The original Mega Man was the perfect NES action game: powerups, platforming, shooting, and controller-tossing difficulty merged with ‘80s story conventions: the convergence of man and machine, greed, and technology gone rogue. I can only imagine what people were thinking when they picked it up in 1987 and saw a silly middle-aged fellow stuck in an uncomfortable pose with his pistol on the box cover; I’ll bet they wouldn’t be thinking that in a few decades there would be people dressed up as Mega Man along the streets of Hollywood, making a quick buck posing with tourists. It all started with a great game that is still great today.

As the story goes, Dr. Light created a near-human robot, Mega Man, with the assistance of his colleague Dr. Wily. Together they developed six additional humanoids for industrial purposes: Bomb Man, Guts Man, Cut Man, Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man. But Dr. Wily was disloyal and reprogrammed the humanoids so he could control the world and its natural resources.  However, Mega Man resisted the reprogramming and chose to hunt down the six “Robot Masters” and bring Wily to justice.

Where this game succeeds the most right off the bat is with the level design. Each Robot Master’s stage has a going theme that befits their various abilities.  For instance, Fire Man’s stage features areas with lava and enemies made of fire particles; Guts Man’s stage is located in a rock quarry with certain enemies resembling a construction worker (hard hat and all).  Most of the character designs are quite unique, to say the least.  You’ll have to contend with a variety of small and mid-sized robots that range from easily defeated floating penguins to the troublesome shield-wielding Sniper Joes.

Each stage ends with Mega Man passing through a brief gauntlet before finally facing that stage’s boss.  Once victorious, the boss for that stage will explode into small particles of light and you get collect the power core they leave behind.  Arguably the best part of the Mega Man series is the joy of defeating the near-impossible bosses by using the weapons of fallen Robot Masters.  Each of them has a specific weakness to the others’ abilities. Take Ice Man, for instance; if he seems too tough to beat, try using Elec Man’s Thunder Beam on him.  You’ll find that it makes life a lot easier.  Of course, there’s always at least one Robot Master that can be (relatively) easily defeated with Mega Man’s normal Buster cannon.  Figuring out each boss’s weakness added a layer of strategy uncommon in games back then.

The NES library still has a reputation for brutal difficulty, likely in part because of games like Mega Man.  Anyone who played any of the other games in the series can expect to see their fair share of cheap hits, missed jumps, and energy or weapon items teasingly placed out of reach.  But this first game had a particular viciousness to it.  The frustration of dealing with those dreaded disappearing brick patterns in Ice Man’s stage or the electrical beams in Elec Man’s stage will forever haunt me.  Each stage has at least one section that can potentially make you want to give up and quit after a while if you lack the patience to carefully time jumps or deal with those sine patterns of certain floating enemies.

Mega Man controls very well for the most part, though he tends to slide a little bit when coming to a stop from running.  This makes it tricky when trying to navigate jumps on narrow platforms, or those infernal vanishing bricks I mentioned earlier. When Mega Man takes a hit, he’s knocked back a little, which also leads to countless cheap deaths.  The slippery conditions on Ice Man’s level don’t help much either.  Even so, it’s not so prevalent to the point of making the game unplayable.

Practice, but only a lot, lot, LOT of it, will make perfect. Dying anywhere other than in the boss area will set you back further than you’ll like. Each level has only one checkpoint before you reach the Robot Master, meaning that unless you make it far enough into the level, you’ll start back at the beginning upon death. And while none of the stages are particularly long, they have their fair share of deathtraps you won’t look forward to repeating if you die.

From the start, the series has always had a pleasing quality not often seen on the NES.  The colors are bright and add to the very cartoon look and feel of the game.  It’s never hard to tell what object is an enemy and what’s a powerup or platform.  Everything stands out just right.  It’s also pretty cool to see Mega Man change colors when using a copied ability from a defeated Robot Master. But most of all, I just love that brief freeze-frame that happens when Mega Man collects energy pellets for his health or ammo. I can’t tell if it was intentionally programmed into the game or if it was just a side effect of some hardware limitation, but it definitely contributed to the game’s uniqueness that lasted well into the series.

The audio complemented the game very well.  My personal favorite would have to be the music in Cut Man’s stage.  Fire Man’s tune is my second favorite.  The only downer is that some of the tunes in the game sound tinny; Capcom still had some tweaking to do with audio presentation.  That issue aside, you can still tell where they were going with it. Interestingly enough, the tune that plays once that stage has been selected (just before starting the actual stage) has appeared in various other Mega Man games on and off throughout the series.  Even Mega Man X on the Super NES has it.

The sometimes mind-boggling difficulty and lack of a save feature keeps Mega Man shy of a perfect score. The game was unique for its time, had great level and character designs, and is still fun to play. It’s a game definitely worth playing, especially if you’re interested in going back to experience video game history. It’s a great start to a series and a cultural phenomenon that, thanks to his recent inclusion in the Super Smash Brother series, shows no sign of abating.