I’d like to preface this article by welcoming A1-X-Gamer as my first guest reviewer. This means the review will be following a slightly different format than usual. For his article, he’s chosen and oldie, but a goody:


Capcom’s 8-bit side scrolling platformer has its intuitive aspect, but still its frustration factor. Being an experienced platformer-player you’d think you’d know what to expect, right? Well for Mega Man, you get no rest for your brain: It’s all think fast, shoot here and jump here exactly when this happens. While I might make it seem this game is not enjoyable, I’m just saying it’s extremely challenging. Children will get easily frustrated with this game and quit, but hard core gamers who have to beat it will have to deal with the frustration or die (OVER 9000 times) trying.

Mega Man’s plot is simple, but somehow spawned many sequels and spin-offs: In the year 200X, Dr. Thomas Light

Created Rock to help with lab assistance, but when Light’s assistant Dr. Wily turned evil and stole the 6 helpful robot masters and reprogrammed them to take over the world (OF COURSE), Dr. Light gave Rock and upgrade and turned him into the mighty robot hero: MEGA MAN.
The game play has simple mechanics, but an entertaining style of game play. When you start, you will be equipped with you basic weapon the Mega-buster. This weapon, can allow you to take out basic small enemies and gradually destroy more powerful ones.


IF you make it through a stage and defeat the robot master at the end you will gain his power, which will be a weakness to another robot master. Here is a list of robot masters, their powers and their weaknesses:
Cutman: An offensive robot who throws his boomerang like cutter at you. Its weakness is the boulder throw, but can still be easily beaten with the mere Mega-buster.

Gutsman: A very strong robot who shakes the ground when he jumps and throws boulders he rips from the ground. His weakness is the bombs from Bombman.

Iceman: A very tricky robot, he jumps and floats in the air while firing dangerous ice…ice…stuff at you. But the easy way to beat him is to shoot Elecman’s lightning bolts at him and he’ll be shocked that you won. (I’m sorry.)

Bombman: He’s not really that hard; just avoid his (pretty powerful) timed bombs and jumpy jumps. I took him out with my Mega-buster, but I guess you can take him out with Fireman’s flame shot as well.

Elecman: I never had trouble with his Super Powerful electric bolts, because his power line can be cut by, Cutman’s cutting blade.

Fireman: He basically stands there and spams his big fire crescents. I took him out easily using my ice powers…Wait. WHAT? Isn’t Fire supposed to melt ice? Unless when it hit him it turned to water and doused the flames, hmmm it worked in Super Man 3.

To get to the robot masters, you must go through very treacherous stages where quick reflexes and awareness is key to passing every stage. Longer stages will have more turrets while, shorter stages have the unnecessarily hard platforming. Jumping to plat forms the size of your character is a small challenge. When jumping to plat forms and having to shoot enemies in the air is hard. Jumping to moving platforms that drop you at a certain point multiple times at high speeds are harder, and JUMPING TO FLYING PLATFORMS WITH NO PATTERNS THAT SHOOT YOU, WHILE ENEMIES ARE KNOCKIG YOU INTO THAT OBVIOUS BOTTOMLESS PIT BELLOW IS THE HARRRGGGHH-dest.
Seriously though, this game an unending amount of bottomless pits everywhere, so be careful. Also, look out, for the Wily patented 1-hit-kill-spikes.

As the name implies take my advice not to: under-jump, over-jump, or even jump too high. The will take a miserable robotic life from you. Another frustration are those disappearing, reappearing blocks. Despite how they have a pattern, they require very precise jumps and timing to get on top of. If you try to jump to the next one, you’ll most likely not jump far enough, because you have to be at the very edge of the block to make it to the next one. If you don’t understand a pattern, you’ll most likely figure out how to get there by sheer luck. (Same applies for killer-pattern less- platforms.)
Eventually you’ll get to Dr. Wily’s base where you will have to pass a reasonably challenging stage. When you pass some stuff you will move to a boss. A very difficult boss.

After this fight you’ll go through a boss run, (both rehashes and special surprises) with platforming segments in between. Then you’ll fight the final boss:
DR. ALBERT WILY!

While it seems I’ve been complaining, this game is extremely fun. This is a true game for hard-core gamers. It’s hard, but none of the game or controls are broken. It’s a fun challenging game where, precision and concentration are needed. The enemies are awesome with their unique abilities, and using their powers as a weakness for another boss is a past cool concept. Just don’t think you’ll get this on your first try, it’s a game of Trials and Errors (Which can hinder the fun factor, a little.). A lot of them, but one of the top platformers I’ve played.
Give this game 4/5 with the title of PAST COOL!
Uninformed Gamer’s Thoughts: it may seem a little odd to review an NES game, but then this site has never claimed to be anywhere close to the cutting edge. I think it’s good to review old games in perspective, and see how they stack up. Everything was the state of the art at some point.