Rockman

The game that started it all, Mega Man is one of the NES games that is infamous for being one of the hardest for the console. You take on the role of Mega Man, a helper robot who has been modified into a super fighting robot after six of Dr. Light's robots are stolen and reprogrammed by the evil Dr. Wily to aid him in world domination. Don't let the cutesy character fool you, this game is hard. Each stage has a hazard that can cause instant death if you fail to correctly time your jumps (like Guts Man's moving platforms at the start if his stage, or the floating platforms in Ice Man's stage that are over a bottomless pit). However, the game is easy to play (D-Pad moves Mega Man, A jumps, and B fires his arm cannon or the weapons he can gain by beating the six Robot Masters). Also, the first six stages can be done in any order, with the next four stages being linear. If you are looking for a classic challenge, Mega Man is a must play.

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.

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!

There may be hundreds of sequels, but the original is still the best if you ask me. It starts out with Dr. Wily and Dr. Light being buds, and creating 6 robots to help mankind. The robots were Bombman, who could explode unneeded buildings and such; Gutsman, who had enormous strength that could crush boulders; Cutman, who could chop down trees; Fireman, who could burn unnecessary objects and explore volcanic areas; and Iceman, who could explore Arctic area (there's also Elecman, but I forget his benefit.) During their companionship, Dr. Wily betrays Dr. Light and has the robots do his bidding. Dr. Wily, now a madman who hopes to conquer the world, must be stopped. Dr. Light realizes that his former cleaning robot, Mega Man, is everyone's last hope. Mega Man sets off to face the evil robots, and at the end meets Dr. Wily himself. This game is very original, and quite fun to play. As in any Mega Man game, you receive the enemies' power after defeating them, which in turn can help you find out secrets, and help you defeat some of the other robots. Viva Mega Man!