Yup, on the walls they go. I put the robot masters on the rafters in my mancave.
As for thoughts on each of the classic series games, here's mine, and Forte is free to chime in with his. These are just my thoughts.
1: MM1 is one of the most remarkable games on the NES. It forged such a difference from other NES games, even other Capcom games in controls, replayability and sheer variety. Sure it's hard, but that's par for the course for Capcom NES games. A great many games owe MM1 a debt of gratitude for all the things it pulled off in 1987.
2. MM2 is one of the best sequels to any game I can think of. It took everything that worked about the first title and then added more elements and improved everything. One of my
favorite games to this day. Easily one of the best Megaman titles ever made. When people ask why I love Megaman so much, I tell them to go play this game.
3. MM3 has some of the best chiptunes ever composed and some of the best weapons in the classic series such as the Search Snakes and Magnet Missiles. The slide was a welcome addition that made Megaman more agile and meant that every time you got it it was your own fault for not being careful enough. I also feel the same way about the dash and the wall jumping abilities in the X and Zero series. MM3 also has the Top Spin, one of the lamest and most broken weapons in the series. As much as I do enjoy 3, you can't help but notice how rushed and unfinished it is. No major cutscenes, no real explanation of Breakman or even Protoman for that matter, and how the game's debug tricks are left in place in the final build is just kind of embarrassing. I like the game, but I think Megaman 3 is a little overrated.
4. MM4 to me is the exact opposite of 3. I think it's actually underrated. The Charge Shot is what Megaman is best known for and looking back its hard to believe that there were three games before it where Megaman couldn't do use his signature ability. 4 features one of my favorite MM soundtracks of all with highlights being Pharaohman, Skullman and Cassock's Citadel. While not every element was explored as much as it could be (you can count the number of times when the hidden grapple ability is useful on one hand) I think 4 has a lot of charm and I wish Megaman fans would give it it's fare shake rather than dismissing it as the black sheep of the classic series.
5. MM5 comes very close to being my favorite classic series game. All the ideas from 4 are back and refined and the visuals are some of the best on the NES. I also think that Megaman 5 has the coolest set of robot masters. Napalmman looked SO cool to me when I was six. Although the game can be incredibly easy if you just charge shot your way through it, I think Megaman 5 has the perfect difficulty if you avoid using the Mega Buster and instead use the various robot master weapons exclusively.
6. MM6 seems like a very by-the-numbers game and doesn't really try too many new concepts other than the Power and Jet suits which were optional. If 6's stages were designed in a way that required the suits and put more focus on situations where you would have to switch between Megaman's three forms often I think I would enjoy 6 more. But even as it is, I enjoy the soundtrack a whole lot and play the Rockman Complete Works Arrangements quite often.
7. MM7 is quite honestly a bit disappointing - it feels like an early SNES game rather than a game that came out towards the end of the SNES's life. It might not be completely fair, but I think it's impossible not to compare it to Megaman X1 which seemed to do so much with the SNES hardware. Although yeah, Megaman 7 had parallax scrolling and some neat effects, the whole game could have been easily on the NES, and I wish it was. I always felt like Megaman belonged in 8-bit. I had a great deal of tracking down a copy of this game for the sake completion, but it's quite honestly my least favorite Megaman classic title. I'd rather play any of the other ones than this, and that includes Megaman 8, which I'll get into below. Also, FUCK the Wily Machine 7. UGH WORST BOSS.
