Mega Man (video game)

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This page is about the Nintendo Entertainment System game. For the Game Boy version, see Mega Man in Dr. Wily's Revenge. For the Sega Game Gear game, see Mega Man (Game Gear).

Later, it would be added to the Japanese collection game, Rockman Complete Works in 1999 for the Sony PlayStation. In 2004, it was re-released in the anthology game, Mega Man Anniversary Collection for the GameCube, Xbox and PlayStation 2. There is also a remake called (Rockman Rockman in Japan) for the Playstation Portable. It features full 3-D graphics and extra stages were added, making the Robot Master count 8 instead of the original 6. It also features a stage level editor. However, the most interesting feature of the remake is the super deformed style of Mega Man and other characters. (Keiji Inafune stated in an interview that he originally planned to make Mega Man look this way, but couldn't, due to the hardware restraints of the NES)

Mega Man is also the name of a separate PC game released in 1990 by Hi-Tech Expressions and licensed by Capcom. This game uses the Mega Man character and some of the sprites, but otherwise, has original stage designs and bosses.

It is worth noting that the picture on the game's American box contains virtually nothing that can be found in the game. Mega Man himself resembles a mid-aged man rather than a boy, and he is holding a handgun instead of his Mega Buster. The game's cover is commonly ridiculed because of its inaccuracy; Gamespy placed it in first place of its Top Ten Worst Covers list.

Characters

• Mega Man — Tool assistant created and modified by Dr. Light to combat Wily
• Dr. Albert W. Wily — The antagonist of the game, his goal is world domination. He appears as the final boss in a hovering ship (at first a tank-like machine in the remake).
• Dr. Thomas Light — Creator of Mega Man, aids Mega Man on his adventure to stop Dr. Wily.
• Roll — Mega Man's sister, she makes her debut in this game, though in the NES version her name is not mentioned. She is only seen at the ending of the credits in the NES version, but she can be downloaded in the PSP remake as a playable character.
• Robot Masters - The various industrial robots built by Dr. Light, reprogrammed by Dr. Wily to do his bidding. They become playable characters in the PSP remake. There were six in the original game, but there are eight in the remake.
• Proto Man - Although he does not actually appear until Mega Man 3, he has an important role in this game's backstory, and the PSP remake features him as a playable character.

Story

With the success of the project, he then builds six more of the Robot Masters to be used for industrial purposes: Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man (and additionally Time Man and Oil Man in Powered Up). The project is a great success, and for his work on it, Dr. Light is awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. However, Dr. Light's old colleague and rival, Dr. Albert W. Wily, is not acknowledged for any of his past work - and he grows bitter.

Around this time, Dr. Wily had discovered a prototype robot Dr. Light made before Rock and Roll. This robot, named Proto Man, is in danger of having his energy generator going critical. Wily gave him a nuclear energy supply to extend his life, and learned much about creating robots from studying his design. He also likely learned the means to reprogram Dr. Light's robots from this. [link]

Wily sneaks into the lab one night and reprograms the robots, but he fails to reprogram Rock and Roll, who still operate on an earlier system, then escapes. When Light finds out that Wily has escaped with the Robot Masters it is too late, and Wily has already sent his new robotic army out to conquer the city.

Rock, having a strong sense of justice, volunteers to be converted into a fighting robot to stop Dr. Wily and his minions and restore peace to the city.

Gameplay

Stages

Screenshot of Cut Man's stage in Mega Man

The stages in Mega Man are in the "platformer" genre. In each stage, Mega Man faces many enemies and obstacles. The enemies vary in size and behavior, and are defeated by one or more shots, either from Mega Man's plasma cannon or from one of the weapons he gains defeating a Robot Master.

Obstacles involve jumping from one platform to another. Platforms often move, or become insubstantial periodically, so that complex timing is often required.

