Get Equipped With: Time Waster
Another attempted comment that outgrew its feeble bounds...
I think the usual rap against Mega Man 3 compared to Mega Man 2 is that the weapons you acquire aren't particularly interesting (the Needle Cannon and Spark Shot, in particular, are basically the same as your regular arm cannon) and that correspondingly dings the novelty of the gameplay. I always have liked 3 better, though: Its level designs are more attractive (utilizing the best graphical technology Capcom could bring to bear in 1990) and more ingenious, particularly the expansive, oddly creepy "revisited" stages, where you play through toughened-up versions of earlier stages fighting ghosts of the Mega Man 2 robot bosses. The music and (such as it is) the story are both improved in 3 as well, and both give the last stages a less playful, more urgent feel than what comes before -- though admittedly it never quite matches the creepy atmospherics of Mega Man 2's final showdown level.
I liked Mega Man 5 better than 2 when it came out and a couple of the robot master concepts are great (Charge Man, a belligerent steam locomotive-android is a lot of fun) but in retrospect I'm more sympathetic to the view that the gameplay is kind of bloated by that point in the series. Never played 6 (or 7 or 8, which were not released on the NES); 4 always struck me as a clunker; the original has a lot going for it but having picked up the series with 2 I never really got past the lack of polish and the clunkier controls.
Any love out there for Whomp 'Em, which if I'm not hallucinating it was a contemporary, much less catchy Capcom offering with a similar structure and weapons system but instead of a robot you played a crude Native American stereotype? We must have rented that from Iggle Video, like, three whole times.
There was sometime around fifth grade when I filled up most of a sketch book with something like eighty designs for robot bosses of my own, all with the stereotypical "______ Man" name and gimmicky theme weapon. I really had Mega Man on the brain there for some time...
Does this make sense to anyone who didn't while a way a chunk of their childhood and/or college downtime playing Mega Man games? Any sense at all?
I'm excited by the concept of a new NES-style Mega Man game, too, though if I bought a Wii for that I think it'd end up collecting dust in a corner next to my Game Boy Advance from a few years ago with Square's retread of Final Fantasy 1 still plugged into it. I find it neat as well that that A.V. Club's game reviewer describes the background music in one Mega Man 9 stage as "poignant", which -- as any remaining readers of this blog who spent a lot of time hanging out with me in college may be able to attest -- is a word I've applied excessively often to the plinky wistfulness of Mega Man 3's Magnet Man theme. The term might apply even better to the music for Wave Man's ocean-based stage in Mega Man 5, which is almost mournful in tone; perhaps Mega Man feels a broad, Brittenesque emotional response to the sea as he, you know, zips around on it trying to blow up a giant mechanical nautilus with a jet ski-mounted cannon. Still more notable to me in that review is the mention of a robot master named Splash Woman, who if I'm not mistaken has broken the robo-gender barrier for the series (not counting Mega Man's rarely present sister/lover/whatever Roll). Too late to be truly progressive, but still a milestone, I suppose; Ms. Pac-Man didn't put those 255 cracks in the glass ceiling in vain.
I feel like it'd be remiss to ramble about the NES Mega Man games for long without mentioning homestarrunner.com's Stinkoman 20X6 Flash game, which is an admirably dead-on parody of the series' look and feel.
I think the usual rap against Mega Man 3 compared to Mega Man 2 is that the weapons you acquire aren't particularly interesting (the Needle Cannon and Spark Shot, in particular, are basically the same as your regular arm cannon) and that correspondingly dings the novelty of the gameplay. I always have liked 3 better, though: Its level designs are more attractive (utilizing the best graphical technology Capcom could bring to bear in 1990) and more ingenious, particularly the expansive, oddly creepy "revisited" stages, where you play through toughened-up versions of earlier stages fighting ghosts of the Mega Man 2 robot bosses. The music and (such as it is) the story are both improved in 3 as well, and both give the last stages a less playful, more urgent feel than what comes before -- though admittedly it never quite matches the creepy atmospherics of Mega Man 2's final showdown level.
I liked Mega Man 5 better than 2 when it came out and a couple of the robot master concepts are great (Charge Man, a belligerent steam locomotive-android is a lot of fun) but in retrospect I'm more sympathetic to the view that the gameplay is kind of bloated by that point in the series. Never played 6 (or 7 or 8, which were not released on the NES); 4 always struck me as a clunker; the original has a lot going for it but having picked up the series with 2 I never really got past the lack of polish and the clunkier controls.
Any love out there for Whomp 'Em, which if I'm not hallucinating it was a contemporary, much less catchy Capcom offering with a similar structure and weapons system but instead of a robot you played a crude Native American stereotype? We must have rented that from Iggle Video, like, three whole times.
There was sometime around fifth grade when I filled up most of a sketch book with something like eighty designs for robot bosses of my own, all with the stereotypical "______ Man" name and gimmicky theme weapon. I really had Mega Man on the brain there for some time...
Does this make sense to anyone who didn't while a way a chunk of their childhood and/or college downtime playing Mega Man games? Any sense at all?
I'm excited by the concept of a new NES-style Mega Man game, too, though if I bought a Wii for that I think it'd end up collecting dust in a corner next to my Game Boy Advance from a few years ago with Square's retread of Final Fantasy 1 still plugged into it. I find it neat as well that that A.V. Club's game reviewer describes the background music in one Mega Man 9 stage as "poignant", which -- as any remaining readers of this blog who spent a lot of time hanging out with me in college may be able to attest -- is a word I've applied excessively often to the plinky wistfulness of Mega Man 3's Magnet Man theme. The term might apply even better to the music for Wave Man's ocean-based stage in Mega Man 5, which is almost mournful in tone; perhaps Mega Man feels a broad, Brittenesque emotional response to the sea as he, you know, zips around on it trying to blow up a giant mechanical nautilus with a jet ski-mounted cannon. Still more notable to me in that review is the mention of a robot master named Splash Woman, who if I'm not mistaken has broken the robo-gender barrier for the series (not counting Mega Man's rarely present sister/lover/whatever Roll). Too late to be truly progressive, but still a milestone, I suppose; Ms. Pac-Man didn't put those 255 cracks in the glass ceiling in vain.
I feel like it'd be remiss to ramble about the NES Mega Man games for long without mentioning homestarrunner.com's Stinkoman 20X6 Flash game, which is an admirably dead-on parody of the series' look and feel.
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