How Capcom betrayed my expectations and almost put a permanent black mark on its record.
One of the biggest surprises in the previous few years was Mega Man 5's turning out to be a very enjoyable game. I had a great time with it. I found it to be a lot of fun. And I didn't expect that to happen because in the weeks prior to its release, I was really down on it. I kept thinking that its strict adherence to the series' established formula would undoubtedly render it another one of those tired, predictable entries whose existence would only serve to further dampen my enthusiasm for the original Mega Man series.
But that's not how it went. Rather, Mega Man 5 succeeded in spite of its strict adherence to formula. It did that by being a fun, feel-good video game--by being more energetic and more spirited than Mega Man 4, which was contrastingly drab and depressive in tone. Also, it had some inventive level design and a lot of cool, interesting platforming challenges. It was just really fun to play!
Yet even though I felt that Mega Man 5 was a much better game than Mega Man 4 and I returned to it far more frequently than I did to the latter, I still generally regarded it the same way--as another formulaic entry with a similarly disappointing ending that did nothing to convince me that it was worth continuing to emotionally invest in the original Mega Man series.
So while Mega Man 5 had taken me on a pleasant detour, it was still just that--a mere detour. In the end, I still arrived at the expected stopping point. And just like it was a year earlier, I was pretty much done with the idea of NES Mega Man sequels.
After all: The 16-bit era was now in full swing, and recently it welcomed an amazing new SNES game called "Mega Man X," which proved to me that a Mega Man game could absolutely shatter the mold if its creators were willing to pour passion and ambition into its creation.
"Who needs another by-the-numbers NES Mega Man game when a masterfully designed, incredibly evolutionary series entry is now strutting its stuff on a technologically superior next-generation console?" I'd think to myself.
I mean, I still had my NES hooked up to the TV, since I had strong feelings the 8-bit wonder and didn't want its run to end (also, my brother, James, was still scooping up gobs of NES games at clearance sales, and I felt compelled to play all of them), but I certainly wasn't keeping it there in anticipation of another overly formulaic Mega Man sequel.
"Are they even trying anymore?" I wondered as I shook my head.
To be honest, though, there were some interesting-sounding tidbits in those previews: The traditional Rush abilities, apparently, were being done away with in favor of a new fusion system that would instead provide Mega Man a gravity-defying jetpack and a power suit that would allow him to destroy certain obstructions with a charged-up punch. There was a new real boss-fake boss system that was said to provide each Robot Master stage a minor exploration element. And two of the game's Robot Masters--Knight Man and Wind Man--were designed by American kids in one of the fan-creation contests that would always run concurrent to the development of a new series game ("Having your country represented in a Japan-developed game?" I thought to myself upon reading this bit. "How cool is that?").
But none of what was written suggested that there would be any meaningful changes to the established formula. Take the plot, for instance: As usual, was paper thin, and there was no way that anyone was going to be dumb enough to not see the "Wily was behind it all along!" swerve coming. Even Nintendo Power didn't play along; as it did in its coverage of Mega Man 5, it refused to insult its readers' intelligence and bluntly stated what was painfully obvious--that the "new" main villain was just Dr. Wily in disguise. Hell--Capcom barely put in any effort to conceal the fact that the main villain, Mr. X, was just Wily with a beard!
I understood that being naive was part of Mega Man's character, yeah, but his blindly accepting all of this made him look a lot more than simply "naive." Rather, his unquestioning trust of Mr. X, who just appeared out of nowhere one day, made him look like a complete fool. And it was even more inexplicable that Dr. Light, the so-called "genius," and the rest of the supporting characters didn't see through him, either. This entire story made all of the game's characters look mentally deficient.
Really, everything I'd read about Mega Man 6 made it seem like nothing more than a cynical, mailed-in rehash.
Of course, though, there was no chance that I wasn't going to go out and buy Mega Man 6 on day. I was, after all, a gullible brand loyalist, and thus I didn't need to come up with a rationale for buying the game. I just couldn't help myself.
