As a lad, my favorite series of video games was Capcom’s Mega Man. I didn’t much get into the SNES X series, but those original games — I don’t know, maybe it was my childhood love of robots and futuristic sci-fi, but for games with such simplistic stories, they opened a world of imagination that you don’t always get with modern, “realistic” games.
I couldn’t tell you if it was the announcement of a new Mega Man 9 in the classic, 8-bit style that did it, or just happening to coincidentally find a YouTube instructional video at around the same time, but I fixed my old, worn-out NES. It didn’t take quite as much effort as I thought; just a lot of screwing and unscrewing. Probably the hardest part was leaving a certain level of looseness to the screws; strangely, the spring that keeps the cartridge-holder depressed will fail to work if all the screws are hand-tightened to their tightest.
Once it worked again, the first game I popped in was Mega Man 2 — still, for me, the series’ peak. The game features some of the greatest music ever created (not just in video games!); stages, weapons, and bosses that are clever but not “we’re running out of ideas” silly (Top Man?!); and overall, it feels like the perfect length. The stages are a little longer than the first game, and they’re more challenging but not in the punishing way that is still the first Mega Man’s trademark. Unlike later games, the stages don’t go on so long that they wear out their welcome. Later games may have had better graphics or neat new moves (the slide!), but nothing ever topped Mega Man 2.
I played through Mega Man 2 in one sitting, on difficult. I felt cocky — as a kid, it was hard enough to beat it on normal. Beating it on difficult felt like a bad-ass revolution. I moved on to 3, which is tougher and harder, but it just loses a little something. The best thing about it, for me, are the memories I have of my sister and I spending hours — weeks, really — trying to get ahead, poring over strategy guides and Nintendo Power tips. My sister and I never got along well, but Nintendo — one-player Nintendo — was a different story. We were completely cooperative, each willing to give up the controller if a certain section of game required the playing strengths of the other, but for selfish ends: we both wanted to get to Dr. Wily and see the end of the game.
But there’s a secret shame: I’ve never beaten the first Mega Man. As a kid, it was fucking impossible. I’m not kidding; the only game I ever played for the NES that gave me more trouble was Metroid, a game I still can’t beat (though I can get way farther nowadays than I ever could at the tender age of nine). But, you know what? I never even owned the original NES Metroid until long after the system was past its prime. Some might remember an unusual time when the Super Nintendo eclipsed the NES in popularity; despite Nintendo’s insistence that they’d keep developing equally for the NES, it quickly became clear that their buyers didn’t want that. New games for the NES dwindled, but apparently Nintendo still wanted to push some hardware. I distinctly remember them repackaging well-known classics — like Metroid — so I got a brand-new, unused copy in, like, 1993 or ‘94 (probably the latter, since that’s when Super Metroid came out).
Point being, Metroid doesn’t hold any kind of “recaptured youth” element to me. Sure, I played it at friends’ houses and witnessed the awe-inspiring, Custer’s Revenge-like magnificence of the Justin Bailey code — but I didn’t sit there for hours trying to figure out how to beat it. Mega Man, on the other hand… It only became more infuriating when I’d beat Mega Man 2, 3, 4, 5, etc., then still go back to the first and not be able to make it to the boss on the easiest stages.
Now I’m older, wiser, and about 1% more patient — I figured, with a functional Nintendo, I could crack it.
I figured wrong. The game is a fucking nightmare.
Okay, that’s a slight exaggeration. In addition to being older and wiser, I’m also lazier. I set some ground rules for myself: no winning in ways that I wouldn’t have known about when I was a kid. For instance, I don’t remember the correct boss order. I could spend ages figuring it out through trial and error, but what would I have done at age eight? Talked to a friend who beat it and find out from them, or borrow a strategy guide. I don’t feel like it’s cheating Googling a walkthrough to find a good order, though I wouldn’t allow myself to look at anything other than the order (even though if I had had a strategy guide, I would have had complete maps of every stage and details on how to beat each enemy and boss).
That said, the stages are pretty easy — much easier than I remembered. I had a lot of trouble with Ice Man (that second set of randomly appearing blocks has a really hard pattern), but once I got it, it was a snap. Of course the bosses are easier; with the correct order, you kill most of them in two or three hits. So that’s all good, right?
Wrong. Remember how you’d have a good buzz going, playing some awesome game, and you’d get farther than you’d ever gotten before —
— and it’d freeze up? Yeah, that hasn’t changed. In fact, considering my console is over 20 years old (nothing on this blog has ever made me feel older than that statement, but there it is), it’s probably worse than it used to be. Without the password system implemented in the second game, you have to start all over, every single time. It’s all well and good, except if it’s going to freeze up every time, you’re screwed.
It doesn’t freeze up every time, but predicting it is an act of futility. I’ve gotten to Dr. Wily’s castle several times, but that rascally motherfucker has a torture chamber that would make Macaulay Culkin look saintly. When I finally get to that stupid rock monster, he kills me, and I’m always on my last life by that time. So then I finally found out the yellow devil/select trick to beat him — but ever since then, some kind of disaster has struck before I’ve gotten to Wily’s castle. It freezes, I get some kind of absurd RF interference from a nearby parked taxi (that really happened; my NES is kickin’ it so old-school that it’s still connected using the original RF/coax box), somebody calls and I pause the game then have to do something more productive than playing a video game…it’s a cruel mistress.
But I will not rest until I’ve beaten Mega Man, and when I do, I will feel truly unstoppable.
Posted by Stan on July 14, 2008 5:07 PM