The series' latest entry was just as formulaic as the last, yeah, but still it managed to stretch the mold in an impressive way.
Now, I'm not going to spend another 10 paragraphs ranting about how I was burned out on the Mega Man series and resentful of Capcom because of how it squandered all of the momentum that was generated by the expectations-shattering Mega Man 3 by rushing out an underwhelming sequel that was so regressively formulaic that it dampened players' enthusiasm for a series whose newly arriving games used to light the gaming world on fire. Doing that would be annoyingly repetitive and a waste of everyone's time.
I can sum up my feelings, instead, by saying that Nintendo Power Volume 42's announcement of Mega Man 5 was so incredibly uneventful and so humdrum in nature that the only thing I could muster in response to it was a tepid shoulder shrug.
What surprised me most was that there was barely any substance to the magazine's preview. In the previous years, it was standard that newly announced Mega Man games were treated royally. They were given cover-story-level attention and 3-4 page previews that were all at once enthusiastically presented, highly substantive and momentous-feeling. They were provided the type of coverage that was befitting of new entries in a beloved gaming franchise. But Mega Man 5 got nothing of the sort. Its preview, in a pretty huge departure from the norm, was limited to a third of a page, and it was comprised merely of two low-resolution screenshots and a single condensed paragraph whose most significant comment amounted to nothing more than "Expect great control."
And I couldn't have been less interested in what I was seeing. My excitement for the series had long since faded, and this preview did nothing to recapture my interest. And if what I'd seen here was any indication, the enthusiast press was apparently feeling the same way. And, really, it was hard to blame them. I mean, how could anyone get excited about yet another samey-looking 8-bit Mega Man game at a time when the 16-bit war was in high gear and competing companies were producing ambitious, revolutionary games like Super Mario Kart, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Out of This World and Streets of Rage II?
What I was left with was the sad realization that even a treasured series like Mega Man could fall into a terrible rut and consequently find itself left behind.
To me, nothing was more indicative of the series' stagnation than Mega Man 5's storyline, which Keiji Inafune and the gang probably wrote up on a cocktail napkin during a visit to the pub. The details of the game's plot, which Nintendo Power revealed two issues later in its first extensive Mega Man 5 feature, read like a big joke: According to Dr. Cossack, Proto Man had gone insane. He created eight Robot Masters to assist him in destroying the city and then proceeded to kidnap the lovable Dr. Light.
I didn't buy into it for a second, and I couldn't imagine that any other kid would, either. And the feature's authors saw through the plot, too. That's why they thought nothing of just casually spoiling the "big twist"--that the entire affair was all a ruse perpetrated by Dr. Wily--on the feature's final page. "You knew it all along," they said, rightfully inferring that attempting to invest in the game's story was a waste of your time.
I'm not saying that the storyline was ever that important to Mega Man, no. It really wasn't. What bothered me, rather, was how the story was being presented and what it was telling me about the game's creators. They just didn't care anymore. They'd lost their drive and their ambition. That's why they were falling back on the same swerve three games in a row. And thus I had every reason to believe that the rest of their game, sadly, was going to be equally formulaic.
Now, I was of course going to put Mega Man 5 down on my Christmas list for that year, anyway, because I was an obsessive sequel hound and simply couldn't help myself (and because I knew that requesting a potentially disappointing game as a gift was a great risk-mitigating strategy--one that would save me from having to spend my own money a game that I might not like).
But still, I wasn't looking forward to Mega Man 5. I had basically no enthusiasm for it. My rationalizations for listing it were that (a) because I wasn't anywhere near ready to abandon my NES (which still stood prominently on the bottom-left side of my wheeled TV stand's lower shelf), I needed to keep getting a hold of new NES games; (b) I wasn't interested in any of the SNES' late-'92 releases; and (c) I felt that even an unexciting, formulaic Mega Man game was still a safer choice than any of those from the piles of junk that were currently lining the shelf wall in Toys R Us' games section.
But the fact remained that I had no expectations for the game, itself.
Though, I didn't ignore Mega Man 5 completely, no. I managed to find some time to devote to it during the latter portion of the seven-day period between Christmas Day and New Year's Day (the magical period of bliss, as every kid knew it). Of course, I went into it with a sour attitude because I was still angry about Mega Man 4 and how regressively formulaic it was. And I was expecting Mega Man 4 to be more of the same. I was expecting to actively dislike it.
My prediction was that I'd quickly deem Mega Man 5 to be "nothing special" and then subsequently toss it aside--probably return to it at a much later date, when I was bored with all of my other games.
