From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games

Mega Man - The Undervalued Classic
A valuable lesson in why you should never judge a senior citizen by its donkey-riding pose.

My story with the original Mega Man is one of ignorance, flippant disregard, and ultimately illumination.

It all started one day back in November of 1989, when the game and I were brought together by pure happenstance. It was the day when my parents agreed to drive me over to Toys R Us in the Caesar's Bay mall so I could pick myself up a copy of Mega Man 2, which I had been desperately coveting ever since my friend Dominick introduced me to it two months prior. I'd fallen so deeply in love with the game that all I desired was to own it for myself, and this was the day when it would finally happen!

Though, the situation changed during the drive over: My parents suddenly, unexpectedly offered to buy the game for me as an early Christmas gift! And I happily accepted! (This arrangement was product of a longer, more-thoughtful exchange, which I won't recount here; you can read about it in my Mega Man 2 piece.) This new development was significant because it created for an opportunity that wouldn't have been available to me otherwise.

So when we entered the store, I, being the hyperactive little fellow that I was, began to speed-walk my way toward the games section with the intention of grabbing a Mega Man 2 tag from the associated slot and then hightailing it over to the glass-protected checkout counter near the entrance. My mindset was "Get in, get out, and then hurry home so I can start playing the game immediately." I had no other business in that place.

But then fate decided that it had other plans for me. 

As I entered the games aisle and started looking for that familiar Mega Man 2 cover art, the gears were set in motion: My father, who had been trailing me, suddenly disappeared from the scene; having assumed that it would take me a while to locate the item in question, he chose to head outside and over to the pay phones, using which he'd make his usual calls (the man was and still is always on the phone). Then, when I had the tag in hand and was starting to turn in the direction of the checkout counter, my mother, who had trailed me the entire way, suddenly stopped me in my tracks because she wanted to make sure that I'd grabbed the correct item.

"Yeah--it's Mega Man 2," I said while directing her attention to the name on the tag.

"Oh," she replied as she turned her head left and began looking over the game wall in search of the corresponding cover art, curious to see what, exactly, she was about to spend $50 on.

That's when another unexpected event occurred.

While surveying the artwork, her eyes drifted further left, where she saw a similarly titled game. It was the original Mega Man, whose existence at no point ever entered into my consciousness. I didn't even notice that it was there.

And suddenly she asked the most shocking question: "Do you want that one, too?"

Now, seriously--when does that ever happen? When does it ever occur that you drag your parents to the store to buy you cheaply made, exorbitantly priced plastic objects and then watch as they turn around and cheerfully inquire as to whether or not you want even more of them? The answer, you'd think, would be "never." But here, at this moment, it was actually happening!

I wasn't going to say no, of course. Free is free, after all, and I wasn't a fool. If someone was offering me a free game, I was taking it whether I had interest in it or not.

Where Mega Man was concerned, I had no interest. I couldn't think of any reason why I would want to play this old game whose box art depicted some weirdly postured geriatric-looking dude. You want to talk about unappealing? That box art was it. 

"I mean, really," I thought. "Who would want to play some obsolete 'Part 1' when the obviously-superior sequel is currently available?"

"The sequel is better simply because this one is so old," I told myself. "This game might as well not even exist!"

It was just simple logic, man.

So when I got home, I promptly brushed Mega Man aside in favor of its sequel, which was completely dominating my thoughts. I didn't even bother to remove the plastic from its box. Instead, I simply placed the game on my little cabinet desk and left it there.

Oh, sure--I'd planned to eventually give Mega Man a look, though I wasn't going to be doing so because I thought that it deserved a fair assessment, no; rather, I was going to give it some play only because I felt obligated to--because my parents were kind enough to buy it for me and I knew that I'd come to feel guilty if I didn't acknowledge their generosity by affording it at least a few minutes of my time. 

Also, there was a bit of a curiosity factor: "What would a Mega Man 2 predecessor even look like?" I wondered. "And would it be even half as good?"

It's just that I wasn't eager to afford it any attention at this particular moment in time. I couldn't. All I could think about was Mega Man 2. Its allure was simply too powerful. 

