Tuesday, April 27, 2010

BEDA 26: Megaman

And I'm still a day behind. I meant to write two blogs yesterday but I got distracted. Maybe I'll write two today. Who knows?
Today, I want to talk about Megaman.

Megaman is such an awesome game. Especially Megaman 2.

First of all, let me just say that going back to any regular Nintendo or Super Nintendo game is a bit jarring for one reason: they're hard.
In modern games, your character is allowed a lot of leeway when it comes to damage. Enemies in a 3D environment are easy to avoid, health is regularly available, and your HP is high.
In the side scrolling games of the past none of this is the case. Enemies come at you in a straight line, impossible to avoid by the very nature of their 2D environment. The art of dodging comes into play, in which you must wait patiently and study the habits of your enemies before killing or avoiding them to move on. This style of gaming is all but dead in today's video games, and if you don't believe me go back and play Megaman and watch yourself die a miserable, energy explosion death.
Hell, in the first Megaman you can't even shoot at an upwards angle. You have to jump and shoot straight forward to kill the enemies that are above you. Oh, are the evil robots swooping down on you at an angle that makes them impossible to hit? Deal with it.

Also, the progression in Megaman is way ahead of its time. By the end of the game you've acquired the unique and totally badass abilities of eight bosses, making you an unstoppable cyborg of death. And this game doesn't even tell you where to start. At the beginning of the game you have to randomly guess which monstrous robot boss to fight first, and you might fight your way through the whole level just to discover that you're not nearly strong enough to compete. But one by one the robots will fall and you'll slowly become a bone-breaking Terminator-like war machine ready to destroy Dr. Wily.

No comments:

Post a Comment