That shit was soooooooooooooooo much fun. The spritework, music, and goofy Saturday morning cartoon story really packs a nostalgic punch while showing you a peak you're likely looking for if you adore a more modern version of classics. Think something akin to Sonic Mania from the classics instead of Sonic Generations. With a few tweaks here and there, this feels like the peak of what Mega Man should aim to look like and make you feel in comparison to the classics. Truly a whole 'holy shit, two cakes!' scenario for me.

What started as just something silly to cheer myself up (which the questionable voice acting did in spades) ended up being what I would consider one of my favourite Classic Megaman games.

Loved the variety in the levels, the weapons being used to help with the platforming was cool and I wish it was expanded upon and it's the graphical detail of the PS1 does absolute wonders for the Classic's more cartoony artstyle.

Loved it

Welcome to the 32-Bit era for the blue Bomber! And while this game isn't talked about often among the fanbase, I think this game is a gem in the franchise. 8 is a refinement of everything Classic Mega Man was to this point, while trying to build ideas to try to move the jump n' shoot design forward, while also being a fun adventure with Rock.

Mega Man 8 really doesn't try to reinvent the wheel. 8 robot masters, 4 Wily's Castle stages, boss rush, bust Wily, save the day. So what makes Mega Man 8 so special compared to the other 12 times this formulas been done?

The answer is this feels like the most actualized vision for Mega Man's world yet, from characters, visuals, music, uh 'story' if you want to consider that. There's a passion behind Mega Man 8 wasn't quite felt in 7 or many of the later NES releases. Like this game looks as gorgeous as it does and it came it a little over a year after Mega Man 7, and it ended up looking this gorgeous.

This game's sprite work is some of the best on the console, and honestly aesthicly, this game is peak Mega Man. The enemies are vibrant, colorful and expressive, with some of my favorite enemy design in the franchise. The robot masters are unique and expressive, they animate very well while being packed with personality, aided by (very cheesy) voice acting. Seeing more of Mega Man's retro-futuristic world is just...really neat in a way I can’t express properly. The world of Mega Man really pops in this game.

I haven't even mentioned the music, composed by Shusaku Uchiyama. He composes of some of the most memorable music in the fn the Classic franchise in this game, and it helps sell the colorful, airy vibe this game has.


What about that gameplay? As I said earlier it’s a Mega Man game, you jump, shoot and slide and it feels good. Everything’s scaled better this game and platforming feels less clunky than 7 out the gate, which is great. Level design is on point, mostly what you expect from a Mega Man game. There’s a complaint to be made for some of stage gimmicks dragging for too long, such as the infamous Jet boarding sections or the SHUMP sections, but honestly most stages flow extremely well to the point where even the sub-bosses were fun for me. I even enjoyed the idea of adding a labyrinth, even if it is a bit clumsily handled.

Also, the game tries to add fresh ideas to both Mega Man and remixing a few old ones. For starters, in the intro stage Dr. Light gives Mega Man the special weapon the Mega Ball, which allows Mega Man to spawn and kick a ball that ricochets off of walls and objects, which is neat, but as a hidden gimmick Mega Man can jump off the ball to give him a pseudo-infinite jump so long as he has the weapon energy. And I love that kind of shit in games, it promotes skill expression and adds a bit of depth to the game. 8 in general seems to flirt with the Special Weapons more for level design. On top of all being pretty well designed and useful for the challenges MM8 asks of you, quite a few interact with Mega Man, the enemies and level design itself that really promote exploration and experimentation with the weapons. To reward this, The Bolts, which were random item drops in the GB games and 7, are now hidden collectibles, and now the shop gives Mega Man more permanent upgrades. It’s not anything groundbreaking in terms of a game play loop, but it was a nice, simple fresh take in the Classic formula besides just finding the Rush/Beat parts and beating the robot masters, while not just being the armor system from MMX.