For the next four-five days, I was spellbound by Mega Man 2. Every moment I spent playing it was pure bliss. It was already been hovering around my pantheon of favorite games, yeah, but now, thanks to the thoroughly satisfying experiences I was able to have with it in this more-intimate setting, it had rocketed its way to the top of the list. It was now my new favorite game of all time. Also, as the greatest games are apt to do, it left me wanting more.

"Though, this need for 'more,'" I concluded, "will be amply met by repeated play-throughs of Mega Man 2 and my dreams of a Mega Man 3!"

There was another option available to me, of course, though I wasn't keen to admit as much. I mean, once I'd settled into a particular mode of thinking, it was difficult to change my mind, and I was adamant about not giving that game the time of day. Not now, anyway. It was a matter of pride.

Still, I couldn't lie to myself: I knew that "more of the same," alone, wasn't likely to suffice. I needed something else, even if it wasn't an ideal choice.

"Buuuuuut ... since it's laying around right over there," I thought to myself indifferently. "I might as well pop Mega Man into the NES and find out what it's about."

But first I had to consult the game's manual, as tradition dictated. It was an interesting read, though I found some of the information to be curious if not questionable. Its backstory description, for instance, spoke of the "powerful leaders" of "Monsteropolis."

"Huh?" I questioned. "Mega Man 2's manual didn't mention anything about such a place. Since when are Robot Masters 'monsters' who occupy their own city?"

"And who the hell is "Dr. 'Wright'?" I asked, challenging the manual's veracity. "It clearly identifies him as 'Light' in Mega Man 2's weapon-get sequences! What gives?!"

Overall, the manual's presentation was very similar to Mega Man 2's (whose manual, strangely, reused the life- and weapon-energy images seen here even though they were no longer indicative of the game's item sprites, whose respective designs had since changed), but its content had an oddly dissimilar tone to it. It made it seem as though Mega Man existed within its own bubble and played by its own rules; it was a predecessor, yes, but somehow distant from the sequel it spawned. For reasons I can't quite articulate, I found this to be an intriguing phenomenon.

The manual's descriptions, for however dubious they seemed, had managed to supply me a bizarrely positive image of the game, and suddenly I was hankering to get a sense of it.

Oh, and that "Magnet Beam" item struck me as an interesting addition. I couldn't wait to find out what it actually did. "What does 'create a step' mean?" I wondered.

There was only one way to find out.

The experience got off to a somewhat-inauspicious start. First, I was bothered by the fact that there was no opening sequence and that the game instead threw me directly onto a silent, static title screen. This was a far cry from what I saw in Mega Man 2, which greeted you with an awesomely rendered, high-spirited intro whose rockin' musical theme got your blood pumping in the run-up to the adventure. This game gave you nothing. "What a rip," I thought.

Then, when I arrived at the character-select screen, disappointment set in when the imagery confirmed that what I'd seen and read were true--that there were only six Robot Monsters as compared to Mega Man 2's eight, which should have been the standard number, I felt, even in a game this "old" (I was hoping that the character information seen on the box's back portion and in the manual was concealing a secret--that somewhere on the screen there'd be text hinting as to the existence of more character slots).

Though, I thought it was neat that the character slots contained the actual Robot Master sprites rather than mugshots. I saw this not as a minor variance but as a key differentiating feature--one that went a long way toward reinforcing my conception of Mega Man as the proud oddball that was happy to operate within its own niche. Really, I just liked the screen's presentation; there was an appealing simplicity to it.

I elected to tackle Guts Man's stage first, since the character looked cool and intuition told me that this was the place to start. And immediately I could sense that there was something different about the game's tone, both in terms of visuals and music. Its textures were formed from tertiary colors (or "darker colors," as my younger self identified them) and the color-schemes in general seemed muted, whereas Mega Man 2's were vibrant and showy. "This is a gloomier place," I felt.

The stage's music track, too, was of a more-serious flavor. It wasn't rock-themed, like all of those tunes I'd heard in Mega Man 2, no; rather, it had an ominous character to it. "There are no fun times ahead," it told me. Obviously this was the direct product of the game's contrasting style of instrumentation: The percussion was softer, to the point of being de-emphasized, and there was more importance given to its coldly metallic, synth-sounding bassline. To hear this music was to know that you were in a darker, more-troubled world. 

