Thanks to my big brother's game collection, I was quite the retro gamer when I was little, so despite being only 12 when it came out, I was really excited for Mega Man 9 and bought it right when it came out back in 2008. It's been more than 12 years since I last played the game, so I had forgotten just about everything about it except for sorta what order to fight the bosses, but I was super pleasantly surprised by what I found. I knew people said Mega Man 9 was good, and I went in ready to be met with just a middling game, but heck am I glad to have been wrong. It took me around an hour and a half to finish the Japanese version of the game.
Eight robot masters are once again trying to take over the world, but this time it's allegedly Dr. Light controlling them! Dr. Light is thrown in prison, and it's Mega Man's job to help prove him innocent! Mega Man 9 was made some 12 years after Mega Man 8, and it was quite the event back when it was announced. The story is very well aware of the twisted, awkward road that Mega Man had stumbled through (such as the later Mega Man X games) and the somewhat Sonic-like reputation the Blue Bomber had gained over the years, so this game is quite tongue-in-cheek with its story quite often (down to the point where they even made deliberately awful box art for it just like the American game boxes for Mega Man used to have X3). The news anchor is dressed like Chun Li from Street Fighter, Wily uses a Swiss bank account, Roll rides around dangerously on the Rush jet, and the animations on some of the stills used for narration and cutscenes are hilarious. Sure it turns out that, of course, Dr. Wily is behind it all, but it's a lighthearted return to the good old days as you remember them being, and not just in the 8-bit graphical style.
Mega Man 2 is a game that's really tightly designed for the time, but it's got a lot of problems when you look back at it with some two or three decades of hindsight. However, Mega Man 9 is how good you REMEMBER Mega Man 2 being. Mega Man is back to only his pea shooter and Rush (no ground dashing or charge buster), but despite that this game is still just so well made. Traps and enemies are almost always in places they can be reasonably dealt with, and though there are a couple places where things feel less than fair, just how well put together the rest of the game is makes the odd blip in fairness that much more noticeable. It might take you a bit of trial and error to get enemy or platform patterns down, but every challenge can be gotten through with the right timing, patience, and use of special weapons. The special weapons in this game are especially worth mentioning because so many of them, like the concrete shot, have uses outside of combat for getting rid of enemy platforms, grabbing out of the way items, or just a little boost to get you through a tough spot. It's hard to put into words exactly how Mega Man 9 is so tightly designed, but those wizards at Inti Creates only heckin' went and did it.
Another place the quality of the design extends to is the boss design, and they're easily a handful of the best fights in the series. Again, despite having no charge shot or ground dash, you always feel super well equipped to take on these bosses with only your mega buster, and I had a blast taking them down without their special weaknesses in a way I've never had in the older entries. All of the bosses are really well designed, technical fights that vary in difficulty (Concrete Man is definitely the hardest out of the first eight bosses) but never in quality, and it makes the boss rush time attack mode a blast as well.
The presentation is also top of the line. Sure, the graphics are great and in a very 8-bit style (though they're of a quality that they probably wouldn't've run on an actual old NES), but plenty of Mega Man games are pretty. What plenty of Mega Man games are NOT is full of awesome music, and that is where Mega Man 9 shines. It's like we're back to the old days of Mega Man 2 and 3 with just how heckin' great basically every track in the game is, and I am all here for a return to basics like that.
Verdict: Highly Recommended. Throughout my marathon of playing Mega Man, I was thinking a lot about which entry in the series was my favorite, but that thinking stopped with Mega Man 9. This takes all the best things of the old games and of games made since and uses them to absolutely masterful effect. As far as the classic style is concerned, this is the Mega Man game without peer. Perhaps someday Capcom will put out a better one (and I haven't played 11 yet, so perhaps they've already got something good going on), but damn if they haven't set themselves a VERY high bar to clear.