Finally, I should mention the fact that this was the first game designed with It's the first game designed with Animated cutscenes and a story that is in the backdrop of the game and it adds absolutely nothing and is very pointless and predictable, and doesn’t really go anywhere. It's a basic plot where there's a dark energy that Dr Wily uses to power up his robot masters and also introduces Duo, A mysterious alien robot who strongly believes in justice. It it really doesn't do anything novel storytelling wise but it's still a big part of the charm of Mega Man 8, even with its comical voice acting.

I had no intention of talking about Mega Man 8 this long. And I still have a lot more I want to say, but I think it’s best to conclude with this game super cool to me, and I don't get to say that a lot about the classic series. I think it does a lot of things that are really interesting for classic Mega Man and it's a shame that classic series didn't get more love and attention like this, as I feel it was on the cusp of doing more for the classic formula. I very much recommend Mega Man 8 to Mega Man fans and platformer fans alike.

Aside from the obvious terrible "Jump Jump Slide Slide" trial and error sections (which make up about 4 minutes of game), and the way the game lies about saving mid Wily Castle, Mega Man 8 is the best looking, deepest and most exciting game in the series since 3.

It has its weaknesses, namely a floatier and less precise feel to the platforming comapred to the NES games, but it really doesn't affect the game much once you get used to it. The shmup bits are pretty fun and the level design feels way less annoying than 7, with a surprisingly well implemented mid stage checkpoint to make up for the somewhat longer stages to mitigate frustration.

The cutscenes look fantastic and the voice acting is wonderfully awful. It's melodramatic, its good vs evil, it's a Mega Man plot with a little bit more, like a decent ending for once. A massive step up from 7 and honestly rivals 3 for my second favorite Mega Man.

I am a little disappointed the PS2 version doesn't have the Saturn content, though. It does seem a little tacked on just looking at it, but I'd love to have a little more Mega Man with these aesthetics and controls.

You can call me Handsome Guy

So this is just classic Mega Man but with the controls of the X series and I’m all for it, great music and bosses, fun levels, awesome story and corny cutscenes I love it
Yes Jump Jump, Slide Slide is awful, it’s probably one of the worst designed Mega Man stages ever tbh but it’s doable, it’s like the disappearing blocks in Ice Man and Magnet Man’s stages, super cheap and annoying but everything else makes up for it
I’ll forever love this game for blessing us with Dr. Wahwee

This game is kind of the best so far of the Mega Man games, and it's not even a contest. The bosses from the robot masters to the wily castle ones are a really good, I love this game's presentation, it's art style with the sprite work, the cutscenes for as badly acted as they are, etc.

This game also just lets you shoot with the buster alongside any other weapon, and I'm like, slightly mad no other Mega Man game lets you do this to my knowledge. It makes even the more mediocre weapons still feel alright to use because you're not left rudderless. Stacked on top of the new upgrades you can give to the mega buster depending on what you get in the shop, it can make it pretty dangerous to use.

I don't know how the other games are gonna fully shake out, but this is a high point. This is some of the coolest things I think you can do with Mega Man, I love this game. Oh yea, and here's the boss rankings

8 - Astra Man
7 - Search Man
6 - Aqua Man
5 - Clown Man
4 - Frost Man
3 - Grenade Man
2 - Tengu Man
1 - Sword Man

I did not like this game very much.
Most of the stages were frustrating. Especially Frost Man's and Astro Man's stages. The Frost Man stage was one of the worst experiences I've ever had in any videogame and Astro Man's stage is a giant pain in the ass.
Another problem I have with this game is that Mega Man moves so damn slow.
And let's not forget the voice acting. It is laughably bad.
I did like the animations (for the most part) and the graphics. And the music was decent as well. The weapons were pretty alright too.
Still, that isn't nearly enough to save this trainwreck of a game.