And, actually, I really dug the tune. I found it to be catchy in a makes-your-head-bop-from-side-to-side kind of way. It was antithetical to Mega Man 2's lively, excitement-fueling Robot Master themes, sure, but it was nonetheless rhythmic and engrossing. More so, I liked that it helped to provide the game's world a distinct-feeling atmosphere.

Also, I was happy to find that the familiar Hard Hats (or "Mets," as the manual termed them) appeared in this game. They were a comparatively immobile sort, yeah, but still a welcome sight. Seeing them here served as a nice reminder of where I was coming from--of the masterpiece to which this game was connected. Mega Man needed those comforting little links; otherwise, it would risk veering away from offbeat-feeling and creeping toward unrecognizability.

Then everything started to go wrong: After dispatching the Hard Hats, I jumped up to a precipice overlooking a long chasm. This is where I encountered my first platforming sequence: three lifts that moved horizontally across the rails to which they were coupled. While riding on the top rail, I observed that the two lower ones contained drop points that forced the lifts to go limp; also, the bottom rail featured a lot more of them--a disturbing amount. Still, neither looked particularly inviting.

The problem was that this challenge demanded a lot from me: I was required to (a) jump/drop down and land safely on a moving lift, (b) quickly react to a visual cue (the lift's clip making contact with the drop point's very first pixel), and (c) jump over the drop point with the speed and timing necessary to accurately reconnect with the lift.

I couldn't do it. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to read the cues or time my jumps. One attempt after the next ended with me being dumped to my death. "This is insane!" I thought. "This is way nastier than anything I ever encountered in Mega Man 2!" 

It didn't help that the lifts' accompanying sound effect--a loud, abrasive chugging noise--was drilling away at my brain, overwhelming my senses (and the system's sound channels, apparently), and hampering my ability to concentrate. Talk about questionable sound design!

I fell into the chasm countless times before giving up and returning to the character-select screen.

"What the hell, man?!" was all I could think.

So I decided to try out Cut Man's stage next. And it was a good choice: I was having much better luck here. The predictable Octopus Batteries and the stationary Beaks were easy to engage, and I was able to reach Cut Man's lair without much trouble. The only real obstacle was the menacing Big Eye--a giant high-jumping bullet-sponge that inflicted an enormous amount of damage upon contact. This thing was super-tough; it made Stilted Joes (my name for the Mega Man 2's Sniper Joe-controlled mechs) look like Robo-Rabbits. I learned early on that my best bet was to avoid engaging it and instead and beneath it as it was executing its higher jump; though, I wasn't sure how, exactly, to trigger the higher jump, and I couldn't tell whether or not it was executing said jump in response to any of my movements (to this day, I still don't know what triggers it).

The Cut Man fight went poorly. I got destroyed before I could even get a read on his pattern. Part of the problem was that 30% of the floor space, for some reason, was being taken up by two large blocks; their presence served to condense the battlefield and therein make it difficult to get level with Cut Man, who would jump over me whenever I'd approach him within the available floor space. "What a strange design choice," I thought, the blocks' presence another one of those little oddities that worked to reinforce my conception of Mega Man as Mega Man 2's bizarrely disparate predecessor.

Basically I couldn't hit the little bugger.

After failing a handful of times, I concluded that Cut Man wasn't the boss I was meant to take down with my default weapon, so I returned to the character-select screen.

Next I headed over to Elec Man's stage, hoping that success would start to come easier. That's when reality smacked me in the face; it's when Mega Man's level design turned cruel and said, "Let's see you navigate your way around this nonsense, smart guy!" I'm talking specifically about its very first screen. I couldn't even get past that!

It was nuts: The game was asking me to jump up to higher-placed platforms from within cramped spaces whose ceilings were equal in length to the floors, and it wanted me to do this while somehow avoiding the speedy, seemingly indestructible Spines that were rocketing across the platforms' surfaces. I had never seen anything like this in a game. I was stuck there for several minutes.