But over the next two months, I was able to develop a sound rationale. It came to me as I was playing Mega Man X, whose overarching storyline captured me in large part due to its highly intriguing (though cryptic) connection to the original series. It made me wonder about the nature of the connection; it inspired me to think about all of the potential ways in which the original series could transition into the Mega Man X series. I desperately wanted to know how it actually happened.
So now I had a reason for wanting to own Mega Man 6. "Surely," I thought, "it's going to provide me the answers I seek!" It was the original series' swan song, I was certain, and thus it would tell me a lot about how the transition occurred!
And I had so many questions: How does the original series conclude? How does it set in motion the events leading into Mega Man X? Will Mega Man die? Will there be any allusions to Dr. Light's creation of Mega Man X, like maybe a scene in which he's seen working on a new prototype in secret? And will Zero (who, at that point, I assumed to be a remodeled Proto Man) show up in any form?
I was excited about the prospect of learning about the buildup to the transition--about finding out whether or not any of the connections I was obsessively wondering about were accurate.
So yeah--I was more excited about Mega Man 6's storyline implications than I was about the game, itself.
Mega Man 6 was going to explain to me how the two series were linked. I was sure of it.
In honoring what had become tradition, I went out and bought Mega Man 6 on the day it released and then immediately brought it home, and subsequently I hurried to my room and spent the next few hours playing through it.
I don't have many specific memories of my first session with Mega Man 6, no, but I do remember being overcome with a sense of deja vu at many points. That was happening because the experience was turning out to be a total repeat of the one I had with Mega Man 4, which is to say that the game's action was so overly familiar and so bog standard that I was almost bored by it. A lot of the time, I'd drift off and start thinking about other things and basically reduce the game's action to a mere peripheral exercise. And I kept feeling as though I was playing a game that existed only because Capcom was obligated to have a new NES Mega Man game on store shelves in the new year.
This was such a far cry from how it was just four years back, at a moment in time when I spent every waking moment daydreaming about the upcoming Mega Man 3 and being super-excited for its release. At a time when a Mega Man game was able to deliver on its promise and set my world on fire. That's what a new entry in a big series was supposed to do for you.
I mean, there was nothing technically wrong with Mega Man 6, no. It played just as solidly as any other Mega Man game. And at times, it could even hold my attention for long stretches--particularly when it introduced a level-design feature or a mechanic that deviated from the norm.
I perked up, for instance, when I gained access to the Rush Fusion devices. I had a lot of fun smashing my way through walls (and taking out hard hats when they were in shielded positions, which was a power I'd always wanted to have!) with my power suit and flying across stages with my jetpack. I enjoyed using these new abilities to find secret rooms, uncover shortcuts, and fully explore stages with the purpose of locating the real Robot Masters. (Though, I didn't enjoy having to wait through those tedious, interruptive "demonstration scenes" that would play every time I equipped one of the suits. You could cut them short by pressing any button, sure, but even then, you had to wait two or three seconds, which was still too long of an interruption.)
I did what I could to extract entertainment value from a game that I considered to be pedestrian.
But really, everything that was playing out on the screen, from the wall-smashing and the jetpacking to my usual weakness-chain experimentation, was part of a mere mechanical exercise. It was all extraneous activity and what I had to endure to get what I was truly seeking from the game. I had only one desire. There was only one thing that was making me feel excited about playing through and beating Mega Man 6: the thought of reaching Skull Castle's final stage and defeating Dr. Wily and consequently initiating the endgame sequence, which, I was hoping, would match the one that I'd eagerly, obsessively put together in my head over the previous two months!
So finally I arrived at the game's endpoint. And after I destroyed Wily's ship and brought the pitiful doctor to his knees, the ending triggered. Then I began to watch on very attentively.
