Perfect to blow through in 2 hours. Give me short bursts of gameplay these days, that’s what I’ve been looking for. You give me a list of short stages with a theme, I give you the heads of 8 robot masters.
Still feels like… how did they do this? How does each stage manage to feel so fully realized with unique enemies and setpieces? Why does every time you enter a stage you hear the new best song you’ve ever heard? How has it been almost 35 years?
The Wily side is always the weaker half of these games, but cut Wily 4 (with the moving platform mazes over spike pits and gimmick boss) and I think we’re golden on this one. Who doesn’t think the dragon chase is neat? The biggest hit of disappointment I took in the whole game was when the Wily 1 music started back up when I entered Wily 2. Incredible song, though!
Also I like that these Wily stages force you to get use out of your platforming items. I rarely swap to the sub weapons due to menu time tax, but I do get a kick out of using Item 1 and 2. Super satisfying to bypass whatever stage design I don’t feel like dealing with by floating right over it. My RetroAchievements made me chuckle when it poked fun at me for flying over the disappearing block furnace before Heat Man… who wouldn’t?
Flash Man’s stage still fills me with so much dread even though this time I one-shot it. Years of practice, I guess. Instant kills are probably not worth the frustration they cost, but the time lost in Mega Man is what, 45 seconds? It’s fine. Fun, fast stage. The underwater spike tunnel fall in Wily 3 killed me more this go around.
Crash Man’s music is still my favorite, and climbing his tower into space as the sky gets darker and darker is one of the coolest things on the NES.
The closest thing we have to this recently is Mibibli’s Quest from 2015, but that cranks the difficulty to 10000% and also is like 20 hours. It rules though. The best fan game I’ve ever played, MegaMan Unlimited, also has a sequel coming soon. Shovel Knight is great, too, but the scope of it is so much bigger it’s almost unrecognizable as a Mega Man 2 thing.
Mega Man 1 has not aged as gracefully, but I’ll probably jump into 3 soonish. Mega Man 2 is so perfect though, adding a slide may be the beginning of the end of that. Then the charge shot? Just let my boy run, jump, and shoot.
hippochippies 
Leave a comment