Eventually I made it to the screen's top portion, yeah, but only after I necessarily learned how to execute pixel-perfect jumps from platform edges. And even then I had trouble reliably making these types of jumps. 

It was good training, actually--both for this game and for future Mega Man games, a lot of which would require this level of precision. Challenges like these helped me to grow more skillful and evolve as a player. 

But at that moment, in November of 1989, I considered this type of level design as being unreasonably tough. It was too much. For that matter, so was Elec Man, who kept destroying me in two or three hits, well before I could even process what was going on. I didn't stand a chance.

"This is ridiculous!" I shouted. "What does this game want me to do?!"

I just couldn't make any progress. No matter which stage I chose, the result would be the same: brutal death. If I wasn't being knocked into spike pits by Flying Shells or blown away by the Medusa Head-like Killer Bullets, then I was getting wrecked by flame-spewing contraptions or falling off (or sometimes through, inexplicably) Foot Holders (which acted as moving platforms in one of the most insanely difficult platforming sequences I'd ever encountered).

And so, for what must've been the fiftieth time, I arrived back at the character-select screen, completely defeated. All I could do was stare at the TV, blankly. 

"Why is this so damn difficult?!" I angrily questioned. "No minor enemy in Mega Man 2 can absorb as many shots as that Big Eye thing, and none of its bosses can kill me in a mere three hits! And none of its platforming challenges are anywhere near as difficult! This game is just plain unfair!"

Mega Man 2's contrastingly undemanding "Normal" mode, it appeared, had given me a false sense of what "challenge" entailed in a Mega Man game--of what the series' creators intended for its default difficulty to be.

I was very frustrated with Mega Man, yeah, but I didn't want to abandon it. For however angry I was, I was still intrigued by the game. There was just something mysteriously attractive about it; it was imbued with a certain "aura"--one that I couldn't describe because I lacked the literacy. Whatever it was, though, it was so fascinatingly distinctive that I couldn't help but want to continue soaking it in.

So I resolved to fight on--to do my best to work around the game's insane difficulty-level and annoying glitches. My sense of curiosity demanded as much.

The struggle continued for quite a while--maybe an hour or so (probably less when you consider that we're talking about a 12-year-old's perception of time). Then, finally, I made a breakthrough: I was able to defeat Bomb Man, whose pattern was easy to read. "He's obviously the Air Man of this game," I concluded, "the guy they intended for me to challenge first."

Surprisingly, there was no item-get sequence; instead the game froze for a few seconds, long enough to where I started to worry that it had crashed, before promptly returning me to the character-select screen. "What a curious omission," I thought. I surmised that the freezing and the lack of an item-get sequence had something to do with a "memory limitation"--a general term used by those of us who were computer illiterate but pretended not to be; any time there was a technical issue with a game, we'd confidently declare that it has to be related to a lack of memory.

Though, I didn't really care about any of that. None of it registered as especially important to me. All that mattered was that I'd earned my first weapon: the "bomb weapon," which I could only assume to be its name, since the game wasn't interested in providing me such information. (It wasn't until years later, when Mega Man Dr. Wily's Revenge released, that we learned of the weapons' true names. Well, four of them, at least.)

Now there was hope. With the bomb weapon in hand, I could start putting to use the game's rock-paper-scissor system and test for weaknesses.

Process of elimination brought me back to Guts Man's stage. He had to be weak to the bomb weapon, I figured, since none of the other Robot Masters were. So I made the effort to learn the timing for lift jumps and after a number of attempts finally gained access to the stage areas beyond. Within a couple of minutes, I arrived at Guts Man's chamber, ready to find reward.

And my math was correct: I was able to eliminate the boulder-tossing brute with three well-placed bombs!

After that, the rest of the previously insurmountable Robot Masters fell one by one, and consequently I was granted access to Dr. Wily's castle. Though, I was disappointed that the game didn't introduce me to it via a transitional map screen like the one Mega Man 2 so famously displayed; the absence of such served to dampen the feelings of excitement and intensification. That's how I felt at the time, at least.