I started with Gravity Man because he had the most interesting-sounding name and because he occupied the honorary top-middle "Air Man spot," toward which I always felt inclined to send the selection-cursor at the start of any Mega Man adventure. It was what I'd been doing for years, since the day I was introduced to the series.
The action in Gravity Man's stage was different from the type I'd experienced in Mega Man 4. It felt more lively and more spirited (partly because, conversely, the colors were brighter and thus more eye-popping and the music had a more optimistic tone to it), and for that reason, I found it to be quite engaging.
The game just had a nicer feel to it.
What I liked most about the stage was its cool gravity-reversing mechanic. Immediately I found it to be more exciting than anything I'd seen in Mega Man 4's Robot Master stages, whose best ideas were pretty interesting, sure, but still kinda safe- and rudimentary-feeling. Being able to reverse gravity and run along ceilings, in contrast, felt unconventional and daring.
Mega Man 5 wasn't the first game to experiment with gravity-flipping and ceiling-crawling mechanics, no, but it certainly was the first to present them in a realized way. Older games' gravity mechanics were comparatively unpolished and glitchy and often a bad combination of stiff- and shaky-feeling. Mega Man 5's, on the other hand, were tight-feeling and reliably precise, and consequently, ceiling-based action felt just as smooth and as fluid as action on the ground.
I still felt as though Mega Man's charge-shot ability worked to trivialize a lot of the challenge, yes, but at the same time, I couldn't deny that using single charge shots to wipe out entire groups of enemies was both satisfying and fun (also, I liked that charge shots now looked like tiny atomic blasts!). And the game's smaller, stealthier enemies (like the concealed "B Bitter" cannons) were always tightly clustered and thus basically begging to be charge-shotted! So I did what I felt I was invited to do.
Everything about Gravity Man's stage impressed me. I thought that its level design was great; I liked how it challenged me to exhibit understanding of the reverse controls and find ways to shrewdly transition between the ground and the ceiling. I was fond of its sharp-, clean-looking visuals and its peppy music. I liked that the background in the stage's upper portion featured parallax scrolling, which was an "advanced effect" that I didn't even know the NES was capable of pulling off. And I enjoyed the Gravity Man fight; I felt that it was creatively crafted and that it was the most interesting fight I'd had with a Robot Master since Mega Man 2.
Every stage in Mega Man 5 had a surprise for me--something creative and cool. Gravity Man's stage had the gravity-switching mechanic, as I've said. Wave Man's stage, for instance, contained an out-of-the-norm autoscrolling vehicle sequence in which I had to ride across the ocean in a cannon-equipped jetski and do so while tangling with robotic marine life, jetski-riding Sniper Joes, and a giant octopus mini-boss (the unimaginatively named "Octoper OA").
Charge Man's stage was comprised of a moving train that I had to traverse by moving along its cars' roofs and its crowded interior in alternation (and the whole time, a recurrent screen-shaking animation and accompanying bumping noises worked together to create authentic-feeling train movement!).
And Gyro Man's stage had elevator sequences, one of which required me to maneuver around platforms whose bottom portions were lined with spikes. (Also, Gyro Man's stage saw the return of those obscuring clouds from Air Man's stage, which I found to be a nice nostalgic touch.)
Proto Man's castle, too, had some cool surprises for me. The one that delighted me most was the final stage's environment-shifting mechanic: Whenever I'd blast away a section or multiple sections of one of the cracked support pillars, the stage's entire upper level--both its sprite-layer and background structures--would drop down and do so at a distance that was equal to the height of the tiles that were cleared away! It was one of the most impressive visual feats in NES history.
Other castle stages recycled older gameplay elements like low-gravity fields, conveyor belts and water currents, yeah, but they used them in interesting ways. In one stage section, for instance, you had to jump from one floating conveyor belt to the next while dodging bomb-dropping enemies; it was a challenge that was equal parts fun and harrowing. Many of Mega Man's 5 challenges were engaging in that way.
Oh, and Proto Man Castle's second stage had platforming segments in which you rode atop moving, snaking platforms that were very much like the ones you rode atop in Super Mario World! Seeing something like that--something ripped from a recently released 16-bit game--further convinced that Mega Man 5 was an "advanced game" and for that that reason worthy of praise.
There were memorable little additions everywhere: Stone Man's stage introduced a new type of hard-hat enemy called "Metall Mommy," which split into three smaller metalls when you blasted it. Charge Man's stage introduced mini-train-riding metalls that emitted cute little "choo-choos" before firing. In certain stages, Apache Joe, a new helicopter-piloting Sniper Joe variant, attacked from above. And other stages placed items and power-ups behind DuckTales-style walk-through walls and thus invited you to figure out how to access them.