The ending's first scene played out exactly like I expected it to: Mega Man finally captured Wily and brought him to justice. This was confirmed by a newspaper headline whose accompanying image showed Wily behind bars.
"Here we go!" I prepped myself, my eyes intently glued to the TV screen. "Right after this screen fades, stuff is gonna go down!"
Well, not quite yet, the game said. First there was a little matter of the standard Mega Man curtain call. It was a nicely presented montage that spotlighted the 8 Robot Masters, all of which displayed their skills to the accompaniment of an elegantly-weaved-together medley of their respective stage themes.
"All of this padding has to be part of a slow build to a grand finale and an epic final scene that'll tie everything together!" I theorized as I watched the montage play out.
When the seventh montage closed out (I was counting) and the final Robot Master, Yamato Man, appeared onscreen and started showing off his moves, I started leaning forward, toward the TV, in anticipation of the next scene.
"Here it comes!" I said to myself.
Aaaaaaaaaaand then, well... the credits began to roll.
Quickly I became deeply concerned, and my heart began to drop. Staff rolls, you see, had an air of finality to them. The appearance of a staff roll was usually a sure sign that the storytelling was entirely done and all that would follow was a terminating sequence in which a company logo scrolled into view and froze in the center of black, empty screen.
At that moment, I began to delude myself: "Oh, I see!" I said. "The credits will finish rolling, and then they'll transition into a Mega Man X-style ending screen on which some foreshadowing event will be displayed! That's gotta be it!"
There was, after all, such a thing as a "post-credits scene."
As the "Presented by Capcom" text crawled its way onto the screen, I could feel my heart moving into my throat. "Please don't stop at the screen's center," I said. "Please don't do that to me."
But it did. It froze in place at the screen's center point
At that moment, I was overcome by a feeling of desperation. I began looking for some sign--any sign--that post-credits content was incoming. I was hoping and pleading for there to be a screen fade, a change in music, or the sudden display of segueing text--anything that would signal that the game wasn't really over yet.
I observed no such signals. Instead I looked on in horror as the most ominous words possible formed letter by letter in the screen's bottom-right corner. They spelled the last words I ever wanted to see: "To be continued."
I was stunned but still operating under a state of delusion. This couldn't be it, I thought. I waited and waited for something more to appear onscreen, but nothing ever did. There was no insightful postscript, no foreshadowing imagery, and no Mega Man-to-Mega Man X transition scene. No changes were occurring.
Slowly the reality of the situation started to sink in.
Exasperated, I stood there for an additional minute or two and continued to stare at the TV screen. "This just can't be it," I said to myself in a subdued, disillusioned way. But soon it became painfully obvious to me that it was. The game was over and my reward was not the transitional cut-scene I'd so obsessively constructed in my head but instead the dispiriting knowledge that yet another original-series Mega Man game was on its way.
And man was I pissed about that. I was so angry, in fact, that I began to externalize my inner monologue and rant about how stupid Capcom was playing me like that.
"I spent $50 for that big nothing?!" I shouted in a way that was meant to question the integrity of a company that I'd always considered to be trustworthy. "You mean to tell me that you're going to continue a series that's already been wrung completely dry?! That's not what was supposed to happen! It was supposed to be that you used Mega Man 6 as a platform to transition into the X series! What are you doing, Capcom?! What are you thinking?! Are you that creatively bankrupt?!"
I'm sure that my rant also contained a promise to "never again buy a Capcom product" and some other really "serious" threats. You know how that routine goes.
But that was how I felt. I was so upset by what Mega Man 6 had done that I swore to never play it again or, well, to at least stay away from it for a few months. I'd have felt guilty about making such a decision had Mega Man 6 been a next-level game, but it simply wasn't; there was absolutely nothing special about it. So I had no real reason to return to it any earlier.
Mega Man 6 was, in my opinion, a shameless retread and the worst game in the original series.