8. I can't put my finger on it, but MM8 doesn't feel like a main series Megaman game. No matter how many times I go back to it I feel like I'm playing Megaman Gaiden or Super Happy Cartoon Land Starring Megaman or something like that. The art style change never really bothered me, but 8 feels slower and far more forgiving as it if was trying to be something that Megaman wasn't. For the most part I don't care much for the soundtrack as again, it doesn't fit the style of the older titles and many of the tracks could be put to any given platformer and you'd never guess that those were Megaman tracks. The cutscenes are endlessly amusing for how bad the voice acting is for the most part. The only voice actor with any degree to talent was Ruth Shiraishi, who was given the role of Megaman himself. Nothing against Ruth Shiraishi, but why in the hell did Capcom decide to hire a woman with a naturally high pitched voice to play both Megaman in MM8 and X in MMX4? Baffling! Amusingly though, Ruth Shiraishi is apparently now a Tokyo based real estate agent. If you look her up on youtube, you'll find many tour videos of Tokyo office spaces....narrated by Megaman.
8.5. Okay, Rockman & Forte isn't officially Megaman 8.5, but for all intends and purposes it is. I actually would have rather liked THIS game be called Megaman 8 and the one we got as Megaman 8 be called Megaman 15th Anniversary Special Edition or something like that. To me, this game got all the elements Megaman 8 missed - the speed of the gameplay, the difficulty of the levels and bosses, and the distinctive charm of Megaman music. It's a shame it never came out for the Super NES in North America as I think it would have been one of my most played SNES games during its hayday.
The ability to play the game in two incredibly different ways always appealed to me, and I thought Bass was badass and one of the best elements of Megaman 7. Since I played this game, I had always hoped to see more of Bass and be able to play as him in other Megaman games. I think of Bass/Forte very much like Knuckles from Sonic - an alternative that has many of the same abilities but also has many tricks of his own....but damn you Megaman 8 for most people pronouncing the name like the fish rather than "base".
9. Oh man was I excited about this game when it was first announced. Not only a new classic series game but a new classic series game for the NES......sort of. Again, I always felt that Megaman belongs in 8-bit and his MM7 and 8 years just kinda cemented the feeling. I guess because I had waited for such a long time, the high difficulty of Megaman 9 never really bothered me. What DID bother me was using the Wiimote on its side as if it were an NES controller. The problem is that it's NOT an NES controller, and forcing me to use it as if it were just led me to wish I could just simply use an actual NES controller to play MM9. That's when I discovered the Mayflash NES and SNES to Wii adapter that lets you use those controllers for Wii games including Megaman 9. It was this game that when I realized the Mayflash adapter had the DB9 NES socket instead of the standard NES 7 pin one, I modded it and wrote a tutorial, which made me some notoriety on gaming tech forms across the globe.
Anyway, back to Megaman 9, once I could use an NES controller with it I began to fall in love with it. To me, 9 feels like a carefully crafted sculpture that requires refinement and sophistication to appreciate. Therefore I wasn't at all surprised by all the negative reaction surrounding the game's difficult and how it turned many people off from the get-go. Like a lot of NES games, you only get good at 9 with a lot of practice and I don't think thats true of many modern games. Tornadoman and Plugman's stages remind me of the best elements of 2 and 5, such as Quickman's death lasers and Crystalman's falling crystal shards. Maybe I'm a fan of punishment but I feel games SHOULD be challenging so when you beat them you feel like you accomplished something rather than wasted your time playing a videogame when you could be doing something else.
10. Megaman 10 is the Megaman game I most often replay. The game is really quite remarkable for having so much to offer if you spend the few bucks extra it costs to unlock everything. Playing as 8-bit Bass was like a dream come true, although the sprite is ugly as sin. I liked the story this time around and found it actually legitimately surprising Wily was behind everything (rare for a Megaman game!). That final wily stage had me grinning like mad. It's like Capcom knew exactly what I wanted to see and they put on the show of a lifetime. The time attack extra stages from the GameBoy Killer Robots were just the icing on the cake. Although it'll never happen, playing both 9 and 10 on the Wii makes me wish there could be actual NES cartridge ports of both games. Someone needs to get on that. Seriously.
I suppose I should reply to this to get things back on track:
1. Mega Man (NES) - the one that started it all. Kept score, no passwords, hard as balls unless you use the Select button cheat, but still good fun. Capcom struck gold on their first try, but they found a way to makes things better...
