Mega Man was released for the NES near the end of 1987. It is an action-style shooter game where you control Mega Man as he shoots at enemies with his arm cannon. This game is the first in a long running series of games. Capcom released a lot of these games for the NES, but there are also some Mega Man games on the Gameboy and SNES systems as well. When it comes to this first Mega Man game, there are a lot of issues I have with the game's difficulty that keep me from enjoying it all that much. This one feels like isn't as designed as well as the later games and is only for players who are experts that grew up with it.

Graphics 7/10: Mega Man is an early NES game and suffers from the same problems that a lot of these types of games had graphically. The backgrounds aren't as bland and uninteresting as some of the other ones released prior to Mega Man, and you can tell that Nintendo and Capcom were trying to make a better looking game. The sprites aren't all that bad looking, but these backgrounds don't look all that great. I've seen worse looking games, but then, I've seen better. The sprites are okay, but the backgrounds look very dated. For the most part, I have to say that this first game in the Mega Man series isn't a good looking game, but it is kind of passable considering how old it is.

Music 9/10: The first game of the Mega Man trilogy has a soundtrack that sounds pretty good but not as good as the later games. I have played the second game and after going back to this one, I've noticed that the tracks in this game aren't near as good. Don't get me wrong, I love the themes for the Iceman, Cutman, and Dr. Wily's stages, but some of the other songs for the Fireman and Gutsman stages sound very boring. I have mixed emotions about the music of Mega Man 1, but there are probably more good songs than there are bad ones. This is the game's strongest point, and you can say that Mega Man does have a pretty impressive soundtrack that is still pretty decent if not superior to a lot of other retro NES games.

Gameplay 2/10: Mega Man is a different kind of game from a lot of the other ones I have reviewed so far. It is an action-shooter game where you control a robot named Mega Man who shoots at enemies with his arm cannon. There is also a lot of platforming in this game as well. The player starts out the game with the option of playing any level they want to. There is a recommended order to play the stages in that makes things easier. After you beat one of the bosses of the stage, you are given the same ability of the boss in that stage. In other words, you copy their ability kind of similar to a game like Kirby's Adventure when you would inhale an enemy.

Mega Man has an energy meter and also an ammunition meter for each copy ability he has. The arm cannon you start the game with has unlimited ammunition, but the other ones run out after using them so many times. The player has plenty of energy, but after taking so much damage you'll run out and lose a life. There are only about 2 or 3 lives in this game without many opportunities to collect more. Running out of lives will give you a Game Over with the option to play the stage again. You'll be able to retain your copy abilities and items, but you'll have to replay the entire level again before getting another chance to take on the boss.

There is no time limit in Mega Man, but the player has to make their way through the stages without getting hit by enemies. You can clear the path by shooting them with Mega Man's arm cannon. The player also has to avoid bottomless pits and spikes that instantly kill you. You have to do this all while avoiding contact with enemies, and the placement of these enemies are terrible! Not to mention, how difficult the platforming in this game is also. I hate the Gutsman Stage! Those moving platforms are almost impossible to time right! As a mentioned in the introduction, it's like this game is only for experts or very experienced players. It sure isn't designed for beginners, and I think it has God awful level design!

What makes things even worse is that if you don't play these stages in the proper order, you can't beat the game. You need to beat the Bombman Stage in order to defeat Gutsman. The Cutman Stage is by far the easiest, but you still have to go back and play the other areas in order to unlock the final level which is an utter nightmare! The player can play the first 6 stages in any order, but all of them have to be played in order to unlock Dr. Wily's stage. With the 6 main areas, I feel like with a little practice and trial/error things aren't that bad, but Dr. Wily's level freaking sucks! It is full of glitches such as unfair platforms you can fall right through and die!

This is what I hate most about this game. You can avoid a lot of this by grabbing the Magnet Beam which is found in the Elecman Stage. The Magnet Beam is the only way to get through the Iceman and Fireman Stages. This is why it is necessary to play these levels in this order: Bombman, Gutsman, Cutman, Elecman, Iceman, and Fireman. You need certain items and abilities in order to successfully complete these stages. Otherwise, Mega Man is an impossible game to beat (I think it is still impossible no matter how you play it). I've never gotten any further than Dr. Wily's castle, and that's why I can't get that much enjoyment out of this game. I know that I can't beat it, and it is designed in a way that makes a lot of players want to give up.

