Rockman

This was the begining of a major video game franchise. Dr.Light makes 8 robots each of which has its own special ability. Then his assistant Dr. Wily reprograms 6 of them, and makes them do evil. Thus one of the 8 robots of Dr. Light Rock becomes Mega Man, whose new duty is to defeat the evil robots, and then defeat Dr. Wily himself. This game was the begining of one of the longest running video game franchises in the world, not to mention one that would have over 20 sequels! This game will go down in history as one of the best ever!

Yes, called Mega Man in the United States this game would be the first of many titles in this series. Though I wonder why it is called Rockman in Japan, is it because they equate him to a rock somehow or is he rocking cool? Anyways in this game the evil Dr. Wiley has turned his robots evil, robots that were initially used for various construction and such type jobs. You have one who uses fire, a cold one, an electrical one, a bomb expert, one who cuts, and a strong one. As the title character you must progress through these characters deadly levels and defeat each one and gain their powers so that you can infiltrate Dr. Wiley's stronghold and go toe to toe with the evil creator himself. The game was rather fun for its time, though I found a few levels especially annoying, the first time I played it I especially had difficulty facing the first boss in Dr. Wiley's place. A creature that flies into the room a part and you must dodge each part or suffer damage and then when totally together you can shoot him once and he does it again. Granted, on subsequent playings I did not have all that much trouble against him. You also have another headache in this game common in many games of this era, the pit with no end. You know, the bottom of the screen has no floor, you fall in, and you instantly die. It is fun trying to figure out what villains powers can work against the others effectively and for the most part this game is a fun game, though part II is more fun...granted the enemy robots would start getting a tad strange as the series goes on, like Pharaoh man.

Dr. Light was a genious. At a time when the world was at peace, he created eight robots to perform certain tasks for him: Rock, Roll, Cut Man, Guts Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Bomb Man. Each of them had their own use, such as Cut Man was used to cut down trees and Ice Man was used to explore terrain too cold for humans. As for Rock and Roll, Rock was a mechanic and Roll was a housekeeping robot. One day, Dr. Light's assistant Dr. Wily reprogrammed six of Dr. Light's robots to do his bidding and help him take over the world. Dr. Light, in an effort to stop him, changes Rock into a fighting robot, thus creating Mega Man.

Since then, Mega Man has spawned over 20 sequels, six for the Nintendo, five or more for the Game Boy, four or more for the Super Nintendo, several arcade games, Playstation games, computer games, and Sega Saturn Games. All of which take Mega Man on new adventures and new enemies to face. Truly an excellent game and probably one of the first equally challenging and equally beatable games for the Nintendo.

Man, talk about a mixed bag. This game was way ahead of its time in some elements, and totally behind in others. Lots of contradicting ideas here and there. Like, the game has this ingenious choose-your-level mechanic, where every boss you beat gives you a new weapon to use in further stages, but then the game makes it so that half of the stages REQUIRE a specific weapon because either the boss is too hard to defeat without its weakness or there's a special, MANDATORY ITEM for game completion that you need an external weapon to collect. Consequently, I think you have what? 2 or 3 out of the otherwise numerous possible stage orders you could take that are actually reasonable. Some bosses have straight up ridiculous patterns, the level design, while good for the most part, has a couple of really annoying sections that revolve around RNG with certain enemies/obstacles, which on one hand motivates you to make the most out of your weapons to clear them, but on the other just reinforces the linearity issue, making you avoid stages that contain said sections until you've acquired the optimal weapons for them.

Regardless of everything, though, I still think there's a lot to like about this game. Sure, in hindsight, it's one of the bumpier Mega Man games, but for an early NES title? This is great. It's got that characteristic charm of the series, a really good (although lackluster for Mega Man standards) OST, mostly fun and creative levels/bosses, awesome Run & Gun action, and at least some amount of replayability thanks to the trial-and-error nature of the game's learning curve. I think it says something about a game's core design when it transcends several generations. You can see every single aspect of this game present in the following entries of the series, all of which getting progressively more refined over the years. While I find some of the creative choices questionable, Mega Man laid the PERFECT groundwork for one of my favorite franchises of all time, and its daring, innovative design can NOT be understated. I will always love replaying this game, despite all of its flaws.

Mega Man was one of the Nintendo games I grew up. This will remain as one of my favorites. Despite the fact that it was an 8-bit game, the graphics, gameplay, and sound\music were much better than most Nintendo games of that time. I especially love the "de-dit" sound that Mega Man makes every time he lands on the ground!