2. Mega Man 2 (NES) - ah, the one everyone calls the true start of the franchise. 8 Wily Numbers, passwords, E-Tanks, Items 1-3. Definitely the best VIDEO GAME sequel of all time (The Empire Strikes Back takes it as far as sequels in general). Awesome music, powerful weapons (some say too powerful), and what's this? Dr Wily is an alien? That was just awesome to see as a kid, and the ending was a great payoff. But for some reason, I always find myself going back more to...
3. Mega Man 3 (NES) - to me, this is the perfect Mega Man game. Introduces the slide, Rush the dog (and the best form of Rush Jet ever), a better balance of weapons (no overkill like Mega Man 2), "Breakman" showing up every so often to "antagonize" you, Doc Robot stages (so you can refight MM2 bosses with MM3 weapons), and a Wily fortress that brings back nostalgic elements and adds a unique twist to them (Yellow Devil Mark II, Mega Man Clone Triplets). Plus, the story actually pays off (if you read the Manual, otherwise you don't get much of it) when you get to fight Gamma at the end. As far as the games go, I think this one is underrated with as much of a game as you get compared to the first two. But they don't get more underrated than...
4. Mega Man 4 (NES) - this is where people start to complain. "Oh, the Mega Buster makes the game too easy. The music is bad. There's two fortresses now. Wah wah wah." This game has some of my favorite music ever (especially Dr. Cossack Stage 1 & 2) and the Boss Battle music (just wish they had the boss meter filling up take less time). I agree with satoshi_matrix, this one is overlooked way too much and is one of my favorite of the classic series, I wish more people would give it a chance. I mean come on, this game gave us the true start of the Wily Capsule!
5. Mega Man 5 (NES) - this is where they started to lose me. Some of this game was good (the Super Arrow was a fun toy, Gravityman and Starman had fun stages), but the Mega Buster starts overtaking the game here. Rush was neutered quite literally; I find Rush Jet and Rush Coil in this game to be close to worthless. The music doesn't really stand out, the bosses don't really stand out (Gyroman? Really?), and the whole "Is Protoman a bad guy?" thing just about ruined the franchise (to the point the Mega Man cartoon actually made him a villain). The whole point to Mega Man 1-4 was to show he was absent, showed up in MM3 to test you, and finally proves his disloyalty to Dr. Wily in MM4 (Wily specifically says, "You betrayed me, Protoman!" in the game). Now all of a sudden he's a master villain? Nope, it was Wily with a Dark Man clone. What a shock. The fortress levels were boring (though "Protoman"'s stage has an interesting concept to it I wish was used more), and Wily was easily dispatched by Beat.
6. Mega Man 6 (NES) - and this is where they won me back. I don't know why this game gets so much hate. Yes, it was barely released only because of Nintendo, and yes it was when SNES was taking over the market, but look at what you get. New Rush Adapters, the Energy Balancer (it's about time), multiple stage paths, fake Bosses (if you want to unlock Beat), a solid soundtrack (especially the final Wily battle. It just felt like you were finally going to capture him). And then, the "To Be Continued..." at the end to let you know this game wouldn't die with the NES. Simply wonderful.
7. Mega Man 7 (SNES) - Mega Man 6 almost wasn't released because of this game (and Mega Man X) just as Star Fox fans lost out on Star Fox 2 for Star Fox 64 (which I'm still pissed about, it was FINISHED for crying out loud). Anyway, this game added some fun new elements (Rush Search, Rush Super Adapter, and of course my favorite character ever, Bass [Forte]), and brought back a nice touch (carrying over Mega Man 6's credits music as the intro music just like Mega Man 2 and 1 did) but there's just something off about it. They listened to the complaints about the Mega Buster apparently and toned it down to dish out only 2 damage to bosses, but the game just feels a little flat. With as awesome as Mega Man X was, Capcom showed they could do a Mega Man game on the SNES. This one just doesn't live up to the potential. Although, unlike satoshi_matrix, I love the final boss, and especially the payoff (and Mega Man looking badass while that awesome music plays as Wily's castle burns).