Wave Man's stage contained an additional standout segment in which you had to advance three screens upward by riding on the large and small bubbles that were being released from the lowest screen's fissures (Mega Man 9's creators were apparently so enamored with this segment that they recycled it, almost pixel for pixel, in Splash Woman's stage). Star Man's stage introduced the intimidating-but-cool-looking "Dachones"--ED-209-like mechs that stomped about and fired off lasers. And Gyro Man's stage contained a new type of floating platform that caused Mega Man to spin around as it carried him in a particular direction (this same animation, I should mention, was also used on the interstitial weapon-get screen).
The spinning animation didn't serve any real purpose, no, but it still made for an impressive visual, I thought. Also, it was nice to finally see what Mega Man looked like from different angles!
I also liked the game's new "Beat" system, which gave you the option to collect 8 special tablets and thus earn the assistance of Beat, a robotic bird helper who would automatically attack any enemy in the vicinity. It provided a fun little side challenge and an ally whose services were invaluable (especially during one of the fights that I'll be talking about later on). For me, procuring the assistance of Beat was always worth the effort. I made sure to do it in every play-through.
Mega Man 5 was filled with these types of memorable details, all of which worked to provide it a unique personality. In time, I came to define it as the "ideas game." It was different from Mega Mans 4 and 6, I thought, because while it was certainly formulaic, it also wasn't afraid to try new things and innovate within the space and thus stretch the mold. My conception of Mega Man 5 was that it was a game made by people who were eager to take the series to new places but couldn't do so because their bosses wouldn't let them; so what they decided to do was make the best of a bad situation and instead express their ambition by packing in as much inventive content as they could and creating a game that at least felt different.
Regardless of whether that belief was true or not, Mega Man 5 was a more-ambitious-feeling game, and I found it to be a hell of a lot more fun than Mega Man 4 (and the future Mega Man 6, for that matter).
Much like I did with Mega Man 4, I completed Mega Man 5 in a single day, though I didn't do so for the same reason (to simply be done with it). Rather, I played through the entire game in one sitting because I was constantly intrigued by what it was doing and couldn't wait to find out what else had in store for me! "What will this game throw at me next?!" I kept wondering. Also, I thought, the sooner I finished the game, the sooner I could start playing through it again! It was that much fun!
And just by looking at what Mega Man 5 was doing graphically, it was clear to me that Capcom had mastered the NES' hardware. The company's latest was one of the most visually impressive games an NES-developer had ever produced. I thought as much any time I examined the game's backgrounds, all of which, I observed, were exquisitely rendered, super-detailed and dominated by eye-catching displays--displays like the amazingly-sharp- and realistic-looking parked train seen at the starting portion of Charge Man's stage and the majestic-looking, awe-inspiring mountainscapes seen in Stone Man and Wave Man's stages.
I loved, in particular, the beautifully animated palm trees that populated the background of Napalm Man's Vietnam-inspired stage. Any time I was visiting this stage, I'd stop to marvel at them (in the moments when angry tigers weren't furiously pouncing on me).
Every background in Mega Man 5 had something that was attention-grabbing. Each was brimming with impressively rendered visuals or some type of animation, be it flashing lights, glittering crystals, pulsating clouds or raging waterfalls.
Mega Man 5 told me a lot about the state of the NES. It told me that even though the NES had had its thunder stolen by the SNES, it wasn't yet dead, no. It was still alive and kicking and continuing to evolve technologically. It was still showing itself to be a capable little machine. And here was the trusty Capcom continuing to do what it had been doing from the start: one-upping its peers by successfully pushing the NES' hardware harder and farther than any other company could. And by doing so, Capcom provided some spark to a console that desired to endure. It gave the NES some extra life, which I strongly appreciated because I didn't want to see the console's run come to an end.
That's one of the main reasons why I was and continue to be fond of the game.
But none of that absolved Mega Man 5 of its sins, no. It was creative, visually impressive and fun, certainly, but at the same time, it was still disappointingly formulaic and safe-feeling. Like Mega Man 4, it was held back by its adherence to the worn-out formula of "fight through 8 Robot Master stages, then through a fake villain's castle, and finally through the real villain's castle."
