This one is fucking grimy. I just replayed Mega Man for the first time in over ten years this month, and one thing you forget so easily when you haven't played the original in a long time is how "off" everything feels. Sure, I remembered the sprite flicker, and the glitchy screen transitions, and the mean level design. I remembered a lot of things about how this particular Mega Man was the worst of the NES entries. But what I didn't remember is just how bad movement feels in this one. Mega Man slides like he's on ice skates in every stage that isn't Ice Man's, and in Ice Man's stage you may as well not bother walking on the ground at all. Just making it up a series of alternating platforms or attempting to avoid an enemy moving up and down is enough of a hurdle, god help you when they start having you platform over pits and spikes.

Unlike its sequels, Mega Man's enemies' damage values are all over the place, their attack patterns often inscrutable and more easily solved by brute forcing through a particularly difficult encounter than by careful application of running, jumping, and shooting. Its distribution of health and weapon energy is sparse and oddly placed. Its platforming puzzles feel clumsy and oddly timed. You really do just get the sense they didn't know what they were doing yet.

Mega Man is a really important game - it laid the groundwork for one of the funnest, most important platforming franchises of all time, but boy howdy is the first entry a fucking mess.