Though, after some time had passed and my anger began to subside, I decided to return to Mega Man 6 and give it a second chance. I felt that it deserved as much because of how unfairly I'd treated it. I realized that my behavior was silly and that my anger was largely misplaced. "So this time," I swore, "I'll approach Mega Man 6 in a more sensible fashion and judge it for what it is rather than I wanted it to be."
And as I played Mega Man 6 and observed it with unbiased eyes, I came to see that it really wasn't the mediocre, series-degrading game I'd made it out to be, no. Rather, it was a standard-quality Mega Man game--a solid series entry made by a development team that wasn't looking to create anything more than that (my guess was that Inafune and his pals were reserving all of their real creative energy for the soon-to-be-announced 16-bit Mega Man 7, which, if Mega Man X was any indication, would be incredibly evolutionary!).
So Mega Man 6, it turned out, was an OK game. It delivered some solid action. But the problem was that it hit the market at the same time Mega Man X did and thus couldn't escape comparison; and placing Mega Man 6 next to Mega Man X only served to further emphasize its overreliance on an aging formula and magnify its mundanity.
Take the Robot Masters, for instance: They just weren't as cool or as creative as Mega Man X's mavericks. I mean, Knight Man, Centaur Man and Tomahawk Man were distinct and interesting (and I might have included Yamato Man in that group had I known what the hell a "Yamato" was), sure, but the others were too plainly archetypal. And there was nothing special about the way in which any of them operated. In fact, they seemed to be even more limited in ability than any of the Robot Masters that came before them. Each could only manage to engage in predictable scripted movement and execute two rather lame attacks.
For Knight Man, Centaur Man and Tomahawk Man, being "distinct and interesting" in appearance didn't make them any less boring as fighters.
Also, there was nothing unique about the Robot Masters in terms of their susceptibility to the weapons against which they were weak. They all suffered similar amounts of damage when struck with said weapons (they lost three or four bars of health). As I cut each Robot Master down in the same formulaic way, all I could think about were the days when weapons had wildly different, very notable effects. I remembered how you could devastate Crash Man with the Air Shooter and how you had to put in some additional work after merely freezing Pharaoh Man with the Flash Stopper. Mega Man 6 had no such variety. It was always "strike the Robot Master seven times to win."
And once again, the Mega Buster was so overpowered that you didn't even need to take advantage of weaknesses. A charged Mega Buster shot could, in most cases, inflict the same or almost the same amount of damage as the weapon against which a Robot Master was weak! "Didn't the developers learn anything from the previous two entries?!" I wondered.
On the whole, the minor-enemy cast was pretty dull. Its members were either uninteresting in form and function or too derivative of past foes--past foes that were far more memorable. The surface-patrolling, flame-propelled Cyber Gabyoalls, for example, were so very plain- and generic-looking and thus they paled in comparison to the distinct-looking, personality-filled Spines and Springers of yesteryear. Even the game's brands of wall-mounted cannons and mechs were derivative and boring!
Also, Mega Man 6 suffered from one of the same issues that plagued the previous two entries: It handed out way too many 1ups and energy tanks! They were strewn about everywhere. It was almost as if the game didn't want to challenge you in any serious way--as if it was saying, "Just hurry up and beat this game so you can start looking forward to the next one."
And for as much as I liked the new Rush powers, I had to admit that they only served to trivialize the game's platforming challenges. I mean, there was no reason to bother jumping onto and across series of rotating wheels and weighted platforms when you could instead equip the Rush Jet Adaptor and simply fly over or around them. And there were so many shortcuts, all of which could be easily accessed with the Rush Power Adaptor, that I got the impression that the designers didn't feel as though most of their game was worth seeing.
The shortcut that really made me shake my head was the one found in the second Skull Castle stage. It took minimal effort to reach and destroy the icy barrier that obstructed it, and it allowed you to skip more than half the stage! "Why in the hell would they allow you to do something like that and do it so easily?!" I wondered while in a state of perplexment.