Also, it repeated its predecessors' mistakes: It handed out too many energy tanks and thus worked to trivialize many of its challenges (and you could now hold up to 9 energy tanks, which was ridiculous amount). Its 1up drop-rate was way too high (if you didn't have nine lives by the time you reached your fourth Robot Master stage, you were doing something terribly wrong). The charge shot was so overpowered that the damage it dealt was equivalent to or greater than the damage dealt by acquired Robot Master weapons, and thus it was so effective against bosses that you didn't even need to use the Robot Master weapons! And its allowing you to defeat Dr. Wily by summoning Beat and letting him do all of the work for you (which, I'm sad to admit, I often did) was more of that "kill Gamma in one hit with Top Spin"-style silliness that only served to diminish the value of victory.
And Mega Man 5 also had some problems of its own: Its Robot Master weapons were largely uninteresting and not very useful (the redirectable Gyro Blade was about the only one that had a convenient use). The Super Arrow was neat but superfluous in a game in which Rush Jet was available. The Rush Coil had been unnecessarily altered into a weird pogo-type contraption whose movements were jarring and glitchy-feeling (half the time, it didn't even function correctly).
And, of course, the game ended with an entirely short final scene that once again served as nothing more than sequel fodder. I mean, I wasn't expecting for its ending to deliver any real resolution to the long-running saga, no, but it could have at least given me something exciting--maybe something that hinted that the series was about to be taken in a new direction. Instead it was just more of the same.
The castle bosses were a mixed bag. Those that occupied Proto Castle were largely uninspired, I felt. The first three were mere variations of the castle's final boss--the "Dark Man" robot--and thus they all had the same look. Their attack patterns were also noticeably similar; each would glide from one side of the room to the other and stop only to redirect or fire off some projectiles.
So all four of the castle bosses were completely homogenous and for that reason not particularly interesting.
I mean, I understood what the designers were going for, yeah. They wanted to establish a brand of robot that looked and behaved dissimilarly from the standard fare--the type or robots that Dr. Wily was apt to create--and thus try to make you believe that Wily wasn't involved in any way. Though, what they wound up doing, as a result, was crafting four bland-looking, nondescript bosses and a series of repetitive-feeling boss battles.
The Skull Castle bosses, however, were much more inventive. The best of them was the totemlike Big Pets, with which you engaged in a unique and interesting way: Whenever you shot one of its three individual sections, that section would rocket its way forward and attempt to ram into you. Though, this was actually beneficial to you because you could use the independently moving sections to your advantage; you could use them as platforms to boost yourself higher and thus fire off shots at Big Pet's otherwise-out-of-reach weak spot: its head.
The Wily Press boss was interesting, too, because of how it operated: It had the ability to magnetically lift the room's entire bottom level! Its controller, Dr. Wily, did this with the intention of slamming into and crushing you.
It was obvious to me that the designers had way more fun creating the Skull Castle bosses--that they didn't feel as restrained.
So yeah--there was plenty to like about Mega Man 5. It was formulaic and constrained in many ways, certainly, but still it had too much going for it for me to just outright dismiss it as a tired retread and thus spurn it (like I did to Mega Man 4). It was filled with interesting, distinguishing ideas. Its level design was creative. Its visuals were impressive. And its music was uplifting in a unique way--one that I couldn't explain until years later, when I learned that Mega Man 5, like each entry before it, had a unique composer: Mari Yamaguchi, who chose to differentiate Mega Man 5's soundtrack by making it more cheerful and more spirited in tone. Her music did a hell of a lot to help the game carve out its own personality. She did great work. (My favorite of her tunes was Charge Man's stage theme, which was one of the most energizing, inspiring tunes I'd ever heard in a Mega Man game.)
And quite simply, Mega Man 5 was just plain fun to play! That's why I kept returning to it. Even at a point in life when the SNES and the Game Boy were stealing all of my attention, I still found plenty of time to devote to Mega Man 5, which played a big a role as any in keeping the NES front and center during this period.
Mega Man 5, the game for which I had zero expectations, turned out to be a winner. It wasn't a top-tier Mega Man game, no, but still it had a lot to offer. It was enjoyable and fun, and it could reliably deliver a solid dose of satisfying Mega Man action.
I still feel the same way about Mega Man 5 today. It's a very solid action game. I maintain, as I always have, that it's the series' most underrated game and certainly the best of the latter three NES entries. I really like it. That's why I continue to return to it regularly--on random occasions and when I'm on one of my week-long Mega Man binges in which I play through all of the series games in chronological order. And it always provides me what I'm looking for: reliably fun action.
Mega Man 5 didn't stop the series' decline, no, but it also didn't hasten it. Rather, its endeavoring to reject the mundane elements of formula and instead focus on being consistently creative helped it to temporarily flatten the curve and and serve as a shining light during one of the series' darker periods.
And for that reason, I give it a lot of credit.
No comments:
Post a Comment