Mega Man 9 is often described as a game that started the retro boom in the industry. It's not the first game that decides to go for a retro look, but it was one that proved that such revivals can be successful.

When playing it, it's hard not to commend Inti Creates on how far they were willing to go with this game. It feels, looks, and sounds like an NES Mega Man title. In the context of 2009, it was a joy. Classic Mega Man was effectively dead, and Mega Man 7 and 8 weren't exactly the games people remembered that fondly.

Now, however, it starts to feel dated. Its incredible devotion to 8-bit aesthetics is a bit harder to appreciate amidst hundreds of similar titles that did the same, but, arguably, much better.

Mega Man 9 stands proud as a Mega Man game, having a fun roster of bosses and their stages and featuring some truly great music. However, it's hard to look at it and not see some of the missed potential.

This game feels like a mish-mash of ideas at times. Not in the worst way, but it certainly left me with plenty of questions about its features.

Mega Man 2 is undoubtedly the most popular game in the classic franchise, but I'm not sure you can find a single person who can blame later Mega Man NES adventures being bland on the quality of life features introduced in later games. Despite that, the game goes WAY back, removing the ability to not only charge your shot but also slide.

The removal of slide in particular hurts the game a lot. It was never a particularly great feature when used in level design, but it allowed for more maneuverability, and, what's more important, speed. Without it, Mega Man feels naked, as it was present in basically every platformer Mega Man game.

Lack of quality-of-life features also affects one of the best things Mega Man got in its 16-bit days: changing weapons without opening the menu. You're stuck with the Zelda 1-like inconvenience of opening the menu each time you want to switch the weapon, which is necessary quite often in the later stages.

The level design is amazing, and is more akin to later Mega Man titles, with each stage being completely unique. Aside from enemies, you get different platforms and mechanics which make every stage a blast. However, while music and level design are pretty damn great, the graphics aren't.

The game, unfortunately, mostly looks like early NES titles, again taking more inspiration from Mega Man 1 and 2 with its often barren backgrounds and lack of detail.

There is one part in Splash Woman's stage that is, for some reason a nearly 1:1 copy of a fairly long section from Wave Man's stage in Mega Man 5. Strange, but what's more questionable is that if you compare how the two look, this game from 2008 looks more dated than even Mega Man 3!

While not every screen has a one-tone background, it's present often enough that it becomes a little annoying.

The game feels stuck between knowing full well what it wants, but not quite being able to achieve it. Unfortunately, this also applies to gameplay.

Mega Man 9 is hard. It's a pretty good challenge which makes the game easier as you get more familiar with it, but when returning to this game after ~10 years, I couldn't shake the feeling that some of the difficulty was yet another retro throwback reference. "Nintendo-hard was a phrase, let's do that!" says Mega Man 9, and in addition to completely competent and great level design adds quite a few "gotcha" traps.

I'm pretty sure this game has more spike traps and pit-jumping enemies than any other Mega Man title. While those aren't new to the series, I feel like the enemies especially were a stupid addition that should've stayed in Mega Man 4. This isn't a quarter muncher, after all.

Overall, Mega Man 9 is weird. Its presentation and design make it one of the better in the classic series. It's not as janky as early titles and not as bad as some of the later ones. However, I also can't help but feel the missed potential oozing out of every corner of this game. Is it enjoyable? Yes. But it could be so much better!

Both Mega Man 10 and 11 build on its legacy, ironing out some of the imperfections while keeping good ideas, so I suppose in a way it was a necessary game.

And hey, I don't want to sound too negative. It's pretty fun, and it gave us Galaxy Man!

This was almost my favorite.

The graphics? Absolutely gorgeous. The NES-style without the shackles of the NES hardware made for some stunning visuals, and that chiptune? Perfect.

The powers too, all of em were fun to use in both combat and exploring. Like, they even made the shield powerup good. I never use the shield! But I did this time!

The robot masters and their levels were all very fun, when I was in that leg of the game, I had a great time. Like I said, almost my favorite. Sure, it was hard as shit, but it was fun.

But then, I dunno, it just kinda dropped off towards the end. Dunno what did it, but I just found myself liking it less and less. Odd.

Still better than 4 tho.

Favorite classic mega man game.

It's harder than the more recent classic games, but the difficulty balance is consistent and it's fun to learn. Getting rid of the slide is questionable at first, but the levels are built around not having it and the level design is top tier.

Best soundtrack since mega man 3 and this game has hands down the best robot master upgrades in the series. This game is super comfy and easy to pick up and is my most replayed classic mega man game along with 2 and 3.

