Well well well. We have since moved on to one of my classical favorites: Mega Man. Although I wouldn't have discovered the franchise until the seventh installment, I decided to play backwards back then, from seven back to one. The journey was quite a difficult one, moving backwards from the advanced seven all the way back to one. So, let's see how my impression of Mega Man (NES) is!

Graphics: The graphics of Mega Man really focus down on the Blue Bomber himself, instead of everything around him. The creator, Keiji Inafune, directly stated that in order to create a more detailed sprite, they chose the color with the most variation in the Famicom color pallet, and "blue" happened to be it, so Mr. Jump-n-Shoot here has got to be pretty detailed, more than the likes of say Mario in the original "Super Mario Brothers". That however, was only the character; the rest of the game does not check out here. The backgrounds are drab, falling into the classic "Metroid" style of using completely solid colored backgrounds and the guilt of copy-and-pasting area designs to artificially increase playtime. The boss chambers also suffer from this. Guts Man and Cut Man both have the exact same room to fight in (minus the changed patterns, the structures are identical)! This makes the game quite a bore to look at times, since an average player would most likely focus on his surroundings for possible enemies, instead of Rockman himself, thus losing track of the most detailed sprite.

Sound: Ugh, I really wish I could give this a higher score, but I can't. No matter how memorable the music are (I still whistle them to myself at times), the sound design in this game is still pretty awful. All of the music tracks are simply bleeps and bleeps of machinery, and that really decimates the value for me. The songs are catchy, but can get droning at times, especially since you only hear the main Robot Master tracks in their respective stages, which are all short in general (save Elec Man and Ice Man, but I'll get to them later). The Wily Stage 1-2 theme is also pretty nice, but once you get past the first stage, the second stage becomes another droning area again (again, I'll get to it soon), and the final Wily fortress theme, though not as droning as say "Mega Man 2"'s second Wily theme, is also quite droning (I'll get to it later). So, the sound really can't score past a 7 in my book.

Addictiveness: This area for me translates to many levels, including controls, which I will cover in the difficulty section. However, ignoring controls, and provided that I play with the sound off in the aforementioned droning stages, I would gladly replay the game. However, this is when the other aspects kick in to make me hate the overall experience (see difficulty for everything that I said I will cover later).

Story: like many early NES titles, the game has no story... unless you have the Japanese instructional manual. The English version of the booklet is absolutely horrendous in every way imaginable, starting with the nonexistent "Monstopolis" the keep yakking about, and how "the leaders of Monstopolis: Dr. Wily, Dr. Light, Mega Man, Cut Man, Guts Man, Ice Man, Bomb Man, Fire Man, and Elec Man". All gibberish and  old-school mistranslated nonsense. The real story, which is a classical tale nowadays, is still quite shallow, "once upon a time there where two doctors, Light and Wily. Both pioneered in the fields of robotics, but Light always seemed one step ahead of Wily. So, Wily, being jealous of Light's success, hijacked his six Robot Masters to conquer the world. Light's assistant, Rock, who had a strong sense of justice (cheesy quote), volunteered to be transformed into the fighting robot Mega Man to stop Dr. Wily." Very shallow story, but the game really needs no story.

Depth: This carries a bit over to difficulty once again, but I'll just say it ain't that deep. Just jump and shoot anything that moves. Figuring out weakness chains for the Robot Masters isn't a problem: Nintendo Power or Internet.

Difficulty: Ah, here is where I have been waiting to sink my critical fangs into! The difficulty of this game is completely ludicrous, offering little challenge and putting more into luck than any other game I've ever seen! It is one thing for the game to be hard, but this game is arbitrarily hard, offering not a fair challenge of reflexes, but instead praying that enemies don't spawn right on top or next to the ladders! Guts Man, for instance, was boss I struggled with so much, and I am now convinced that my emulator's random number generator is rigged. He keeps jumping towards me and cornering me at the boss gate, relying only on his sheer size and contact damage to take me out, and by this point he is already out of the range of my Hyper Bombs, his only weakness. This is completely ludicrous. Then, there are the matter of those Footholders, the things you step on in Ice Man's stage. They take up and entire third of the stage, and move WITHOUT PATTERNS! They go where they wanna go, which is anywhere but near you, and they shoot as well! The player must land on these little platforms in the middle to wait for other Footholders to come by, which may take up to 30 minutes (how long I've waited for one)! Then, there is the matter of Elec Man, which requires you to move vertically upwards in his stage, which Mega Man's physics where not built for! I have had those propeller droids spawn point blank next to your advancing ladders, and have more than a fair share of being killed by them. Then, it is Elec Man, whose Thunder Beam packs such a punch it is really unfeasible to try and beat him with your normal blaster unless you exploit the programming. Finally, what's with the physics control in this game? Mega Man slides forward quite a bit after landing from a jump, which killed many a unsuspecting gamer. The Blue Bomber either has quite a bit of momentum, or just has ice under his Mega-Feet. Not a fan of this selection, Capcom! 

Overall: *Sigh* "Mega Man" is simply a game that I can recommend to everyone. It's sheer difficulty (and unfair difficulty at that!) makes them game unfeasible to play for newer gamers, and even today I struggle at the game. It is quite a sad thing for me to say that this game really was a poorly constructed mess, and although I still like it, I can't say the same for others. If you want a challenge, have a few hours to cash in, have a game genie handy, I'd say try this game. You may see something that I don't.

Awesome review, you hit the nail right on the head about the first Mega Man. It is a lesser known fact that we were lucky to get a sequel to this game as this is where it would have initially stopped.

I agree, the Mega Man franchise got off on a rough start. From Mega Man 2 onwards, the series started to be great.

I personally think you went a little rough on the game in the difficulty section though. The pace in which you move around has been like this throughout in the entire series, and they actually kept it like that in Mega Man X on the SNES. That you get killed after you slide on a little further than you'd expected, isn't the game being unfair, it's simply something the player should learn from and get better on further attempts. And tbh, I've noticed a pattern in just about every of Mega Man's bad guys movements and attacks (don't think I particularily remember the Footholder part though).

Not bashing on your review though, just stating that this is something I personally disagree with. I love to read a person's different in opinion. Nice review. Good luck on further reviews!

OrdannonsX :
Everyone has their own opinion, and mine is in no way absolute
However, the fact that they dramatically lessened the sliding in MM2 and took it away altogether in MM3 kind of makes it seem more like a programming quirk.