Mega Man 9 brings the series back to its old school roots with retro gameplay, music and classic 8-bit style graphics! Mega Man fans, your wait is over! The classic Blue Bomber that debuted in 1987 is back with the ninth installment in the classic series. It's a new adventure for Mega Man all done in an 8-bit style -- graphics, music, and gameplay are all like you remember them!
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literal peak megaman if you disagree you already drank the koolaid bro... wonderful level design (tornado man's platforms, the birds in concrete man's stage are megaman screen scrolling chaos incarnate and plug man's arduous disappearing block section all come to mind) a point of contention i see is megaman not having a slide or a charge, to that i say play proto man and quit crying. a slick gaming challenge and what migfht be the best game in the classic series (cant decide between this 8 or 10) just because a game is unfair or challenging does not make it bad
Terrible. By far the worst classic Mega Man game and a strong contender for the worst game in any Mega Man series. The design choices in this game are profoundly stupid. All of them. The removal of charge and slide, the outrageously slow menus with the same texts being repeated endlessly, the overuse of spikes and jumps that require perfection, among other things.
When it comes to retro games, it's true that they're often associated with high difficulty, but also with well-crafted level design and overall good progression. This game lacks an interesting one. Instead it is repetitive, and excessively frustrating level design. It also amplifies the worst flaws of these retro games like terrible navigation menus. In some cases, it goes beyond that, EXACERBATING these issues. Mega Man 2, for example, was nowhere near as clunky as 9 is.
I'd probably give it an even worse score, but visually, the game has a charm and a few stages are decent. It's a game from 1986 stuck in 2008. But not from a competent developer like Capcom, but rather on the level of bad stuff like LJN games.
When it comes to retro games, it's true that they're often associated with high difficulty, but also with well-crafted level design and overall good progression. This game lacks an interesting one. Instead it is repetitive, and excessively frustrating level design. It also amplifies the worst flaws of these retro games like terrible navigation menus. In some cases, it goes beyond that, EXACERBATING these issues. Mega Man 2, for example, was nowhere near as clunky as 9 is.
I'd probably give it an even worse score, but visually, the game has a charm and a few stages are decent. It's a game from 1986 stuck in 2008. But not from a competent developer like Capcom, but rather on the level of bad stuff like LJN games.
I'll be honest, I replayed this because I did want to see if my old verdict on the game held up. As a reminder, I really didn't respect that the game got rid of the slide and charge shot, and I did not like the level design like at all. I thought it was cheap and frustrating, but doable with Mega Man at least. All of which sucked because I really liked a lot of other things about the game. I liked the robot masters as characters especially, I liked their weapons, I liked the wily bosses, I loved the music, I especially really liked the story, or at least the nugget of lore about robot expiry dates that I think they should've done more because it was compelllllling.
Coming back to it now, not in the midst of a megaman marathon that burned me out of playing games for a week after failing to get past Megaman X5's second level, I like it a lot more.
I don't think it's what I would call that outstanding for a Mega Man title, but the level design certainly wasn't as frustrating as I remembered. It still can be, I really did not like Hornet Man's, Plug Man's, and especially Jewel Man's stages, and some of the WIly Stages (mainly stage 2), but you know what, it is whatever. Weapons still are really fun, was a lot smarter idea starting with Hornet Man though so I got the Hornet Chaser and could just deal with annoyances from a far. It was a lot cleaner of a playthrough.
I'm still not jazzed about the lack of charge shot and slide, those I think make the level design like more interesting or potentially at least, but I do think this game completely doable without it, it can just be kind of tough.
Alright game now, I will go back to MM10 when I feel like dealing with it, but I don't know if I'll think much better of that one.
Coming back to it now, not in the midst of a megaman marathon that burned me out of playing games for a week after failing to get past Megaman X5's second level, I like it a lot more.
I don't think it's what I would call that outstanding for a Mega Man title, but the level design certainly wasn't as frustrating as I remembered. It still can be, I really did not like Hornet Man's, Plug Man's, and especially Jewel Man's stages, and some of the WIly Stages (mainly stage 2), but you know what, it is whatever. Weapons still are really fun, was a lot smarter idea starting with Hornet Man though so I got the Hornet Chaser and could just deal with annoyances from a far. It was a lot cleaner of a playthrough.
I'm still not jazzed about the lack of charge shot and slide, those I think make the level design like more interesting or potentially at least, but I do think this game completely doable without it, it can just be kind of tough.
Alright game now, I will go back to MM10 when I feel like dealing with it, but I don't know if I'll think much better of that one.