Sadly, the push would end here. My attempt to infiltrate the doctor's madhouse ended in failure, the type that was tantamount to running face-first into a thick brick wall. Let me tell you, man: This stage was next-level difficult. It made the Robot Master stages look elementary in comparison. It was no-mercy from the start. "These people must be nuts," I thought.

This nightmare stage had tasked me with fighting three Big Eyes in succession, surviving another harrowing Foot Holder sequence (this one situated in a room whose floor and ceiling were lined with spikes), and challenging one of the most unfathomably difficult bosses I'd ever encountered: the Yellow Devil (or "that big orange thing," as I referred to it at the time), a giant cyclopean blob creature that could break itself into small fragments and reform on the other side of the screen by sending the fragments over there. The problem was that the fragments moved at a crazy-fast pace--with speed that was so blitzing that I couldn't hope to respond quickly enough. Also, its attacks hit hard; you couldn't survive more than six or seven of them.

The Devil's speed and power were overwhelming. "This is absurd!" I shouted. I'd never been so badly dominated by a boss.

After getting destroyed for, oh, the 20th time, I'd had enough. Beating the Devil didn't seem possible (I was so flustered that I didn't think to test for a weakness. Not that knowing its weakness would have helped me). I had no choice but to admit that I just didn't possess the skills necessary to deal with this guy. Without energy tanks, it was hopeless. The game was simply asking too much of me.

It seemed that my Mega Man experience had come to a decisive end.

Yet I still didn't want to give up on the game. So I came up with an idea: "I'll bring the game over to my friend Dominick's house and play it with him! Maybe together we can finish it!"

As luck would have it, Dominick and his family were familiar with the game. They'd rented it a few times from ABC Video, a rental store that for years occupied the corner of his block before the aptly named Blockbuster Video set up shop and put it (and every other local video store) out of business.

Also, it so happened that Dominick had come to gain knowledge of a few special tricks, all of which he was happy to share with me. First he introduced me to something called "the Select Trick," which he learned, I think, from one of his brother's Nintendo Power-subscribed friends. It was an unintended exploit that allowed for the player to repeatedly damage an enemy with a single projectile blast. All you had to do was rapidly press the Select button--which acted as secondary, non-inventory-prompting pause function--when the projectile was currently overlapping an enemy or an enemy's weak point; during that time, the projectile would virtually freeze in place and continue to inflict damage. If you executed it correctly, you could take down even the toughest bosses in seconds!

Additionally, when we made it to Wily Castle Stage 1, he demonstrated for me a very useful tactic: He used Ice Man's weapon to freeze the troublesome Big Eyes! I had no idea that you could do such a thing--that the weapon functioned in that manner--since I'd used it only against Robot Masters.

By the time our session came to an end, I felt as though I now possessed all of the tools necessary to conquer Mega Man on my own! (I don't recall whether or not we beat the game during this session. All I know for certain is that I returned home immediately because I wanted to jump right back into action.)

It was these new tactics plus liberal use of the Magnet Beam--which, I came to realize while experimenting with it, could be used to bypass the longer, more-harrowing platforming sequences--that allowed for me to confidently infiltrate Wily's castle, in record time, and cut through not only the Yellow Devil (who in the early years we called "the Rock Monster," because that's what Nintendo Power named it) but all of the other obstacles and bosses that were standing in between me and the crazed doctor.

When the final battle commenced, I used the Select Trick to strategically (read: cheaply) assault and destroy both forms of Wily's ship. A few shots of the Elec Beam was all it took. When it was over, Wily began begging for mercy, just like he did at the end of Mega Man 2. 

I'd done it. I'd beaten one of the toughest games I'd ever played. Satisfied, I placed the controller down and watched the ending sequence. Instantly the ending was memorable to me because its initial screen, which displayed congratulatory text, was accompanied by the music from Mega Man 2's intro--by that wonderfully familiar, goosebumps-inducing tune that I'd listen to in full every time I'd load up Mega Man 2. Both that and the scene in following--wherein Mega Man headed home, his journey playing out against a backdrop of mountains, a harbor, and then a city--made for the perfect reward.