This is easily the weirdest Mega Man game so far. There's a lot of aspects I like and don't like, but I think overall I like a lot of it more. For the bad, I think the voice overs kill a lot of intimidation I'd get from the Robot Masters and almost none of the voices fit the characters, If I saw Tengu Man without that goofy voice I'd actually be a little scared to fight him. Also this is a personal dislike but I don't really like the art style too much in this game. I think Mega Man 7 had a much cleaner style but was held back by how cramped the game felt and as a result there were moments where I couldn't predict what was coming. This game has much smaller sprites so the only sections that ever felt unfair since I couldn't see ahead well were in some of the gimmicky levels. However, the art style to me just doesn't really fit what I envisioned for Mega Man and it feels sort of jarring at times. I'll at least take the fact that it mostly feels fair to play over an uncanny art style though. The parts that felt a little unfair were when they brought back the gimmicks seen in one level for the Wily Castle, which were the board section in Frost Man's stage (JUMP JUMP SLIDE SLIDE) and the flight section in Air Man's stage (where you hover on Rush and the others can assist you with more projectiles). I think those were fine in those levels, but in the Wily Castle it felt a little cheap, mainly the former. Anyway, the onto the good. The levels in both visual design and level design are pretty well done here. A lot of levels have pretty fun gimmicks, like Clown Man's stage and Sword Man's stage. There's also things you can interact with using different weapons, like being able to swing off hooks with the Thunder Claw, which made levels more interesting. The shop system was much better here as well, I liked being able to upgrade my Mega Buster or other useful perks like using less energy for my special weapons. Difficulty felt pretty fair too, it did feel a lot easier than 7 (which is nice because 7 was exhausting), but it didn't feel too easy. The only real difficulty spike was in Wily Stage 1 due to how weird the board gimmick felt to control but otherwise the game felt pretty fair. Overall, I found this to be a much more enjoyable experience than the previous installment, but I do think there's some aspects of this game that don't let it live up to the heights of most of its predecessors.

It's safe to say that the Mega Man series is more iterative than innovatory across its installments, but this one still makes strives in fleshing out the formula.

The design from Mega Man 7 where you only have access to four robot masters carries over almost verbatim, the only improvement I see is that the shop's existence is made more obvious to the player. At face value, I'm mixed on this feature persisting as it takes away the player freedom that was at the core of the series. On the other hand, most people follow a rigid weakness order anyway and it provides better set up for the 'narrative', so it's really up to your discretion. Another carry over from 7 would be the bolt system that acts as currency to buy upgrades. However, instead of being random pickups, there are a finite number of them hidden across the levels. I think this is a fun enough change, as it provides enough incentive to explore and replay the levels. Some of those upgrades are pretty nifty too, the arrow shot especially, because it's pretty much like a spread shot from Contra.

The weapons are actually put to good use throughout the levels, which isn't something you can say all the time with this series. Sword Man's stage comes to mind with this point, as the first half is a series of challenges requiring the use of a specific weapon to clear. For example, the thunder claw, while mostly being used to swing from pegs, also acts as a tether to press hard to reach switches. Most weapons have this variety of application, even with the charge shot's effectiveness.

I also applaud the inclusion of additional movement options to flesh out level design, such as swimming. The stages with the shoot em' up sections are personal favorites, being vast improvements over the jetski segment in Mega Man 5 and the space levels in the game boy games. At first, something as innocuous as the Mega Ball seems silly, but when you learn that it can act like the Rush Coil even in middair, it opens up some the level design and allows you course correct mistakes. Well except when they expect you to make precision shots against the boss in Wily Stage 1, but it's not too bad. Finally, I know the boarding sections are divisive or outright hated by most, and I personally don't like the rampant trial and error at play, but they're fun when you get the hang of them, way better than the ones in Mega Man X5.

Now for the story, the more infamous aspect of this game. It's harmless, but you won't really be paying attention to it because of the presentation. The things that come out Dr. Light's mouth is the stuff of legends at this point, I can't watch any of the cutscenes without erupting into laughter whether its the awkward pacing, the almost infantile inflection, or the dragged-out length of character's screaming in agony. I loved it all.

For the music and graphics, those are top notch for the series and Playstation. It's crazy to see just how many frames of animation was included with each character, especially those Mets. The soundtrack is a bit a departure from the hard rocking tunes of the previous games, being far calmer on the whole with heavy use of brass and synth samples. My personal favorite tracks were Wily Stage 1 and 4, Aqua Man Stage, and Frost Man Stage.

Overall, this was a very fun game with varied level design and spectacular presentation, even with its strange quirks at times.