There are two ways to approach a review of a game like Mega Man 1. The first way is to look at what elements the game implements as the baseline formula that would eventually define the gameplay of the long series it spawned. You can look at whether or not those elements laid a good foundation for a long-running series, and how those building blocks set Mega Man apart from other games in the 2d Platformer genre. For example, every other game in the series afterwards takes ranged weaponry being the default as an assumption, but in the first Mega Man game, that was a deliberate choice made by the developers of the game. If you take this approach to reviewing Mega Man 1, it is a fantastic game. It lays down gameplay loops, moveset concepts, level design concepts, and overall game structure in a way that was unique and innovative for the time, and it deserves all the credit in the world for that. However, you can also take a second approach to reviewing Mega Man: The perspective of a player who first played the game in 2018 as a part of the Legacy Collection, and who thinks it’s significantly worse than most of the games that followed it.

See my full review here: https://queenemilyscorner.wordpress.com/2024/04/04/mega-man-1-review/