God that cover art reminds me of how hilarious they thought Bad Boxart Mega Man was as a joke, yeesh.
Aside from that, this one kicks a lot of ass! All the stages are fun and have a lot of satisfying movement, even if they took the slide out. One of the strongest lineup of Robot Masters, and the Wily Stages are actually just as much of a blast as the normal levels!
Aside from that, this one kicks a lot of ass! All the stages are fun and have a lot of satisfying movement, even if they took the slide out. One of the strongest lineup of Robot Masters, and the Wily Stages are actually just as much of a blast as the normal levels!
Every time I have a hankering to play some mega man, and i think "i haven't played mega man 9 in a while, maybe i should give that one another try", i spend two hours trying to beat one of the robot masters or dealing with the unbalanced stage design and pretty soon i'm remembering why i haven't played mega man 9 in a while.
The megaman series had six games on the NES, for eight years the franchise operated within NES limitations, and it changed very little about each new game. Finally with Mega man 7 the series actually changed the gameplay up slightly, and then megaman 8 and mm&b made even wider changes. but when the series finally came back after a decade with megaman 9, the only progressions that it offered was to remove all of the progressions that the past seven games had already made. i will hold this opinion to the grave that megaman 2 did not need to have a spiritual successor, and megaman 9 didn't even understand what megaman 2 did right anyways - half the robot masters here are clones but yet they still failed to clone a weakness order that actually makes sense.
we also need to talk about splash woman. before this point, every robot master ended in "man", which to be clear implied "human", not emphasizing anything about the characters being masculine- most of them lacked gender characteristics completely, which makes sense because they're fuckin robots. Does top man scream 'masculinity' to you? maybe that's a bad example (top man is the pinnacle of masculinity) but after splash woman came out, retroactively they all became male. now we know for a fact that ice man has a penis, shade man has a penis, needle man has a needle shaped penis, ground man has a drill shaped penis, which actually we knew already because that one was visible in-game but the point is that i wouldn't be thinking about this before splash woman existed. now i'm not saying it's reasonable to make a mermaid robot master male, but to be fair spongebob has already proven mermaid man to be a successful character
apparently the old megaman games had gotten a reputation for being 'difficult' at some point between the 90s and 2008, which to me doesn't make much sense because that's kind of just how all NES games were. but megaman 9 tries to live up to it by being needlessly difficult; in fact, far more so than the actual originals were, and in far less forgiving ways. only about half the deaths here truly feel deserved - especially in the boss battles, which are extremely unbalanced, especially in mega buster runs.
fortunately the music bangs enough that it completely makes up for it. nobody tell NicoEvaluates that I didn't rate it 5 stars though.
The megaman series had six games on the NES, for eight years the franchise operated within NES limitations, and it changed very little about each new game. Finally with Mega man 7 the series actually changed the gameplay up slightly, and then megaman 8 and mm&b made even wider changes. but when the series finally came back after a decade with megaman 9, the only progressions that it offered was to remove all of the progressions that the past seven games had already made. i will hold this opinion to the grave that megaman 2 did not need to have a spiritual successor, and megaman 9 didn't even understand what megaman 2 did right anyways - half the robot masters here are clones but yet they still failed to clone a weakness order that actually makes sense.
we also need to talk about splash woman. before this point, every robot master ended in "man", which to be clear implied "human", not emphasizing anything about the characters being masculine- most of them lacked gender characteristics completely, which makes sense because they're fuckin robots. Does top man scream 'masculinity' to you? maybe that's a bad example (top man is the pinnacle of masculinity) but after splash woman came out, retroactively they all became male. now we know for a fact that ice man has a penis, shade man has a penis, needle man has a needle shaped penis, ground man has a drill shaped penis, which actually we knew already because that one was visible in-game but the point is that i wouldn't be thinking about this before splash woman existed. now i'm not saying it's reasonable to make a mermaid robot master male, but to be fair spongebob has already proven mermaid man to be a successful character
apparently the old megaman games had gotten a reputation for being 'difficult' at some point between the 90s and 2008, which to me doesn't make much sense because that's kind of just how all NES games were. but megaman 9 tries to live up to it by being needlessly difficult; in fact, far more so than the actual originals were, and in far less forgiving ways. only about half the deaths here truly feel deserved - especially in the boss battles, which are extremely unbalanced, especially in mega buster runs.
fortunately the music bangs enough that it completely makes up for it. nobody tell NicoEvaluates that I didn't rate it 5 stars though.
You can’t go more than 2 rooms in this game without a set of instakill spikes lying around