it's still a bit tough even now; mind you, nothing like the first two Zero games) but still pretty solid. 4 and 5 were decent and 6 was the worst one by far 'til MMX7. MM7 was great and Mega Man and Bass is one of my favs. MMX4 is the best of that series but all three SNES ones ruled as well. X5 and X6 were fun but below the SNES ones. We shall never talk about MMX7 again and X8 wasn't much better. The Zero completely revitalized the X-style for me, too bad they stopped it. Was never a fan of the Network series.

It is getting to the point where they need another Zero-level comeback or it'll be regulated to just nostalgia very soon.

[M'k'n'zy]

Its odd that you say that about MM3, as personally I found it to be the easiest in the series. For me, the only part that was challenging at all were the parts where you have to fight the MM2 bosses over again, and they toughened the stages up.

[Julius Seeker]

I remember when playing through the Megaman games on the collectors disk last year, I found 3 to be the easiest of the first three at least.

[Don]

The only hard part in MM2 was Quickman's stage. You had so many energy capsules that it was literally impossible to die unless you ran out of weapon energy (say Wily) or you got instant killed from falling off some disappearing blocks. Also MM1 is the only one where invinicibility doesn't work on spikes, and every game after you can get through some of the tough spike stages by just ramming into some regular enemy and run through while you're invinicible. In MM2 you can also just find a spot and have a Leaf Shield up and kill the eggs that drop and collect powerups until you've enough 1UPs. Although you can do this in MM1 too there's no spot you can just have one attack on and collect stuff indefinitely.

As far as gameplay goes, the biggest innovation in the last 20 years in the Megaman games would be the charged shot, the double jump (X4), and the dash-under (somewhere around X1 but did not see a heavy use until Z1). Other than that things have not changed very much. MMZ's additional weapons were mostly an exercise in futility. The shield was a useless weapon that you use to make things harder for yourself because you can't dash with the shield on, unless it's on a boss that actually has an attack that you can block (Fefnir), or in the case of MMZ1, you must have the shield to lock Harpuia in an infinte combo on the Hard mode. The whatever-rods are usually useless but occasionally useful for some ultra cheap attacks like the hundred-hand slap rod in Z3 that can kill a boss in about 10 seconds if you trap them in a corner.