#	Boss	Weapon	Weakness
3	Cut Man	Rolling Cutter	Super Arm
4	Guts Man	Super Arm	Hyper Bomb
5	Ice Man	Ice Slasher	Thunder Beam
6	Bomb Man	Hyper Bomb	Fire Storm
7	Fire Man	Fire Storm	Ice Slasher
8	Elec Man	Thunder Beam	Rolling Cutter

Fortress bosses

Boss	Weakness
Yellow Devil (AKA Rock Monster in old American material)	Thunder Beam
Copy Robot (takes form of Mega Man)	Fire Storm, Thunder Beam, Hyper Bomb
CWU-01P	Super Arm
Wily Machine Number 1 (Phase I)	Fire Storm
Wily Machine Number 1 (Phase II)	Rolling Cutter

Note that with the "NES Pause Trick", a weapon like Thunder Beam can also work as a bigger weakness against bosses like the Wily Machine, Yellow Devil, etc.

Comparison to series

Items from Mega Man

The same items from Mega Man 2 - 6

Points

Mega Man was the only NES Mega Man title to feature a score counter. High point scores were a very common gaming convention during the mid to late 1980s, especially in arcade games, which is probably why they were included in Mega Man. However, other than the satisfaction of achieving a high score, the player got no extra incentive to collect points, nor did it affect gameplay in any significant way. While this was also true for some other games of that era, high scores were usually a more integral feature in games, especially in the arcade. The score counter was removed from future Mega Man games because it was unnecessary, and because there were a few issues with the counter that made it easier to remove than to fix. Specifically, the points that were awarded to a player for clearing a level were reduced to zero if that player ran out of lives, and since the game was very difficult, most players would be starting over from scratch more than once. There was also no high score sheet, which meant that you had to keep track of your own high score.

Yashichi

In the NES titles, the yashichi is exclusive to Mega Man, and appears only once in the entire game. It appears as a spikey sprite and refills all weapons and energy, acting like a Super Tank. The Yashichi also awards the player 100,000 points bonus. It is found in the very last level of the game, next to an extra life icon. The player must maneuver Mega Man across two rather challenging jumps to get it, and while certainly obtainable, is not very easy to get to.

The only other times it has made an appearance in a Mega Man game is Mega Man 8 and Mega Man Battle & Chase. The former has the Rush Teleporter, which like Eddie in previous titles appears and gives the player a random power item. In Mega Man Battle & Chase, it appears as a boosting item.

Death by spike

Starting with Mega Man 2 and continuing throughout the series, if Mega Man is hit by an enemy he becomes temporarily invincible for a few seconds. If he falls on a spike during this brief time, which is instantaneous death in all the Classic games, he does not die. However, in the NES version of Mega Man 1 that is not the case. While the temporary invincibility is in the game, if Mega Man falls on a spike during that time he still dies, contributing greatly to the overall difficulty of Mega Man 1.

Difficulty

Mega Man is considered, by most fans, to be the most difficult NES game of the Mega Man franchise. There are several factors contributing to this. One is it lacks any sort of back-up (the game did not have passwords nor battery or memory saving), so the player had to restart the game every time he or she wanted to play. Also, several of the levels are difficult to most players, especially Guts Man's level, where platforms running on rails have drop rails, holes in the rails that cause the platforms to fall. It takes skill and precision to get past these platforms.

Another major contributing factor to MM1's difficulty is lack of Energy Tanks, which, starting with Mega Man 2, are contained in every subsequent installment in the Classic series; these allow Mega Man to refill his energy at any time. How this affects gameplay readily becomes apparent in the very last stage of the game, where the player must fight no less than four Robot Masters with absolutely no energy pellets to power back up.

Also, for the six NES games, MM1 is the only one that makes the player fight enemies after reaching the Robot Master's lair. In the other five installments, once Mega Man reaches the Robot Master's room, Mega Man goes into a short passageway into the next room to fight that particular level's boss. There are no enemies in these passageways, and are only one screen long. However, in MM1, the corridors are longer than one screen and there are enemies to contend with when bartering passage to the Robot Masters. These corridors might have been leftovers during development, during which Capcom originally was going to release the game on the Famicom Disk System. The corridors would have been used as "loading tunnels", allowing the disk to be accessed and load up the boss fight without any major pauses in the action. In the end, Capcom switched to cartridges instead, but the tunnels stayed anyway.