I think it took me forever to beat the Gutsman Stage, and I needed the Gutsman ability to get the Magnet Beam. The controls in Mega Man made it very difficult to time the moving platforms at the beginning of this level. Mega Man is so slippery it is frustratingly difficult to control where he lands. Like I mentioned before, the moving platforms on the Iceman Stage are fall-through! If Mega Man gets hit while he is riding one of these things, he'll fall to his death! I don't mind a game being hard for the right reasons, but this is a game that shouldn't be so hard. It feels like Capcom was still in its experimental phase with the Mega Man games.

All this game really amounts to is re-playing these stages again and again because you hardly have any lives, it is impossible to not die because of glitches and other problems in the game, and the way the enemies attack you makes it impossible to avoid taking damage and losing all your energy. As I already stated, Dr. Wily's Castle is as far as I have ever gotten with this game. The first boss on that stage requires a lot of memorization in order to defeat him. If you die on this part and use up your limited supply of lives, you have to play this level (which is full of glitches and other platforming issues) all over again in order to fight this next to impossible boss fight again!

I have found that over time this game does not get much easier, and it is not a fun game. The platforming takes forever to get used to, and you'll probably find yourself dying a lot about every time you play. I still cannot finish this game, but as I said before, the main 6 stages of the game have tolerable difficulty. The final level was where I lost interest in the game and just gave up! This is a game with very poor level design and gameplay due to its insane amount of difficulty. The only ones who like this Mega Man game are the players that grew up playing it as a kid not people like me who are new to the franchise. For newcomers like myself, I don't recommend playing Mega Man unless you just want to be trolled!!  

Story 8/10: The setting of Mega Man is in the future where robots have been created to assist mankind. Some of these robots go mad and start attacking people. Dr. Light discovers the evil Dr. Wily is the one responsible for this. So, he converts his helper robot into Mega Man and equips him with an arm cannon to stop Dr. Wily and his 6 evil robots from destroying the human population. You have a plot here that is about like that of a lot of other games. It is sort of creative in a way but still pretty ordinary. The setting is pretty cool, but there isn't much else about that is all that catchy. Like many other storylines, it isn't all that important and is okay but nothing groundbreaking.  

Content 5/10: Mega Man consists of only 7 different levels which are fairly lengthy. They are: Bombman, Gutsman, Cutman, Elecman, Iceman, Fireman, and Dr. Wily's Castle. In total, this game takes only about 30 minutes to successfully finish. That isn't a lot of content for a video game, and this is another area where the game fails. This is a game that is pretty short for people who are familiar with it. I feel like many who have completed this game feel like there isn't much to it. Maybe they get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but I feel like players who have played the other Mega Man games probably get more out of those games than they get out of this one. The first one seems to lack a lot of content that the later games had.  

Difficulty 10/10: I've already talked about how the difficulty keeps this game from being all that fun to play, and it really does become a big problem. The controls are way too slippery, some of the stages are very long meaning you have to go back a long way even if you can still continue upon losing all your lives, a good many of the platforms are fall-through, and the enemy placement makes it impossible to avoid taking damage. The thing I hate the most is the way it is almost impossible to avoid the attack pattern of the enemies in this game unless you have this crap memorized! All these things really make Mega Man a hard game to play for just about anybody unless you're an expert or a very experienced Mega Man player!

Overall 6.2/10: This first Mega Man game falls into the same category as many other first games in any of the game trilogies. There are players who get too caught up in the nostalgia factor of this game to realize how badly designed it is. However, unlike with quite a lot of other first games, many feel like I do too. Mega Man 1 does have a good soundtrack and decent plot, but the way it is such a hard game to play is what makes me give it a pretty low score. Capcom was still developing these games, and I heard that Mega Man 1 and 2 were both being worked on at the same time. Maybe this was the prototype for the second game which I felt like was way better. Anyway, this game feels out of date and isn't as good as the later ones.