Mega Man 6 was filled with strange level-design choices. All too often, the designers would construct a room around sets of nimble, difficult-to-target enemies or one of those big bruisers, like the hopping Power Slam, but then place them behind a tall wall; it was like the designers forgot that Mega Man can fire shots through walls and easily neutralize such threats. Also, many stage sections felt kinda empty; quite frequently, I'd run through two or three uninhabited rooms in succession, and obviously this was the result of the designers needing to add copious amounts of transition screens to account for the numerous, oversupplied shortcuts.
I can't think of a bigger microcosm for Mega Man 6's issues than the event that occurred after I completed the Robot Master boss rush: a ninth teleportation capsule appeared and opened up what I was certain was the traditional fake-out Wily battle, but the moment I entered it, the stage simply ended! There was no Wily fight, "Mega Man killer"-type enemy, or even a special cut-scene. Absolutely nothing happened. Instead I was immediately taken to the final stage. And in that moment, I sensed that the developers weren't even trying anymore. It felt like yet another regressive step in a string of them. "Is Capcom's goal to have less and less content in each successive game?" I wondered.
And the final Wily battle was a joke. All three of his ship forms were unimaginative and samey-looking, and they were all weak to the exact same weapon (the Silver Tomahawk) and suffered damage at the same rate. And the result was the most mailed-in Wily fight in series history.
For that and many other reasons, Mega Man 6 was the worst of the latter three series entries (the "purely formulaic entries," as I called them).
But still, like I said, Mega Man 6 was a solid action game, and it had a few things going for it. After all: Even the most suppressive formula couldn't fully restrain Capcom's creative spirit. Mega Man 6's best ideas were proof of that.
There was some fun stuff in Mega Man 6. I liked, in particular, the new pre-stage Robot Master profile screen, which went well beyond the norm and now provided details as to the selected Robot Master's domain, powers and specifications; it was a minor addition, yes, but one that did more than most to help the game establish its own unique personality. Also, I found some of the level design to be quite inventive. There were cool ideas like oil pits that could be ignited by enemies' fiery projectiles; spring-filled sequences in which you could bounce high up into the air and collect the energy pellets that doubled as plant seeds; a rising and sinking ship that was being defended by Cannon Joes; and upside-down, undulating pools of water whose buoyancy-granting properties had to be used tactically.
Also, Mega Man 6 introduced the Energy Balancer, which automatically distributed weapon energy and thus helped to eliminate a lot of inventory-prompting. It made life a whole lot easier.
Otherwise, I thought that the wall-walking Power Piston was a standout castle boss and really fun to fight (the other bosses were sadly generic or overly derivative; I mean, another Hard Hat-controlled vehicle?). I thought it was a great touch that revisited Robot Master stages featured palette changes to reflect the day-to-night changes that occurred in the time between (though, admittedly, I didn't notice the changes until a few weeks later); it was a nice little nod to Mega Man X's stage-altering mechanic. And I was pleasantly surprised to learn (years later) that there was more depth to the Power Suit than I realized; you could also use it to do cool things like (a) maneuver blocks onto the Peat-dispensers' openings and thus prevent them from releasing Peats ("fake Beats," as I called them) and (b) and damage Mechazaurus by striking and reflecting his spiky platforms back at him!
And Mega Man 6 also had something else that I could never forget: one of the most harrowing platforming segments in series history!
In the middle portion of Skull Castle's first stage, there were two successive C-shaped rooms whose walls and ceilings were lined with spikes, and to clear these rooms, you had to execute tight wraparound jumps and do so by jetpack-thrusting at just the right time.
I considered these to be the two most challenging, most stressful jumps in the entire series. I feared these rooms so much that I'd always try to avoid them and instead take the shortcut that was located in one of the previous rooms (its entrance was deviously placed and hard to access, so I usually missed it). Theirs was the type of challenge that would unbalance me; I'd start thinking and worrying about them more and more as I got closer to them, and I'd be stressed out by the time I made it to them.