"How did it happen that I once dismissed and neglected this game?" I wondered, feeling like a fool. When it was given a fair chance, it showed itself to be alluring in the most strangely fascinating way. It played like Mega Man 2 and kinda resembled it, but it was somehow completely different--in a way I was never able to explain. There was just something about it.

I liked Mega Man so much that I made sure to include it on my go-to-games list, which contained all of the beloved favorites I'd play through regularly. I'd play it at least once a week, usually by myself but sometimes with friends.

Of course, some of my more fond memories were formed during those times when I played it with Dominick--when we'd decipher the meaning of game's visuals, mess around with its mechanics, and engage in our usual banter. I remember how I'd impress him by using some Magnet Beam trickery to make the 1up in Bomb Man's stage respawn over and over again. How, whenever we were in the final stage, we'd stop and observe the embedded gold Guts Man "statues" and wonder about how deep Wily's affection ran for the big guy. And how we'd give special names to the Wily stages and its bosses. We called Wily Stage 3, for instance, "the Bowling Alley Board" because its passageways' textures resembled the surface pattern of a bowling lane; and we referred to its end boss as the "Bubble Man predecessor" because, well, it was a bubble (though, we probably stole this one from Nintendo Power).

And because we were a pair of gullible twits, we'd take the word of my lying Strategies for Nintendo Games Consumer Guide book (which I may cover in the future) and spend an embarrassing amount of time desperately attempting to gain entrance into the openings of those blade-tossing contraptions in Cut Man's stage, since we were led to believe that entering them transported you to secret areas.

Even years later--in the early-mid-90s, after the Mega Man X series had taken the torch--I could still find value in observing and thinking about its visuals. I'd stop in, say, Bomb Man's stage, gaze upon the spherically shaped housing complexes in the background, and wonder, "Where, exactly, are those buildings? Do they still exist in the future? Are they and others like them still standing in the time-period when X is locked in a war with Sigma and his minions?"

Fun times, man.

Still, something was bothering me: Deep down, I knew that I'd never truly beaten Mega Man. All I'd really done was Select Trick my way to victory. I'd been cheating, and all of my victories were for that reason tainted. "I never have to resort to using such unsavory tactics when I'm playing any of its sequels," I said to myself, "so why am I doing so here? That's not who I am."

I knew that I wouldn't feel content until I'd beaten the game legitimately.

So eventually, sometime in the late 90s, I loaded up Mega Man with the intent to remove that weight--to achieve victory without the use of the Select Trick.

In truth, the Yellow Devil was the only real obstacle. I found that the process of making it to his chamber with adequate health and enduring his aggressive assault was fraught with peril. It was one of the most considerable challenges I'd ever faced in a game. Though, even in those moments when I was furious because once again I'd been sent back to the stage's starting point, I remained steadfast and principled. And I learned much during my countless defeats; in that time, I focused in and learned the Devil's pattern--the order in which the individual pieces were zipping in and the heights at which they were spawning--and practiced timing my jumps.

And finally, it happened: For the first time ever, I'd defeated the Yellow Devil legitimately! It was one of the most cathartic moments in my gaming history. It meant more to me than beating entire games--super-difficult NES games like Ninja Gaiden, Double Dragon, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I possessed the skill now. "Never again," I told myself, "will that thing get the best of me."

Oh, sure--that Robot Master gauntlet in Wily Stage 4 was similarly nightmarish, but I found ways to weather through it and in most instances emerge with a fair bit of health. For one, I could count on the healing power of the unpronounceable Yashichi, which in past play-throughs I usually ignored because I didn't trust my ability to navigate around that cramped rail section without plunging into the spikes. These days I pick it up only because I have a compulsion to acquire every out-in-the-open power-up and 1up I see, even when I don't need it. I'm just nutty like that.

But from that point forward, I would never again use the Select Trick. I would not let my thumb get anywhere near that Select button (well, unless I was messing around with the game for fun).

In the present day, I'm quite the Mega Man master. I can clear the game without suffering a single death and defeat every boss without taking a hit (yes, even Fire Man). It's no sweat, really. Sure--I always feel of tinge of nervousness as I approach the Yellow Devil'd chamber, but that's only because I'm afraid that he's going to bust up one of my no-damage streaks.

