Upon starting Mega Man 6: The International Blowout, I was worried that my complaints about 5's terrible weapons and simple robot master fights would require me to make excuses for 6 in anticipation of similar problems. Fortunately not only does this game mostly avoid it, but it adds more than enough to keep me from being focused on such things.
The plot of the game is absolutely absurd. A guy named "Mr. X" who totally isn't Dr. Wily (and not related to X from MMX or the guy from Streets of Rage) takes control of a bunch of robots entered into a world tournament and uses them for his own ends toward world domination. I love it. Giving the robot masters a bit of an international feel to them was a great touch which helps shake things up a bit thematically, and Dr. Wily not even trying with his disguise is just the cherry on top. I absolutely adore the useless stats that are displayed when you select a robot master to go after.
The new gameplay gimmick for this game are the Rush adapters. Jet adapter might break the platforming sections, but there's two things I argue against that being bad, and that's that it's fun to use and you can just not use it if you wish to challenge yourself more. Sure, you could try and argue against me that my complaints about the charged mega buster in the last game were unfound, because I could've done something similar and not use it, but I need to reiterate that the weapons in that game were fucking terrible. The weapons in this game? While not quite the heights of 4's arsenal are still a massive improvement to some of the junk we had in the last game, and this game also actually bothers to provide threats to make you actually want to use them, which helps take the spotlight off the mega buster in this game despite it getting some small nerfs.
The game is on the easy side, but the fact that it's devoid of literally everything that I hated about past games in the series is what makes me enjoy it a ton more every time I come back to it. No Yellow Devils, no Boobeam Traps, no Mecha Dragons blasting my fucking eyes out every time I shoot it, no badly implemented Doc Robot fights, no paying attention to Bright Man's HP bar to avoid inescapable attacks, no boring-ass Dark Man bosses, etc, etc.
It manages to feel like a climax to this era of Mega Man games with the somber sounding music that you hear throughout Wily's last castle and his final boss fight. It's like one last dance before we gotta go 16-bit. It helps put some emotion into an otherwise pretty easy final boss fight. Perhaps that's just me making up excuses? Who cares. I always loved/hated the stupid boss in Wily's Castle that was just a gun on wheels. It really hammers it home that after six games Wily has managed to finally run out of ideas, and all he has left before the robot master refights is just a dumb gun on wheels that basically acts like the gorilla mini-bosses from Plant Man's stage. It makes sense considering in the last game he apparently had to resort to stealing giant robot Pez Dispensers from a fucking amusement park.
Overall, I like 6 a lot. After playing through all six of the NES era games again I think my final opinion is that 3, 4 and 6 are all the best with their own strengths and weaknesses. I'm probably chickening out by not saying that either 4 or 6 are the best of the NES hexalogy, but honestly? Opinions are so mixed on these games due to tastes and whatnot that it really shows off how fun it is to talk about them. A series is a lot more interesting when one game doesn't crush everything else, ignoring the popularity of MM2 (baffles me to no end). Playing these games really brought me back to when I hung out in chats with other Mega Man nerds who would actually argue about shit like timelines and whatnot, it's been way too long.
Maybe I'll get to 7 at some point, but for now I'm gonna take a break from revisiting these games for a while. It probably doesn't help that I don't have much enthusiasm for 7, but hey I'll get there sometime this year ... maybe.
Favorite Enemy Name: Hotchkiss'n, Dr. Wily apparently made it by accident after stapling his finger. Though I also think "Power Slam" is incredibly badass.
Favorite Music: God, 6 is probably the only game to compete with 3 for best ost out of the NES games. I'll go with Tomahawk Man because it led to some pretty awesome remixes, but I really do like the Wily stage music in this one.
The plot of the game is absolutely absurd. A guy named "Mr. X" who totally isn't Dr. Wily (and not related to X from MMX or the guy from Streets of Rage) takes control of a bunch of robots entered into a world tournament and uses them for his own ends toward world domination. I love it. Giving the robot masters a bit of an international feel to them was a great touch which helps shake things up a bit thematically, and Dr. Wily not even trying with his disguise is just the cherry on top. I absolutely adore the useless stats that are displayed when you select a robot master to go after.
The new gameplay gimmick for this game are the Rush adapters. Jet adapter might break the platforming sections, but there's two things I argue against that being bad, and that's that it's fun to use and you can just not use it if you wish to challenge yourself more. Sure, you could try and argue against me that my complaints about the charged mega buster in the last game were unfound, because I could've done something similar and not use it, but I need to reiterate that the weapons in that game were fucking terrible. The weapons in this game? While not quite the heights of 4's arsenal are still a massive improvement to some of the junk we had in the last game, and this game also actually bothers to provide threats to make you actually want to use them, which helps take the spotlight off the mega buster in this game despite it getting some small nerfs.
The game is on the easy side, but the fact that it's devoid of literally everything that I hated about past games in the series is what makes me enjoy it a ton more every time I come back to it. No Yellow Devils, no Boobeam Traps, no Mecha Dragons blasting my fucking eyes out every time I shoot it, no badly implemented Doc Robot fights, no paying attention to Bright Man's HP bar to avoid inescapable attacks, no boring-ass Dark Man bosses, etc, etc.
It manages to feel like a climax to this era of Mega Man games with the somber sounding music that you hear throughout Wily's last castle and his final boss fight. It's like one last dance before we gotta go 16-bit. It helps put some emotion into an otherwise pretty easy final boss fight. Perhaps that's just me making up excuses? Who cares. I always loved/hated the stupid boss in Wily's Castle that was just a gun on wheels. It really hammers it home that after six games Wily has managed to finally run out of ideas, and all he has left before the robot master refights is just a dumb gun on wheels that basically acts like the gorilla mini-bosses from Plant Man's stage. It makes sense considering in the last game he apparently had to resort to stealing giant robot Pez Dispensers from a fucking amusement park.
Overall, I like 6 a lot. After playing through all six of the NES era games again I think my final opinion is that 3, 4 and 6 are all the best with their own strengths and weaknesses. I'm probably chickening out by not saying that either 4 or 6 are the best of the NES hexalogy, but honestly? Opinions are so mixed on these games due to tastes and whatnot that it really shows off how fun it is to talk about them. A series is a lot more interesting when one game doesn't crush everything else, ignoring the popularity of MM2 (baffles me to no end). Playing these games really brought me back to when I hung out in chats with other Mega Man nerds who would actually argue about shit like timelines and whatnot, it's been way too long.
Maybe I'll get to 7 at some point, but for now I'm gonna take a break from revisiting these games for a while. It probably doesn't help that I don't have much enthusiasm for 7, but hey I'll get there sometime this year ... maybe.
Favorite Enemy Name: Hotchkiss'n, Dr. Wily apparently made it by accident after stapling his finger. Though I also think "Power Slam" is incredibly badass.
Favorite Music: God, 6 is probably the only game to compete with 3 for best ost out of the NES games. I'll go with Tomahawk Man because it led to some pretty awesome remixes, but I really do like the Wily stage music in this one.