So yeah--Mega Man 6 had some interesting aspects.
I had plenty of problems with the direction that Capcom took with Mega Man 6, sure, but still I could give the company credit for the things it did well. I could be proud of Capcom for how it once again exhibited its mastery over the NES hardware and produced a game that would have been unimaginable to people who entered the NES scene in the mid-to-late-80s. Mega Man 6 was the culmination of the company's efforts. It had the richest, most highly detailed visuals ever seen in an NES game (and very limited slowdown) and yet another high-level, homerun 8-bit soundtrack. And there was fun to be had in marveling at them.
I did that a lot. I loved to stop and look at and examine the woodsy, mysterious-looking background in Plant Man's stage; the strikingly detailed, interestingly shaped mountain formations in Tomahawk Man's stage; and the strongly atmospheric medieval-style environments in Knight Man's stage (I was tickled by the fact that his stage's door-knocker ornaments were assets borrowed from DuckTales 2, which used those same door-knockers as hooks! I liked when companies created visual links between their separate series, even when, like here, it was obviously just cheap asset recycling). They stirred my imagination. In 1994, Capcom's NES visual design still had that power.
Also, the game's music was great. It was finely composed and did an excellent job of conveying mood and atmosphere and telling informative stories about the scenes and stages it accompanied. But like I said: My favorite track was the ending medley, which combined all of the stage tracks and did so with some cool-sounding, aurally pleasing transitions. I made sure to record this medley with my tape recorder and use it in my Costumed Celebrity Dance Shows, during which I'd have my He-Man figures--which I pretended were pro-wrestlers dressed up as lizards, knights, rock people, etc.--dance to all of the video-game music I'd recorded!
I had a lot of alone time.
As time went on, my opinion of Mega Man 6 changed significantly. I still felt that it was an overly formulaic game, yeah, but at the same time, I started to have a considerable amount of appreciation for what it did. I became more attached to it. This happened because I realized that it was offering something that I was now beginning to miss--something that was now lamentably gone forever: 8-bit Mega Man action. What we had with NES Mega Man was over, and we'd never again see the Blue Bomber in his iconic 8-bit form (well, at least not for another decade). And, well, I was really sad about that.
The fact was that the times were changing and so too was Mega Man.
Fortunately, though, the original Mega Man series survived generations-worth of change and is still going strong today. It's still providing us great action. But truthfully, I still long for an original-series game that contains the transitional scene I've been waiting to see since the day Mega Man X came into my life.
And in retrospect, I'm happy that Mega Man 6 wasn't the original series' swan song. I'm thankful that Capcom continued doing its best to keep the NES relevant at a time when all of the big publishers were abandoning it. It did the right thing. And I know that to be the case because these days, with my two decades' worth of acquired wisdom, I'm always looking at the NES Mega Man games and saying to myself, "You know what? I wish they'd made more of these."
Had my younger self known just how much he'd come to cherish the NES and 8-bit Mega Man and their respective legacies, he probably would have enthusiastically embraced Mega Man 6 and valued what it represented.
Mega Man 6 is my least-favorite of the six NES entries, yes, but still it's a good game. I still play a lot, and I'm certain that I'll be returning to it many times in the future. And no doubt it'll continue to provide me a satisfying amount of sustenance during my semi-frequent Mega Man binges.
And each time I play Mega Man 6, I'll be filled not with feelings of past angst but instead with regret that the it's a capper rather than a link in a longer chain. I'll hold it closer to my heart.
Really, I can't thank Capcom and Nintendo (which published Mega Man 6 in North America) enough for how they worked together to provide my beloved NES just a little bit of extra life. The ol' console deserved some love in its twilight years, and thanks to them, Mega Man was there to provide it the big hug it needed.
"To be continued?!" I said in anger. "I hate that you've done this to me!"
But twenty years later, I'm happy to say, Capcom, that I'm glad you did.
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