Mega Man 1 is also the only NES Mega Man game that makes the player climb up or down once he or she reaches the inner chamber. In Elec Man's stage, the player must climb up a ladder to reach his lair; in Bomb Man's stage, the player climbs down a ladder to reach his lair.

The end of every NES Mega Man game, the player must fight the game's Robot Masters a second time before going to the final showdown with Dr. Wily. MM1 is the only game that spreads these fights across two separate levels (Mega Man must fight Cut Man and Elec Man on Wily Stage 2, and then has to fight Bomb Man, Fire Man, Ice Man, and Guts Man on Wily Stage 4). MM1 is also the only game besides Mega Man & Bass that does not allow the player to select the order in which to fight the Robot Masters a second time. In Mega Man 2 through 6, after defeating each Robot Master the second time, a large energy pellet appears. In Mega Man 1, these do not appear, making the last stage considerably difficult.

Glitches

Mega Man contains one of the series' most famous glitches, which is known as the "Pause Trick". This trick arises because it is the only game in the series with two pause methods. When the player presses the start button, the gameplay pauses and shows the menu. When the select button is pressed, the game pauses and silences. Players tend to take advantage of the full pause when using the Thunder Beam weapon when close to hitting the boss. If done right, the pause will make the shot do multiple hits on impact. This method works well on the Yellow Devil and the two forms of the Wily Machine. Using this method, the Yellow Devil and the second incarnation of the Wily Machine can be dispatched with a single shot. To an extent, even Ice Man and the Mega Man Clone can be defeated this way, too. Without this trick, both the Yellow Devil and the two battles against Dr. Wily are extremely hard (to many players next to impossible, due to their difficulty and lack of Energy Tanks). This is seen in the eyes of some gamers as a cheat trick. Such glitches are also extensively used in the tool-assisted speedrun of this game.

Dr. Wily's castle (or lack thereof)

Starting with Mega Man 2, the player is shown a visual representation of Dr. Wily's castle (or, in Mega Man 4, 5, and 6; Dr. Cossack's castle, Proto Man's castle, and Mr. X's castle, with Dr Wily's castle following each). Each stage is a dot on the map, and when Mega Man beats one stage and goes to the next, this progress is shown on the map. Mega Man 1, however, does not have this feature. In the PSP remake, Mega Man: Powered Up, it can be seen as the player loads one of four final levels, and is named "Castle Wily". Mega Man 1 is also the only game where the player selects Dr. Wily's stage and he appears like the Robot Master with the clear points listed next to him. After clearing the levels for Mega Man 2 and 3, Wily's castle automatically begins. In MM 4, 5, and 6, Dr. Wily is not credited as the main nefarious mad scientist running amok in that particular time, and so Dr. Cossack, Proto Man and Mr. X appear in the center square (although he was still the main villain in each one. He was using Dr. Cossack, framed Proto Man with Blastman, and was disguised as Mr. X). Dr. Wily is listed in the center square in Mega Man 2, but after clearing the levels his level automatically starts. In Mega Man 3, Mega Man's head appears in the center square and his eyes divert in the direction of the level selected. In Mega Man 4, Dr. Cossack's logo replaces Mega Man's head. In Mega Man 5 and 6, Mega Man's head returns, although his eyes no longer look at the selections.

Trivia

• Creator Keiji Inafune stated in a G4 interview that the concept of the game was inspired by Rock, Paper, Scissors; every weapon and Robot Master has a strength and a weakness.
• This game has been remade or ported more than any other game in the Mega Man series. All in all, there have been five versions of this game: the original, the Wily Wars remake, the Complete Works port, the Anniversary Collection re-release, and the Powered Up remake.
• The US cover art would go on to be improved over the years right until Mega Man 8 ,where it was the first Mega Man game to use a Japanese drawing of Mega Man. The US cover art of Mega Man had him look like a police officer and the background is what appears to be a futuristic Rio Grande Valley being destroyed, maybe Weslaco.
• Due to Nintendo of America's strict rules concerning religious references at the time, the Yellow Devil boss was instead named "Rock Monster".
• A tool-assisted speedrun has been made of this game, in which the entire game is finished in only 0:16:10 (16 minutes and 10 seconds). See Mega Man (tool-assisted speedrun) for more information.

Notes