Now, I know what some of you might be thinking: How can you claim that this game is playable when it takes 25-plus years of work to become good at it?

Well, I say that the criticisms aimed at its difficulty-level are somewhat overblown. I mean, the game gives you the Magnet Beam, which can prove to be a cure-all for the game's toughest platforming sequences; and the Select Trick, which is kind of a cheat, will always be there for novices who want the full experience and need a reliable method for taking down bosses.

Mega Man is indeed beatable. You just have to put in some effort to sharpen your reflexes (because the game's enemies move about and attack much more swiftly than those in the sequels) and get a handle on its experimental mechanics and eccentricities.

Sure--the game's rough and glitchy: Sometimes Mega Man takes a few extra steps when you tap forward on d-pad, or he slides off of a platform after grabbing a power-up item. Other times his jumps come to a sudden halt when he makes contact with power-ups while in the air and consequently he plummets to his death. And then there are those instances when he just falls through floors for no particular reason.

All of that is annoying, yes, but it's part of what makes Mega Man so interesting. It's what makes the game what it is: a rough draft--something raw and unburdened by convention. It's one of the aspects that contributes to the creation of that "mysteriously attractive aura" I talked about earlier.

That Mega Man is rough and raw--a creature of its own primal desires--is why I find it so alluring. That's how it was from the very start, only back then I lacked the ability to put feelings into words. Mega Man is not like its sequels, no; it doesn't feel like them. It feels, as Jeremy Parish suggested, like a strange hybrid: a half-arcade, half-console game created by a company that was still figuring out how to transition from one to the other. Mega Man, Capcom's first console-exclusive title, is the symbol of that journey. It's a commentary on one of gaming's most-fascinating eras. I feel that history--that undertone--whenever I play it.

And I play it pretty often. I return to it several times a year, whenever I'm itching for some fast-paced robot-blasting action. Each time, I have a ton of fun jumping and blasting my way through robot-packed passages and corridors, observing the game's distinctive environments, and absorbing its wonderfully unique emanations. It always delivers the goods. For that reason, it hovers near the top of my go-to-games list, just as it did 25 years ago.

As time has gone on, and as my interests have shifted toward simple, less-complicated games, I've come to appreciate Mega Man more and more. In the last ten years, in fact, it has slowly crawled its way to the top of my "Favorite Mega Man Games" list, passing both Mega Man 2 and Mega Man 3. That's quite a turnaround considering that I used to have it slotted as a distant third. Quite simply, it's proven that it can do a better job of meeting my needs--of delivering satisfying action within an ideal time frame and in a straightforward manner.

My saying as much probably sounds like sacrilege to fellow die-hard series fans--who think of Mega Man as unpolished, glitchy and unfairly difficult--but I don't care. Mega Man is tops. I mean, why else would I play it so much? Why else would I return to it more frequently than I do to the other series games? In the past, I may has stated that Mega Man 2 "elevated the original's formula to the next level," but that doesn't necessarily mean that I like it more. Mega Man 2 is objectively a more-finely-crafted product, yes, but such a descriptor isn't automatically synonymous with "better."

Mega Man is a damn good game. It's a true classic.

You heard me.

When I look back on how I behaved during our first week together, I can't help but shake my head in disappointment. "Why is it that I was so narrow-minded and so quick to dismiss games with which I wasn't familiar?" I wonder. "Why did I always have to be persuaded into trying new things (or 'old things,' in Mega Man's case)?"

Really, what a dumb way to live.

Thankfully I've since changed my ways: I've become passionate about video-game history. I've come to see the value in exploring its depths and discovering the true origins of and the inspiration for the games and series that I love. I'm always keen to see the full picture.

That's why I stand here in 2014 with what I think is a fair bit of wisdom for the new generation of gamers: If ever you're thinking about heading over to a message board to express your interest in a legacy series and solicit opinions as to which entry is the "best one to start with," stop for a moment and realize that the most optimal decision you can make is to ignore your instinct to want to follow the crowd and instead start where it makes the most sense.

That is, you should always start with "Part 1."