I hate this game. The whole concept sucks to me. Instead of evolving the series in interesting ways, Mega Man 9 tries to replicate Mega Man 2 by removing features that made later games more fun, such as sliding and charging shots. The issue I take with this is that Mega Man 2 is not the perfect game everyone makes it out to be, but rather one that happens to be very good for it's time, which certainly isn't 2008. Although, considering the Legacy Collection's versions of Mega Man 1 through 6 include sprite flickering and slowdown (both caused by hardware limitation), being stuck in the past seems to be what Mega Man is all about nowadays. They actually went so far as to only have a few sound channels in this game, resulting in the music regularly getting interrupted by sound effects. This, too, is an artifact from the NES era. In addition, the game seems to be made by sadists for masochists who automatically find anything hard extremely fun. While the level design is generally pretty solid, it gets interrupted about every 2 minutes by some dumb trap the devs placed specifically to unexpectedly kill you. They are also way too comfortable with killing you for every single mistake you make. Wily Stage 2, an underwater hellhole full of spikes and multiple near pixel perfect jumps, exemplifies this quite well. Also, you can't save or visit the shop between Wily Stages, which, especially if you didn't know beforehand, makes going through them an absolute pain. In conclusion, this game is stuck in the past and bullshit hard to a degree that, to me, is only really acceptable in games without life systems. I never want to play it again ever.

Después de la joya infravalorada que fue megaman y bass, llego la novena entrega a arruinar todo. Pero bueno, vamos por partes.

Megaman tiene menos movilidad, sin la barrida, y de la nada ya no puede cargar sus disparos. Por fortuna, los niveles están diseñados en base a este tipo de juego, por lo que no hay mucho problema. Ah, que digo, eso no fue excusa para que le dieran esas caracteristicas a protoman .-.

Ya en serio, los niveles solo están... bien. Realmente no tienen mucho por destacar, y encima se involucran mecánicas algo frustrantes (como el nivel de hornet man o jewel man), lo que hace algo insufribles. Se nota que se intento volver al estilo clásico, pero las mecánicas de los niveles no cumplen dicha función.
En cuanto a los poderes, pues... honestamente, son muy situacionales, que solo los usarías para los mini-jefes, o cuando hayan partes en las que claramente se requiere el uso de estos. No digo que no te ayuden durante el juego, eso sería mentir, pero aquí se sienten mas situacionales que nunca (igualmente esto no es un caso aislado, hay otros juegos con este problema).
El apartado grafico, aunque es bueno, otra vez, es un retroceso comparado incluso a los juegos de la nes, esto debido al error de basarse en megaman 2, considerado el mayor ejemplar de la franquicia (obviamente esto no es cierto).

Pasando a los modos extras, por ahora solo he jugado el modo héroe (el dificil, pues) y lo digo de una vez, esta de asco. Si el juego ya se siente injusto de base, este modo es directamente insoportable. Ni me quiero imaginar como estará el modo superhéroe.
Y protoman... tiene barrida y buster cargado. Pero no puedes usar la tienda. Creo que con eso basta.

Para concluir, esta entrega no es mala. Tiene sus niveles decentes y malos, pero en general esta bien. No me dejo un sabor agridulce como el 8, pero de todos modos fue un gran paso hacia atrás.
¿Lo recomiendo? Si, pero necesitarás practica, lo digo en serio.


After the undervalued jewel that was megaman and bass, the ninth installment arrived to ruin everything. But hey, let's go in parts.

Megaman has less mobility, without the sweep, and out of nowhere he can no longer charge up his shots. Fortunately, the levels are designed around this type of game, so there isn't much of a problem. Ah, what am I saying, that was no excuse for them to give those characteristics to protoman .-.

Seriously though, the levels are just... okay. They really don't have much to highlight, and on top of that, somewhat frustrating mechanics are involved (such as the hornet man or jewel man level), which makes them somewhat unbearable. It is noticeable that an attempt was made to return to the classic style, but the mechanics of the levels do not fulfill that function.
As for the powers, well... honestly, they are very situational, that you would only use them for the mini-bosses, or when there are parts in which the use of these is clearly required. I'm not saying that they don't help you during the game, that would be lying, but here they feel more situational than ever (also this is not an isolated case, there are other games with this problem).
The graphics although they are good, again, it is a setback compared even to the games of the nes, this due to the mistake of being based on megaman 2, considered the greatest example of the franchise (obviously this is not true).

Moving on to the extra modes, for now I've only played the hero mode (the difficult one, well) and I'll say it once, it's disgusting. If the game already feels unfair at base, this mode is downright unbearable. I don't even want to imagine how the superhero mode will be.
And protoman... has sweep and loaded buster. But you can't use the store. I think that's enough.