8. Mega Man 8 (PS1, Saturn) - Oh this game. I'll give you two answers depending on which version I'm playing. If I'm playing Rockman 8 on Saturn, then it is an enjoyable game with some good and bad points (good: the Bolt system, the weapon interaction with the environment making them important, especially in the latter 4 stages, Anime cut scenes; bad: no E-Tanks, Rush (in general), JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE). If I'm playing Mega Man 8 on any system, I hate it. The bad voice acting is THAT DISTRACTING. I specifically bought a Sega Saturn, Pro Action Replay, and imported Rockmna 8 just so I could stand to play this game. The transition to 32 bit was not good for the Blue Bomber.
9. Mega Man & Bass (SFC, GBA) - Again, depending on which version depends on which answer I give. This game is basically unplayable on the GBA. Moving on, I found the SFC version to be ok. Really, this felt like Capcom showing they could have done Mega Man 8 on the SNES but didn't (when maybe they should have, since this is a better game, although harder). Plus it gave us playable Bass! And he kicks ass. This game is really hard with Mega Man (feel like the beta testers only played with Bass considering what Mega Man has to do to advance in some parts of the King stages), but quite enjoyable with Bass. Again, no E-Tanks, which really hurts in Wily's stage which is just a gauntlet of Boss fights and one of the hardest Wily battles (I hate this one more than Mega Man 7's). I don't go back to this one much, but it does have it's charm. It seemed the franchise would die here, though, but some years later...
10. Mega Man 9 (PS3, Wii, XBox 360) - Since apparently Capcom didn't want to bother trying to make a 128 bit Mega Man game for PS2, they brought the franchise back in the form of downloadable media on the 7th Generation consoles. But, they half-assed it. A lot of the game seems to be just a rehash of Mega Man 2, right down to the overpowered weapons and music. The backgrounds are uninspired, the stages are both easy and insanely difficult (you'll be strolling along and then bam, giant jump of spiky doom or something). It feels like nostalgia for the sake of nostalgia. They turned Mega Man back into his Mega Man 1-2 form (for no reason) with no way to unlock a Mega Man C or Mega Man S (as he's called in MM Powered Up), expecting you to buy DLC for Protoman if you want to charge and slide. But guess what? He gets dealt double damage and his shield functions as it did in MM3 instead of as it did in MM7 (which really, it didn't work at all in MM3, it just showed up as he jumped), so he isn't really worth playing as anyhow (unless you want to do a no damage run). And where the hell is Bass? The one bright spot: Wily Machine 9 music is badass! I don't go back to this one much. Now, as to it's successor...
11. Mega Man 10 (PS3, Wii, XBox 360) - Now this is more like it. 3 playable characters (though having to pay for the best one) with 3 unique styles (akin to the later Mega Man X games, except Protoman is X and Mega Man is well, Mega Man), more balanced weapons, more detail to stages and backgrounds, and lord, what a soundtrack. Especially once you get to Wily's castle. That music when you first start, it's pouring rain and so miserable, then you get inside and BAM, hardcore). Plus the whole Weapons archive thing is just perfect (as a kid, I used to imagine Mega Man 9 having 1 Wily Number from each game as a halfway boss in the main Wily Number's stages, which they basically did here all crammed into 1 stage). I love the gag for the last Wily stage, climbing the tower forever, then once you get there, everything is upside down! This one felt like they really tried, and it shows. I replay this one the most just because of all the options and features, followed by Mega Man 3, 2, and 4 in that order. Truly belongs with the classic NES games.
As far as Capcom's plans for after 10, I imagine at some point they'll announce a Mega Man 11, and it'll be like 9 and 10. I doubt they ever bring the main series into the modern graphical style. That, or they'll reboot it. Whatever, as long as I get me some more games DAMN IT.
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