To conclude, this installment is not bad. It has its decent and bad levels, but overall it's okay. It didn't leave me with a bittersweet taste like 8, but it was a big step backwards nonetheless.
I recommend it? Yeah, but you'll need practice, I'm serious.

Game has a bumpin' OST, but SHEEESH the devs went a little too hard on the whole "NES hard" aspect of the game, the game can be unnecessarily frustrating at a lot of times. I was having a solid time with the difficulty of the previous 8 games(wily capsule 7 excluded), so I think that this is exceptionally hard for a mega man game. The robot masters are a lot more memorable this time around though. It feels like they were trying to channel as much mega man 2 energy as they possibly could which like is okay in concept but they really should have been working towards the franchises future rather than being stuck in its past and also try to not make your game CBT levels of hard.

It's far past time that we all admitted it. Inti Creates has ALWAYS been better at Megaman than Capcom ever was.

The common sentiment that I've heard is that Megaman 9 is "the best one" and while I'm not quite willing to commit to such a claim, it's absolutely in the highest tier of Classic Megaman. The only things holding it back are things consciously done to assume parity with the old games. I would rather just not repeat what I consider to be mistakes, but it does complicate the criticism somewhat when everything I can complain about is clearly intentional.

I don't think we needed to get rid of the charged shot or the slide. I don't think that there needed to be (admittedly hilarious) player traps sprinkled throughout, and I don't think the game needed to be tuned Too Hard on purpose. There are some screens in Megaman 9's Wily stages that are more satanic than anything else in the whole franchise. They are things that an experienced player CAN respond to, but even if you know what you're doing, certain things just feel like too much to ask from a player who is trying to have any kind of good time. The shop is back, which is something I've never been terribly fond of, but it's very inobtrusive here. It's mostly just a way to pile up consumable E-tanks and lives.

Megaman 9 also has a somewhat surprising amount of content, with a bunch of challenges included, some of which are... rude to even SUGGEST to the player if I'm being honest. Suggesting that somebody beat the hardest Megaman game without ever once taking damage is either going to get you laughed out of the room or make you an enabler of someone's complete self-destruction.

Designed with a modern sensibility to the point that it feels like a romhack, which is why it's so painful to admit that it's good. It lacks a lot of the teaching moments and the general attitude of restraint that the NES games had: a lot of the gimmicks and stage hazards are introduced as though the player's already familiar with their original iterations and must be served a more demanding variation. What if the Iceman blocks had a more complex pattern? What if Quickman's beams were in a level where you move upwards? The game winks at its fannish audience with all the decorum of a Mario Maker level.

And yet I can't deny that these are some of the most memorable stages in the series, some of the best-paced and most varied. The subweapons, which in some of the later NES games began to feel exclusively useful for exploiting weaknesses, each fill a unique roll here, and the player's naturally encouraged to use all of them in stage traversal. The soundtrack's probably more consistent than any of the classic series games', even if it never quite rises to the height of their better tracks.

Also very pleased to see Inti Creates just backporting their original character into the classic series. I also think Harpuia is cool, guys.

Whoa! I've always enjoyed Classic Mega Man, but mostly as being a generally "solid" series with diminishing returns (I get, but don't feel, the hype for Mega Man 2). But this is legitimately great, plain and simple. Inti Creates really got the design principles that made the original games so strong, and they knew how to tease out a lot of the potential with this gameplay format. Robot Master weapon weaknesses finally make sense for reasons beyond theming - the properties of the weapons themselves and how they counteract boss patterns informs weaknesses, which is so smart. The Robot Masters have some fun designs here - of course I love Splash Woman, but I love Galaxy Man even more. Stages are uncompromisingly difficult, but not impossible to overcome, finally striking a good justification for using things besides the Mega Buster in moment-to-moment play (outside gimmicks like Quick Man's Stage in MM2). The story tugs at interesting plot points for the classic series, almost deconstructing the games with questions that don't hold easy answers (tried previously in MM7, to mixed results). Great great game overall, perhaps only hindered by how much of the rest of the series you have to play for this to feel just right.

Horrible experiencia.
Ha sido como si me pegaran una paliza en la que, en cada muerte, me saliera el mensaje de HAS MUERTO de Dark Souls, per, en lugar de poner eso, ponía algo así como "LOS JUEGOS DE ANTES ERAN DUROS EHHH???"
Viniendo de rejugar los clásicos megaman de NES, puedo decir que eran durillos, pero no a este nivel de COÑAZO. Había fases complicadas, y segmentos difíciles, pero en Megaman 9 hay un sinfín de bullshit por fase increíble. Un cachondeo de hazards instakill, enemigos colocados para putear y puntos de control muy alejados.